We all know that consistency is important for improving our health and fitness. On episode 620 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss a strategy for getting that done called Your Perfect Repeatable Week.
Transcript
Let's Say Hello
[00:03:28.930] – Coach Allan
Hey, Ras. How are you?
[00:03:31.460] – Coach Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?
[00:03:33.590] – Coach Allan
I'm doing okay. Tammy went back to the States. We recorded these a few weeks in advance. So Tammy's going to go do a surprise visit for her mother for Thanksgiving, so she's going to see her boys. I'm not sure if summer is going to make it up there or not, but she's definitely going to see her boys and probably her granddaughter and her mother and all that and spend some time with them. Wonderful. Her mother was a little bummed out. It's like, I'm not going to see you this year, and DA DA DA. So we said slow here, and it's slow here because people are afraid of what not to be afraid of, which is there's stuff going on everywhere, and if you let people scare you, then you're scared. But that being said, things are slow here. So we decided, okay, go ahead. Head on up there. So it's just me and the dogs. So it's a boys weekend or boys week. The dogs just hanging out nice and dogs.
[00:04:29.350] – Coach Rachel
That sounds awesome.
[00:04:31.190] – Coach Allan
How are things up there?
[00:04:32.780] – Coach Rachel
Good. I'm super excited to share that I just completed the Dr. Stacy Sims Menopause 2.0 class. She has an online class. It was about 20 hours long, although I wasn't timing myself. It just seemed like it was a lot. But it was a really great class, and I needed it for the CEUs that you and I need to get for our NASM certification. So it was a perfect class at the perfect time, and I learned a ton, so I'm pretty excited about it.
[00:05:02.360] – Coach Allan
And you're living it.
[00:05:03.970] – Coach Rachel
I am living it, which made it so much easier to digest. I'm like, yeah, I know exactly how that know how that feels. Exactly. Yeah. It was perfect.
[00:05:15.620] – Coach Allan
Well, good. Congratulations on that.
[00:05:17.320] – Coach Rachel
Thanks.
[00:05:18.310] – Coach Allan
All right. So are you ready to talk about your perfect repeatable week?
[00:05:23.190] – Coach Rachel
Sure.
Episode – Your Perfect Repeatable Week
Today we're going to talk about your perfect repeatable week. This is a concept I recently heard or heard something similar to a business related style podcast, and I got to thinking about the lesson and what it was about, and it really hit me that this is actually very good for our health and fitness as well as our business. So want to share this concept of the perfect repeatable week with you and see if you can use this to maybe create the thing that's going to help you make the most change this next coming year. So the perfect repeatable week brings about a few different things that are really, really important. The first is about consistency. So we want something that is going to allow us to be consistent. And when you think about consistency, the way I really want you to think about this is realize that the Colorado River and depending on when you read what they say, it could have been 70 million years ago or 6 million years ago. But at any rate, there's still a lot of consistency. That river has formed the Grand Canyon just by being consistent, running, running over all of that time created one of the most amazing spectacles on the planet, the Grand Canyon.
So one of the things that the perfect repeatable week does for us is it creates consistency. The second thing is it creates a level of discomfort. Okay? We humans spend way too much time in our comfort zone. We're never willing to go out of it and for good reason. That's how we've survived as long as we did. The ones that did the things that were stupid, that were outside of the norm, well, they often didn't come back. So the ones that did the comfortable thing, just enough of the comfortable thing and just enough to stay just on the edge, well, they didn't die and they managed to survive. Okay? But when you're looking at change, comfort is the enemy. We have to get a little uncomfortable if we want change. So that's one of the other things that your perfect repeatable week does is it pushes you just outside your comfort zone. Not too far, but just enough that you can get the benefits. And the other thing about your perfect repeatable week is that there's nothing inherently special about a day or even a week. However, we tend to structure our lives around a day and that can make it really, really hard to be successful in the long run because days are different and we'll talk about that in more detail.
So there's three key things that make your perfect repeatable week kind of special. So let's talk about the principles behind your perfect repeatable week. Well, first starts with your. And the thing about your is this is yours. This is not mine. This is not someone else's. This is not an influencer on Instagram or someone you're seeing on YouTube. This is what works for you. This is what you, it's built around you. So what you can make your week do is what you make it do. So you think about what you need to do within a given week to meet your health and fitness goals. Your health and fitness goals. So this is all built around you and your lifestyle. It's not anybody else's. And that's a really cool principle behind this. Your perfect repeatable week. The second is perfect. Now the term perfect is conditional. Someone who is a professional athlete, well their perfect is going to look very, very different from mine and going to look very, very different from yours. Yours is going to look very different from mine. So it's conditional on who you are. So first off, don't think perfect is perfect for everyone.
That we're looking for this perfect model that would fit everybody. That's not we're after here. We're after what would be perfect for you. Again, back to your, because the second thing about perfect is that we want to start where we are now. We don't want to think about, well, gee, if I were perfect, I would be running 100 miles a week and I'd be doing this and I'd be doing that. We're not looking at that. We're looking at starting from where we are now. What would be perfect based on where I am now and what I can do now. So what you have and where you are are key components to defining your perfect. And then the next is, well, I may not always hit this goal, but at least by having a target that's a little bit further than I think I can reach, I'm going to get close. And if I'm getting close, what does that look like? Maybe I'm not running or walking the 40 miles on a perfect week like I would. Maybe I only got 35, but that's still pretty darn good. So this is about trying to set this stretch goal and knowing that if I can occasionally hit perfect and sometimes hit really good, I'm doing pretty awesome job and I'm going to get where I need to be because again, I'm pushing myself outside of my comfort zone.
The next part of your perfect repeatable week is the repeatable part. So the reason I like to break this down this way is what can you do week in and week out? Okay. What this requires you to do is it requires you to be consistent. So I'm not thinking about, well, gee, I'm off work this week, it's this week and I'm off work this week. So of course I can do more than I could last week when I was working all the extra hours to make sure I could be off this week, really off this week. So obviously I can't do this every week. But if I'm doing the things I can do every week, then I'm being consistent. So what's repeatable what makes sense? And that's the second part. What's realistic, I can't say that I'm going to work out twelve times every week if my work schedule doesn't allow that to happen. If in general, I know, okay, I'm working eight to five Monday through Friday, so I know I can work out before I go to work. I know I can do a little bit of moving around during the day, like during my lunch break.
I can do some walking. I know that I can do some things during the week and during the weekend to make this all work. And if I do those repeatable things, I create consistency. So that's the key there is repeatable equals consistency. If I do repeat it, okay, then we talk about week. Of course, week being seven days. And a lot of times the reason I like the week is sometimes the day can be limiting. It is 24 hours, and sometimes I'm working 16 of those. And if I look at it from that perspective. I'll never be successful because a perfect day would not happen all the time. But a week gives us a little bit of flexibility. And the other thing is days are different. So my Saturday often looks very different from my Monday. My Sunday looks considerably different from my Friday. And so as you look at your days now because you're looking at a week you can find ways to make bits and pieces fit in that make sense. So days that I'm off, maybe I can do better. Maybe I can do things to make the days that I'm working or on better.
So batch cooking, things like that, what can I do? And then sometimes you just need a day off. Think about it. If you're trying to train or lift or do anything seven days a week, eventually you're going to burn out. So the advantage of a week is it lets you look at this holistically and you can say, okay, if I know that I need to predominantly eat less than a certain number of calories, if you choose to count calories you may say, well, it's really hard for me on a Saturday, only eat 1800 calories. I can easily do it Monday through Friday, but Saturday is a little bit difficult. So if I look at it and say, well, I really only have to eat 2000 calories a day to make my calories work for what I want, well then I calculate it. Okay, what is 2000 calories times seven? That's 14,000. Okay, how do I distribute those? Well, maybe more of those are distributed on Saturdays and Sundays when I'm more active and a little less on the days when I'm a little busier and not as active because again I'm more distracted and it makes it easier.
So I can fit this stuff in in a way that works. And I can take days off when I need to take days off. And I can really push myself on days that maybe I'm not doing some things so I can get things done that make it easier when I'm doing the other thing. So I know that's a lot, but I want to just back it up because again your perfect repeatable week gives you the tools to be consistent. It gives you the tools to get outside your comfort zone as often as you can and stay out of it as often as you can. And because it's a week it allows you a lot of flexibility in how you apply this. So an example if you will, would be a perfect repeatable week for me might be something like Sunday. I do batch cooking. I put some lunches and dinners in the refrigerator and more and others in the freezer. Okay. So now what I've done is I've made it very easy for me to make sure that my food is set for the week. I can pull it out of the freezer when I need to so I'm not pushed when I come home for work.
I can also do my grocery shopping on Sunday. So I go to the grocery store, I pick up the things I need. The reason that's perfect for me is if that's when they run the sales on the meat to clear it out, because tomorrow Monday, they're going to get a new shipment of meat. Then I can go ahead and I can take advantage of those savings. I go in, I buy early morning, I buy the meat, I go do the grilling. That afternoon, I cook the other things I need, I do that batch cooking, and I'm done. Okay. When I have my work week, well, my day starts around 07:00, so I know if I get up early Monday through Friday, I can schedule time to do my workouts. So I can put in a little bit of time each day to get in my resistance training, my balance training, my mobility training. And then on Saturday and Sunday morning, I can go out and do a little bit longer cardio stuff. So build a little bit of stamina, longer walks, enjoy my day, be a little bit more active so I'm able to take my week and build it out that way.
So I'm not saying, well, gee, today I didn't get stamina work in. Oh, my gosh. Well, no, I got a whole week to build this stuff in and put it in my schedule and put it on my calendar. So I've built this out, and because I want to get better and better, I'm constantly looking for ways to improve so my perfect repeatable week doesn't stay the same over time, it often changes. Okay, so how do we do this? How do we really put it all together? Because all I've really given you with your perfect repeatable week is a standard. You've set a standard for yourself. This is how I want to live my week. This is how I want to do my week. And if I do it well, this is my perfect. Okay, so the way I like to apply it is to basically look and say, okay, on a scale, and you can do a one to ten or one to seven, whatever fits. On a scale of one to seven, how did I do? A perfect week would be a seven. A horrible week would be a one. Well, chances are you're not going to have a lot of ones.
And chances are you might not have all that many sevens either. But as we go into the holidays now, you might find there's some weeks that you can just blow this out of the water. I intended to do this, and I did more great. Okay. On something else, I thought I was going to do better, and then I didn't. Okay, again, we're not totally after perfect, but we do have a target. And if I'm staying on the top end of that scale. Most of the time, I'm going to see change. So each week, I can go through my perfect week, and I can rate myself. How did I do relative to my perfect? Your perfect? How did you do? So you rate yourself, and then you look for what you can learn. What did I learn this week that I can apply and be better in future weeks? And in some cases, you may find, well, you know, I thought my perfect was basically eating whole food five days a week and then letting my Saturdays and Sundays be a little bit more flexible. But what I found is that if I go ahead and push myself outside my comfort zone, I can actually eat predominantly whole food all week long, that I don't need the snacks as much as I thought I did.
And if I do need a snack, it's easy enough for me to get some nuts, have a small salad, or some protein if I'm prepared. So I can actually ratchet up my perfect week as I improve my health and fitness. So I hope that you can see how you can take your perfect repeatable week, build out your model, schedule it, put it into play, and then start rating yourself based on it. And then as you improve, ratchet up that perfect a little bit. Hope this is helpful for you. I hope to hear from you.
What does your perfect repeatable week look like?
Post Show/Recap
[00:19:20.030] – Coach Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:19:26.030] – Coach Rachel
Hey, Allan. I love the concept of a perfect repeatable week because it really limits your vision to one week to one week. That's all you need to worry about. Not a year from now, but just one week. And especially right now, this is probably the busiest time of my year. Probably everybody else's, it really helps you plan things and still have some sort of a focus on your own personal health and fitness. And that is so important.
[00:19:54.830] – Coach Allan
Yeah, it's just too easy to get too busy. Well, I was busy doing this, I was doing that. This was a priority. That was a priority. Family this, family that, friends this, work that. And some of us, I don't know, me always going into the holidays, I would be working my butt off so that I could actually take a whole day off because there's too much going on. And so it's just that thing of, okay, I'm working so hard, and I got to get all this done and family and friends and all this other stuff around this time of year, and it would just be chaos. So, yeah, this whole idea of kind of looking at your week and saying, okay, what would be the best thing? But not just this week. I mean, this week is different than last week, obviously, and this week is different than a lot of weeks, but we have weeks that are the same as the week before, the week before that. And we still come up with excuses to not do what's necessary to be done. And so this is just a point of saying on a normal week, sometime in the middle of April, when there's nothing else going on, it's like, what does that week look like?
[00:21:07.860] – Coach Allan
And why don't at least probably 40 or so of the other weeks of the year look very similar to that? And so if you can figure out what works, then here's your opportunity to kind of build a blueprint for this. And I just think that's important, for sure.
[00:21:25.610] – Coach Rachel
As a runner, I'm no stranger to consistency and following a training schedule, usually a good training schedule might be ten to 14 weeks, depending on what you're going to run. So you basically have an outline with a training plan. But in terms of just general health and fitness, I think that if you take a class at the gym, like with me, I have run clubs several nights a week. That's my repeatable week that's on the calendar. I don't schedule anything over it, and that's just what I do. And then just because of where my husband and I are in our life, we know what nights that we can cook at home versus what nights we're out with work or doing other things. So I can control what we're cooking at home, what we're eating at home. And that's a pretty basic way to manage our health and fitness. And then with the holidays, things go sideways. And sometimes you just need to put what you can do the best you can when you can.
[00:22:26.350] – Coach Allan
But I'm telling you, if you go into a week like that with no plan right, it will go sideways. It has to. There's no other way for it to go. You didn't plan for it. Yeah. You didn't plan for it to come out better. You didn't do anything besides just say, well, I'm going to wing it. Well, winging it puts you in the ditch. It just does. And so that's the advantage of this, is saying, I know what a great week looks like, and trying to aspire to be as close to that as possible, even when things aren't optimal, is going to put you on the right side of this equation more often than not, for sure.
[00:23:02.560] – Coach Rachel
And you can plan that for us. We recently had Thanksgiving. Christmas is coming up. If you have other holidays, birthday parties, family events, that goes on your calendar, because those are important days in your life and your family's life. And so then you work around that. Well, when can you squeeze in a trip to the gym or a run with friends? Or when can you plan a meal? And you have a whole week, Sunday to Saturday, to plan that out. So put all your important things on there, but certainly put on there the important things that you need to live a healthy lifestyle.
[00:23:38.330] – Coach Allan
Yeah. And some folks might get upset. I use the word perfect. Well, I've even done an episode saying nobody's perfect. And it's true. It isn't perfect. So maybe a better word for you would be ideal. So maybe instead of the word perfect, if you find yourself cringing over the use of that word, maybe the better word for you is ideal. This is your ideal repeatable week. And it follows the same pattern of this has to be something you know works for you, will get you where you want to go. It's something you can repeat. It's your week and it's your time. And it's written in a time where you're not saying, well, okay, Sunday is different than Monday. So therefore, if I can't do it on Monday, there's no sense in me trying to do it on Sunday. Hockey Puck of course you can. Sunday can be different than Monday, but your Sundays generally might be about the same week in and week out. Your Mondays might be about the same week in and week out. And if they are, that's awesome because that gives you the opportunity to create that repetition that gives you the consistency.
[00:24:44.450] – Coach Rachel
Oh, that's perfect. But I also liked your rating system, too, because it makes you look back on your week. And if you didn't hit your marks, like whatever run club or whatever meals you wanted to cook at home or whatever your journey is, look back and say, well, why didn't you hit those marks? If it was because you had a sleepless night with a baby or grandchild or something, then you have to give yourself grace because you can't work out if you're sleep deprived, but it gives you ideas. Well, maybe you made too many excuses because the weather's too cold or it's too rainy or something, or a new.
[00:25:20.630] – Coach Allan
Series dropped on Netflix and you've been.
[00:25:26.390] – Coach Rachel
If only we scheduled our TV habits like we did, our eating and workout.
[00:25:30.890] – Coach Allan
That can be a part of it, too. For a lot of people, the television is time, family time. It can be or it can just be. That's a way that you really enjoy unwinding in the evening. Sure, fine, throw it in there. It's a part of your week. It's a part of unwinding relaxing, and you can just say, okay, I'm going to give myself 90 minutes of television time this many times per week. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that if it's not disturbing your sleep and it's not keeping you from doing the other things that you need to do, but when you're like, okay, well, I spent 15 hours on Saturday and Sunday watching Netflix, so I didn't have time to work out. I didn't have time to batch cook. So McDonald's it is, and so what? Well, no, that week didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. Then it gives you some food for thought.
[00:26:21.770] – Coach Rachel
Yeah, what can you do better next time? Or what can you fix so that you're not stuck with grabbing snacks out of the cabinet or fast food or something. There's always something to be learned, and if it can't be helped, it can't be helped. Things happen, but whatever you can plan and control, the better for you. So I love it. I love the idea of planning your perfect week and seeing how it goes.
I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I posted on my Facebook the other day it was kind of a joke, but not really a joke. And it was a principle of nobody starts a diet in November.
[00:03:50.900] – Rachel
Right. This is a terrible time to start, Allan.
[00:03:54.690] – Allan
Yeah. Who's going to start in the middle of November and then six weeks later is a much better time to start?
[00:04:02.060] – Rachel
That's right. Yeah.
[00:04:05.070] – Allan
And I got some good feedback and some good from folks on that, because they recognize it's like we do these little logic things in our head that really if you just took a step back and says, is that how I would do it? No, it's like, well, the check engine light came onto my car, but I really just want to wait till January 1 to take a look at that, that's not how we would approach it. So it was just kind of one of those things. And I'm going to probably be posting a lot of those. So if we're not friends on Facebook, come check me out. You can go to the Facebook group at 40 Plusfitnesspodcast.com group. But I also have friend people on my Facebook, so I post some things there. I post some things to the group. So if you're interested and want to have a little bit of fun, check both of those out. Cool.
[00:04:50.220] – Rachel
That sounds fun.
[00:04:51.500] – Allan
So what are you up to?
[00:04:53.390] – Rachel
Actually, funny you should say that. I'm kind of planning my New Year's goals. I got to wrap up this year. No, but actually, at the end of the year, I do like to have something to do between Thanksgiving and New Year's. It's the busiest time of year, and this is no different. I'm doing tons of things. I got lists for my list. But I always like to have some sort of an activity between Thanksgiving and New Year's. And this last year from 2022, I had a run streak. So we did a 1 mile minimum streak between Thanksgiving and New Year's. It was I can't remember, 38, 37 days, however many days it was. And I'm trying to figure out what I want to do this year. And the reason why I like to start at the end of the year, just like in your post, is that I need the distraction because holidays are stressful, they're busy, and sometimes we get so focused on all of the other things that we don't have time to take care of ourselves. So having some sort of a movement goal reminds us that we need to take time for self care.
[00:05:59.300] – Rachel
We need to take time to exercise and do the things that are good for us. So I don't know what I'm going to do yet for the end of this year or for my New Year goals for next year. But I've got something planned, figuring something out.
[00:06:10.740] – Allan
Yeah, well, I break it all down month by month. And so December is no different for me than any other month of the year. January, February, whatever. It's the month. And so what I do is before the month starts. So I've looked at what I want to do for the year, and as I get into the month, I'm like, okay, what do I need to do this month to move myself in that direction? It doesn't have to be a huge move. It's just what is it? And so I have all of those, and it goes across personal, professional, health, fitness, Lula's, my online business and stuff. And so I'll have all of these things that I want to accomplish. Some of them are relatively mundane. Like, I really do need to write a statement of policy or statement of position for Lula's on a lot of how things are done, basically. So basically how things work, and so someone else can do it if I'm not doing it. Because right now I'm the only one that knows how to do most of the back office stuff. And so it is what it is. I need to write that down.
[00:07:12.410] – Allan
I need to publish it in some way that someone could follow me if I don't want to do it anymore or I can't do it anymore. So some of that is that simple. It's like I just need to start writing these things. And then as I get into the month, it's like, okay, what do I want to write this month? Which policy? What's my movement goal? What are the other goals that I have in my life? And then each morning I wake up and I go through a thing, and there's a lot of affirmations and gratitude and all that, and then the goals, and they pop up. And because I know what my monthly goals are, I can then go into my to do list today and say, okay, what on this to do list actually does those things and what does not? And so a lot of times I'll have a list of all my to dos and they're dated and they're in order of importance or time of the day that I need to get them done, because there's some things I do each day that I need to do in the morning, and some things I can do later.
[00:08:08.800] – Allan
But I'll take a task and I'll say, you know, that's not really an important task right now. And I'll put it over under the parked list, and it just sits over there. And about once a month, I go through the parked list and delete a lot of those because again, it wasn't really built that goal, whatever. It wasn't really something that's going to move me. The to do was not going to move the needle for me. And it sounded cool. It was the shiny object of, hey, I should buy those new shoes. And then I get a month away and I look at back and I'm like, okay, well, why did I want those shoes? And are they really going to move me forward? And, oh, they're not going to last here in Panama. Stupid purchase. Yeah. And then they're gone. I might park them and say, no, I know I'm going to be doing a little bit more mileage next month or the month after, and so maybe I do want the shoes for that. But a lot of times, yeah, they just get written off because it really wasn't something that was going to move the needle.
[00:09:06.680] – Allan
So if you find yourself overwhelmed, break things down, figure out what your big rocks are, what the important things are, and that becomes my monthly thing. That's great. And I have an annual thing and then a monthly thing. And then literally every morning, I wake up and say, okay, what am I doing today that does one of these things? I love that, and sometimes they don't. I had an intention of writing an article to advertise, and with everything that's going on here, okay, what's the sense of telling people what the best beaches are in Bocas if we don't have the guests coming into the country the way that they would or could? So I'm not writing that article because I'm not going to put the time in to write something that isn't going to move the needle for the business or do what it needs to do. So it's not valid anymore. I'm moving it over into the parked items. I'll reevaluate it in December or January, and maybe I write it then, but I'm not writing it right now. Perfect.
[00:10:05.670] – Rachel
That sounds like a good plan.
[00:10:07.360] – Allan
So if you find yourself a little overwhelmed with the change that you want, the things that you want, just start with the big thing. Okay, I know I need to lose two inches off my waist. Well, you're not going to lose two inches off your waist today.
[00:10:23.290] – Rachel
Right.
[00:10:24.790] – Allan
Or maybe even this month. But what can you do consistently this month that's going to help you do that? And then each day you do that thing. Perfect. And so it's really a trickle down of breaking your bigger rocks into the bite sized pieces to keep it workable. And then, you know, you wake up in the morning, you look at what you got to do that day. Is it on my calendar? Yes. My movement is on my calendar? Yes. Getting this done is on my calendar. And then I go do it. And if I don't have the time in the day to do it, I have to prioritize and push some of it to tomorrow or park some of it, because, again, it just isn't going to do enough for it to be worth what everything else on my list is doing for sure.
[00:11:05.340] – Rachel
You can only do so much.
[00:11:07.430] – Allan
All right, well, you ready to have a conversation with Dr. Greger?
[00:11:10.640] – Rachel
Sure.
Interview
[00:12:13.070] – Allan
Dr. Greger, welcome back to 40+ Fitness.
[00:12:16.470] – Dr. Greger
Thank you so much. Glad to be back.
[00:12:21.070] – Allan
I've watched your videos over the years and I'm just fascinated with how you can teach so much information in a three to five minute video. And then here you come out with this book and quite frankly called How Not to Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older. And I'm just going to call it right here. This is the most comprehensive health book I have ever read in my entire life, and I doubt anyone's ever even going to come close to matching the depth of what you put into a single book. Some would argue it might be a few books, but given the length of it. But this is really good stuff if you love understanding health and understanding how our body works. Dr. Gregor here, he's your friend. He's done the work, he's done the research, and he's put it together in depth. And it's all there from my perspective, again, because the end notes are there, but you have to go to a separate website to follow them through because otherwise the book would be twice the length that it is. Because I believe there were like over 8000 endnotes, and you probably referenced no less than maybe 300 or 400 videos along the way that could go deeper.
[00:13:38.090] – Allan
But this creates a lot of rabbit holes, particularly for those that love the science of health and fitness. So I'm going to say it was not a hard read, but it was a read.
[00:13:50.250] – Dr. Greger
Yeah. This is for all the longevity nerds out there. There's meat on them bones, and beyond.
[00:13:57.620] – Allan
The meat, there's actionable. Things you can do today to improve your health going forward. And so I love that because I'm all about action. And so let's dive in a little bit because again, there's so much again, I can read a book. A standard health and fitness book these days is about 250 pages, and I can read that in about 6 hours. And usually it's because I know most of what they're going to say because they're saying the same things that everybody else says. Your book is nearly three times that length, and you're not saying what everybody else is saying. You're going in and saying, well, this is what they looked at and this is how you can apply it. And so you do a lot of that. So I want to get as much of that in as I can in the limited amount of time we have, because I think I could actually probably talk to you for about three straight days without sleeping, and we could probably still not cover everything that was there. Like I said, you've won. The game is over. The competition is over. For what we know right now, based on the science that's been done today, this is the most comprehensive book you can buy.
[00:15:05.090] – Allan
Okay, so you talked in the beginning of the book, you brought up the I think there's eleven pathways of aging, and I want to dive into a few of them because I think sometimes there's a little bit of confusion when we start talking about certain things. So the first one that I want to get into is the AMPK. And where people may not have heard of that before, but they've probably heard of autophagy and how we can use fasting as a mechanism for reversing aging, improving our health. Can we talk a little bit about how that process works, just a little bit, and then how we can get into autophagy? Because I think there's multiple mechanisms you brought up in the book, but I think there's some misconnection of, oh, well, I can just do intermittent fasting and I'm into autophagy and I'm doing great. Okay, again, there's some misconceptions out there because it's old. If you do intermittent fasting, you're getting autophagy. If you're getting autophagy, you're slowing your aging. So can we just kind of dive into that a little bit? Sure.
[00:16:09.910] – Dr. Greger
Yeah. Autophagy is the kind of primary system for cleaning the body from the inside out, clearing out the cellular debris that may be contributing to aging. Some food components can suppress autophagy, like acrylamide, which is a compound concentrated in French fries and potato chips, whereas others, like spermidine and the antioxidants in coffee, can actually help your cells kind of take out the trash. So to boost this antiaging pathway, I encourage readers to consider, on a daily basis, 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity. Unfortunately, 20 minutes does not quite I mean, is wonderful for health, but not enough to boost autophagy similarly, fasting. See, the issue with fasting is fasting. Autophagy doesn't optimally ramp up to like 48 to 72 hours of fasting, which is really too long to go unsupervised. That's not just kind of legalistic mumbo jumbo. Our bodies go into kind of sodium conservation mode when we fast, but should that response break down and we continue to lose sodium, the symptoms we might experience are like fatigue, dizziness, something that could be dismissed until it's too late. So that's why prolonged fasts should really be only done under kind of medical supervision, but they actually kind of test your electrolytes and make sure your body's doing what it's supposed to be doing.
[00:17:42.480] – Dr. Greger
And so the studies suggesting that, oh, 12 hours of fasting can boost autophagy yeah, in mice, that's because mice's metabolism is so much higher. A few days of fasting can actually kill a mouse. They can lose, like, 40% of their body mass after a day or two of fasting. But unfortunately, yeah, in humans, it takes a little longer. But again, we don't have to walk around starving all the time. We can 60 minutes of aerobic exercise minimizing our intake of French fries and potato chips, trying to get about at least 20 milligrams of spermidine, and by incorporating spermidine rich foods in our diet. So that's tempeh, which is a fermented whole soy product, but any mushroom will do. Peas and wheat germ. So adding wheat germ to my diet was something new after this book because I wanted to get the spermatine to boost autophagy. And also, drinking three cups of coffee a day, either regular or decaf, can boost autophagy, thanks to glorinic acids.
[00:18:44.190] – Allan
Well, you've definitely got me to thinking, and I'm going to reestablish my big ass salad every day.
[00:18:51.850] – Dr. Greger
Excellent.
[00:18:52.320] – Allan
Yes, we're having some difficulties with delivery where I am right now, so it'll be a little while before I get the wheat germ, but that'll be something. I'll probably sprinkle a bit of that on my salad just to go along, but, yeah, big ass salads coming. Okay, the next one I want to get into, because there's a lot of talk about this, which there should be, because I think this is probably the biggest problem we have as people is inflammation. How does inflammation lead to aging?
[00:19:21.730] – Dr. Greger
Aging can actually be thought of as kind of part of an inflammatory disease. In part, a single measurement. Inflammatory markers like CD, CRP, ser, active protein, or Il six, interleukin six, can predict both physical and cognitive performance, as well as remaining lifespan in elderly individuals. Thankfully, excess inflammation can be kind of extinguished through changes in diet. There is something called dietary inflammatory index, which ranks each food in terms of how pro inflammatory or anti inflammatory it is. And those eating lower on that dietary inflammatory index, meaning less inflammatory diets are more likely to age successfully, which is defined as living independently with no major chronic disease, no depression, no pain, and with good overall self perceived social, physical, and mental health. So to help slow this aging pathway, I can encourage people to consider, on a daily basis, reducing both dietary and endogenous exposure to something called to these inflammatory advanced glycation end products. We can do that. That's a whole nother aging pathway. But basically we restrict ourselves to low glycemic lead foods so we don't have high blood sugars and make these AGS endogenously. And we reduce our intake of AGS which are found most concentrated in kind of high protein foods exposed to high dry heat.
[00:20:50.700] – Dr. Greger
So rather than grilling or barbecuing or frying or baking meat, we would like steaming, stewing, soups, that kind of thing would produce fewer of these inflammatory AGS. Also we reduce senescent cell inflammation. That's another whole antiaging pathway. These so called zombie cells spewing inflammation. As we get older, we can clear those out. I have a whole chapter on that. Boosting autophagy actually helps clearing out some of that inflammatory cellular debris. And you know what? One of the most interesting things in that chapter I ran into is applying an emollient skin lotion. So actually our skin layer, we actually have a breakdown in our skin barrier as we get older and that can increase systemic inflammation in our body. And they found that rubbing hairless mice with vaseline actually cut down inflammation. So they gave it a try with people and randomized people to try just every day applying a little full body molly and skin lotion and actually saw a decrease in inflammation which was so shocking, it's like, well, that's easy to do. So that's something I've incorporated into my diet and not in my diet, god into my daily routine.
[00:22:01.520] – Allan
Don't eat hand lotion.
[00:22:03.510] – Dr. Greger
Gregor said I should be eating and then avoiding the pro inflammatory foods. The pro inflammatory foods and increasing the intake of the anti inflammatory foods. So the pro inflammatory food components, saturated fat, endotoxins, which got new five GC sodium. So actually salt is pro inflammatory. People don't think about that. And then, so basically it's minimizing meat, dairy, tropical oils like coconut oil, the palm kernel oil, all these kind of junk food oils and as well as salt, I mean, one kind of lousy breakfast can double your creactive protein levels within 4 hours before it's even time for lunch. And then the anti inflammatory foods on the other side of the kind of balance sheet legumes, which are the beans, slippies, chickpeas, lentils, berries, greens, sodium free tomato juice or sodium free tomato paste. These processed tomato products without added salt, turmeric, ginger, flaxseeds, garlic, cinnamon, cocoa powder, dill beverages, chamomile tea, green tea, as well as kind of anything basically that contains fiber. So fiber rich foods, anthocyanin rich foods. Those are those brilliant kind of purple berry like pigments also found in, like, red cabbage or purple sweet potatoes, as well as salicylic acid rich foods, which is the kind of component, the antiinflammatory component of aspirin, not just found in willow tree bark actually found throughout the plant kingdom, most concentrated in, actually cumin, the spiced cumin, but found in a whole bunch of plant foods, and that also has an anti inflammatory effect.
[00:23:38.950] – Allan
And I think one of the cool things here is if you begin to eat less inflammatory foods, other good things are going to start happening for you. Like, your joints aren't going to hurt as bad. You're going to have more energy because your body is actually allowed to use that energy for you to do the things you want to do versus trying to heal, because that's what the inflammation is there for. And so just eating an anti inflammatory diet actually has these really quick turnarounds for you to feel better, look better, and move better. Now you hit on one, and as soon as I saw this written out, I was like, okay, now we're going to spar. We're going to spar a little bit, because I kind of like having a little bit extra muscle on my body. And so there's this concept called mTOR, and it's complex, I'm not going to lie. It's a very complex set of rules, but it's basically how we build muscle with mTOR. There's a little disconnect in my head I got to get through is having more muscle mass and being stronger, particularly as measured in grip strength, has been shown to help with your mortality.
[00:24:47.470] – Allan
However, having too much mTOR, which is part of the process for getting protein to turn into muscle, can also be problematic. Can you dive a little bit into mTOR and help me put that together? Yeah, no, absolutely.
[00:25:00.900] – Dr. Greger
So mTOR is an enzyme recognized as a major driver of aging, perhaps more so than any other single anti aging strategy. mTOR inhibition suppression disrupts a panoply of degenerative processes, explaining why the mTOR blocking drug Rapamycin is the most effective drug ever devised for targeted aging. No other drug has been able to show it works in every single species, even starting in middle age. But the problem is, the drug has some downsides. So then we turn to non pharmacological approaches. How are we going to slow this kind of pacemaker of aging enzyme? And we do that through the restriction of certain amino acids such as methionine and leucine. And how do we restrict those? Well, you can do full dietary restriction, and you're going to decrease your amino acid intake or eat the same number of calories, but just reduce overall protein intake, and that'll cut down. Or you can keep the protein intake the same, but just switch from animal sources to plant sources, most of which tend to be lower in methionine and the branch chain amino acids like leucine. And there's kind of a YinYang with AMPK. So anything that boosts AMPK can drop mTOR, like the barberries and vinegar and all the stuff I go through in the AMPK chapter.
[00:26:24.450] – Dr. Greger
And then it's really about reducing one's protein intake down to recommended levels, which is 0.8 grams for healthy kilogram body weight, which translates to about 45 grams a day for the average height woman, 55 grams for the average height man, and then choosing plant based sources whenever possible. Now, as you noted, mTOR plays a role in muscle protein synthesis. So the question is, well, wait a second. Do we have this kind of balancing act between aging and muscle mass? Thankfully, no. All we need is sufficient levels of mTOR activity to build muscle mass without excess levels. How do we do that? Again, recommended dietary protein intake over age 65. There's actually no benefit from adding protein in terms of muscle mass, muscle strength, or muscle performance. How are we going to maintain muscle mass into old age? One way and one way only? Well, there's actually a bunch of things that contribute, but the most important one is resistance training, right? Strength training. That is how we're going to keep our muscles. Particularly if you're doing something like caloric restriction or something critically important to maintain muscle mass. And we do that through exertion. Putting strain on our muscles and then adding extra protein in older age does not add that.
[00:27:46.180] – Dr. Greger
Add extra muscle mass. That's whether you're sarcopenic, you have excessive muscle mass, whether you're frail, et cetera. Excess protein does not help at those ages.
[00:27:55.950] – Allan
And one of the other ones I wanted to get into is oxidation. And the reason I want to talk about this is there are billionaires walking this planet right now that are selling antioxidants. That's true. And you're like, okay, well, if I take an antioxidant, then I'm going to be cool. Right. And I don't think that's quite the answer. Can we talk about oxidation and why some of these seemingly good things aren't necessarily doing what they're supposed to?
[00:28:26.050] – Dr. Greger
Yeah, this is one of the most interesting chapters to write in terms of that kind of nerdy part one section about the eleven aging pathways. So oxidation. So there's this mitochondrial theory of aging, which is kind of standard stood the test of time in terms of the dozens of aging theories out there. It explains basically the spread, why some animals live so much longer, in fact, 1000 times longer than others. The animals with the lowest rate of free radical production within their mitochondria, the little power plants within their cells live the longest, full stop. So we can slow the pace of aging by slowing the rate of this free radical production in our mitochondria. And there's really only two ways we can do that. Antioxidants don't work because it's actually the damage to our mitochondrial DNA happens so quickly, so close to the source of free radical production. Antioxidants just can't penetrate in time. But there's two things we can reduce. One is exercise. Again, nailing critical factor of exercise. And number two is methionine restriction. Cutting down on the amino acid methionine by eating healthier. Also in terms of so that's just for in terms of longevity.
[00:29:37.040] – Dr. Greger
However, oxidation does play a role in our health span as well. For that, we can cut down on prooxant foods, boost our antioxidant rich foods. Kind of similar to the inflammation story and actually kind of similar. Foods, right? The prooxin foods are the ones rich in cholesterol, salt, saturated fat and sugar, where the antioxidant foods are the ones berries, spices, as well as something called Nerf Two Activation, which is kind of our first line of antioxidant defense. On the second line is this kind of symphony of antioxidants we can kind of take from plant foods and kind of hijack them from our own needs. But our first level of defense is really our antioxidant enzymes that can detoxify free radicals and we can boost those through something called NRF Two Activation. And the two ways to do that one is green tea and one is cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collard greens and so to slow the saging pathway, exercise, restricting methionine, where you can do that through protein restriction activating NRF Two eating green and drinking green. So eating your kale, drinking green tea and then eating berries and other naturally vibrantly colored foods because the colors are actually the antioxidants herbs and spices like the cinnamon, cloves, garlic, ginger, margarum packed with antioxidants and then cutting down and added salt, sugar, saturated fat and cholesterol.
[00:31:12.000] – Allan
Latent foods, well, and all those you talked about, they make the food exciting and fun and taste good. So win win. And the exercise, of course, you've got my vote there because it does just a lot more. You feel better, you're stronger, you're faster, you built up a body that's capable of doing the things that you want to do. Now I'm going to dive into a few foods that some people will avoid for various reasons that they don't necessarily have to, but they at times avoid them that are really actually I mean, we can talk about superfoods, but I actually only want to use that title because it's been so overused and falsely so in many, many cases. But some of these foods actually are, in a sense, exactly what our body needs, but a lot of people don't eat enough of them. So the first one I want to talk about is beans. What makes beans?
[00:32:06.150] – Dr. Greger
Ah, beans. That's the centerpiece of all Blue Zones diets. These areas around the world with exceptional longevity as their chief source of protein, have some source of legumes which are not just beans, but also split peas, chickpeas, lentils. And so if you're talking about what are the kind of healthiest foods to eat, according to the Globe Burner Disease Study, which is the largest study of risk factors in human history for death and disease, the greatest lifespan extension would be achieved by eating more legumes. That's what they calculated of all the different food groups, eating more beans. If there's one thing we can do to live longer in terms of our diet, be eating more beans. And so though that's on a kind of per serving basis, but actually on a gram for gram basis, the food most associated with longevity is actually nuts. And so I also recommend like a palm full of walnuts a day, one of my kind of antiaging eight foods, but, yeah, definitely legumes. There's a reason why they associated. Like, if there's one question you had to ask in populations around the world in terms of assessing dietary quality, how many legumes people eat is the number one dietary predictor of survival in populations around the globe.
[00:33:26.130] – Allan
Now, you talked about nuts, and I think this is another area that people are kind of afraid because they hear, okay, nuts have a lot of calories and an almond, 16 calories or whatever. And so they thought that there's a calorie load to nuts, and therefore they'd be maybe better off eating something else. But there's a lot to be said for the nutrition, particularly the fats that we can get from nuts.
[00:33:52.310] – Dr. Greger
Well, yeah, I mean, a gram for gram basis, compared to any other food on planet Earth, consumption of nuts is associated with the longest lifespan, and you can get the maximum benefit for just that palm full, half of ounce of nuts a day, half to a full ounce maximum benefit. You don't seem to get more benefit eating more. In fact, you don't want to overdo it over a cup of nuts a day. You can actually get too many oxalates. Peanut butter does not appear to have the same benefit. Technically, not even a nut. And of all the nuts, probably walnuts are the healthiest. So, yeah, kind of a palm full of walnuts every day is the way to go. Improving artery function probably the primary cause. For example, in the PREDIMED study, those randomized to boost their intake of nuts had about half the stroke rate. And so you can think of that the other way. Not eating nuts kind of doubles your risk of stroke. So the cardiovascular protection from nuts is probably what is resulting in most of the longevity benefit.
[00:34:51.250] – Allan
Now, another nut that you don't necessarily want to overeat but is okay to have regularly is Brazil nuts.
[00:34:58.650] – Dr. Greger
Oh, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, even one high selenium Brazil nut is actually too much one a day, a single nut a day in terms of inflammation. So, yeah, that's something you really want to moderate because you can actually get solenosis. You actually get kind of selenium toxicity. It's known as the selenium is known as the essential poison because it is actually essential trace mineral, but you can actually get too much of it. And most concentrated dietary sources, brazil nuts. So, yeah, I would really hold back, I mean, in how not to Die, I talk about the study showing that four Brazil nuts once a month actually dramatically lowers cholesterol levels. But unfortunately, people read that to be, oh, four Brazil nuts a day. No, you could actually get a selenium toxicity. Even though I emphasize this, this is once a month. Pick a day of the month, your favorite day of the month. And like, okay, on the 13th of every single month, I'm going to eat four Brazils. Period.
[00:35:50.840] – Allan
That's it.
[00:35:51.700] – Dr. Greger
Unfortunately, people did not listen. Actually ran into people who got problems, who started getting, like, peripheral neuropathy, started losing sensation, and got tingling in their feet because they're getting too much selenium because they're eating too many Brazil nuts. So, yeah.
[00:36:09.430] – Allan
The sad part is, Brazil nuts are my favorite nut. But that said, I buy them in the shell. Oh, I have to go through the trouble actually cracking that shell. It's not easy.
[00:36:23.050] – Dr. Greger
Those are some hardcore shells. Oh, my God. You want grip strength. Yeah, I got your grip strength right there.
[00:36:29.740] – Allan
Exactly. But if you buy them in a bag shelled, it's just so easy to do like you do with everything else.
[00:36:36.530] – Dr. Greger
So that's actually a good idea. No, that's a good idea. We shall be like sitting by the fire with the nutcracker and just digging out little pieces.
[00:36:46.610] – Allan
If you can't crack it, then go do some exercise and come back when you can.
[00:36:51.330] – Dr. Greger
Yeah. Oh, my God. Those are hardcore.
[00:36:53.320] – Allan
Yeah. All right. And then actually my favorite besides cruciferous vegetables, I eat cruciferous vegetables every day, but leafy greens are my next favorite. That's why I was saying the big ass salad. So let's talk a little bit about leafy greens and what they're doing for us. Yeah.
[00:37:10.350] – Dr. Greger
So dark green leafies earn their place in the antiaging aid as the vegetable most associated with longer lifespan. So cruciferous vegetables, which certainly can be green leafy, but not necessarily something like cauliflower, is also cruciferous. They boost the first line of our gut defenses as well as boosting detoxifying enzymes lining our airways to help reduce our risk from air pollution. It's actually a leading killer of humanity. So particularly if you're in a city, live by a highway or something, cruciferous vegetables will help you deal with that kind of diesel exhaust. The longevity benefit, though, actually may come from the nitrates, the metabolic slowing that comes from nitrate consumption. Particularly athletes think of like beet juice. For nitrates, we're actually the most concentrated source. Dark green leafy vegetables also beets bee greens. And those nitrates actually slow down your resting metabolic rate, something you typically only see with something like severe caloric restriction. But instead of walking around starving all the time, big ass salad to the rescue. They can also improve age related declines in muscle mass. Age related declines in artery function. So you give people like a cup of cooked spinach worth of nitrates, you get a significant improvement in maximum power from the quads.
[00:38:25.900] – Dr. Greger
I mean, you can bulk up on muscle mass just reading spinach. And we think it's because of the nitrates. Although it's interesting, the magic of nitrates require the presence of certain good bacteria on your tongue to actually activate the nitrates. Otherwise they don't work. And those bugs are killed by antiseptic mouthwash. So you don't want to use an antiseptic mouthwash or an alcohol containing mouthwash and you can actually foster the growth of those good bugs by tongue scraping and regularly eating those nitrate rich vegetables which act as a prebiotic and keep them going. So that antiaging strategy only works if you got the right bacteria on your.
[00:39:07.180] – Allan
Tongue and probably all the way through your system because we are actually just one big biosystem of a lot of.
[00:39:14.230] – Dr. Greger
Things, not just most of our cells are not human.
[00:39:18.290] – Allan
Exactly. Now, sometimes I get really mad about how, for lack of a better word, our government gets in the way of us living healthy lives. One of the ways that you kind of detailed in the book is this kind of weird thing, the way they do things. And so what it is, is you think about the volume of food that you eat. So it's this big volume of food that we eat during a day, if you think about it. And then we're going to focus on one or two pills that are going to change our life for us and not focus on all that food we ate. The medical system doesn't train it. It's not followed. It actually doesn't make them any money. So they don't care to know about it or teach about it or talk about it. You're just told eat better and move more and you're good. But we're not, we're not healthy right now as a society. And one of them that came up was supplements because if you hear something's good and it's like, well, I don't really like that food or I don't have access to that food readily, it's not easy because I got to cook it.
[00:40:29.850] – Allan
Go figure. Is that the dietary supplements that we want to take to help improve our health? And I actually had someone I was talking to who's in this field and he and I were talking back and forth. He says we should get together someday and talk about our medicine cabinet and what supplements we each take. And I said, Well, I take one. And I said it's some zinc and magnesium that I take before I go to bed just because it helps me sleep better. That's the supplement. That's the one. And I live in a sunny area so I get plenty of vitamin D. If you're not in a sunny area or certain times of the year, you might need to supplement on that. If you are eating predominantly vegan or vegetarian, you might need B two. But you can do blood tests to know that stuff. The problem is that we have this industry that might not even be putting that stuff in the pill that we're taking. And the law that actually made this happen, you told me about it in the book, was the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act that came out in 1994.
[00:41:36.430] – Allan
And again, I want to go punch someone in the chest. Yeah.
[00:41:44.930] – Dr. Greger
Supplement industry is very powerful industry and people think of like Big Pharma. But actually Big Pharma owns many of the biggest supplement industries. So it actually is big pharma. And they got a law passed thanks to kind of duping people, and it'd be like, government is coming for your vitamin C. So we got to pass this law. So people have this incorrect belief that supplements must be approved for safety by some government agency like the FDA or something, before they're sold to the public, or the very least must have like a warning if there's some kind of side effects or something. And some even believe that supplements actually have to be shown to be effective at some level. None of that is true thanks to that law. So what that law did is it removed the burden of proof for quality control, basic quality control, safety efficacy from the submit manufacturer. So all of a sudden, it was great for the submen industry. They went from a $4 billion industry to like a $40 billion industry. Used to only be a few thousand products on the market. Now there's tens of thousands of products on the market, just absolutely skyrocketing.
[00:42:54.970] – Dr. Greger
But we don't have those standards. So you get some over the counter medication, for example. You like, buy some Tylenol or something. It actually must meet standards for safety efficacy, quality control. Meaning if it says it has this many milligrams, it has to have this many milligram, right? But dietary supplements, all dietary supplements are exempt. So it doesn't have to contain what it says on the label. It doesn't have to contain any of it. It contains something contaminants that aren't listed on the label, like house plants.
[00:43:26.430] – Allan
House.
[00:43:28.930] – Dr. Greger
Actually. And this is right, this is not some just like, see me shady internet thing. They went into GNC. Walmart. This was a New York Attorney General. I mean, just like mainstream supplement and they just tested well, what's actually in these things, right? That was one of the things that came out, was just like house plants, just powdered house plants, like the cheapest possible filler they could think of and had nothing of the so called active ingredient. But then I talk about how, look, we hope it's just house plants because there's some really toxic contaminants, particularly in kind of erectile dysfunction and weight loss supplements often contain kind of these illicit hormones. Things have been banned for good reason, but just keep popping up on the shelves just because things are so poorly kind of enforced. And so now we have about estimates about 50,000 Americans every year are harmed by dietary supplements, usually kidney and liver damage. Now, look, you could say, look, Big Pharma doesn't just harm but kills over 100,000 people. Side effects of drugs. Absolutely true. So we absolutely have to make sure the pros outweigh the cause. Unfortunately, we can't do that with dietary supplements.
[00:44:39.910] – Dr. Greger
And so, look, if there is some supplement that you really want to make sure is what it actually is. There is a certification pathway, something called USP certification. It'll have a little USP seal. Now, that doesn't say it's good for you or it isn't bad for you, but it just verifies. That what says on the label is actually what is in the capsule. So you're actually getting what you're paying for. One of the supplements that I've been using on the road for jet lag, because I travel a lot, is melatonin. The problem is there's all these contaminants found in typical melatonin supplements. So actually go through a Canadian pharmacy, which isn't exactly legal, but very easy to do.
[00:45:21.160] – Allan
We won't.
[00:45:23.030] – Dr. Greger
So in Canada and in Europe, melatonin is sold kind of like prescription only. So it actually has to rise to all those standards, actually has to have what it says it has and not have contaminants in it. And so you can get kind of a prescription only melatonin. Any doctor should write you a prescription, but you have to get it from one of those places. But then at least you can get some contaminant free. So there's kind of a ways around it, but it's just so sad that the snake oil is still being sold and sometimes doesn't even have any snake.
[00:45:54.620] – Allan
In it at all. Right. But there's real food and most of this, what a concept. All of it you can typically get from whole food.
[00:46:05.650] – Dr. Greger
You're a radical, I tell you, man.
[00:46:07.800] – Allan
Look at this guy.
[00:46:09.510] – Dr. Greger
Wait a second. You mean we as a species survived before? There are pill bottles sitting on the shelf.
[00:46:15.200] – Allan
Yeah. There's no witch doctor giving me a.
[00:46:17.690] – Dr. Greger
Prescription for years without all our supplements.
[00:46:22.830] – Allan
Yeah. So if you feel like you need something, I mean, there are times you're going to need some vitamin D. And.
[00:46:28.330] – Dr. Greger
If you live in pregnant women, need to get folic acid. If you're an alcoholic, there are certainly scenarios in which supplementation with nutrients is useful. But buyer beware, unfortunately.
[00:46:44.610] – Allan
All right, Dr. Gregor, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay, you know, according to.
[00:46:57.200] – Dr. Greger
The Gold Burden Disease Study, again, largest study of disease risk factors in the world, funded by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, the number one cause of death in these United States is the American diet. Bumping tobacco smoking to number two. Cigarettes not only kill about a half million Americans every year, whereas our diet kills many more. So the single most important decision we make three times a day is kind of what to put to the end of our fork. And so if there was just like the absolute simplest things, it'd be like if you could just add three foods to your diet and just remove three things from your diet. The three things I would add right off the bat beans, greens, berries. And the three things I would remove first, before anything else, are the trans fats these partially hydrogenated oils, processed meats like the bacon, ham, hot dogs, lunch meats, which cause colorectal cancer. And then number three, be liquid candy, the soda, sugar sweetened beverages. If we just get rid of those three, add the other three, you'd be a long way there. I mean, I really want to emphasize, yes, I get way into the weeds in this book, but it's simple, basic, common sense lifestyle factors can literally mean the difference of an extra decade to your life or not.
[00:48:06.960] – Dr. Greger
And what are we talking about? Regular exercise, not being obese, not smoking, eating more fruits and vegetables, like the basic, basic basics already right there. You got a decade, a whole extra healthy decade. Now, you want to tweak stuff? You want to push that a little farther, fine. I got a book, but it's important. And that's how I conclude the book is like, okay, let's take a step back. People. Don't get overwhelmed. Some really simple, important, basic stuff to nail first before worrying about all this other stuff.
[00:48:39.670] – Allan
And not only are you going to add a decade, it's going to be a better decade.
[00:48:43.180] – Dr. Greger
Exactly.
[00:48:44.470] – Allan
Doctor, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness. If someone wanted to learn more about you and learn more about your book, How Not to Age, where would you like for me to send them?
[00:48:54.330] – Dr. Greger
Send them to Nutritionfacts.org, where all my work is free and you can go to local public library and get the new book, which is out now, or your favorite bookseller. I don't get a penny from any of my books. All proceeds from the sales of all my books are all donated directly to charity. I just want you and your loved ones to enjoy the longest, healthiest life.
[00:49:17.120] – Allan
Thank you, Doctor. And thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness. Keep up the good work.
Post Show/Recap
[00:49:30.120] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:49:32.380] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. There's a lot to unpack there. But first, I've got the 60 minutes of exercise. I drink a ton of coffee, and I love nuts. It's my favorite snack. So I'm basically immortal. At least today. That's right.
[00:49:48.890] – Allan
Nobody wants to see that. But no, I think the point being is that science can be very misleading if it has a bias. And you can't look at anything and not have a bias. It's built into the way your brain works. If at some point someone told you that milk was bad, you're going to have a hard time reading studies where it says milk is the best thing for you. It's a struggle. There are individuals that have read something in the past and that's just drilled into them.
[00:50:24.060] – Rachel
It's stuck, and it's stuck.
[00:50:25.760] – Allan
And so this is a book where because what he does over at his website, Nutritionfacts.org, is he does these quick little videos and he pulls up a study or he pulls up a concept, and he says, okay, so is red wine healthy for us. And he goes out and looks at all the studies, and some of it he sees it's like, okay, well, this was a rat study. I'm not a rat. Although some things we learn from rats are applicable, but not all. And so he says, okay. And then what you realize is, okay, the amount of wine that you would have to drink to have the same dose as this rat is 100 glasses of wine each night. Oh, dear. Probably not going to happen.
[00:51:10.580] – Rachel
Not good for you at that point.
[00:51:13.190] – Allan
And so there's those little bits. And so now what's happening is you have a supplement company that's selling a supplement that they say, this is equivalent of drinking 100 glasses of wine without the alcohol or all the delirious effects of having that much alcohol, and it might not even have that in it. Okay? Now studies, if they're doing a study, they do a little bit of quality assurance to make sure, okay, if I'm giving someone turmeric or cumin or something like that, I want to know what's in there. And so they do some work there. But supplements you might buy on the market may not be the same thing that you're seeing in that study because it's not sourced the same way. And that's why he was know, he sources some supplements outside the United States because he trusts the compounder, putting it together. But most of us, that's outside the realm of what we're capable of. Know, contracting with someone outside the United States to prepare a supplement for you. For most of us, we're just not going to do that. But he has a lot in this book about things that will age you.
[00:52:20.990] – Allan
And so at the beginning of the book, he starts out with the eleven pathways of aging, and he goes through those. And we talked a good bit about each one. And then in the end, he sort of did go through and say, what are the eight things that are practical, applicable? And I think he was kind of excited that when we got into the book and got into this conversation, that's where I tried to take the whole thing. You have to do a little bit of the work to understand, okay, when he's talking about AMPK or autophagy or mTOR oxidation, because when you're talking about these other foods and other things, these are the pathways that they affect, and in some cases more than one, because there's overlaps. And understanding how that works will kind of help you put this all together. And the basis of pretty much the whole book is if you're eating processed food, you're aging faster than the rest of us.
[00:53:11.520] – Rachel
That's a good point.
[00:53:12.700] – Allan
Yes, it's right there and there's no if, ands, or buts. It can say healthy on the label. It's aging you faster. It just is.
[00:53:23.430] – Rachel
Well, we absorb our nutrients better from the actual food itself. And not all these fortified items in boxes.
[00:53:31.080] – Allan
But even if we didn't even if we didn't, it's just the fact that there's a way that nutrition works on the way that we were adapted as animals through evolution. And it's literally we were not sitting there just eating one food all year round. We were eating a large variety of different foods because it's hard to fill up on blueberries. You're still going to eat as many blueberries you want, but you're going to want other foods, and if they're available, you're going to eat them.
[00:54:01.420] – Rachel
Well, that's the thing. It's about eating a diverse all the colors of the foods, like they say, all the leafy greens you talked about, big ass salads, which I'm sure is more than just spinach. And lettuce throw it all in there and just eat something different and unique every day as best you can to make sure that you're getting all these different nutrients.
[00:54:23.660] – Allan
Yeah. And that's really what it comes down to, is feeding your body good food, good movement, good rest, good sleep, good stress management. When you're doing these things, your body has these ways of protecting you, of healing you. And those things all the things being healthy helps you live longer. Go figure. And some of the stuff, when you look at the science, it's like, oh, well, actually, this is worse for you than what I thought the worst thing was. That doesn't mean go do the second worst thing. It just means that pay attention. You can sit there and well, you know, so what? I eat McDonald's every day. It's like, well, someone smokes two packs of cigarettes every day. So what? You're like, oh, that's terrible.
[00:55:16.550] – Rachel
Well, yeah, I suppose.
[00:55:20.550] – Allan
Well, of course McDonald's wants me to live. No, they want you to eat more McDonald's. They don't really care. They want you to eat more McDonald's. And that's their sole job. How can I get you to eat more? And that's what they do. They're not trying to kill you, but they're not trying to keep you alive, either. Yeah, that's not their.
[00:55:41.690] – Rachel
I just like we talk about all the time eating a wide variety of different foods, getting a number of different types of movement of exercise throughout the week, and just doing all the things that are important to maintaining our good health and fitness.
[00:55:57.320] – Allan
Yeah. Again, treat your body well, and it'll treat you well.
[00:56:01.270] – Rachel
Absolutely.
[00:56:03.570] – Allan
All right, well, I will talk to you next week. Great.
On episode 618 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we meet Alana Van Der Sluys and discuss her book Freedom with Food and Fitness.
Transcript
Let's Say Hello
[00:02:33.730] – Allan
Hey, Ras, how are you doing up there?
[00:02:35.960] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?
[00:02:38.050] – Allan
I'm doing all you know, I okay. I live in Panama and it's beautiful. And, yes, I live on a Caribbean island that doesn't get hurricanes. And, yeah, that means I can wear shorts and tank tops every single day of the year. This is my work uniform. This is my day uniform. This is just kind of how I'm dressed most of the time. That's great. But I'm not going to say this is just a total paradise. Everything's great every single day. They're having a strike or a protest in the country. And the way they like to do them here is they like to block off roads and make everybody else's life as miserable as possible so that the government has to respond because everybody else is not living their full life. So they've had the country shut down now for a couple of weeks. A few weeks, wow. Which means probably if you paid attention about a year and a half ago, I guess that we had the kind of the same thing where I was talking about not having eggs, not having bread. Well we don't have eggs on the island, we don't have fuel on the island.
[00:03:49.290] – Allan
There's some pluses and minuses to cars not having gasoline, so there are fewer cars on the road. But at the same time it means that we don't have the things that we would normally have. And when it's available, typically it gets bumped up in price. So where a gallon of gasoline would normally be about $4 a gallon here in normal times it's anywhere from eight dollars to thirteen dollars. People are reselling it. So you walk up there with a jug and they'll sell you some gasoline. And so right now we're in this mode where some of our supplies are starting to kind of dwindle down a little bit. We've still got food, we've still got water, we've still got the things that we need to make it. But at points it just gets a little frustrating that you can't go to the grocery store and buy a dozen eggs. I eat a lot of eggs. It means I have to change my behavior, I have to change my eating. Which is kind of something we're going to get into today. But how are things up there?
[00:04:57.550] – Rachel
Good. Over the weekend I did something very different. I've never done this before. A friend asked me to pace during a half marathon and the pace group that we were leading was the 1235 minutes mile group. So we were pacing an entire half marathon at that pace, 1235 minutes. And I'm surprised. I've never paced, I've never run consistent like that for an entire half marathon. But we did and we were just about a minute and a few seconds faster than we should have been. But we were pretty close. I feel like a minute is pretty darn good for pretty good miles. So it was an interesting new experience. So it was a lot of fun.
[00:05:42.180] – Allan
Well, good for anybody that gets into running. If you join a run club or something like that, that's one of the benefits is sometimes they'll put together a structure like that to make you run. And even if you don't, finding a buddy or a friend that is a better runner than you and saying, okay, this is what we're going to run. I remember I was in Washington DC years and years and years ago and there was a guy that was working with us, he's a little freaking rabbit, but not kidding, but he goes out and says, well I'm going to run the ten K, you want to run it with me? And I'm like, sure. Now I basically outweighed this guy by a good 45 50 pounds, and I wasn't huge, I was like, 195. But he's a little bitty guy. And so he goes out there and says, well, what do you want to do? I says, yeah, I'll run it, but I said, I'm probably going to do it at about eight minute miles. He says, okay, I'll do that with you. And I'm like, okay, but I know you run a lot faster.
[00:06:42.780] – Allan
He's like, no, that's fine. Eight minute miles, I can do that. I'm like, okay, cool. So we go to line up, and if you line up for a race, realize that you get used to these, you know, that the faster runners want to be at the front and the slower runners need to be at the back. So you get into the practice of knowing your pace and for the type of race and knowing, okay, I need to be two thirds back or all the way back. This guy's just wanting to inch forward, inch forward, inch forward. I'm like, Dude, no. I said, I'm not going to get in front of faster runners. Eight minute miles. So the guy keeps inching forward and I watch him, and then he finally, he just leaves. He gets up right up in the very front, like, right at the start, and like a rabbit, he's out the gate. Of course I finished my race. I think I was 801. I think my actual time splits were 801 on average.
[00:07:30.810] – Rachel
Fantastic.
[00:07:32.610] – Allan
I got passed by a blind guy, but I wasn't going to mess up my slip. But I get through, and the guy's there at this point, he's pretty much already cooled off and he's ready to do another one. I go through and he says, how was your race? I said, yeah, I did 801. He's like, okay, good. And I said, so what were yours? He said, about a 603, of course. Why did you even say you were going to try to do an eight when you knew you couldn't physically allow yourself to run that slow? And so again, I thought we would go and we'd pace and we'd run together, and we weren't going to. So one of the advantages again, of getting involved with a run club or having a run buddy that's running the same pace as you is that then you can help each other stay accountable and involved and engage and keep your pace so you don't overdo it.
[00:08:27.490] – Rachel
You could practice those faster paces when you're chasing somebody. I like to have a rabbit, too.
[00:08:33.570] – Allan
I wasn't going to chase a 603 rabbit maybe when I was in the army for 2 miles. That would have been a fine rabbit to chase, but ten K I know. Wasn't going to do it, but anyway, awesome. Oh, good. So you enjoyed the pacing?
[00:08:53.390] – Rachel
It was it was a neat experience, yeah.
[00:08:56.410] – Allan
Cool. All right, well, are you ready to talk about food and freedom?
[00:09:01.350] – Rachel
Sure.
Interview
[00:09:44.170] – Allan
Alana, welcome to 40+ Fitness.
[00:09:47.770] – Alana
Hi, Allan. How are you?
[00:09:49.770] – Allan
I'm doing very well, thank you. Your book, it has three of my favorite words in it freedom, Food and Fitness. The name of the book is Freedom with Food and Fitness. And so really kind of a good conversation to have right now because I think particularly now, we just finished Thanksgiving. And so this is the season of eating. This is the season of, if you will, gluttony and also internal abuse because we eat things and then we get mad at ourselves or feel guilty or feel shame. We have these feelings about food and fitness that we just carry with us in a very uncomfortable way as we go through this whole season.
[00:10:36.490] – Alana
Absolutely. And it's also the season of unsustainable weight loss. It's the season of crash diets and beating ourselves up.
[00:10:44.480] – Allan
It's both because we think, okay, well, I did something bad, I have to fix it. And we kind of get drawn into this whole world, and I'm in the fitness and health space myself, so I see it every single day of just the mental gymnastics, if you will, that I see people go through to try to figure out why it isn't working for them. Like someone will actually say, I saw this post today was I'm not eating the food. I'm basically staying within my numbers. I'm doing this, I'm doing that, but my weight is not going down. What can I do? And then you have the calories in, calories out, for lack of a better word, Nazis that come out and basically say, oh, well, you're obviously overeating, or, oh, you're obviously not moving enough. You should just do more movement and you should just eat less. And they're telling you in the post, I am doing everything I possibly can and I'm failing, and all you're saying is just do it more. It's a really hard message to just sit back and say, this is happening every day. Thousands of conversations over and over and over, and we don't seem to be learning the lesson.
[00:12:11.050] – Alana
No, we don't. And that's because the diet and weight loss industry is a multibillion dollar industry that has made a huge profit on our insecurities. It's just we feel like we're the ones who have failed and that we fail over and over again. But the thing is, we're not getting the correct information about how to actually feed our bodies and how to actually move our bodies, for us to be at our peak. And by peak, I don't mean that we're all ready to go do a fitness or a bikini competition. I mean feeling good in our bodies and not having nutrition and fitness be something that feels so punishing and so difficult. It shouldn't be hard. It shouldn't be hard at all. And that's why I'm an intuitive eating coach. It's in the title. It's being intuitive, listening to your own body instead of all of these rules and these conflicting messages, and every diet to do something different. And then we have misinformation, like calories in, calories out. Yes, from a physiological standpoint, but that's also not the entire picture. That's not everything.
[00:13:20.270] – Allan
Yeah, so there was this I don't know if you know who. I guess his last name is Gillette, or maybe his first name, but he was the comedian. He and his partner would do this magic show, comedy show thing, and he had gotten kind of obese, and he's working Vegas, and he'd gotten kind of obese, and then he lost 100 pounds. And he lost 100 pounds just eating potatoes. He literally just ate potatoes, and he lost 100 pounds. And so now, basically, people are saying, well, if I just eat potatoes, I'll lose the weight like he did, and I'll keep it off. He's a pretty smart guy. What he understood with eating potatoes was that, okay, yeah, this is somewhat of a fad. But for him it was. If I force myself to just eat potatoes, I know I'm going to get tired of potatoes, and then I won't eat as much again. I don't prescribe to that. But it worked for him. And so there's this fad diet that comes out, and it says, hey, just eat potatoes, and you could lose 100 pounds. And then he gets interviewed on all the shows, and it's more publicity for people to say, okay, yeah, I'm going to look at this potato only diet.
[00:14:36.630] – Allan
Why is it that these fad diets, they blow up, they get really huge because, again, there's a success story there. Why do they fail? Because they worked for him. Why aren't they working for me?
[00:14:52.110] – Alana
It could be a variety of reasons. Number one, I find it hard to believe all he ate was potatoes because there's definitely a nutritional deficit, if that's what he's doing. There's no healthy fat for his brain function. There's no protein for muscle development. I don't recommend this at all, and I know you don't as well. I think these fad diets get airtime because they're so outlandish and novel, and people also want the quick fix. They want the sensationalized results. They want 100 pounds. No one wants to hear that someone lost ten pounds over the course of eight weeks doing things reasonably and sustainably. They want really quick, really flashy, really novel. And to your point, before I say why it didn't work, it might not work for somebody else. To your point about why it did work for him. There is an element of something that we talk about in intuitive eating called habituation. So it's when you have the same stimulus over and over and over again, eventually your response to that stimulus decreases. So the example would be he eats potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. Eventually he'sick of potatoes. He doesn't want potatoes anymore. So what we do in intuitive eating is if you have a fear food, let's say you're fearful of cheesecake.
[00:16:15.630] – Alana
It's high calorie and sugar and fat, and you think it's going to make you gain weight, so you always try to avoid it, but that ends up with you inevitably binging an entire cheesecake. You want it so much. So we go through the process of habituation, and I tell clients, have a little bit of cheesecake every single day for a month. And you will notice the pull for the cheesecake on day one is a lot more intense than the pull for the cheesecake on day 30 because you've been having it over and over and over again. And people, they're like, how can that be? I'll want cheesecake forever. I love cheesecake. It's my favorite. So I tell them, think about are you married, Alan?
[00:16:50.390] – Allan
I am.
[00:16:51.730] – Alana
Okay, so first time you said you loved your partner, there were probably butterflies, and everyone was so excited, and it was so novel and wonderful. And now that you've been together for however many years, it's like they say they love you and you're like, yeah, I love you too, and you probably mean it still, right? I've been with my husband for ten years, and I still mean it. I still love him. But it doesn't have that same butterfly inducing, exciting feeling, at least not in the same intensity as it did the first time versus ten years in that's habituation. Why? It's not going to work for somebody else. Variety of reasons. I mean, people eat emotionally. People want to eat different things when they're emotional. Your body's going to crave what it needs nutritionally. That's why intuitive eating is actually a healthful practice. Your body's going to tell you you're going to crave steak when you need iron, things like that. So for you to force yourself to eat one kind of food with one nutritional profile, your body's going to crave other things. And once you allow yourself to go off the potato diet, you're going to binge those things because you've been restricting them for so long.
[00:18:00.170] – Allan
I call it the purple elephant, and it's like, don't think of a purple elephant. And it's like, what's in your head right now? It's like the thing you weren't supposed to think about. And we do that to ourselves exactly every time we start thinking about, well, I'm on this thing and this diet, and therefore I can't have these things, that's all you think about. I remember when I tried paleo. Okay. And Paleo works great for me. My body responds very well to the Paleo style of eating, but there are foods on that list that I would typically want in volumes like bread and beer and stuff like that. I remember having a dream about bread when I went into that because my brain was just so wired on bread. That was a top of thought thing. And I was like, okay, I know I don't need bread. I know I don't really want bread. But what am I telling myself when I tell myself I can't have something? The rebel side of my brain is like, well, I'm going to make you think about this every single day of your life until you eat bread.
[00:19:14.670] – Allan
And so I think there's that aspect of this whole thing of when we do that. So with a lot of my clients, I'll actually tell them, I'll be like, well, I want a pop or soda or whatever you call it, wherever you are. And I'll be like, well, you're a grown ass woman. Have a soft drink. But at the same time recognize that you're making a choice as an adult. You're not a kid, you're an adult. You have a smart part of your brain that can look at it and say, why am I doing this? What's my emotional state? Why do I feel like I need this? Versus because we know we're not getting any nutritional value from that soft drink that our body actually needs. We may be craving it. So the question is back down and say, okay, is this an emotional thing? Am I trying to get through a stressor? Am I using this in a different way than I would use food? We're going to talk about that in a minute. But it's kind of that whole concept of, okay, is this really helping me? And I think that's where a lot of these fad diets kind of come in, is like, okay, is this going to give me what I need?
[00:20:19.430] – Allan
Is this diet really going to me and nourish me and make me feel whole, or am I going to be miserable until I'm done?
[00:20:28.970] – Alana
Right? I think that last sentence that you just said is something that I want listeners to take away is, do you want to be miserable the whole time? Because whatever diet you choose to be on or no diet at all, your food regimen, if you will, you have to be doing that for the rest of your life in order to maintain whatever results you're looking for. So if you're on Keto, congratulations. You have to be on Keto probably for the rest of your life in order to maintain the results that you have right now. Because if you go back to old eating habits, you're going to gain the weight back.
[00:21:02.020] – Allan
I think that's the key. I do think that's a key. I do want to state that, because I do think you can temporarily go on a sprint and you can temporarily do something, but it's the going all the way back to who you were and not recognizing that. Wait, when I eat whole food and I feed myself and I let myself get full and I'm mindful of what I'm eating, when I do these intuitive eating things, I'm suddenly satiated. I'm full, I'm comfortable. I like this. Don't go back to eating the way you ate before. When you get back to you think you got to a goal or you feel better about it, there's no real reason to go back if you feel really good eating the way you're eating. And I think that's the disconnect when we use the word diet. Diet actually the word, you know, this basically means the way you eat. It was never intended to be used as a specialized concept of temporary eating. And I think that's where a lot of people lose it. But you could sit there and say, I know beer does not really help me.
[00:22:06.120] – Allan
If I'm a little bit overweight or feeling uncomfortable with myself or my energy levels are low, I know that's not going to serve me as a grown man. I can make the decision, I'm going to have a couple of beers with my buddies and I'm going to be okay with that. But at the same time, I also know if I go periods of time without drinking beer, I feel better, my energy is level better, I sleep better, my stress levels are better, everything's better. And so I think that's the kind of the disconnect when we use that term diet, and particularly the fad diets because they tend to exclude a lot of things that we really need.
[00:22:40.130] – Alana
Absolutely. And I would say if somebody is going on a certain diet and then going back to their original way of eating, they've put a Band Aid on a bullet wound. They haven't addressed the mental and emotional issues that are causing them to have a broken relationship to food in the first place. And that's what I deal a lot with my clients about, is what are the thoughts that you're having that are creating these emotions that are causing you to binge eat in front of the pantry? We have to address that emotional pain or lack of stress management or emotional management or trauma or whatever it might be, because it's never just about the food ever. It's always about some sort of underlying issue that you're not addressing and using the food as a mask or using exercise or lack thereof as a mask. So you have to really get down to the nitty gritty and do the deeper work.
[00:23:39.590] – Allan
One of the things you got into here that I thought was, I think this is key, we're going to say the term intuitive eating, and immediately I think people are going to be like, well, wait a minute, I already overeat, I already binge. I already do these things. How can I trust myself. And diet culture tells us you can't. You have to eat a certain way, you have to do a certain thing, because you can't be trusted with cheesecake.
[00:24:12.690] – Alana
Right? It's all about relearning how to listen to your body's cues. So we're all born as intuitive eaters. When we were children, we ate when we were hungry, we stopped when we were full. I have a three year old son and I see him leaving half a cupcake on a plate, and any one of us who's been through diet culture would be like, oh, my God, I would have ate that thing in one bite. It's like my cheat day to have a cupcake. But for him, it's just like, I don't really care because he knows he can have it whenever he wants. And that's really the beauty, the magic. And the thing about intuitive eating that I don't think people fully understand until they've been going through the process is you actually crave those junk foods, quote, unquote, less, once you become an intuitive eater, because it becomes more about, what can I add in to my diet that's going to make me feel good? Instead of, what do I have to take away because I'm on this diet? But it's, what can I add in? Can I add in more water? Can I add in more veggies and fiber and protein?
[00:25:15.790] – Alana
And listen, I love pizza just as much as the next person, but one of the things I ask myself before I sit down to eat a meal is, how am I going to feel after I eat this? And if I eat one slice of pizza, I'll probably be fine. I would try to pair it with, like, a salad with grilled chicken or something to kind of round out that meal. But I know if I sit down and eat two, three slices of pizza, I am not going to feel good. I'm not going to feel good in my body. I'm going to feel bloated and sluggish. So it's asking that question, how am I going to feel? But the other thing that we need to do to start learning to listen to and trust our bodies is honing in on those body cues. Do you actually know the signs of hunger? Aside from a growling stomach, which is really late stage hunger? Can you pick up those nuanced cues? Do you actually know when you're full or do you, when you have a cheat day, just plow right through that fullness queue because you think it's your only day, you can have that food.
[00:26:18.970] – Alana
When we use external tools like calorie counters and the scale and what people say we can and cannot eat, we can't listen to what our bodies actually do need, and it's different for everybody. So learning to listen to those body cues, I think is super important, combined with this question of how do I want to feel in my body after I eat this thing that takes a.
[00:26:45.270] – Allan
Ton of self awareness and it takes a lot of patience. I'm a huge fan of Journaling. Not necessarily that you're going to sit down and write down everything you ate. You can write down all the calories and all the macros and do the math. And now you basically have this huge accounting system like General Motors. You're spending hours trying to figure out all this stuff and stay within ranges and numbers and all that. And I just think that's not the way human being was meant to eat. I don't think we were walking through the forest saying, OOH, blueberries. I think I'll walk past those because too many carbs. I don't think that was even a thought. It was like, oh, blueberries, I'm going to eat all the blueberries because I know they're not going to be here in three weeks, but we eat all the blueberries. And then now guess what? We're back to hunting and foraging, eating roots and other things that we would just eat. But I think you're onto something. You talked about something there that I think is really kind of a big part of this is we have to be aware of what our body's telling us.
[00:27:44.280] – Allan
And too often we're not even listening.
[00:27:49.830] – Alana
That's right. We're listening to what other people are saying we should be doing. We're listening to the quote unquote experts.
[00:27:57.590] – Allan
Yeah. And then sometimes we're not listening to anything. I don't know how many times I've had a conversation with a client and they would say, I had a nice meal, I felt good, and then my kids were done. And so I ate everything that was on their plates that they didn't eat, like your three year old. It's like they would throw down the half a cupcake because, well, it's there not even thinking how that feels, whether they were already full, why were they doing it. And usually it's just this is easier, this is quick. I'll feel good, I'll enjoy it. And they're just not having that conversation. So how does someone go about that? How do I go about saying, okay, look, I need to be in the moment, I need to be aware, I need to be mindful.
[00:28:42.790] – Alana
It's really just a practice. It's really just learning to stop in the moment when you're about to do an action and just think to yourself, is this going to serve me? And if it's not, maybe choosing something different. But I think you're right in terms of we go through our day a lot, almost like zombies are almost on this autopilot where we do things where we don't even question why we're still doing them. So I think that's part of it. And I also think we're trying to always numb out, especially in today's society, there's so much on social media and so much that we're consuming that we use it because we don't want to feel our actual feelings. We're using. TV and food and drinking and drugs and gambling and porn and all of these things to try to not feel our feelings. And I have a lot of clients that emotionally eat because they don't want to feel whatever it is. So part of my work with my clients is thought work is cognitive behavioral therapy. Again, as I said before, it's what are the thoughts that are going on in your head and what emotions are those causing and what outcomes or actions are you taking as a result of those emotions?
[00:30:00.490] – Alana
Like, are you grabbing that cup and eating it because you need the dopamine hit because something went bad at work today that you don't want to process in the form of journaling or with a therapist or whatever? Are you just stuffing it down with food? That's one of the principles of intuitive eating, is coping with emotions, with kindness. And that's something that we don't do very often because we weren't socialized to a lot of us were told when we were younger to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and don't cry and don't be a sissy. And the negative emotions mean that something has gone wrong. But there are ways to process emotions so that they complete the stress cycle and they do dissipate so that you don't need food to cope with those emotions.
[00:30:45.480] – Allan
Yeah, I was at dinner last night with some folks at a friend's house and someone had made a pumpkin soup and so this woman brought it up and she said, are there carrots in this? And the woman that she asked didn't hear, so she just went on and started eating the soup. And then she came back later and said, yes, there's carrots in this. And someone says, well, do you have a problem with carrots? She's like, I don't like carrots. And they said, well, you don't like carrots? She says, no, because I remember as a child sitting at the table for a long, long time with carrots in front of me, and my parents would not let me go to bed until I ate the carrots. And so this woman had a relationship with carrots that I was glad she was aware of it, but she had pretty much decided that she would never eat carrots willingly, although she did eat the soup because I guess it was delicious. So there was that. But there was a relationship there that she was aware of, and I was glad that she was aware of it. I wasn't in the conversation, I was just the fly on the wall listening.
[00:31:55.520] – Allan
But it was just that understanding that there's more to food than just the calories and the macros and everything else. We have memories, we have traumas, we have all these things that have gone on in our lives that tell us how to eat. They're not telling us what our body needs.
[00:32:16.010] – Alana
Absolutely. That story just reminded me of a client who she had anorexia for 20 years, and in the year that she worked with me, she actually finally was able to move over into the category of in recovery. She made so much progress with me, and I'm so proud of her. But she had this story in her head that she was safer when she was thinner. She was in a safer body. She felt safer. And I had to ask her one day, I said, have you ever thought about the validity of that story today for you? Because today for you, your anorexia has nearly killed you. Is this really safe for you anymore? And she was like, wow, I never really thought of it that way. I think sometimes we have these stories that we make up to make sense of what's happened in our lives, and we hold on to those stories and repeat those stories over and over again over the years. They begin to sound like facts, and we don't even challenge them after a while. But you might be holding on to a story about yourself or about food from 2030 years ago that doesn't really apply anymore.
[00:33:22.380] – Alana
And you really have to challenge those thoughts and ask yourself if you're willing to let go of some of the stories that you've been holding on to or challenge them the way a lawyer would challenge somebody else in court. Hold up the facts of that story.
[00:33:39.510] – Allan
Yeah. Now you brought up something in the book that it's a topic that I've known about and I've thought about because I don't want to push someone to think that they need to be perfect. I'm a big fan of just progress. Just do something a little better. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it's orthorexia and this is basically kind of the other side of the coin of just not giving a damn about your health and your fitness. This is like maybe caring a little too much. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:34:16.130] – Alana
Yeah, that's where I was. And orthorexia as you said, it's an obsession with, quote unquote, clean eating and having a real anxiety and fear around foods that are deemed unhealthy or junk foods. And when I was in my twenty s, that was one of the things that I most certainly had. I was never diagnosed with it, and it's not in the DSM Five for diagnosable eating disorders as of yet. I know they're working on that. But I think sometimes when we want to reach a goal weight, when we want to be as healthy as possible, especially since our culture has become so obsessed with wellness, it could become an obsession. And for me, I've always been a perfectionist and in certain ways a maladaptive perfectionist. And I in my 20s, was seeking perfection through being a certain goal weight, and I wanted my body to look a certain way. But I think kind of going back to our conversation of calories and calories out. It's not that simple. I wanted six pack ABS, and that's very difficult for someone with my genetics. That's just not how our bodies are shaped. And we gain weight in our middles first in my family.
[00:35:32.190] – Alana
And I could have the six pack, I would have to get my body fat very low. I would have to eat very regimented whey. And for me to have a goal like that would mean to have a very real fear of anything that would not allow me to reach that goal. But it got to a point, obviously, when I developed an eating disorder, where I had to say, is this goal really worth it? Is eating this clean all the time really worth it? And the answer was no for me. And I actually just spoke with, I don't know if you know her, Marie Wald. She's the host of the Make Bank podcast. And she used to be a competitive bikini person. And she was saying that she had no social life when she was prepping. She felt, like, horrible all of the time in her body. And then when she was done prepping and done competing and she would eat, quote unquote, normally again in between shows, she would gain all this weight and feel so bad about her body. And I've heard similar stories like that before. I read a book called oh, gosh, madeline Moon's book, the Confessions of a Fitness Model, I think it was called.
[00:36:47.640] – Alana
Same Story. She would compete in these bikini competitions, and it was just this mental and physical struggle to reach peak perfection. But was it perfection? Is the question that's what I posed in the book as well is. I think the chapter is called The Dangers of the Perfect Body or The Myth of the Perfect Body.
[00:37:06.020] – Allan
Yeah. And I think that gets a little weird, if you will, or OD when we get over 40. And because a lot of us, I think, guys more maybe than women, we still think of ourselves like our 20 year old self. It's like, I want to go out and do the things I did when I was in my twenty s. I feel like I should be able to do those things. I think I should look like I did when I was in my 20s, when I had the six pack and had the things going on. And what I've come to realize is that my body right now won't hold on to that much muscle mass. And therefore, from a BMI perspective, or whatever you want to call it, I'm never going to be 29 again. I can be very fit. I can be very strong. I can do everything that I want to do, but I'm not going to get down to the 31 inch waist again. It's probably just not going to happen. But that's me being real with myself and understanding my physical limitations and also just understanding my lifestyle of, well, I still want to be able to go out with my friends and do stuff.
[00:38:10.860] – Allan
And if I'm going to have these detours, if you will, I'm going to go do these things. To me, I don't want the guilt. I don't want the shame of saying, well, okay, I don't have the 31 inch waist. I'll be happy with 34 and still going out and having fun with my friends.
[00:38:27.250] – Alana
Right. It's that balance of the perfect body. But what would you lose if you tried to gain that perfect body? Because it takes so much work and effort and mental and physical anguish that it's not worth it for me. And I think that's a question that the answer to, which is different for everybody, I suppose. But you can absolutely be healthy and not look the same way that you did when you were in your in high school and society glorifies the young. But we're all going to get older. Our bodies are all going to change. Women are going to go through menopause and the whole host of body changes that come along with that. And it's something to be appreciated and respected and embraced at the same time, that you could still be eating mostly nutrients, dense foods and moving your body most days and drinking your water and sleeping and managing your stress. You can be healthy without looking like the 20 something model. And that's something that I addressed in my TEDx Talk, is this fallacy and this very one dimensional view of what health is supposed to look like.
[00:39:37.690] – Allan
Yeah, and I've gone through that with my clients, too. It's like you don't have to look like a CrossFit athlete to be fit if your level of fitness is just I want to be an awesome grandfather, and when we go to the zoo, I want to be able to keep up with the grandkids. And if they want to go get in the park and roll around on the ground, I want to be able to do that, too. And so it's that kind of mentality of, okay, what do I need to be able to do? And I still see that. Like, there was a post on Facebook today. Again, a lot going on on Facebook today, I guess, but the guy was posting, what can you do? This is a 40 plus fitness level thing, as most of us were. All of us are in our older. He's like, what can you do? And so you've got people. Well, I can run a six minute mile. I'm 52 years old. And of the guys like, Well, I can. And I'm like, well, I can do everything I want to do. And he didn't like that answer, because I wasn't bragging about what I could do.
[00:40:36.880] – Allan
I was just saying if I want to be able to do it, I train around the things. I train my strength, my mobility, my stamina, my balance to be able to be the person I want to be. And beyond that, if I have a little bit more strength than I need, well, great. If I have a little bit more stamina than I need, great. But I know I can go anywhere I want to go. I can do anything I want to do. Can I do what I did when I was in the military in my twenty s? No, probably not. But I can still do a lot that I enjoy doing, and I can do everything that I need to do. And so to me, that's enough. And I think it's that line of saying, what's enough? Physically, health wise? All of it? Yeah.
[00:41:19.050] – Alana
What's enough for women especially, it's challenging not only what is health, because I ask my clients a series of questions toward the beginning of my program. Is healthy being physically afraid of a brownie? Or is healthy not having a piece of your son or daughter's birthday cake because you're too afraid of it? Is it really healthy to spend every single day at the gym without giving yourself a rest day? So not only questioning what health actually is, authentic health versus diet culture's version of health, but also what is your definition of beauty, what is your definition of worth? Because we tend to inflate all of those things together. Fitness equals health, equals worthiness equals beauty. And that is what society has served us up and that's what we've been socialized to believe. But as autonomous human beings, like you said to your client, you're a big girl. You can have the beer or the bread or whatever you want. We are allowed to subscribe to this version of health and beauty and worthiness if we want to, or we can choose to opt out. And if you opt out, yes, of course you have to contend with the fact you still live in a thin obsessed society, but you get to write those rules.
[00:42:36.900] – Alana
You get to write those rules in a way that allows you to do all the things you want to do, as you said, and also still feel good in your body.
[00:42:43.160] – Allan
Yeah. And you're not subjecting your children or grandchildren to this level of anxiety about a piece of cake or a brownie. They're seeing you live a happy, healthy life. And that's what we want. We're not going to break the diet culture paradigm. We could do it for ourselves, but we can also do it for people around us by being the example of the person who's not anxious about, oh, well, they've got this, I can't eat that, I won't eat that kind of thing.
[00:43:14.430] – Alana
Yeah. And that's definitely something. As a mom to all of your female clients over 40, we can say one thing to our children, but they always pay attention to how we act. And I have a lot of clients, I ask them about their family history and I say, well, did your parents ever put you on a diet when you were younger? And I would say a good half of them say, no, they didn't put me on a diet, but they were so hard. Like, my mom was so harsh on herself. Or my mom always used to go to Weight Watchers meetings, or she would eat something for dinner that was different than the rest of the family, or she would always pinch the fat on her arms or whatever. And when we see those things, it's generational. Eating disorders are generational. When we see those things when we're children, it's, well, I want to be like Mommy, and Mommy doesn't seem to like her body unless it looks this way, and that's what makes her feel like a good girl. So that must mean that that would make me a good girl if I was thin, too.
[00:44:17.480] – Alana
And that's how it starts.
[00:44:19.290] – Allan
Yeah. Now, this transition, if you will, to where you're starting to trust yourself, you're starting to do these things. It's not just something you pick up and you say, okay, well, Alana was right. I'm on the podcast. I'm going to start intuitive eating. It's not an easy thing. This is an intense internal piece of work. In the book, you included about, I think, 15 tips that will make the transition a little easier and a little bit more sustainable. Can you share a couple of your favorite? I have a favorite that I'll talk about in a minute, but what are some of your favorite tips that you have in the book for this transition?
[00:45:03.950] – Alana
I'm all about practicality, and you read the book, so, you know, these tips are just like, really things that you can implement the day that you read them. I'm not here to wax poetic to anybody because it sounds great, but then you're like, how do I actually implement this? So my favorite first step is always to just get rid of the scale and delete your calorie counting app, like MyFitness pal. Because if you're using external tools to determine how much or little you should be eating, you cannot actually honor any hunger and fullness cues that you're getting in your body. So that is, like, step number one. And I will say again, as somebody who would weigh herself every single day before anything else, before even a sip of water, I was so scared to not step on a scale one day and not know how much or little I could eat that day, because that's how I would determine it. But it's always scarier before you do it. The day I actually decided to not step on the scale, it was actually a relief. It was a breath of fresh air, and anxiety is fear of the future.
[00:46:08.970] – Alana
So once it was already happening, it wasn't that scary anymore. It just was. So I would definitely say that. The other tip I really enjoy, and I think it's actually a couple of different strategies in the book that fall under this umbrella, but this idea of meal planning, not in the rigid way that diet culture tells us. Like, whatever you meal prep, you have to have because it's in your macros or whatever, it's just taking an hour or two every Sunday or whatever day you have off and prepping a couple of options for breakfast and lunch or something. You don't even have to do dinner and do a couple of snacks, but just having some pre prepped, nutritiously, dense food readily available at the go. Because I think we get in the habit of eating on the go, going to the drive through, waiting till we're starving, that we don't have time to make the food. So we just gobble up whatever prepackaged garbage is available to us, instead of saying, oh, I made these yogurt parfaits for snacks. Like, they're right here. I can just grab one if I'm really hungry. So meal prepping as a flexible, gentle way to ensure that you have nutrient dense, balanced meals available to you, I think is super key.
[00:47:24.500] – Alana
And I have a ton of tricks in the book about how to meal prep so that it doesn't take 6 hours, it should take an hour to max. And I have some strategies for that.
[00:47:36.290] – Allan
My favorite was your tip number six, transition tip number six, which was freeze leftovers or fresh foods for later. And the way you put it together, there's two things that you went through. One was, okay, so someone gives you this big, huge brownie and, you know, okay, I like the brownies. I think you talked about it having brownie and fudge and chocolate chip and a whole lot of other stuff in there. And you love it, you want it, but, you know, okay, it's not in my best interest to eat all of it at one sitting, which I'd probably do if I just left it on the counter. And I keep looking at it every time I walk by it, but you cut it up into bites or pieces or whatever, and then you freeze the rest of it. And so it's like any night you want, you can go in there and say, I'd like a little bit of that, and you have a little bit of it. You feel the satiation of, oh, that was really good, but you're not eating the whole thing. And similar to what we talked about earlier, like with the potato thing, it's like because it's there, you now don't have this scarcity mindset.
[00:48:39.410] – Allan
It's like, oh, I always have something sweet, something savory, something I like, and it's put aside for when I need it, for when I want it. And so I don't have to feel like I have to eat it all because I know it's not going anywhere. It's my freezer, and it's going to be there. So it's there. So I think that ties in that the other side of it was I was thinking. I used to go out and I'd bring food home from the restaurant and it's like, okay, I'll eat that for lunch the next morning. And then I'd find myself at lunchtime and I'm like, well, I just had that last night, and that's just not fulfilling right now. It's not what I want. Yes, I could force myself to eat it. It's still good food, but it's like, yeah, if I just took it home, packaged it up, put it in the freezer, then I give myself the option to say yes or no to that particular thing, and I don't feel like I'm tied to it. Like, the clean your plate mindset that we were passed on when we were kids is like, if I want it, I'll have it, but I'll have it when I want it versus the other way around.
[00:49:47.930] – Alana
Exactly. And you put that so well. And I love the freezer hack, too, because as you kind of hinted at, it takes away that Last supper mentality, like, oh, I have to have it all now because for me, I don't waste food. I have a problem with wasting food, and for me, it would be partially, oh, I have to eat them all now because they're going to go stale and that's going to be a waste. But if you put it in the freezer, it doesn't happen, they don't get stale. So it's this way to take the pressure off and to not have that Last supper mentality.
[00:50:20.690] – Allan
Yeah. And so, like, tonight, my wife's going out with friends, they're going to have a slumber party. So I don't know if a 55 year old woman can actually go on a slumber party, but that's what they're doing. And so every time she leaves town, it's like, well, this is the time for me to cook what I want without worrying about what she wants. So it's almost always liver and onions for me because that's one of my I love liver and onions. No one else on the earth? Well, there's a couple of us, but most people don't. My wife doesn't. She says she loves smelling it, but she has no way she's going to eat it. So I'll cook it. And then what I found is sometimes I'll put it in the fridge, and then the next day, I don't really want it. And I hate again like you. I don't want to waste it, and I don't want it to go bad. But I have to admit, sometimes I just can't make myself eat it. But the idea of tonight, I cook it, I have it, and then the rest of it I put in the freezer, and then that's there for me.
[00:51:12.710] – Allan
Whenever I kind of want my fix, it's there. So I like that tip and I'm definitely going to follow it.
[00:51:20.650] – Alana
I love that. Thank you.
[00:51:22.650] – Allan
Alana. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well.
[00:51:34.110] – Alana
Always approach nutrition from a Place of abundance. So what can you add in to your diet that's going to leave you feeling good? Is it prioritizing more protein? Is it throwing in healthy fats, fiber, water? I say journal. Journaling, I'm with you. I think when we get down about our bodies, sometimes having a gratitude journal about what we are grateful for and happy about in our lives can help pull the focus away from our bodies as this esthetic thing that we have to make perfect. So coming from a Place of Abundance, journaling and I would say emotional management. Emotional management and thought management, learning how to really listen to the voices that you hear in your head, learning how to challenge the validity of them and purposefully choosing whether you want to release them or keep them. If there's something that's serving you, great.
[00:52:39.460] – Allan
Thank you. If someone wanted to learn more about you and your book Freedom with Food and Fitness, where would you like for me to send them?
[00:52:49.270] – Alana
They can go to my website, freedomwithfoodandfitness.com. They can visit me on Instagram at freedomwithfoodandfitness. And the book came out just about two weeks ago now, so it's available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or wherever you get your books.
[00:53:05.210] – Allan
Thank you. You can go to 40 Plusfitnesspodcast.com 6118 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Alana, thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
[00:53:16.430] – Alana
Thank you, Allan. This is awesome.
Post Show/Recap
[00:53:20.030] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:53:21.890] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. I love the concept of intuitive eating. I feel like I'm a pretty good intuitive eater myself now, but certainly that is not something that comes easy. I mean, we have so many rules in our life about when we should be eating. And we're know if you have kids like when I had kids, I kind of got stuck eating what they were eating. So I didn't really have the autonomy to choose because I certainly wasn't going to prepare multiple different meals. But it's not easy to be that intuitive.
[00:53:52.980] – Allan
Yeah, it's not. When you do it, then basically what you do is you turn on all these automatic switches and our bodies, our minds, everything around us was wired for that. We were wired to have regular, consistent, almost everything. And then we could focus intently on what was different because typically what was different was dangerous. So we wander out into a field and we're used to seeing this field look a certain way and act a certain way. And suddenly we get out there and things are not that way. We realize something's in the field that wasn't there yesterday and it's changed things. So certain animals are no longer there. It looks different, it feels different. Our bodies are wired to feel that, to sense that, to not like that. And so when we look at food, we kind of get into ruts. We kind of get into things we like that comfort. We like that thing. And so there's a lot of structure without the intention behind it.
[00:54:59.650] – Rachel
Exactly.
[00:55:00.460] – Allan
And so what we're saying here is, again, I think it's great when you can get to the intuitive part, because then you're just walking around the forest and into the field and doing the things that you do on a daily basis, and it feels good and it feels normal. But to get there, we've got to do some mental training. We've got to get ourselves to a point where we're eating the right way and we're feeling it. We're taking the time, and we're doing these things. And that typically, in my opinion, takes some rules. So you can't just jump into and say, well, I'm going to do this intuitive eating thing. At some level, you got to say, well, what does that mean for me? What am I going to eat that's going to make me feel good? Is that going to be consistent? Does that fit my lifestyle? And so many times people will say, well, this is what I'm going to do. I'm only going to eat this food. I'm only going to eat it this often. And that's where this whole concept, which kind of got into the whole keto thing, is like, once you start keto, you always have to do keto.
[00:56:04.330] – Allan
Well, that's not entirely true for a lot of people. It is, though. I mean, for a lot of people, they go onto keto, they lose weight, they go off of keto, they go right back to the way they ate before they went into keto, and now they're not. Now, I happen to do it in a very unusual way because I talked to a nutritionist that was very heavy into food, actual food, not all the bars and all this. So it was a paleo style that I started eating. Now, the foods I gravitated to meats and vegetables, well, they put me into ketosis because I don't know how much spinach you have to eat to get out of ketosis, but I don't want to know because I've eaten a lot of spinach and not gotten out of ketosis. And so I can't even imagine how much I would have to eat of a leafy green before I would go out of ketosis. So for me, I just happened to be eating a lot of leafy greens and a lot of protein, usually in the form of beef, chicken, or pork and eggs. And I went into ketosis, and it was great for me.
[00:57:18.170] – Allan
It worked very well for me. Now it does not work for me all the time, and there were times it did not work, and then I got out of it. And so what I would say is intuitive eating is understanding with the environment that you have, what's the best that you can do with what you've got. Then when you get into it, you realize that you don't need the three or. Four servings that they bring you when you're sitting down at dinner.
[00:57:41.640] – Rachel
Right.
[00:57:42.290] – Allan
And the concept, the rule you had, the rule you had was eat everything on your plate.
[00:57:47.260] – Rachel
Oh, yeah, that's how I grew up.
[00:57:48.870] – Allan
Okay, we did. But when you walk into a restaurant and they're basically handing you four meals right? Okay. No, that rule is no longer valid. So find rules that serve you, get rid of rules that don't, and then try to make the rules. Just become a natural way that you approach things. That's intuitive. It's intuitive. When I walk in, I look at a plate and I say, oh, my God, that's four servings of pasta. It's three servings of protein, and it's four servings of pasta. And I can look at it the plate, and know that's what I'm looking at. I mean, it took two waiters to carry it to my table. You just look at it? No, this is a lot more food than I need. So I eat it slow. I focus on the protein and the vegetables. I have a little bit of the pasta because it's good, and then when I'm full, I stop.
[00:58:48.390] – Rachel
Well, that's right there is one of those cues that's important to pay attention to, is that feeling of being hungry versus the feeling of being full and.
[00:58:59.130] – Allan
Not being afraid of either, right?
[00:59:01.500] – Rachel
Yeah, for sure.
[00:59:02.580] – Allan
Some people are terrified when they're hungry. It's like, oh my God, I'm out of food, I'm going to die. Like, no, you live in a world of abundance. When you recognize that you live in a world of abundance, you can eat just about anytime you want to.
[00:59:15.730] – Rachel
Well, that's an interesting point too, Alan, because back many years ago when I worked in an office, I had to hurry up and get the kids fed, get something in my mouth before I took my daily commute to get to the office. And then when I got to the office, like everybody else, I had a pretty flexible time frame when I could have lunch. But basically you have lunch around eleven or twelve or thereabouts, and then when you get home, you got to get the kids fed. So you're eating around dinner time, or your time for dinner is what, five or 06:00 or something like that. And so you get into this rut of you're eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, but you're not thinking about whether you're hungry enough to eat that. Well, now, at this stage of my life, I can wake up in the morning and decide, well, I'm not really hungry today, so I'm going to put off breakfast until I am hungry. I'll do some chores or do my run and come back and eat when I'm hungry. But we're stuck in these ruts of these times of the day when we are just conditioned to be eating a meal and then not really feeling hungry at any particular time.
[01:00:22.440] – Rachel
And then because you're eating the meal, because it's dinner and it's in front of you and it's on your plate, you're finishing it whether you're feeling full or not. Those moments of being intuitive and being mindful and feeling the feelings about what you're eating is important, but it's not easy to get to that point.
[01:00:40.030] – Allan
No, it's not. Which is, again, why I think certain rules can be valuable. You can plate your dinner in the kitchen, so you're not dipping the spoon in to grab another serving of mashed potatoes and gravy. And so you just sit there and say you say, okay, I'm going to plate my food. This is the size of a plate that typically satiates me. I'm going to put two thirds of my plate is going to be protein, and one third of my plate is going to be protein, and two thirds will be vegetables. Okay. And maybe you want to have a starch, maybe you don't. Maybe you say, okay, I'm going to have a glass of wine with this. So there are certain rules that you're going to have, and those rules can be very helpful to keep you on track. But then there's just the point where you walk in and you're like, okay, I know my plate. I know my plate size. I know I'm usually feeling I feel pretty good when I eat that amount of food. I feel gross when I eat two or three of them on Thanksgiving, which is coming up, but it's just that whole thing of realizing or I guess it's just over.
[01:01:50.050] – Allan
I'm looking at the date this is going live. Thanksgiving is over. You're probably just now feeling good after five days of Thanksgiving and all the leftovers, but we do that, and then we don't take that information and say, okay, well, I don't want to feel that gross again, I'd like to find that point of what does a plate look like and what does it feel like. I went through precision nutrition, and that's basically how they teach portion sizes, is when you can understand the size of a portion, they usually do it relative to a body part. So your fist or your hand or something like that. And so it's just that recognizing how much food typically makes you feel satiated.
[01:02:33.830] – Rachel
Yeah, that's another mindset.
[01:02:36.850] – Allan
Slowing down and feeling it and enjoying the food is another part of this. But to start out with, you just make a rule. Okay, here's my plate. Yes. Their plate is a ten inch plate. My plate is an eight inch plate.
[01:02:50.630] – Rachel
That's a good .1.
[01:02:52.170] – Allan
Third of my plate is going to be protein, and two thirds is going to be vegetables. They may have a starch or something like that, and I may have a little bit of it, just almost like it's a condiment. Just a little spoonful on the side there that I'll enjoy. If I really love it, maybe that's the last thing I eat. So I'll eat the rest of it, and then that's the last thing. So I get it or I go ahead and just get out of the way, eat that little bit, and then go on with my plate. Whatever the rule is, however it works for you. But after that, once you get that into your system, it's not like you have to see the rule printed in front of you every day. And you have to say, okay, this is the rule. Because unfortunately, again, things are going to come up and those rules might be invalidated for periods of time. And then where are you? And so you want to be intuitive so that you can pivot and manage yourself. When those things aren't available, those rules are difficult to follow or impossible to follow.
[01:03:49.370] – Allan
But even then, I tell my clients like, okay, you're going on this business trip. Look up a couple restaurants in the area, look at what your schedule is going to be, and look at what makes, you know, one of my clients like, well, there's a Whole Foods. So in the morning I'd get up and I'd walk to the Whole Foods and I'd get something for breakfast. I didn't have a refrigerator in my room, which meant that I couldn't go do a shopping for the day and know that that food was going to be okay that evening. And I didn't want to walk over there in the evening based on the time I got off. So I'm eating a lot of crap that I wouldn't have eaten because I got stuck. And so is the whole point of, well, okay, can we manage around that? How do we manage around that? And maybe there is some situations where, okay, I'm just going to have to eat a little bit of crap for a few days, but I'm going to eat a big ass breakfast because I got control of that, and then I'll eat less of that in the evening because I know I don't need it.
[01:04:49.450] – Allan
And so it's just rules and intuitive, I think, when they're put together and managed properly are the way you're going to get through this and find your way, because there isn't a way, there's your way. And that's one of the things about this freedom part, is that you're not trying to be somebody else. You're not trying to live someone else's life, you're not trying to follow someone else's example. You're finding a way of eating that fits you, serves you. You're eating the foods that fit you and serve you, and you're doing it in a way that just feels more natural to you. And that typically is going to have to start with some rules until you figure all that out, and then it can become much more automatic.
[01:05:29.510] – Rachel
Yeah, that's absolutely perfect. Alan I just want to highlight, too, that, like you said, we were also different. You and I both found keto is our kind of preferred way of eating, but we don't eat it that way 100% of the time either. But someone else might enjoy the whole vegan vegetarian aspect. I hate when people feel attacked when they choose a way of eating and somebody is making fun of them for choosing that. You just need to find what works for you and be happy that you found your favorite way of eating. Certain foods agree with us. Certain foods don't. And I think that people just should experiment and find what really works for them.
[01:06:09.990] – Allan
I agree. All right, well, I'll talk to you next week.
Change is the hardest thing we as humans can do. On episode 617 of the 40+ Fitness Podcast, we discuss the 5 enemies of health and fitness change.
Transcript
Let's Say Hello
[00:02:31.470] – Coach Allan
Hey, Ras. How are you?
[00:02:33.600] – Coach Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?
[00:02:35.700] – Coach Allan
I'm doing all right. I'm a little tired. Yeah, I'm not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination. And there was a Halloween thing, so yeah, again, you guys know we record these a few weeks ahead, so yeah, here he is talking about Halloween in the third or fourth week of November. But, yeah, we had a Halloween contest at one of the local places, and our whole group went as the characters from Gilligan's Island.
[00:03:03.330] – Coach Rachel
Oh, how fun.
[00:03:04.590] – Coach Allan
Yeah. So I had the easy one. I was the professor, so all I had to do was wear a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up and khakis. And then I had a little antique looking radio thing and coconut and aluminum foil.
[00:03:20.200] – Coach Rachel
Oh, how fun.
[00:03:21.410] – Coach Allan
That was it. So, yeah, we won the group award for Gilligan's Island. And then one of the guys that's here, friends of ours, he dressed up as Ginger and his wife dressed up as Gilligan.
[00:03:34.590] – Coach Rachel
How cute.
[00:03:37.430] – Coach Allan
He won the best dressed, I guess, the best individual costume award for being Ginger. So, yeah, it was good. But it was late, and so I got in late and was tired and had to get up this morning and run a bed and breakfast. So that whole breakfast part, jeez, if we just stopped doing that.
[00:04:00.590] – Coach Rachel
It's early. Yeah, right.
[00:04:03.100] – Coach Allan
No, but I am an early morning person. But this morning I was not. So I'm going to get through my about 3 hours or so of stuff I got to get done today, and then I'm going to take a nap.
[00:04:14.930] – Coach Rachel
Good idea. That sounds like a plan.
[00:04:17.320] – Coach Allan
Yeah. So how are things up there?
[00:04:19.360] – Coach Rachel
Well, funny you mentioned Halloween. We just got dumped on with some snow. Where I live, I only got a dusting of snow, but to the cities west of us that are in the lake effect area, they got about seven inches of snow. And so the poor kids in some cities nearby, the cities postponed Halloween or trick or treating to the next day, so the poor kids got snowed out for trick or treating. Crazier things have happened.
[00:04:51.540] – Coach Allan
Yeah. Seven inches, though. I thought you guys kind of had that whole snow thing covered. So seven inches. That's a random Tuesday.
[00:05:02.770] – Coach Rachel
Yeah. It is still early. It's not unheard of, especially for Miganders to go trick or treating with costumes underneath our snow jackets. But it was a little not fully unexpected, but a little unexpected. And seven inches is quite a bit yeah.
[00:05:20.810] – Coach Allan
That's when being a superhero or something like that is not cool. But I can be a bear.
[00:05:27.930] – Coach Rachel
Exactly. But nonetheless, it was a good night.
[00:05:33.740] – Coach Allan
Good. And ixnay the candy, right?
[00:05:37.130] – Coach Rachel
That's right. Yes.
[00:05:38.810] – Coach Allan
But you don't have the little ones, so they're not coming home with bags of the stuff.
[00:05:42.850] – Coach Rachel
No, I get to hand mine out. Whatever I've got left gets to go home with my kids.
[00:05:48.610] – Coach Allan
Yeah. And so, yeah, that's the lesson here. If you're still sitting on some of that candy hoard from Halloween, it's time to give it away. Just take it to the office, put it in a bowl, leave it on a table in the break room. Just anything you got to do to get rid of that stuff, it's time to get rid of it and get serious about your health and fitness. All right, you ready to have a discussion about that?
[00:06:15.260] – Coach Rachel
Sure.
[00:06:16.120] – Coach Allan
All right, let's go.
Episode
Today we're going to talk about the five enemies of health and fitness. Change. I get it and you get it. Change is hard. It really is. Humans were not really programmed for change. We weren't built for change. We were built to basically look for stability, look for the same, find comfort, find safety. And we get that through something that we know, which is security and solid. And so when things are changing, that puts us out of our elements. Often that makes it very difficult for us. In fact, our senses in our body react to change in a negative way because typically if something's different, it could be dangerous. So we want to recognize change and be afraid of it or be prepared for it. So we're looking for change. But change often elicits negative reactions because the same is safe. Change can be dangerous. And so that signal is in our head and so change can be hard. But if you conquer these five enemies, it's going to make change a lot easier. Now the first one I want to talk about of the five is believing you can get a different result doing the same thing.
Now there's a quote that's associated with Einstein. He's not sure he said it. Someone said he said it. He said it sounds reasonable. So he's not going to fully claim it. He wasn't willing to fully claim it, but did say it was good advice. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. That's the quote. And so believing you can get a different result just by doing the same thing, well, it is what it is. So I want to start each of these enemies with kind of a story. And I think the story is going to kind of give you a good picture of how this manifests within a client or within a person, rather. Okay, so the first story is about Marie. So Marie was a really cool person, had a very stressful job. And so each evening when she got home from work, she'd have a glass of wine. Sometimes it was two, sometimes it was three. And she did this every evening. This was her kind of her go to wind down habit for each evening. So she finished work, she started dinner, she started the wine.
Now the OD thing was she hired me and we kept talking about the wine, but she would step up her activities. She would do other things with her food. She literally was doing everything right except she wasn't willing to change the wine. Now she was getting results as we went through our training, but she wasn't quite getting the results she wanted. So we circled around the conversation several times and came back to wine. And each time it was, I'm going to work around it. But it was obvious that this was holding her back and she wasn't willing to change it. So she had this belief system that she could do the wine. But in her mind she also knew this was also what was holding her back. So she thought, okay, well, I'll just do it more. This is working. It's not working as well as I want, but I will just keep doing it. And eventually it will work. So sometimes we just have to face facts that we can't get away with the things that we did when we were in our twenty s and thirty s. Okay? This was part of her mindset was, well, I was fine when I was younger.
It's only now that I'm older, but I know if I keep working out and I keep eating this way, I'll get what I want. So three glasses of wine, let's assume a regular pour. But she and I talked about it probably wasn't a regular pour, was about one third of her daily calories. So if you figure three glasses of three regular glasses of wine was about one third of what she was expending in a given day, that was just not something that she was going to be able to out exercise. But again, her mind believed that she could just keep doing what she was doing and she would get different results. So the challenge for you to get something different, you will likely have to do something different. Now it doesn't have to be extreme. She didn't need to quit wine. Maybe just tapering it down because small changes can add up. She wasn't happy with the results that she was seeing, and maybe you're not either, but are you really thinking it through to say, what are the things that I'm doing that I know aren't serving that mission, that outcome that aren't going to make that happen?
And am I right to believe that I can keep doing those things and get a different result? And the answer is typically no. So unfortunately, yes. To get change, you have to do change, and you have to change things to get change. So one of the hardest things and one of the first enemies I talk about when we talk about change is believing you can get a different result doing the same thing. It's typically just not true. The second enemy of health and fitness change is self limiting beliefs. So jill. I got a message from Jill on Facebook. But before I get into the story, are we even friends on Facebook now? If we're not, you can go to fortyplusfitness.com Fballen, that's Fballan. Fortyplusfitness.com Fballan and send me a friend request. I am completely open. I'd love to have some conversations with you there. And that's where a lot of this stuff comes out. So anyway, Jill, I got a message from Jill on Facebook and she told me that she really liked doing the weekly challenges that we do in the Facebook group. But she wanted to know if I would take a few minutes each week and come up with a couple alternate challenges for her to pick from because she often found she couldn't do the main challenge.
So I asked her a few questions. Okay, I want to understand because most of the challenges that I put in the Facebook group are things that most people can do if they put their mind to it. So what we found was, okay, she couldn't do the food challenges because her husband liked to eat out, and so she was stuck with what was on the menu wherever they went. She couldn't do the physical challenges because she had a bad knee or she sometimes get migraines when she exerts herself too much. So she felt like she couldn't do any of the physical challenges. And then she couldn't do some of the other challenges because, well, she had a second job and she just didn't have time to do anything else. So basically what Jill believed was that Jill couldn't do anything food related, she couldn't do anything physically related, and she really couldn't do any of the other things because she just didn't have control of her schedule. So she had these self limiting beliefs that she wasn't willing to work around, and that was holding her back. Okay, so then I just had to ask the question, because it did kind of like, okay, why do you like the idea of challenges?
And she came back to me and said they made her think, okay, and that's good. You definitely have to start with that. But then she said she'd realized that she couldn't do this or basically couldn't do this. So she had this limiting belief. She had something that she felt was a wall, something holding her back that was keeping her from being able to do pretty much any one of these challenges. Now, there's another quote. I'll talk about a few quotes here and there, but Henry Ford is quoted as saying, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So, in other words, where your head goes, so do you. If you have limiting beliefs, those limits are real for you, okay? For me they might not be, but for you, they're absolutely real, and you're going to struggle to overcome them, okay? So to be successful in something hard like a challenge or weight loss or getting healthy and fit, you've got to start believing in yourself, okay? You've got to start believing that it's possible for you to make the change, and you have to start believing in yourself. And these are hard.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is something as easy because change is hard. But if you don't believe you can change, guess what? You're right. So I know you can do it, but you have to approach it with that attitude. And it might not be the solid, okay, I know I can do this, but at least I know I can try. I can try. I will try. And when you give it that shot just that much, you can push past that limiting belief and do things you never thought you could. So my challenge to you is when you set a goal, just be clear with yourself that, okay, not only is this attainable, it's almost easy. So that's why I tell people, don't set this huge goal that you're never going to be able to do, or that you think, okay, yes, if I'm perfect for a long period of time, I can get there. Start out with a pretty simple goal, set the bar relatively low, and it might be for someone, it might be, I'm going to walk for ten minutes in the evening, three days a week. Now, for some, that might seem pretty simple.
30 minutes of walking doesn't seem like a lot of time for some people. For others, that might be quite challenging. So your bar might be a little lower or a little higher, but it still, for you, has to be kind of a relatively low bar to get started. You'll probably hear this advice over and over and over again. The most important thing in change is getting started, and we have to get past the limiting beliefs to get there. So set that low goal. Now, are those 30 minutes of walking each week going to change your life? And the answer is, initially, no. But when you're successful in doing that consistently, your belief grows. Oh, I can walk 30 minutes per week more than I was before. Okay. And then you can start to feed that belief. You can start to make it grow. So you feed belief and you abandon limits. And you do that through consistent, gentle nudges of setting a goal, meeting the goal, proving to yourself that you can. So we get past the limiting belief and then setting a slightly bigger goal, getting that done, getting past that limiting belief, go to the next one.
So eventually you could be doing much, much more than you would have thought you could, your limiting belief, but you're doing it now. So challenge yourself to set a goal that's just outside your comfort zone, but obviously attainable, and then do it, and then do it again. And then do it again. And then do it again. That consistency of running over and passing your limiting beliefs is going to take you to some amazing places. So the third enemy of health and fitness change is staying in your comfort zone. So Carrie was a client, and when we first started working together, she told me, I can't walk for five minutes without getting super winded. Okay? Now, we couldn't just tell her. We couldn't just get her and say, okay, no, you're going to go and do all these workouts, and here's all the programming, and here it is in the app, and you just get in there and start doing this stuff. What we did was we said, okay, what's something that's generally attainable? Remember the limiting beliefs and that we can do consistently that you know, you'll do consistently. It's not going to be comfortable.
So I made it uncomfortable. I said, okay, how many minutes do you think you could walk in a day in addition to just your normal daily activity and she said ten minutes. So we started with ten minutes. Now, I told her, said ten minutes doesn't have to be all at one time. It could be two, five minute sessions, which she said again would push her a little bit. It could be four, two and a half minute sessions. It could be five two minute sessions. The point was for her to get ten minutes of dedicated walking done each day, each and every day. And it was really hard for her most days. Now, she started doing it, she started being consistent and she started doing it, getting it done. So she was walking every day for at least ten minutes. Sometimes she'd do a little more. Now, each week we started to bump up this target because she felt comfortable. She got comfortable with ten minutes a day. Now, we want to push just outside that comfort zone. So we go a little more, usually within a little two minute increments, which is not a bad thing.
It just is a thing. That was her gentle nudge, just to get her just outside the comfort zone. Now, some days when she felt great, she actually did more. So the goal might be twelve minutes and she might be doing 14 one day. Now, other days she just didn't feel good. And she's like, I just didn't feel good, but I still got my target hit again, just outside the comfort zone. Okay? Now she showed this courage each and every week, each and every day. And what ended up happening was her fitness improved. Now, it's kind of a phenomenon, but once people start pushing comfort levels in one place in their lives, they tend to start pushing comfort levels in others. So she improved her nutrition and these little gentle nudges know were coming just as a nature of her saying, I know I can do more. I've got to get outside my comfort zone. She was able to enjoy things that she had really struggled with before. Now, Carrie really loves music festivals, but she had told me, she said she was kind of dreading going because there was so much walking and she would always struggle with that walking.
But because she had done the little nudges just outside her comfort zone while we were training and she was improving her nutrition, she really found that she was able to walk around, enjoy the musical festivals much more than she ever had. And again, it was just from getting outside her comfort zone. It made things so much better. So no matter where you are right now, I'm going to tell you you can improve your health and fitness, but you're not going to do it if you stay in your comfort zone, okay? Now, getting outside your comfort zone doesn't mean you're doing something crazy like, I'm afraid of heights, so I'm going to jump off the Empire State Building. It's just little bits just outside the edge of where you're comfortable and you keep doing this, you keep doing this and consistently doing this again and again, and it all adds up. So my challenge to you is that you need to do things that scare you a little bit. Okay? Now, there's two operative words in what I just said do and scare. Okay? Change requires work. You are not going to change if you don't do something.
And you're not going to really accomplish much if it's inside your comfort zone. So if I say, well, I feel really good that I can walk 30 minutes in a day each day, I'm just going to walk 30 minutes in each day, not really going to grow, not really going to change. Pretty much going to stay the same. So it has to somewhat scary, just outside the comfort zone. And you have to do it, and you have to do it consistently. The enemy of change in health and fitness number four is unwillingness to invest. So Sharon was this prospective client. Now we got to talking, and she was doing these pain on demand workout things. There are several of them, but she was doing one. She said it costs something like 15 $20 a month. She's not sure. Occasionally they raise the price, but still not much. 15, $20 a month. And she loved the workouts, but she wasn't losing any weight. Okay, so we started talking and I said, okay, so how do you go about this? And she's like, Well, I just scan and they have some featured ones. And so I just do a featured one.
And I said, okay, well, how often are you doing this? And she said, well, when I'm turning them on, I'm turning them on. I do them. I do the whole workout. I feel really good. It's hard, but there's times when I just don't feel like doing it or I forget to do it or it's not something I want to do. And so basically, she said I could go weeks without doing any of them. And she says, Well, I kind of justified it. It's just $15. I'm not really losing much because it's just $15. Now, Sharon also told me a story about going to a gym and working with a trainer. Okay? She met the trainer anyway, and so she meets this trainer. The trainer is walking her through the gym, starts talking about programming and helping her reach her goals. And so she's starting to get a little excited that she can lose weight and be more fit, and this is going to be really great for her. Now, the trainer sat down with her and said, okay, they recommend that she buy the gym membership and that she pay for three sessions per week.
And if she signed up for a six month contract, she would get a free consult with a nutritionist to even bolster her weight loss even more. Okay? So I said, well, that sounds really good and probably similar to what I would do if I worked in a gym. So how did it go? She says, Well, I didn't do it. I said, okay, so why didn't you do it? She said, well, that's more than my car payment. So the six months that she would have paid for and gotten training three days a week and gotten a meeting with a nutritionist to help her with her food planning and give her a meal plan was more than a car payment. Okay? So she was okay with the $15, but wasn't doing it. She wasn't willing to pay for the more service, the accountability, all the things that come with that, and all the difference guidance that she would have gotten because she felt it was too much. Now, in the end, we were having the conversation. She said she did want to do something. She wanted to work with me. She realized, okay, I'm not accountable. I'm not doing things.
I do need that. I need this. Okay? So we started talking. I said, Well, I've got a six week starter program. Are you interested? And she said yes. Okay. And when I told her how much it cost, she was like, what her investment would be to do this thing with me. Her answer was, oh, that's a lot more than I'd pay. Okay? And the odd thing was, no, this was not $15 a month, but this was about a third of what she would have paid a local gym and nutritionist to work with her. So she had kind of a base for what this might cost. But she was like, no, I'm not going to pay it. I won't invest in getting this done. Now, at first, I was a little stumped. I'm like, okay, I don't understand this. The conversation we had. She saw her mother declining, and she just didn't want to go down that path. But I just was kind of dumbstruck. It's like, okay, are you willing to invest at all? And so I asked her simple question. I asked her, what is money? Now, that might seem like an OD question, right?
But I needed to understand this. And here's what I solved with that question. Do you know what she said? She said the word security. She had the money sitting in her savings account. It was easy. She could afford it. She could do it. She was working a job. She made plenty of money she could easily have afforded to work with me, to work in that local gym, to do all of it. She could easily do that. She just saw money as security. Now, I would have said money is freedom. So I see money as opportunity to accomplish things you want to accomplish, to do the things you want to do, to be places you want to be. I see that as opportunity. But if she gave me the money or gave that to the trainer, at that gym, she was giving away safety. Okay? Now it turned out after we had a deeper conversation about money, was, oh, well, this is exactly how her mother thought about money. Her mother would not invest in her health either. She would not buy more expensive healthier foods. She wouldn't sign up for different things. Like, I think her mother smoked and wouldn't pay for anything to help her stop smoking, even though she knew she couldn't do it on her own.
Okay? So Sharon didn't value money more than her health. She just looked at it and said, I'm going to find the cheapest way. So she was more than willing to pay $15 a month because it's almost nothing to her for videos. But she had this cheap solution, and she didn't do it because it wasn't there. She also told me she'd pay $30 for diet pills at costco. Okay? We had talked about that earlier with her, and she said she's paying for these diet pills, but they're not working. So she's looking for another low cost, free, if you will, even solution. And honestly, I don't know that they're out there. She'll probably keep looking. Now, with most things, you get what you pay for. So again, video sessions that are $15, there are people who use those and they do phenomenally. So I'm not going to poo poo that. It is an investment for many people. It's a big investment. For her, it was not. She's looking for the cheap solution. And so when you're going to pay for something, you need to do your due diligence to make sure that you're getting what you paid for.
That's true, because you can get ripped off. But if you really want results, you should be willing to invest for them, okay? If you're going to hire someone to do something for you and you need to get it done, you could go with the cheapest price, but you might be getting the worst outcome. You're going to have someone repair something for you, somebody build something for you. You're going to buy something and you're like, oh, look, I can get this really wonderful Corvete for $10,000, and I see every other one that's that year. Well, those are 30,000 $40,000. So the question is, okay, what's that 10,000 buying you? And usually it's a limit of a car because it's not in good shape. It's not what you want it to be. So you have to be willing to make the right investment to get what you want. And a lot of people are not. Here's the other cool thing about investing in yourself. When you invest in yourself, you have skin in the game. Okay? What does that mean? That means you made a payment, you wrote a check, or you put a credit cards in.
You did that thing, and that money is gone. That money is not yours anymore. So guess what you're going to do? You're going to. Do the work, you're not going to pay a large amount of money and then not do the work. And when you do the work, you get the results. So don't go cheap in the sales. If this is important for you, if this is an important thing, like a true priority, then you're going to invest to make it happen. You're not paying for something. You're investing in yourself. And you have to look at it that way because change is hard. And if you're not willing to invest in yourself, it's probably not going to happen the way you want it to. So my challenge to you, don't be afraid to invest in yourself. Invest in yourself is the best investment you'll ever make, okay? And it pays off, not just in the way you look and feel. Today I feel good. I got my workout done. That's great. I feel good that I'm eating well. That's great. But it's the health issues later. I'm sorry. Sharon's mother is in really bad shape.
She's spending a lot of money at the hospital and doctors and all this other stuff because she didn't invest in herself, she didn't invest in her health. So she's dealing with all the health issues around the things that she didn't invest to change, even though she said she wanted to, and she probably wanted to, really wanted to, but she just didn't invest. She wasn't willing to invest in herself. And as a result, she's not getting the payout. So invest in yourself, do the work, and you'll find change. So number five in our enemies of health and fitness, change is failure to act. Okay? And this is probably the biggest one. So Matthew and I, we got on a planning call, strategy call, and we went through all the things, but one of the first things he said to me was, I know what to do, I just don't do it. And I can respect that. I was in the same position for a long, long time. And even now there's some pulls on me sometimes to just not do what I know is the right thing to do. So that's a normal reaction, normal feeling.
Okay? Then he told me, he said he wanted me to ride him a program using the equipment that he already had. He didn't want to buy another membership. He didn't want to do anything, go anywhere else. He had a good equipment. He really had really good equipment. We'll talk about that in a second. But he was just super excited, okay? He had all this equipment, all this stuff. He's like, I want you to write me a program using this stuff. And so he took his phone because he was on his phone on this call and he video showed me his gym and man, it was pristine. It was beautiful, all this equipment. It was just new. Like all new, beautiful. Now the reason that was new, because Matthew never used it, matthew would buy a piece of equipment, and then it would sit there. So he bought a peloton. You remember those? They're still popular, but he bought a peloton, $2,000 on this bike. He's paying a membership with them every month. And he had this beautiful peloton. He read about it in an article, and he bought one. And then one of his coworkers told him about the smart mirrors.
Okay, so this is where you see your image, and then they tell you what to do and all this other stuff. And he had one of those, and he had free weights, and he had bands, and he had cables, and he had all this stuff. The guy had well over $10,000 worth of equipment in his basement. Jim, it was gorgeous. I loved it. In fact, I almost wanted to ask him if he wanted to sell it all to me, that I would give him a take it off his hands. But I knew that wasn't where I needed to go with Matthew. But the thought did occur to me that I would love to have his gym. Okay, anyway, I told Matthew that I would write him a program. I said, okay, here's what I'm going to do, and I'll do it for absolute free, okay? I said, Pick one piece of equipment that you enjoy doing, and I'll write you a program. And so he chose dumbbells. He said, I like the Dumbbells, so I like their different weights. I said, I've got the bench. I've got the whole thing. He says, So I know I can do a full body workout and get stronger using Dumbbells.
And it's simple, and I don't have to worry about it. And so I gave him right there, right there on the spot, I gave him five exercises, okay, so here's five exercises. And then when I log off the call, and I did follow through, I sent him a video describing each one of the exercises I was talking about. And then what I did was I said, okay, go do this workout, okay? Three sets of ten with these exercises. I'll send you the videos. I said, when you get done with this workout, the first time, message me, and then we can make some adjustments. Now, this was in his morning. It was my evening. We had this conversation, and I didn't hear from him that rest of that day or the next day. So I emailed him, and he didn't respond. I texted him again, crickets. Nothing. Now, what they call this in the industry, when you have a client and you're working with someone, it's called ghosting. So basically, Matthew ghosted me, okay? Now, usually when a client or potential client someone ghosts you, it's because they're embarrassed about something, okay? In this case, I'm pretty sure it was because Matthew didn't do the workout.
Normally, I wouldn't give out a workout, like know, I was like, okay, I'm doing something kind of I wouldn't do. We're having this planning call, but to I want something. I want you to feel something. I want you to do something. Because all Matthew really needed to do was to do it once. If he did the action once, he was much more likely to do the action again. He hadn't done the action, and that he didn't do the action. So without action, there was no change. Without action, there wasn't any feeling. There wasn't anything. And then probably the only feeling he had afterwards was a little bit of guilt, remorse, and maybe embarrassment that he didn't even do the workout I gave him, even though he had everything he needed in front of him, and I gave him roughly 48 hours to see if he would do it. He didn't do it. Okay, so have you read my best selling novel? No. Well, of course you haven't, because I haven't written it yet. Okay. I have stories in my head. I read things about writing stories and fiction, and occasionally I even jot down a few ideas and maybe a little bit of what I think would be in the book, what would be in the story.
But here's the thing. I'm not really committed to writing a novel, so I like the idea of being a novelist. I like the idea of writing a best selling novel. It all sounds cool, right? But I don't do the writing, and so I don't have a published novel. Now, health and fitness is the same way. If you want something, you have to do something. So you have to take action. If you want to improve your health and fitness, it takes action. This is not a thought process where you can think yourself healthy, think yourself fit. You need those things. You need to believe in yourself. You need to get past limiting beliefs. You have to do those other things we just talked about. But if you don't do something, don't act, you won't have okay? So here's my challenge to you. I want you to be an action taker, okay? This is what you do. You decide you want to work online, you want to do something. You want to make something happen, you do it, okay? Now, if someone decides they want to work with me online, I always tell them, I say, okay, well, I've got a couple of rules, okay?
I've got a couple of rules. And so one of the rules and you know this because of the podcast you're listening to, is you have to be over 40. I work with people over 40 online. So if you want to work with me online, you've got to be 40 or more, okay? The second thing I ask them is, are you an action taker? Because the thing is, if you're not an action taker, I can't help you. I don't have an easy button, but what I do have are some easier buttons, meaning I can help you make this easier. I can help you get results faster. I can help you get better results. I can help you avoiding some of the problems that people have at our age. But I can't do it for you. So you have to be the action taker. My challenge to you is, are you an action taker? Be an action taker. So with that, I just want to summarize a bit, and we want to get past these five enemies that are keeping you from changing your health and fitness. Remember, the first one was believing you can get different results doing the same thing.
To get change, you're probably going to have to change something, okay? And you probably in your head right now, can point to one, two, three, maybe more things that you're doing that are holding you back. And if you think I'll just keep doing these things, you're probably not going to get a different result than what you already have. The second one is self limiting beliefs. Now, if you don't believe that, you can change. If you don't believe that you can do this, you're right, you can't. So you have to find a way to get past the limiting beliefs. Easiest way I found is to set goals that are just outside of what you think and then do it. Make it a low hanging, make it easy, but do that first goal. Then make it a little bit harder and a little bit harder. Push yourself just past your limiting beliefs. Over time, those limiting beliefs will go away. You'll reset your bar, you'll reset your temperature, and you'll know, okay, yes, I can do this. I didn't think I could do it before, but I know I can do it now, and I know I can probably do more.
And I'm going to keep pushing. Okay? The other is staying inside your comfort zone. And so this is the deal where I see women come in, or men, and they see the circuit machines. They're like, oh, this is awesome. I can get really strong and feel good. And they go through all the circuit machines, setting the weights on the same weight every single time. That's their comfort zone. Now, are they getting change? Are they getting more fit? Are they getting more healthy? And the short answer is probably no. Basically, they're staying in their comfort zone, so they're just not seeing the results. So if you don't find yourself getting results, ask yourself, I'm doing the work, but I'm not seeing it. Are you staying in your comfort zone and just not pushing yourself to accomplish that change? The fourth reason we struggle with change in our health and fitness is an unwillingness to invest. Okay, you're either going to buy equipment or you're going to join a gym. You're either going to buy better food or you're going to eat what you can eat. If you're struggling with the concept of investing in yourself. You got to work on that.
I'm sorry, but this doesn't come from just doing the things the way you've always done them, eating the cheaper, less whole, lower quality food, saying, oh, well, it's not much cheaper for me to pick up a pizza than it is for me to actually eat whole food. I can feed my family on pizza a lot cheaper. We can eat mac and cheese. We can do these other things, and it's cheaper. I can do this workout at home, although I don't really have any equipment, and I can do it with my body weight, but then I'm not doing it again. It's really about, are you willing to invest? You may need something. I'm not going to say you don't. We can work with what you have, obviously, but you probably have to invest to make this happen the way you want it to. And when you're invested, you're committed. And when you're committed, you do the work. And when you do the work, you get things. So change takes work. It's often and typically takes investment. It's definitely going to take an investment of time and effort. And I find you get it faster, you get it better if you're willing to invest in yourself with money.
And then the final one in what makes change hard, the enemies of change in health and fitness. And that's just a failure to act. So if you're not willing to do the work, you're not going to get the results. People will be angry. They're like, oh, well, such and such is carrying $130,000 purse. And I'm like, So the guy's a professional basketball player. He works his butt off. He stays in shape. He does everything he had to do for his whole life up until the point he got put into the NBA. Now he has some genetic skills and things like that. Yeah, but the guy works his butt off, and he makes a ton of money. So to him, $130 purse, $130,000 purse, no big deal, okay? But he didn't get there by just coasting. He got there by acting, by doing. And so I'd say, if you want something and you want something big, you've got to act. You got to make it happen. So think through your journey. And I have a question. Have any of these enemies kept you back? Did you recognize some of these? Are some of these in your life today?
Or have they been in your life in the past? So I want you to take something away from this, okay? This was not just I don't know how long I've been on here, but the reality is I didn't just have this conversation with you for you to decide, oh, okay, that was great information. And then again, number five, failing to act. Okay? So I want you to do what's necessary to do what you need to do to change. You've got to get past yourself. You got to get out of your comfort zone, and you got to be willing to do the work and invest in yourself. And if you're willing to do that, when you're ready to do that, if you have any questions, I'm here for you. So please reach out. I'm here, but otherwise, again, get it done. These are the five enemies. If you're dealing with these enemies, break them down the way we talked about today, and I'll talk to you soon.
Post Show/Recap
[00:45:15.300] – Coach Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:45:17.830] – Coach Rachel
Hey, Allan. These five enemies of health and fitness changes are really a challenge. And I know because I'm a creature of habit, but I also love change. I do a lot that when something's not working, of course I change it. But I can see how these different kind of ideas are just what's holding people back. And I guess one of my favorites, as you know, I love talking about mindset is the self limiting beliefs. I mean, right there, that's a hard stop. If you just can't believe that you can do something, then it's done for you've got no hope.
[00:45:55.040] – Coach Allan
Yeah, change is already hard. I mean, we're not wired for it. We're wired to find a consistent pattern where we can walk through places we're familiar and we can just be there. We can be in a familiar place because then it's really easy to notice the things that are different. But when we start to initiate change on our own, it's hard. What happens then is these different things that get in your way, like limiting beliefs. You can say you want to change, but if you don't believe that you can change, then you won't. I didn't get this for a long, long time because, like you, I'm very tolerant to change. I've lived all over the United States. I've lived in live in foreign countries. Things change, and things go on, and you're like, okay, what can I control? What can I not control? But even within that, there's a serenity prayer of hey, grant me this, to do the that it's about looking for the things you can control and kind of letting the rest of it go. But if you don't believe you can control yourself, then what can you control?
[00:47:18.010] – Coach Rachel
Right? The thing with self limiting beliefs, too, is that we're so ingrained to kind of hold ourselves still, like you said, to stay in our comfort zone, to do what's comfortable. But I just want to call people out to just question that belief in the running world where I see it, we've got people that. And I used to do it. I used to think I could never run a five K, which is 3 miles. And I just thought that was the most impossible task. But if you can just stop with that thought and really think about it for a second, well, why do you feel that way? And you've seen it with your clients. You've had people that say, well, I can't lose that 20 pounds or I can't do this at the gym or take this class, but you just got to pause and really question yourself. Why do you think that?
[00:48:12.970] – Coach Allan
Yeah, it's interesting. I haven't talked about this a whole lot on the podcast, but during my vacation, I guess it was still during my vacation back in September, we finished up a week, know, Mexico at a timeshare. It was all inclusive. And then I just, I'm going to, I'm going to take a break from alcohol. And right now that was about a month and a half ago and I still haven't gone back to drinking any alcohol. And I go out with my friends and they look at me like I'm a space alien. How on earth can you do this crazy thing of not drinking alcohol? Especially sitting in a bar with hundreds of other people all drinking alcohol? And so I just order a club soda and I drink my club soda and it's really that thing of saying I'm in control of me in the instant you tell yourself, but I need this to do that, or I want that to do this or I could never, or I can't. You're hearing those words in your head, you're telling yourself that it's not true. Yeah, it's not true. And so if you're struggling with something, yes, this is going to be hard.
[00:49:39.910] – Coach Allan
This is not an easy change is not easy. That's one of the core things I want people to take away from this is that you can't keep doing what you're doing. You can't let these limiting beliefs stop you. You can't stay in your comfort zone and expect change. Okay. It sounds simple, but this is the hardest thing you're going to do. If you truly have weight that you want to lose or you want to build a fitness level or you want to do these things and the things you have done to date have not gotten you there, you're going to have to do something different.
[00:50:19.270] – Coach Rachel
Right.
[00:50:20.120] – Coach Allan
Okay. And to make that something that you can keep doing, it has to be sustainable. And for it to be sustainable, you got to get yourself doing it. It sounds like this crazy paradox of how do I if I can't and it's like eating the elephant one bite at a time. You just do a little bit more and a little bit more. Get outside that comfort zone, do a little bit of pushing, believe in yourself.
[00:50:46.670] – Coach Rachel
Yeah.
[00:50:47.330] – Coach Allan
And if you're struggling with any of that, invest don't just sit back and say, yeah, I do these workouts online. They stream them to me. YouTube this and Pilates that and they're great, but I don't do them. Yeah, so you can say you do them, but then you say, well, when's the last time you did it? It's like, well I did it. Well, I guess the 1 September I started was a Monday and I did this, and then I did it on Wednesday, and then I skipped Friday because of this, and I've never done it again. And so, no, you don't actually do those videos. You did two of them. Be real with yourself. You did two of them. You don't do them. You liked them, but you didn't like them enough to keep doing them, and you didn't do them long enough to see results. So you went back to your comfort zone. You went back to your normal habits. You went back to living the lifestyle you were, which got you where you are. And that's cool. I don't want to diss anyone that says, okay, I'm happy with where I am. But if you listen and you're still listening to this podcast, you want to change some things.
[00:51:59.270] – Coach Allan
And so you got to do the work. You got to do what's necessary to make that happen, for sure.
[00:52:07.530] – Coach Rachel
And that kind of brings me almost to the next one, the getting out of your comfort zone, as well as willingness to invest in that, taking that next step and doing something that's different is intimidating. But if you could meet with your friends or if you hire a trainer even, or go to the gym and talk to the people there, I mean, it's good to learn something new, because you never know, you might like it. You might go to the gym and take, like you said, a Pilates class or the spin class or I recently took not a tai chi class, something I never would have done on my own, but I went with a friend, and I really enjoyed myself. I mean, try something new and see if it sticks. And you mentioned being surrounded by people who are not drinking or are drinking alcohol while you're not. This is a good chance for you to go inwards and to really focus on yourself and decide, what do you really want? If you did those home videos and it didn't stick because maybe you didn't like them, I mean, it was fun in the moment, but it didn't stick, maybe you need to find something else that would stick, something maybe sign up for a series of classes, like I said, and see how that goes.
[00:53:19.740] – Coach Rachel
But you just need to find something that you love.
[00:53:22.580] – Coach Allan
Yeah, a lot of people, they have the advice. They say, what exercise should I do? And the answer is always the one you will exactly just find something you enjoy. And I think as a starter, that's often a really good advice. You can't just keep doing that. So you can't say, well, I really enjoyed doing that 30 minutes online video thing. Well, you can do that online video thing, and you can do it three, four, five times a week. But if you're not getting what you want, then you might need to do a little bit more or a little bit different. And so this is not a one and done. And you don't have to think about it that way. We don't have to get from A to Z in one jump. There's 24 other letters in the alphabet. And so it's just, okay, if that 30 minutes thing is your B, then you went from A to B, and then you got the B, and now you're like, okay, I'm comfortable with B, now I'm going to do C, right? And you start working your way through, and you stack these habits, and you stack these activities, and eventually you start putting this intrinsically into you.
[00:54:34.390] – Coach Allan
It's like, I don't even think about it. Yes. Someone comes around and says, Would you like a beer? Because people are buying buckets of beer, and they're sitting there with a bucket of beer, and they see me standing there with nothing. They're like, Would you like a beer? And so I have to, at that point, realize who I am, why I'm doing what I'm doing, what it means to me, and say no. I said no. I said, thank you, but no. And I had to do that dozens and dozens of times last night because everybody wanted to offer me a drink because I was weird for being in a bar not drinking. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay outside my I have to be outside my comfort zone. I have to know my limiting beliefs of, oh, okay, if I think that I can't do this and someone offers me a beer, I'm going to take it. Well, I got to get past that limiting belief because if I don't, then every time we go out, there's going to be some offer. I have one friend, we went out to dinner right after I got back, and I said he's like, do you want to split a wine?
[00:55:43.200] – Coach Allan
We used to just yeah, that's what we do. We all go to dinner, and he'd be like, okay. Because our wives would do the white wine. They'd split a bottle of white wine. He's like, you want to split a bottle of red? And I had to say no. And he said, well, what happened to my bottle splitter? So I had to have that conversation with, that's not how I'm choosing to go right now. So ordered his bottle of red, and we went on with our night. The next time we went out, he's sitting there wanting to order a bottle of red wine, and he's like, you want to split a red? I'm like, not really. And he's like, okay. He found someone else to split that bottle of red with, and he was fine. They were fine, and I was fine. But again, I'm not going to say it's not uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to tell your friend no. It's uncomfortable to be in an environment where everybody's drinking and you're not. It's uncomfortable to go for a run. It's uncomfortable to stop eating the things it's there. It's delicious. It's going to give you that hit.
[00:56:42.180] – Coach Allan
You're going to feel great for a moment, then you're going to feel miserable, either because physically or because emotionally, you're going to feel guilt and shame and all these other things about food. Whereas you could say, this doesn't serve me. This does not serve me. I'm done doing it. I'm a different person. I see myself. I don't have this limit where I have to do something. I'm a grown ass man. I can do what I want to do.
[00:57:11.520] – Coach Rachel
Right. You're an adult. Make your own decisions.
[00:57:14.820] – Coach Allan
Exactly. And so just realize that change is hard and it's going to take some time and effort. It's going to take action. This is not something you passively do.
[00:57:28.880] – Coach Rachel
Right. And that was the last thing I wanted to chat about before we leave, is the failure to act. I think that's where people get paralyzed the most because we have so many different information and advice floating around us all day long. Do this exercise, eat in this manner, this diet, that diet, or whatever, and we get paralyzed. Too many decisions, too many things to do. Just pick, just do something, make a plan and do it. Don't be stuck with that failure to act. Don't be bombarded and confused by what's out there. Just make a decision and do it.
[00:58:07.150] – Coach Allan
Make your lunch for tomorrow.
[00:58:09.110] – Coach Rachel
There you go. One thing.
[00:58:10.860] – Coach Allan
One thing. I'm going to start making my lunch and taking my lunch. Okay. Or it can be, I'm going to eat a whole food meal tomorrow. Easiest one for me to do would be breakfast.
[00:58:21.810] – Coach Rachel
Sure.
[00:58:22.780] – Coach Allan
So my whole food meal tomorrow is breakfast.
[00:58:25.970] – Coach Rachel
And that's a great way to think about it. It's the easiest meal of the day to prepare.
[00:58:30.590] – Coach Allan
Pick one and then the other things are looking for ways to make that as easy as possible. So I saw someone online the other day, and it was a business thing. It wasn't even a diet thing. It was a business thing. And the guy said, I have the same thing for breakfast every single day. And it was literally three boiled eggs and then some blueberries and strawberries. That was his breakfast, okay. Every day. And he said he just makes it easy on himself because he doesn't even have to think about it. He has the boiled eggs and the fruit already in his refrigerator. He got to a point where he was ready to eat his breakfast. He went in, he pulled those things out, he sat down, and he showed the breakfast. He said, I eat the same thing, so I don't have to think about know, Steve Jobs used to wear the same sweatshirt, and as a result, so does Mark Zuckerberg, is what I've heard. Basically, they wear the same thing every day. So it's not like they go in their closet and, hmm, what am I going to wear today? They know, grab a hoodie.
[00:59:33.070] – Coach Allan
Grab your jeans and just put them. So make it as easy for yourself as possible, because, again, change is hard. Decisions are hard. But if you're going to do one thing, then put all of it together. Make it where you won't fail. Make it where it's easy, where it's overwhelming odds in your favor. And the more you can do that, the more that thing is going to stick. And once that sticks, it's like, okay, what's the next thing? A. Then to B, then to C. Eventually you'll find yourself at Z. You'll probably find yourself at Z, and it will have felt like a journey, but it's not something you do today. We can't beam ourselves to Z from A. We've got to go through each of those letters. We got to do each of those things. And if you don't try to stack too much of it on your plate at one time, it becomes overwhelming, and you're much less likely to make it. Some people do. Some people sit there and say, I'm changing everything today. Woke up at rock bottom, and I'm changing everything. They blend up that smoothie that morning. They go for a run, they come back in, they shower.
[01:00:39.590] – Coach Allan
They do everything right, and they can do that. I'm not one of those people, and I don't know if you are either, but it's just one of those things of saying, hey, I got to change what I can change in the order. I can change it the easiest way I can change it. But if change is important to you, really important to you, you do that. That's what you do.
[01:01:02.470] – Coach Rachel
Absolutely. Yep. This was great, Alan. Really great information and insights that we could use.
Shoulder and knee problems seem to crop up after 40, usually because we didn't take very good care of them when we were younger. In his book, The Knee & Shoulder Handbook, Dr. Alan Reznik walks us through how to take care of our joints so we can live pain-free.
On episode 614 of the 40+ Fitness, we bring on the CEO of MD Exam and discuss the new weight loss drugs that have been the recent craze.
Transcript
Let's Say Hello
[00:02:13.510] – Allan
Hey, Ras. How are you doing?
[00:02:15.600] – Rachel
Hey, good Allan, how are you today?
[00:02:17.900] – Allan
I'm good. Glad to get into this week. We got a lot going on here. Just some fun stuff or should be fun.
[00:02:24.510] – Allan
We had a chili cook off this weekend.
[00:02:26.730] – Rachel
Oh, fun.
[00:02:27.900] – Allan
Well, it could have been. It could have been.
[00:02:30.030] – Rachel
Oh, no.
[00:02:31.410] – Allan
Well, no. Okay. I was responsible for the chili, and I really put a lot into the chili. In fact, if you know me okay, guess what? There was nothing out of a jar box can.
[00:02:46.630] – Rachel
Good.
[00:02:48.150] – Allan
It was from scratch all the way through. Okay.
[00:02:51.340] – Rachel
Awesome.
[00:02:51.720] – Allan
Everything was all the way through. There were no cans.
[00:02:53.920] – Allan
Only thing that was in a can was the beer. I do use some beer, some dark beer in there. And that did come from a can.
[00:03:01.360] – Allan
But that's all that came from a can. All the tomatoes. I made my own tomato sauce beforehand. I had everything cut up, ready to go. And the folks that we hang out with here, they're a little bit more on the party side. So they just wanted this to be a big party. And so they were busier partying than they were focused on the fact that there was a second competition besides the best booth. And so they were so dedicated to best Booth that everything else just sort of got tossed to the side.
[00:03:34.880] – Allan
So we did win best, Booth. I had very little to do with that other than wearing a costume that was hot and comfortable for about 3 hours, but it was one of those things, so I didn't place still had a great chili. I've got some leftovers, so that's good. But it's just one of those things when you, I guess, hindsight being 2020, if you care about something, then you want to make sure that it's a no lose proposition, set the odds in your favor.
[00:04:02.670] – Allan
And being a part of this group was definitely not putting the odds of winning the chili competition in my favor.
[00:04:10.660] – Rachel
oh, no.
[00:04:11.870] – Allan
Yeah. Winning the booth. Absolutely. These guys were handing out fireball jello shots and everything else, which I don't know if you've ever tasted a lot of cinnamon at one time.
[00:04:21.800] – Allan
Anything you eat after it. Yeah.
[00:04:26.070] – Rachel
Oh, no.
[00:04:28.390] – Allan
Yeah. That was the impression people had of my chili, was, OOH, this doesn't go very well with fireball. Anyway, so it was what it was. It's over.
[00:04:40.350] – Allan
I learned from it. Move on. I had a good time otherwise, and yeah, go on. And then I do want to say something. I am going to be on a kind of a panel thing. It's a summit.
[00:04:54.130] – Allan
And it's called the Women's Strength Summit. Okay.
[00:04:59.180] – Allan
And the title of this, or basically the theme of this, is Women Stronger with Age. At least that's my theme as I go into my part of it. And so this is going to be on November 2, I believe it's going to be somewhere around 10:30 11:30 on that day, I'll be being interviewed live, and there'll be a Q and A. It's Amanda Mackie that's putting this all together. And so if you're interested in getting it, I believe it's completely free. It's on November 2. I think she may be recording it. You may have to pay a little bit just to have access to the recordings, but I will be on the Women's Strength Summit, and you can learn more at 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/amanda, again, that's 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/amanda, that will take you to the page where you can get more information about the Women's Strength Summit. And as I said, I'm going to be one of the key speakers there going on sometime midmorning, so you can check that out. And again, it's 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/amanda.
[00:06:01.230] – Rachel
Sweet. That sounds awesome.
[00:06:02.980] – Allan
Yeah. So what's going on there?
[00:06:04.950] – Rachel
Well, I think you planted the seed with chili, Allan. So, over the weekend, we made a huge patch of chili ourselves, and we've enjoyed it over the weekend. And I've put a bunch in the freezer so I can pull it out throughout the winter. That's the fun part about making chili, is you can overdo it, freeze it, and it's there when you need it. When it's super cold up here in the wintertime.
[00:06:26.660] – Allan
Food prep. I love it.
[00:06:28.670] – Rachel
Yes. It was awesome. Thanks for the idea.
[00:06:31.400] – Allan
Well, good. All right, so are we ready to have a conversation about these new weight loss drugs?
[00:06:40.290] – Rachel
Sure.
Interview
[00:06:58.790] – Allan
Sergio, welcome to 40+ Fitness.
[00:07:01.600] – Sergio
Pleasure to meet you, Allan. Thank you very much.
[00:07:03.990] – Allan
I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today because this topic, some of the medications, some of the things we're going to talk about today, I'm going to call them medications only because that's my vernacular and you're probably going to correct me later. But we can talk about what they are and why they're effective. But I want to talk about these because they're becoming more and more prominent. There's more and more people who are being introduced to them. I mentioned it to my wife today, and she says, well, what is that? And then when I started talking, she says, oh, that's the wigobi stuff. I'm like, yeah, that's what that is. So it's starting to kind of bubble up, and a lot of people are seeing it.
[00:07:39.220] – Allan
And I think for a lot of people, it looks like, wow, this could just be the magic thing. I don't have to exercise, I don't have to eat right. I can just take shots, and there I am. But it's much more than that. But there's a lot of value here. And so your company, MD Exam, I got on the site kind of went out there. You have kind of a quiz, it's a longer quiz that really does help someone narrow down where they stand in this. And you don't just go at this with one hammer, solves all problems. You have different levels and different things that people can choose and look at from their particular needs, not just one size fits all. And I really appreciate that because I think too many times people think, oh, there's one solution, there's one answer for me. I'm going to do what everybody else does. But you've broken it down on your website that there are particular reasons that you may or may not want to use a different approach, and you've kind of lined that out in your website.
[00:08:31.540] – Allan
So the first thing I want to kind of get into is, let's talk about these things, Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus.
[00:08:42.070] – Allan
Yeah.
[00:08:42.660] – Allan
Now, those are one type of product. And they're built around a product called Simaglutide.
[00:08:49.830] – Sergio
That's correct.
[00:08:50.870] – Allan
Okay. Yeah. I'm not really good with medical terms.
[00:08:54.570] – Sergio
I'm not a doctor. I'm not a clinician. I'm just an entrepreneur with some very smart medical people around me.
[00:09:01.700] – Allan
Yeah. So let's talk about what those are and what they're doing for us.
[00:09:07.150] – Sergio
Okay, perfect. So let me jump into that real quick.
[00:09:09.390] – Sergio
So one of the biggest things that we try to do at MD exam is make sure that if you're coming to us to lose weight, first and foremost, let's not jump into the game about losing weight because it's a fad.
[00:09:22.450] – Sergio
We got to lose weight because you want to lose weight, you need to make a change in your life. A lot of people and I say this because my education level in this is what's kept me in this business long term wise.
[00:09:33.490] – Sergio
We're up and fighting against a lot of people that need to understand because there's a lot of questions. You see them everywhere. It's like, what is this? What does it do? How does it work?
[00:09:41.610] – Sergio
Semiglutide triggers GLP one, which is a gastric like peptide, which what it does is it sends and we're doing this in layman's terms. You eat as soon as you got glucose, sugar goes into your body. Your body tears it down, breaks it down. It identifies what type of sugar goes into your body, common or simple. And we go down two different routes. One of the routes it does is. It triggers and goes into your stomach. And it triggers the incontinent hormone, the GLP one. And what that does is it sends the trigger to your brain mentally wise when you're full, when you've eaten enough and it says, hey, Sergio, stop eating, you're full. And what happens?
[00:10:20.440] – Sergio
You know how America is. We eat till, hey, you get a plate of food, you eat it.
[00:10:26.060] – Allan
Starving kids in India. You know
[00:10:27.770] – Sergio
absolutely. You can't eat anything on the and that'S good and bad. But there's something that has to be taught here, which is how much food is good for us? How much calorie intake is good for us? And that's a whole nother topic because 2400 calorie intake for females are like 26 to 2000 for males at the age of 30.
[00:10:47.790] – Sergio
If you follow that rule, which is like the healthy, you fall to what America is obese.
[00:10:53.420] – Sergio
Almost 80 plus percent of America is overweight. Obesity has over, tipping 46%. The biggest epidemic right now in America is child obesity.
[00:11:04.450] – Sergio
That's got to start with education, Allan. And that's what we're here to do. We're here to educate and help people.
[00:11:10.380] – Sergio
A lot of people say, hey, this is compounded, this is this and that. I think we need to understand I'm not here to fight big pharma by any means. I'm here to educate people, help people get this what they want to call medication with a polypeptide. Let's be realistic.
[00:11:26.500] – Sergio
I am a patent holder. Our company, we do have a chemical company, we are a patent holder or a patent holder 16,700. And we're in that range there.
[00:11:34.110] – Sergio
So you can look us up if you want to find out. So we've gone the level, we've gone the extra by the way, we do have 1250 state licensed doctors on board. We have eight nurses, armps, Or, RNS, three clinicians, and we have a staff behind us to try to support as much as we can to everyone who joins us, because my goal is to follow. If we could help them lose weight by making changes that they have to make every day with either one of the two products. Let's make sure everyone understands wegovy and ozempic are the same medication that is Semiglutide. It was created so that a doctor could never be charged I'm calling a spade of spade here.
[00:12:20.380] – Sergio
I'm sorry, can never be charged for a whistleblower process class action lawsuit, which we saw in the past.
[00:12:27.710] – Sergio
Right? What was the biggest side effect to this test for diabetics was weight loss. So if doctors were going to write a weight loss medication script, let's create and write it to Wegovy. But Wegovy did not have the $25 copay. Only Ozempic did.
[00:12:45.800] – Sergio
So if you don't have the $25 coverage because you don't qualify for pre-diabetic or diabetic, you didn't have access to this. And that's where companies like myself step in, and we have other competitors that have stepped in, and we're all trying to do the right thing at the end of the day. Our insurance companies are being really battered in the space, and I want to make sure that everyone has access to it.
[00:13:11.390] – Sergio
Why is it so expensive? This is one $1600 or charging our insurance companies, and this isn't what this conversation is about. My conversation here is our company slogan is lose weight, feel great.
[00:13:25.270] – Sergio
So there is today a product on the market in Semiglutide that works on seven and a half out of ten people that will help you address what has never touched the US market before. A product that works okay,
[00:13:41.350] – Allan
just to take a step back to help folks. A polypeptide, if you don't know, is basically a series of amino acids. And basically it's in a structure that functioned very much like a particular type of hormone. It may be missing a piece or something like that, but it still generally functions. So when he's talked about hormones and he's talked about these, that's basically what's happening, is you're communicating to your brain that you're already full.
[00:14:06.350] – Sergio
That's correct.
[00:14:07.630] – Sergio
And that's where it starts. So that works pretty well. We see on, like I said, seven to ten out of ten people. And what happens? Everyone works a little different. Some people feel it in the first week. Some people feel it at week three. But we monitor our patients by week three to four. If you're not feeling that little change. And everyone's a little different. This has nothing to do with weight, size, color, gender. I've seen it all. I've seen someone who's taken quarter milligram too much and has had a side effect, what you want to call the half life of this, for every ten units, seven days, had a 22 day uncomfortable. The only way to fix it you need water.
[00:14:54.610] – Sergio
Water is the only way this works. And then I've had people who've accidentally taken a whole milligram CC. And you know what? How do you feel, Mary?
[00:15:03.400] – Sergio
I feel fine. Perfect. Tomorrow, Mary, you're going to get a phone call from one of our nurses to follow up. Make sure. I'm fine, right? Absolutely. My biggest thing in this, there are no shortcuts. As you know, Allan, you yourself, being a trainer in the space, I tell and I preach. I've hired every single one of my employees. We do believe in a culture here. My culture is about exercise.
[00:15:24.630] – Sergio
There is no magic pill. This thing about fentermine and these other past medications, there is no quick solution to losing weight. It didn't come overnight, and it doesn't.
[00:15:36.580] – Sergio
Like I tell everyone, I can help anybody lose weight. My goal isn't just to help you lose weight.
[00:15:40.430] – Sergio
It's to help you keep it off. That's the key. And that's where the habits have to be created.
[00:15:46.360] – Allan
Yeah. And we're going to dive a little bit into nutrition and exercise later. So basically, if someone's not hungry, then they're obviously not as interested in eating, so they eat a little less or eat less, they start to lose some weight.
[00:16:01.320] – Allan
Now, there's a couple of different things that I've heard about it. Some of these are relatively rare, some are a little bit more common. So the rare one would be that there's some issues with your stomach and you don't tolerate it well, and that could cause a little bit of problems, and even if you stop taking it, potentially little problems down the line.
[00:16:19.550] – Allan
Could we talk about that? And then the other side of it. Which, again, I think we'll get into with the nutrition and exercise, is if you're not eating enough, if you actually tried to just starve yourself and not eat at all, you're not just going to lose body fat, but you're also going to lose lean muscle mass and potentially bone density and some other things.
[00:16:37.860] – Allan
So let's talk about kind of the problem with the stomach first, and then we'll pivot over and start talking about muscle mass and lean body mass.
[00:16:48.000] – Sergio
Perfect. And let me jump into and that's a great topic. I live with it.
[00:16:51.190] – Sergio
I suffer from this the stomach side issues. So if you starve your body and a lot of Americans suffer from very simple gas. Gas is created from the lack of food sometimes, and I could go into some more medical terminology, but let's make it simple. A lot of times when you don't eat a lot, if you don't eat food or eat the wrong foods because there's a restriction of intake or wanting tea, it can create all sorts of gastric, little issues in your stomach and your intestines. And that's where it starts.
[00:17:22.340] – Sergio
Okay? I've preached to people always, you have to put a little something in your stomach. People say, I can't eat. I can't eat. You need to find a little protein bar. You know, they'll find a little something.
[00:17:32.100] – Sergio
Because that's what you get is that a common side effect for everybody? Negative it's not. Between that and the headaches. Those are typically the two biggest nausea is typically the first and headaches are the second.
[00:17:44.480] – Sergio
The biggest thing is what we try to do is make sure is how much water are you drinking? Realistically the majority of the time people are not drinking enough water. And if you want to ask me on how much water do you need to drink as an individual you need to make sure when you go to the restroom and you do number one it comes out clear. If you're taking vitamins it's one thing. But people understand it. You need to be hydrated.
[00:18:09.920] – Sergio
Come on. Because hydration also takes a big effect on how your stomach functions and your intestinal functions. And then that goes into a lot of what you've been hearing out a lot of stuff about stomach paralysis and this and that. How many subjects are we talking about? We're talking about feeding millions of people here. We're not talking about deaths. We're talking about losing weight is not easy. It's not fun. It's a challenge. It's a lifestyle. Doesn't come overnight. That's where the education comes in here.
[00:18:39.740] – Sergio
The education is critical to understand. I tell people all the time don't come in here to I want to lose weight in 30 days. We're not the right program for you. I see it in our you know we do some very interesting meetings and pull out these clouds and we get all the stuff like I took a shot last week I didn't lose any weight.
[00:19:00.520] – Sergio
But on the contrary we do have people that say hey I took a shot last week and lost nine pounds. I have thousands of that's.
[00:19:10.850] – Allan
That's kind of point is everybody react differently.
[00:19:14.210] – Sergio
I'm scared of those Allan by the way. I'm scared of those because those are the people that really they got to work at making sure that hey this wasn't magic. It's just like everyone's body's different and realize that because your body was affected a little different on how you break down this peptide inside your body and how it affects your peptide. That's the key to understanding.
[00:19:36.010] – Sergio
And that's where we are trying to different. And as we grow our business that's where we are leading to.
[00:19:42.330] – Allan
And so at MD exam they're going to have access to nurses and doctors to be having these conversations of I'm feeling this, this is going on. And they're going to get that guidance and education.
[00:19:52.910] – Sergio
Yes sir. That's correct.
[00:19:54.850] – Allan
Cool. Now there's another product and this is sort of what you I guess you kind of call this. This is the ultimate one. Okay. So this is the newer one I think. I think it's newer but they kind of came up around the same time.
[00:20:05.330] – Allan
And it's called Manjaro.
[00:20:07.400] – Sergio
Yes sir.
[00:20:08.420] – Allan
Okay. And this is a different peptide polypeptide it's called Tirzepatide and it so it works a little differently. Can you talk a little bit about that one and why that one would be a little bit more of an intense treatment.
[00:20:24.630] – Sergio
Okay. So as we know everyone's hitting immediately. How do I take that shortcut? How do I get to that shortcut you know?
[00:20:33.200] – Allan
Oh right. And I'm telling not to take the shortcut, but I'm just saying it's just knowing that there's a higher level treatment. And this is not about I hear I hear tons about how this is the biggest thing that's hit LA in forever because you're about to do a photo shoot and you want to drop those nine pounds and, well, that actress or that model did it. It can seem like that because that's how some people are going to use it. But the reality of it we're a health and fitness show and the principle being is if you're really struggling with obesity and the other comorbidities that come along with it, this is a tool.
[00:21:11.190] – Allan
And so knowing the tool and knowing what the pluses and minuses are of a tool is valuable.
[00:21:18.210] – Allan
You don't want to take a hammer when you need a screwdriver. And I think that's the point is that maybe one of these is the screwdriver and the other is the hammer. But you've got to define what you're trying to accomplish.
[00:21:29.850] – Sergio
Well said. And let me jump in there because if you want let me give you a little bit of both so people understand how this works because I go through this all the time with people.
[00:21:39.600] – Sergio
And they think bigger is better. I think very few people understand this like I do. My sister in law is that person for FYI. So I had a past Christmas at my house with six of her friends that were not happy people.
[00:21:57.960] – Sergio
Why? Because my sister in law put them.They all want to lose weight. All qualified. She hit them up immediately with Manjoro tirzepatide.
[00:22:06.690] – Sergio
Okay. Two of them it worked on four of them were miserable at my house for Christmas Eve.
[00:22:12.820] – Sergio
I sat there and talked to them for a while.
[00:22:14.700] – Sergio
I love to hear feedback because the more I get the more I could help.
[00:22:17.560] – Sergio
So where are we going to go at this?
[00:22:19.340] – Sergio
Semaglutide is a one peptide, is a GLP one, tirzepatide which the brand name is Manjoro. It will be approved for weight loss. It is already on the books for approval. It is approved but it hasn't verbally been said.
[00:22:34.530] – Sergio
And you can look it up, you see it yourself. But that triggers two peptides, the GLP one which is the semaglutide and the GIP which is the gastric inhibitor peptide.
[00:22:45.750] – Sergio
Those two I'm going to go back down on what you said. It's the screwdriver versus the hammer.
[00:22:52.010] – Sergio
Okay. Great model. I love it there. We want to help people minimize their caloric intake, which is something else I'm going to talk about CRM which hasn't been spoken about in this space. Which is massive but we want to make sure that people have some food.
[00:23:08.080] – Sergio
Tirzepatide. It kills your hunger to the majority of people. Again, it's not the same on everybody.
[00:23:15.230] – Sergio
By week five in our program, if you haven't hit that four to six seven pound change or percentage in your weight loss, we typically move you to tirzepatide, and we've been very successful with about 90% of those. We do not allow anyone to start on Tirzepatide unless you come with an understanding or we have information that you already took it. So do people lie and try to get around it? Yes, absolutely. All the time.
[00:23:44.980] – Allan
Do I have no, people aren't going to lie.
[00:23:47.820] – Sergio
No. Why not?
[00:23:51.240] – Sergio
We do have a lot of famous people across the board.
[00:23:55.660] – Sergio
I talked to males and females, primarily females. I'm a person that's accessible. I want to help people.
[00:24:01.500] – Sergio
When people say, oh, you took my money, this is what happened.
[00:24:04.530] – Sergio
If there was so much business. What happened was when Nova NorDis pulled a $25 copay, everyone got backed up. Our company went from a three to four day delivery turnaround time after your consultation to a 55 day turnaround time. I'll take the blame for it. My setup just outgrew us real fast. We're there today and we're not only going to help as many people, but there's 144,000,000 Americans that need our help.
[00:24:31.100] – Sergio
How can we help them? Semaglutide and or tirzepatide today are expensive through big pharma, they're getting more and more economical. And a lot of know you do have to find out. Do your homework. Just don't buy it off the corner of the street. Buy from someone who has credibility.
[00:24:50.470] – Sergio
Our company is Legit script certified. You cannot just go buy your legit Script certification. That allows us to mass market as a pharmacy because we do have a physical pharmacy ourselves in Texas 503, a sterile pharmacy and a non sterile. We do specialize as well Allan in rapid dissolvables, ribelsis is a product that big pharma came out with. The problem is you have to take so much of it because it has to hit your stomach. We made a rapid dissolvable that's a couple other facilities in America making it because it helps people, because a lot of people that does it don't want the injection. They take a couple of these tablets daily. Dosage.
[00:25:30.290] – Allan
Yeah. I think that's a key point I missed before. I should have put that in the plan is that this is not just a shot. There are pill versions. There are oral versions of it as well. Okay, cool.
[00:25:40.350] – Allan
Now, up until now, kind of the final go to for someone who was obese was they'd go to their doctor and explain to their doctor they can't lose weight. And the doctors realize, okay, there is a fundamental problem here. They would go to bariatric surgery, lap bands, things of that nature. Surgery either to actually cut the stomach or to actually just put bands to restrict the size of the stomach. As a result, someone wasn't capable of eating as much.
[00:26:09.840] – Allan
And then that kind of got them to losing weight because they would eat a little bit and be full. And obviously, if they followed through with that, everything's cool.
[00:26:19.610] – Allan
But most people tend to eat a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. They've still got the food issues and things like that. Can you kind of give us some of the pros and cons of these polypeptides relative to bariatric surgery?
[00:26:32.760] – Sergio
Absolutely. Okay, so two things here. Bariatric surgery will be going away. That'll be a thing in the past and the next. Technology here has taken tremendous leaps. AI, teaching big pharma the ability on how to create and manufacture medication at levels and speeds that we were never able to the next 60 months. Supposedly, there's about another 25 to 35 peptides in the works.
[00:27:03.990] – Sergio
And some of them are tIrzepatide is what we are seeing now. There's three others. Another one by Eli Lilly, two in phase, two by Pfizer, and there's somebody else. But almost every big pharmaceutical company in America's got a name brand, will have a product that will outdo anything bariatric surgery could ever do.
[00:27:24.610] – Sergio
So my answer to you, AlLan, this will be gone. But let me just say one more thing. This today is a very expensive product and or solution because the educational level I got to tip my hat to Nova NorDis. The educational level that they have put out on the market space is worldwide, is phenomenal, but they're also you've seen, they've become one of the most valued companies in this world overnight.
[00:27:50.970] – Sergio
But I will say one thing to this, is that if people don't understand that minimizing your caloric intake is an issue, we'll never get to the next level because you said it. You made a very good point. The bariatric surgery, where does it go? It's a lesson. You need to adapt your body to it.
[00:28:16.590] – Sergio
If you don't change those habits and. You don't make that effort, if you don'T make that lifestyle change, it's an issue. And let me go back to one thing you said. It's easy for me sometimes you may say to sit here and talk a lot about this. People say, oh, you don't know what it is because you're not overweight. Blah, blah, blah.
[00:28:34.510] – Sergio
I'll tell you one thing, my friend. I think the biggest thing in America is wearable depression. It's the number one mental health problem in America.
[00:28:43.410] – Sergio
You wear it 24 hours, seven days a week.
[00:28:47.110] – Sergio
Trust me, I'm out there to help people. People say, oh, you took my money.
[00:28:50.090] – Sergio
I give medication away all the time. If you can't afford it, I'll work with you. Our company works with you. You know what I'm saying? What I don't like and let me tell you one of the biggest thing that I do talking about bariatric surgery. Let's nip something in the butt real quick. I've had two patients in the last four months that are a 16 and a 17 year old female. Both parents have been ridiculed because in our state, you have to be 14 years old to have bariatric surgery. That's a big step for a parent to take for a child, a massive step. Those parents came to me, as I do have many other parents that have come to me. And I think the biggest thing that makes me smile in this business is.
[00:29:37.100] – Sergio
The smile that I put on people's faces when they see that their lives get changed by losing two pounds, five pounds, 40 pounds, whatever your goal is, it changes. These two females that came to us both came back almost all their weight. They've both been on a program here for about six day months, like seven months. The other one's almost done because the idea here is to wind yourself into a maintenance program.
[00:30:02.850] – Sergio
I don't believe in the philosophy, like, you should drive this up to the top. It doesn't work. And you're taking 2.4 milligrams. No, type one diabetics. We have two, three dozen type one diabetics that this is knocked out. This side. This I don't want to get into the medical side of this, but the bariatric surgery, if it's helped you out and there's people that have gotten beyond phenomenal success with it, so I'm not knocking it, but they do charge our insurances and tremendous amount of money. You put your body through a tremendous amount of hurt, okay?
[00:30:37.930] – Sergio
And that hurt comes from building tissue now inside your body. So now you are a person trying to cope with the recuperation of surgery. If you have you mentioned something earlier at the time of eating is critical.
[00:30:52.490] – Sergio
The cortisol, the fight or flight, the whole thing where's your body storing foods and blah, blah, blah. We go into all that.
[00:30:57.970] – Sergio
But there is a room everywhere to make this work. There's room for semaglutide, there's room for tirzepatide. Bariatric surgery is very tough. I don't want to take doctors'opinions away because I'm not a doctor. I'm sure there's many doctors who disagree with me and say, hey, no, you're wrong, Sergio.
[00:31:17.630] – Sergio
I'm not a doctor. But I do have some clinicians, and I understand this very well.
[00:31:24.830] – Sergio
I do know that this should be affordable to everyone. And Allan, I promise you this. In the next four to five years, the positive results we have from these two products alone and semaglutide will change the way people look at each other, the risk factor levels, cardiovascularly wise. And I tell you what's bothering everyone in America and all over the world.
[00:31:50.360] – Sergio
Is that when enough people take it and it minimizes their ability to eat or want to eat and makes them healthier, because it's proven everywhere they don't like that. Because for the first time in history, I think one month, these last couple of months, beverage sales are down. Food sales are down.
[00:32:11.370] – Sergio
When you touch the scales at a very small percentage, you don't like that. But five years from now this will be dirt cheap because the risk level, you want everybody on it, right? Your cardiac level has been proven now it increases by 25%. So what we're trying to do is help the person who could afford it.
[00:32:31.180] – Sergio
And help the person who can't by educating them one way or another. Our company does not bill insurances. We're a fee for service company only.
[00:32:39.860] – Sergio
But I will tell you this. I sell it as inexpensive as anybody in America. It's not because we sell a product. We're partnered with the ten largest 503 A and B pharmacies in America along as we own our. So it's critical for us to make this work.
[00:32:57.300] – Allan
So now again, I want to kind of bounce back to the concept of okay, I'm not eating or I'm not eating nearly as much as I used to. This makes nutrition really hard because we need vitamins and minerals from our food. We need essential amino acids, we need essential fats. These are things our body cannot make for itself. So we're going to need some level of nutrition.
[00:33:22.670] – Allan
How do we counsel someone to eat enough where they're getting a proper nutrition when quite frankly, they just don't feel hungry because they're reacting the way this polypeptide is encouraging them to react?
[00:33:39.910] – Sergio
Very good question. That is a very good question.
[00:33:42.650] – Sergio
And I think that's I'll be honest with you, I think that is very the trick. Tricky question, and I'll tell you why.
[00:33:49.870] – Sergio
Because we get all sorts of responses across the board. We have people that say, hey, I was doing great, everything was great and all of a sudden I just fell off the wagon.
[00:33:59.970] – Sergio
What do you mean? Well, some people's inabilities to eat caused some of the cons that we talked about before. So finding and understanding from the get go that you're going to have to find a way to change your eating habits and make sure they work because we do know where this next question is going to go to. If you don't eat properly, how do you make this effective?
[00:34:26.210] – Sergio
So much in the word that it's conducive for you that you're not tired. Because if you don't eat, you don't get the right nutritions. This is a snowball effect, right? Understand the end of the day, it'll be like, oh, I'm diet. So we do have to understand that. And I think it's one of our biggest things that we try to teach.
[00:34:42.490] – Sergio
And we're going to continue to teach. And finding people like yourselves and partnering up with everyone has a different way of thinking about how you are going to change this.
[00:34:52.590] – Sergio
People say, how do we know when and how everyone's different? But I will say something. I've been read and I try to do as much reading as possible. We have thrown out all sorts of stuff. Finding some type of protein bars, some type of bars, because they're available everywhere.
[00:35:08.760] – Sergio
These energy bars, protein bars, granola bars. They're crucial. They're crucial. I say these little bites, it's not eat it, I know it, I get it. Take a bite. Take a bite every couple of hours. Put a little timer every 2 hours, 120 minutes. No, you need to I get it. So we need to make those changes. Those are habits. Those are those couple of minute habits. It's the same thing. If you are not willing to exercise, I don't want you on this program.
[00:35:38.650] – Sergio
I don't. You're going to fail. I'm setting you up for failure. And that's where the nutrition comes in here, because let's get to that point. Let's get there and we'll deal with that. And that's critical here, because if you're not going to drink water and you're not going to do that part about exercise, and when I tell people exercise, I go very clear. When I tell people get up 15 minutes earlier, 20 minutes earlier, you don't need to join the gym. This is free.
[00:36:05.990] – Sergio
No, you don't understand. I'm 280 pounds. Not a problem. What do we got to do? How much do you do today? Where are your goals? I have people that have lost 120 pounds in a year with us and have been off now the program, for 90 days and have not gained but five, six pounds. We're doing all sorts of surveys, test. We are going to be running some interesting stuff now. So going back to your point and touching base on the nutritional factors, I think understanding that people like yourselves in education and knowledge about how do I continue to help myself while I'm on a program like this, and I say program that's sometimes taken the wrong way.
[00:36:42.450] – Allan
Yeah, quick question. This is just a curiosity question from my perspective, because one of the ways I've personally used and I've worked with various clients is on the low carb keto scale.
[00:36:54.870] – Sergio
And so it would seem to me if someone's not eating, they're effectively, let me say mimicking fasting. They are fasting, effectively. Do you find that your patients tend to get into ketosis? Is that where they end up from burning the body fat to have the energy and operate?
[00:37:12.830] – Sergio
You know what? That's a very good question. I'm not going to tell you yes or no. I've heard and seen some interesting results. We've seen, but I don't want to tell you yes on that that is true. Can they fall into it? Absolutely. Are we trying to identify, hey, what's the best way? Because remember, the way I feel and the way you feel and the way we both take our avenues is not right nor wrong. It's how you feel.
[00:37:36.930] – Sergio
I tell people if you're at a half, listen, let's go to the semaglutide route. Week one to week four is a quarter milligram. Week five to week nine or to week eight is a half milligram. Nine to twelve is a milligram 13 to 17 or 17 is one seven, and then two, four. That's what Big Pharma has seen great at. Okay, if I have a patient that's losing good weight at a half a milligram weekly, why am I moving him? No, because Big Pharma said so, and they're going to push it down your throat.
[00:38:10.340] – Sergio
No, that's where we step in and say no, because that's where we differentiate ourselves from it. So if I could tell somebody how and what to do, in a sense, we are putting all sorts of educational. We have recipes, we have all sorts of stuff that we've putting in our portal to help people on the nutritional side. But I think more than anything, it's understanding, hey, what you possibly could endure. Starting this little program. Because I think everyone's mindset's got to be set for the following hour. And how long are you going to take this for?
[00:38:42.220] – Sergio
That's something I tell people, you're not on this for life. I personally tell people, this is a four to six month window. It all depends on where you're at. So everyone might be a little different. If it's got to be an eight month window, that's fine. But I've had some people say, I quit. I stopped. Why? Guy down the street, Barber, said I lost 26 pounds in seven weeks. I freaked out. I get it. What do you have?
[00:39:11.490] – Allan
So let's take a step, because I really appreciated that you mentioned exercise. I talked offline a little bit, and you said you're an athlete. And we both agreed that even though you might not be competing at an elite level, we're all athletes and living the life that we're trying to live and the fitness level that we need for our own selves. But one of the struggles that I have and we see this with starvation studies, we see this with individuals who try to lose weight too quick, is they tend to jettison a good bit of muscle at the same time that they're getting rid of the body fat. So they're losing lean muscle mass, and in some cases, that could even be bone density. So they're weighing less, but they're not losing what they thought they were losing. They're losing both. And so I see exercise and nutrition as critical components to make sure that this weight loss is geared more towards body fat than toward the whole body.
[00:40:08.760] – Allan
What exercises do you think someone should be doing while they're going through this that will give them the best opportunity to lose what they actually want to lose, which is body fat, to get the right health outcome and actually end up stronger, better fitter when this is all said and done?
[00:40:27.030] – Sergio
Very good question. So you started off right out you nailed it right off the head. I think we're all athletes in this. This isn't you. This is everyone being an athlete. This is the journey of life.
[00:40:36.730] – Sergio
This is getting up in the morning and wanting to challenge it. And that's how I say it starts in the morning. It's an everyday thing. We've seen it. Everybody's challenges are different. Everyone's lives are different. But exercise must be a critical thing. When I tell people about exercise, I make it simple. I don't want you to go join the gym if you can God bless you. That doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean you're going to be lose weight faster or quicker. It's the determination you have every day to spend those extra few minutes and let's go into something about exercising.
[00:41:06.390] – Sergio
You lose too much weight. What you lose in muscle density, it's very true. A little different for everybody. But two things you must understand. I talked about the components of nutrients and kind of the energy bars or protein bars and that same thing with the smoothies and shakes like that. Those are also really good ones because you can put all sorts of stuff in that and you don't need a big shake.
[00:41:29.860] – Sergio
You need a shake. And that's a meal supplement to a lot of this. But protein, the right intake. Let me say something real quick. Eating at home is critical, my friend. Eating at home is critical. I travel this country all the time. There's fast food on every corner everywhere. It's easy to eat fast food nowadays. I know it's tough when people say. Oh, you don't understand what it costs. I get it. I get it.
[00:41:57.740] – Sergio
You know what our program cost to purchase $5.66 a day for a 90 day program? I promise you I'm trying to help you out. The amount of people that go out and spend $7 $10 on coffee a day is ridiculous. It's hard to eat at home all the time.
[00:42:16.780] – Sergio
People don't want to come home and cook. People want to make life a lot easier.
[00:42:20.930] – Sergio
And that's part of the challenge in losing weight. How do you break those habits? How do you change those habits? Losing body fat and muscle mass go. Hand in hand with the majority of the time. And you hear when people say, oh. Man, it's hard in the afternoons. I'm big into the peptide space. We do work with other peptides so.
[00:42:41.510] – Sergio
We do understand how this works. I'm a big individual into. Like I got friends of mine say, hey Sergio cheater life because I've been on a couple of different peptide programs on the BPC. BPC one five seven has done great for my gastric, for my intake, for everything from my throat down the rebuilding of muscle tissue. BPC one five seven and TB 500. I'm a patient.
[00:43:08.010] – Sergio
I had surgery on my right shoulder, three screws, the whole nine yards. I had my achilles. I'm an athlete but gone through the works. And I believe in peptides because I'm a results guy. I would be sane if I didn't get results myself. And I'm not saying this is for everybody, but I will tell you something. When people come to me and say. I feel horrible, I feel like this, I tell them really nice. Have you tried to make a change in life? That's it. And it depends on that outcome. And that response is whether I jump in immediately. Because my thing is how do I put a smile on that person's face? Because at the end of all, it's about the attitude. If you got the wrong attitude, I've been trying and nothing works. Let's give it another shot. Let's try it. I got some 60 day.
[00:43:56.410] – Sergio
We're going to do something. I'm working with a lot of athletes. I'm working with the guys at the Pivot. I'm working with the guys at a couple of different places. And we're going to come up with something interesting because we are going to run a study. I am going to do some stuff that's fun. I like to make this fun. Losing weight is fun. When you lose the weight, right, you know it. You're a personal trainer. You see the personal satisfaction that people get when they lose two pounds. People are like, oh, I don't see it. Whoa, look at my watch. Wow. Yeah. It's areas that they don't see and then all of a sudden, once they believe in themselves is the key.
[00:44:30.460] – Sergio
So let's go back just real quick two things you went hand in hand is nutrition and exercise. They're critical. Is there a challenge in them when you lose a lot of weight? Yes. That is something that we must continue to educate. Find individuals like yourself to be able to educate the people out there that need that knowledge on how do I continue to build muscle? Because you know what? You might get a little weaker, but help yourselves out. The stretching part of it. A lot of people say, I can't work out. Let's stretch. You stretch properly. You got a great workout. Once you start getting that blood flow. Things change a little bit. And a lot of people say, hey. And I've learned this. This might be a dumb one, but they always say here, how do you grow like a big sense of energy boost in your life? Stand up and stretch. Lift up your shoulder. Stand up.
[00:45:16.950] – Sergio
You understand that military style thing, it works for everybody. It works. It puts it and then you're like, but let's find I don't have an answer. If you see I haven't given you a direct answer because I don't believe I have one. I don't know if there is one. Because everybody is different. But if we educate them properly, I think we could win the battle of all of us helping people.
[00:45:37.610] – Allan
Sergio, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:45:47.890] – Sergio
I love that. The first one is always I tell our people. Are you committed? That's our first strategy is to commit yourself. If you are not committed to being the best person you could be, you're wasting your money, you're wasting your time, and you're wasting your energy. And then when I say, people say, I'm doing it for who are you doing this for? What are you doing this for? You have to do this for yourself, because it's about feeling good. If you don't feel good, stop. That's why I've been in several businesses. They've all been in the same space primarily, but there's a personal satisfaction asking people, how do you feel today? I feel great. That's a good feeling to get from people.
[00:46:26.490] – Sergio
So when you ask this, tactics and strategies for that is number one is commit yourself to it.
[00:46:31.640] – Sergio
Number two is make that plan. Make that daily plan. Write down those top three things that you're going to do, and people say, it's dumb, it's stupid. Make that little to do list. You're getting up in the morning, you're going to walk for 15 minutes. I'm going to eat three things. Do that. Commit yourself to it. You commit yourself to losing weight, and you do this properly. It works.
[00:46:52.500] – Sergio
It's proven. This is a game changer in life. This isn't just it's a non control. You need to exercise. This is the first time in our lifetime, I mean, obviously mine, and as I've grown up in this, because I've been involved in this 24 years, one way or another, that a doctor could write a prescription for this and say, hey, Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith need to make sure you're exercising. Go exercise today. Start today. You know, people like, oh, I'm going to get dizzy because you've always heard that exercise and medication, that's a problem. It's always been a problem. No, sir. In this, if a man, female, son, child, whatever it is, you want to lose weight, you must commit yourself to it.
[00:47:40.630] – Sergio
This is a booster. This is a helper. People say, you're cheating now. You're not cheating in life. If you need a little help, what's a problem. That's my strategy. How do you make your body feel better? Like you said, how do you get up in the morning with a smile? I promise you, if I could help you lose a couple of pounds every week, will your life change? I have it all the time with people, all the time, and I'm pretty damn successful at it. So I think strategies, commitment, plan A, plan B is that plan A doesn't fail. That's the commitment to losing weight and is following your habits, making sure you're eating a little bit and making sure you're exercising. And by the way, if you don't drink water, this doesn't work. It doesn't work. People like, oh, I drink water. Water and the nutrients. We could feed the nutrients, but you need H20 to make this work, because the amount of water you lose in muscle and forget muscle mass. Body fat is tremendous. Your body freaks out. Your body freaks out. I tell people, hey, I lost whatever it is, seven pounds, eight pounds. How much water are you drinking? No. Eight glasses of water.
[00:48:55.450] – Sergio
You lost ten pounds and you haven't increased your intake of water, you've decreased it? No, let's increase it. And this goes back to where we started, Allan. Education. Let's educate. Let's educate our patients. Let's educate our people. How do we make America healthy? Let's make people healthy. There's nothing worse than when I travel around and see people that aren't healthy. And the worst that hurts me is when I see younger kids that aren't healthy. We could help. There's help today. There's help.
[00:49:27.800] – Allan
thank you, Sergio.
[00:49:29.630] – Sergio
Couldn't say this a while ago. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
[00:49:32.810] – Allan
So if someone wanted to learn more about you and MD exam, where would you like for me to send them?
[00:49:38.540] – Sergio
You could send them directly to start.mdexam.com or go to Mdexam.com.
[00:49:44.730] – Allan
All right.
[00:49:45.470] – Sergio
There's plenty of information there, and someone could always reach out to me directly at sergio@mdexam.com and I'll make time.
[00:49:54.910] – Allan
Well, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/614, and I'll be sure to have the links there.
[00:50:01.740] – Sergio
Thank you very much
[00:50:02.960] – Allan
Sergio. Thank you for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
[00:50:06.540] – Sergio
Allan, thank you for your time and I appreciate it. Hopefully you guys got some out of this and I could help you guys lose weight. Feel great. Thank you again, Allan.
[00:50:13.850] – Allan
Thank you.
Post Show/Recap
[00:50:14.610] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:50:15.880] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. This was really a very helpful educational interview about these amazing weight loss drugs that are being marketed these days, because I see these commercials, I see them every day. Ozempic, Wegovy, Rybelsus, Manjaro, I just saw that one this morning. I've been really wondering about what these things are, and it was interesting to have this education and listen to one of the manufacturers talk about how they work and what they're good for. So it was pretty interesting. But I do have some feelings on these things, as I imagine you do as well.
[00:50:50.880] – Allan
I do. Everybody wants the easy button.
[00:50:57.410] – Allan
Let me just do this, and then it solves the problem. And then I don't have to think about it anymore.
[00:51:02.690] – Allan
And if I had to look at this and say, okay, what does this mean? I would choose this over surgery.
[00:51:10.150] – Rachel
Yeah.
[00:51:11.270] – Allan
Every single time I would choose this over surgery. I just would. There are side effects, and so if you're going to go this route, you need to do your research because the side effects are not pleasant, and there are a lot of people that will start taking it and they cannot tolerate it, and they get off of it. And so there's that. The other thing that happens here that is really a struggle for me is that you're in your 40s 50s 60s you're already losing muscle and bone, sarcopenia and ostopenia.
[00:51:46.360] – Allan
And if you don't manage your nutrition and exercise as a part of this program, you will lose it faster and you will become frail sooner. Okay? I want you to hear that.
[00:52:00.630] – Allan
You will become frail, you will lose muscle mass, and you will lose bone density. So enjoy the BMI. While you sit. In a dependent care facility because you can'T take care of yourself because you don't have the muscle mass or bone density to do so. So that being said, if you go at this responsibly, then you're going to understand that these things work by making you not hungry. Meaning you're not going to eat. You will have to force yourself to eat what you do eat. Most of the time you're just not going to be as hungry.
[00:52:44.120] – Allan
If you're going to be hungry at all, it's going to be on the last couple of days. It lasts about seven days. That's the half life of this whole thing. And so basically you'll take it and for the first three or four days.
[00:52:54.940] – Allan
You probably won't want to eat anything. You might even struggle to drink enough water, okay? And then you're probably going to say. Yeah, now I can eat a little bit. Okay? But if you do that, if you effectively starve yourself, you're going to lose muscle mass and bone density.
[00:53:12.230] – Allan
So go at this with the mindset of lowest effective dose, okay? If they recommend that you start increasing the dose or you think increasing the dose is going to make this go faster, rethink that strategy.
[00:53:29.650] – Allan
Because you need protein. You need the building blocks. There are essential amino acids and essential oils in our diet. We have to get. Essential is not this thing where you're talking about the essentials, like the essential oil stuff where. It'S just pure these essential oils, essential fats and essential amino acids in nutrition means your body cannot manufacture them.
[00:53:54.730] – Allan
Okay? Your brain is 60% fat. You need these essential fats to have a healthy brain. You need these essential amino acids to build muscle and maintain muscle. So if you're not getting nutrition, you'll lose it. You'll lose your brain, you'll lose your muscle and you'll lose your bones. You just will.
[00:54:16.870] – Rachel
It's serious. And the phrase serious as a heart attack. And the reason why I say that is because if you're so severely obese or you have these comorbidities, this could be a tool in helping you lose the weight to become a healthier body. To have a healthier body. But patients need to realize that there's a big picture. There's a long game to this. And so losing weight can get you to a place. But also the nutrition, you need to eat properly. You need to have ideal movement. No matter what your size is, you have to be able to move. So there's like a big picture. And this is just one very serious tool that could be deployed, should somebody be a good candidate for it? But yeah, it's certainly not for everybody, and it is very serious.
[00:55:04.670] – Allan
Yeah. And so, yes, if you're obese or you've got comorbidities, this can be a great tool to help you drop some of that body fat, but it has to be done along with lifestyle changes. Again, I've talked to people about this that have started it or that have used it. I was talking to one guy, asked his results, and he was really excited about what had happened because he started a lifting regime.
[00:55:32.910] – Allan
He managed his protein and nutrition, and then he used his product to basically lose body fat. And he felt great. He maintained his muscle mass and he lost weight and so for him, it was a wonderful tool. Now, one of the other sides of this thing is eventually the intention is. You go off of this. Okay, I'm looking at it. You see different prices, but we're talking $1,500 a week.
[00:56:04.230] – Rachel
My goodness.
[00:56:05.610] – Allan
So you do the math. That's more than $6,000 a month.
[00:56:10.950] – Allan
Okay. Now, is it worth investing that for this and for a lot of people? Maybe it is, yes. Okay.
[00:56:19.210] – Allan
You're going to invest over $6,000 a month to do this, but there's going to be a time when you go off of it, unless you're just weird. And you just want to keep paying that money and going when you need to.
[00:56:30.430] – Allan
But you're going to probably go off of it. And if you haven't made the lifestyle changes, then you're going to be that friend you saw the person that got the bariatric surgery? Yeah. They lost 80 pounds and then gained 100 back because they went back and they stretched the stomach out again, eating the way that they were eating before.
[00:56:49.600] – Allan
They weren't getting the nutrition because they were eating crap food.
[00:56:52.900] – Allan
Their body kept telling them, eat more, eat more. You didn't get what we need. Eat more. And they answered with eating more of the crap versus getting the nutrition their body needed. And so you've got to make some nutritional changes and be ready for that, not just while you're doing it, but the whole time. So again, you can maintain the loss. A lot of people love to go out exercise and think that's the way you'Re going to lose weight. No, but exercise can be a key to maintaining weight loss.
[00:57:23.150] – Rachel
Well, you've seen it, Allan, with all the clients that you've had over the years. You've seen it how when people make changes in the kitchen and they combine that with weight loss or I'm sorry, exercise, and they combine that with adequate rest and recovery and sleep. I mean, there's a lot that goes into successful weight loss. And it's important to make all these changes in how you're eating, what you're eating, how you're moving, when you're moving, as well as utilizing tools like bariatric surgery or weight loss drugs like this, like serious. Weight loss drugs, not the junk you buy at the drugstore.
[00:58:02.250] – Allan
I'm all jittery. I'm all jittery. I got to be losing weight. I'm all jittery.
[00:58:07.050] – Rachel
But it's a big picture. There's a lot that goes into this. This is just not a shot, just not one thing to do. There's a lot to this. Like I said, it's a long game. You've got to look for use this now. But how healthy are you going to be a month from now or two months from now or a year from now? I mean, there's a lot that goes into it, not just
[00:58:27.220] – Allan
and the prices of this stuff will invariably go down over time as they make more, and then other versions of it come out. So the prices of this stuff will go down.
[00:58:37.560] – Allan
But again, if this is a part of your strategy, it can't be all of your strategy. There has to be the rest of it. And so if you're thinking about this from being healthy, not just what you weigh, but being healthy, you need to be smart about it.
[00:58:55.690] – Rachel
Yeah, I feel like, thank goodness this is a prescription that you need a doctor's assistance or a prescription to get it. But it would be also important to have other experts on your team, maybe spend some time with your nutritionist or some sort of an expert nearby, and also maybe get a trainer to help you in the gym. I mean, if you're going to go get to the doctor to get a shot, you might as well rely on some other experts to get you through this safely. In the long run,
[00:59:25.750] – Allan
have a plan.
[00:59:26.960] – Rachel
Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
[00:59:30.510] – Allan
All right, well, Rachel, I'll talk to you next week.
Fitness legend Tony Horton shares information about how he approaches health and fitness as he's aged including training style and recovery.
Transcript
Let's Say Hello
[00:02:16.170] – Allan
Hey, Ras.
[00:02:17.930] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. How are you today?
[00:02:19.790] – Allan
I'm doing all right. How are you?
[00:02:21.620] – Rachel
Good, thanks. It's beautiful and fall up here. Leaves are changing, and I just realized we're into the month of October. And I just wanted to remind all the ladies out there to make sure they schedule their mammograms. This is breast cancer awareness month, so I feel like I got to push
[00:02:38.620] – Allan
We're almost at the end of it. At least get it scheduled. Go ahead and call your doctor. Get the appointment scheduled. Do a little bit of self work because I think there's some things you ladies can do to make sure that you're taking care of your tatas.
[00:02:54.780] – Rachel
Yes. And coincidentally, what made me think of it was I had just recently had a visit with my dermatologist for my annual skin cancer check. He checks if you've ever seen me. I've got a lot of freckles moles. I got all sorts of spots. And he takes a look to make sure that they all look safe. And he was actually just schooling me on habit stacking. And one of the habits he was saying was to take your birthday whatever day you were born on. I was born on the 22nd of the month. He's like, use that day to schedule to do healthful things for yourself. Do your breast exam, do your skin self check, make your doctor's appointments. It's an easy day to remember and make it's an important day, obviously. So that was an interesting little habit.
[00:03:41.450] – Allan
Well, did he mean that by every month of every month, like, you do a self exam, you do looking at yourself over check, something over an appointment? So this is every month?
[00:03:51.340] – Rachel
Every month.
[00:03:51.930] – Allan
Usually the 27th of every month, which is just a few days from now.
[00:03:56.730] – Rachel
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So that's a good thing to do.
[00:04:01.120] – Allan
Yeah. Good. Well, we had that huge vacation, and so you would think, okay, well, things are slowing down for Allan. Not exactly. We have a chili cook off that just happened about a week ago. Of course, we're recording this early, so that's this weekend for me right now, calling from the future. But it's this weekend anyway. Yeah. So it's a chili cook off. I'm responsible for the chili. So I've got a 13 pepper chili that I do, I'm going to do. I call it Superstition Chili. Although my team kind of went rogue on me and decided that they wanted to do Roman stuff, so they want to wear togas what it is. But we're trying to tie 13 chilies to Roman stuff now. But anyway, they're creative. They're going to be the fifth year in a row they're probably going to win the best booth thing, and I just want to win the best chili, so I'm working on that. So all that's going down this next weekend, so that's got me busy. And then I'm going to host a murder mystery dinner here at Lula's on the 11th. I'm planning that. And then, of course, my wife Tammy, she's really into Halloween.
[00:05:15.290] – Allan
So there's the Halloween thing that everybody's got together and said, okay, well, we're going to be this, and so it's like boom, boom, boom, and then that. So a lot of things going on here, but it's fun and it's interesting, and I'm just enjoying myself. And no, it's not getting cooler, and no, the leaves are not falling. I'm still walking beaches and shorts. Shirtless to get a little bit of sun.
[00:05:41.710] – Rachel
Nice.
[00:05:42.180] – Allan
My birthday is on the second, so that's when I can do my little skin checks. And there you go. Good. All right, well, I've had Tony on before, and that was a really good conversation. Exciting. He's got so much energy, it's insane. But are you ready to have this conversation with Tony?
[00:05:59.720] – Rachel
Sure.
[00:06:00.500] – Allan
All right, here we go.
Interview
[00:06:31.530] – Allan
Tony, welcome back to 40+ Fitness.
[00:06:34.030] – Tony
Allan, I know, it's good to be back.
[00:06:37.150] – Allan
It's crazy how time flies when you're having fun, but it's been over three years, the summer of 2020 that you were on the show
[00:06:46.930] – Tony
before the Earth got very confusing.
[00:06:49.390] – Allan
Yes, every day. But I just try to have fun and see where it takes me. But, yeah, that was episode 446. This is going to be episode 611 or 612. No, 612. I got that. 612. So, yeah, I've been working. You've been working. A lot has changed, but a lot stays the same. So I'm glad to have this opportunity to have a conversation with you today.
[00:07:12.380] – Tony
My pleasure, man. Good to be here. Good to see you again.
[00:07:14.990] – Allan
So, the last time you were on here, you mentioned something, so I have to share this with you. You'd pulled out your calendar and talked about your red X's to stay motivated. That was kind of one of the keys of and I kind of keyed into that. It's like that visual representation of consistency and how it drives your mind, particularly if you're someone who's driven by the gamification of things and just kind of seeing it versus just feeling it and knowing it. I had a client, her name was Anne, and so I kind of talked to her. We were talking about a couple of different things. One, we were talking about self love, because I think if you don't love yourself, the fitness game is really hard to stick to. And then the other thing was the consistency. She needed the consistency. So I told her about your calendar tool. Well, she put the two together and she went out and bought some heart stickers. And so every day she did her workout, she put a heart sticker on her calendar, man, and it was so cool to see her going through that. And the consistency improved, and the way she felt and the way she felt about herself improved.
[00:08:17.610] – Allan
So really cool tip. I appreciate you sharing that with me.
[00:08:20.350] – Tony
Oh, hey, man. Hey together, we help somebody get to the next level.
[00:08:24.400] – Allan
Absolutely.
[00:08:25.730] – Allan
It is. Again, I think if we all just pay attention to the tools and things that are out there, everybody's bringing something to this game, and I'm looking for you to really bring it this time. Okay.
[00:08:39.890] – Tony
I've learned. I've learned a thing or two since we spoke last, Allan.
[00:08:43.820] – Allan
Good.
[00:08:44.660] – Tony
Fresh tidbit. We only hope. Maybe there's a good joke in here somewhere.I don't know.
[00:08:49.870] – Allan
Okay, well, one of the things I really wanted to get into this time we talked about your shingles last time, and for anyone that doesn't know, go listen to four, four, six. Tony went through about the worst thing I think you can go through with regards to it
[00:09:07.860] – Tony
visited the demons.
[00:09:09.400] – Allan
Yes. But that required you to kind of restart, because a year of not being able to beat Tony Horton for lack of a better word, you lost 25 pounds of muscle. You came back, you weren't where you were. And for a lot of us that were at a level, particularly as we get older and recovery and getting back to things is that much harder. Can you give us some ideas? If someone took a long break from training, or maybe never was training, how do they get the right mindset and really kind of get themselves moving in such a way that they could get this stuff done?
[00:09:51.310] – Tony
Well, here's what's interesting. Let's say, for example, you were committed at some point, like you were into it, and maybe you were single at the time and you had spare time and maybe who knows? Everybody's different, of course, right? One size does not fit all. And you were that person. And whatever happened, you got married, your house got flooded, you ended up with a really horrible flu. Or maybe you had got Ramsay Hunt syndrome like me, and you lose like me. Like you said, I lost 25 pounds. But for me, at that stage in my life, I'd already been doing it for three decades. You know what I mean? It was already ingrained. It's who I was. It was as important as anything else in my life. And the reasons why I was doing what I was doing then had changed from when I first started. Now, when I first started, it was all about ego and size and how much you benched and the circumference of your biceps and whatever. A lot of ego driven stuff, a lot of comparisons of me to others, you know what I mean? And that's all fine if that sustains you.
[00:10:56.450] – Tony
You got to kind of notice when life is shifting that you might have to shift your strategies, your techniques, your methods, whatever. And so when I came out of my situation and again, this applies to anybody who was into it, and then whatever happened and it was two months, three months, a year, five years, and you're getting back into it, it's important to look at your reason why. And my reason why was all ego and esthetics and comparisons to others and looking for compliments, which is not sustainable as you get older, I don't think. And for me it was about health and wellness and my mental and emotional state or much more so than my physical appearance. And far too often I meet guys who are in their fortys or fiftys. I need to get bigger. Really?
[00:11:44.600] – Tony
Are you playing hockey now? What do you want, a rugby team? Or are you going to be the oldest professional football player in the world? Why do you want to get you got three kids and a wife. Does she want you to get bigger? What do you want, dude? What's important to you because you're wanting to get bigger as an example didn't work for these last six months, a year, two five years, whatever. So maybe it should be something different. And for me, my raison detra, as the French would say, my reason for being is to be a super healthy, fit 65 year old. And what does that look like? And how am I prioritizing now? So I'm prioritizing on exercising today because it helps my creativity and my productivity and my ability to solve problems and improves my sex drive and my sleep and my range of motion and my body's ability to move quicker in situations where I wouldn't if I didn't do these things. To be a better skier, to be able to get through a ninja course on Sundays with guys half my age. You know what I mean? So it's more about performance, it's more about quality of life, it's more about better brain function and improving my emotional state as I make my way into my 60s, right?
[00:13:01.530] – Tony
So I think we spoke about this before. When you move, whether it's yoga or cardio or weights or Pilates or CrossFit or P90X or our new program Power Sync 60, you release norepinephrine dopamine serotonin and brain derived neurotropic factor BDNF that happens inside of your head, inside your temporal lobe, inside your hippocampus, inside your little tiny dentate gyrus. And you don't have to wait 30, 60, 90 days for a better look, bigger arms, more you get it today. And if you don't work out, you don't get it. You don't get it. It doesn't happen. And so the temporal lobe and the hippocampus and the dentate gyrus are not stimulated. Those chemicals are not released inside of your head. So you're just a little sadder, you're a little bit more depressed. Your ADD and your ADHD and your elemental P and whatever it is that you have overtakes, right? You don't have all that good brain chemicals to be able to counteract the doldrums of your life. And that's life altering. You know what I mean? Annex is the plan, right? You get your calendar, whatever it is, figure out what you're going to do and when you're going to do it, and you announce it to the world.
[00:14:14.230] – Tony
I got a friend right now. She's so committed. I'm in. And she's been super inconsistent because she doesn't tell the world, hello world. I am going to be working out at 08:30 A.m. every day so don't even begin to think about scheduling anything there because I've already scheduled it till now, until the day I'm dead. Tell the world my workouts are morning and night because I'm working around other people's schedules, because I want those other people in my world motivating me, inspiring me, and helping me push harder.
[00:14:48.100] – Tony
All right?
[00:14:48.490] – Tony
So if you wing it, you won't do it. If you plan it, the odds go up. And third is accountability. Who are you accountable to? If you are one of these people who get up in the middle of the four in the morning and you go down in your basement and you live in Minnesota and it's February and it's 59 degrees down there, and you do a plotty routine or a yoga or you're a superhero, we crown thee. We say, you are better than me, because I don't invite those people to my house. I ain't doing it half the time, man. I mean, I felt like, oh, Horton, he must love working out. Not really. Purpose, plan, accountability. If you got that in your life and you understand how important those are, you go from surviving like everybody else to thriving like I know you want to.
[00:15:34.170] – Allan
Yeah, I kind of break that down into the two different what I call motivational lines. So there's an extrinsic motivational line which falls along the accountability, and then there's the intrinsic, which is more about self efficacy. And the self efficacy stuff is hard. It's hard because at that point, you have to be your own boss. At that point, you have to identify yourself as being more than just a desk wonk doing your job. You've got athletic aspirations, you see yourself differently. I never want to be a spectator in my grandchildren's lives, ever. I don't care what they're doing. When I started, P 90 X was maybe the hardest, craziest thing I'd ever done in my life. Now they got tough Mudders and Spartans and all that kind of stuff going on CrossFit, and it keeps going CrossFit and all that, and I don't know what my grandchildren are going to be doing. They're not even born. Most of them aren't even born yet. So when they come along, it's like, okay, well, when they get older, I want to be the grandpa that's a participant in their lives. Correct. I don't want to be the grandpa that's watching from the rocker or sitting in the aluminum stands watching them.
[00:16:51.090] – Allan
I want to be out there playing with them.
[00:16:53.540] – Tony
Yeah. Building memories. Memories that you're going to have while you're here, and the memories they'll have for the rest of their lives. The influence that you have on them is I went to a show the other night, and P 90 X is ancient. Really? At this point. I don't know, it's been a while. And I don't get out of the house much because,
[00:17:12.250] – Allan
like, 40 years, let's be honest, Tony.
[00:17:16.490] – Tony
I went to Fargo, and I went to Jackson, and I went to Paris, and I went to Rome, and I went to London, and I'm going to Miami, and I'm going to know, like, when I'm not traveling, I'm here, you know what mean? Like, I haven't been to the grocery store in like, seven years, whatever. That's just who I am. But I go to this club, right, packed theater, and they call me on stage, which was not planned, so I had to do this MC thing. And of course, I'm up there reading these three by five cards, my glasses going like I can't. Anyway, it was fun and it was great. And then the show is over, and I would say a fourth of the audience I mean, I'm talking to Pac Theater, all come up to me and say, you changed my life, and P 90 x this and that. And I started in high school, my parents did it and then I did it. And they're like, you have no idea, man, what this did for my and I'm like, wow. And that's what you would be doing on a smaller scale for your grandkids and your grandkids friends and your grandkids kids when they have kids.
[00:18:16.270] – Tony
I mean, it trickles down, man. And it's powerful and it has a tremendous effect. You don't think, oh, you don't really think? Because I didn't really think about it, then all of a sudden I'm like signing and doing selfies and people are crying in front of me. It's like, holy smokes, wow. You forget because you're just doing your thing. And then you let other people market it and send it out to the world. And I don't know how much is getting used, but apparently quite a bit. And so you're in a field, Allan, that is so important right now for this country, you know what I mean? Because too many people are suffering needlessly. And it's up to us to come up with ways to get people off their butt and changing their lives. You know, there's two things that we control. It's whether we move and what we put in our mouth. I mean, pretty much everything else is out of our control, you know what I mean? So if you have the right strategies, the purpose, plan, accountability, whatever, and other intensity, there's other things on the list, too, and you learn that hydration and proper sleep and supplementation and mindfulness is another thing that's really key.
[00:19:24.480] – Tony
There's a lot to learn here, but once it becomes ingrained, once you get that routine down, it feels impossible to abandon it. But there are people out there who are like, I'm in, I'm out, I'm in, I'm in, I'm fit, I'm fat. You know what I mean? And it's up to us to rein them in and say, hey, man, you got this. You can get going again. Here we go.
[00:19:44.330] – Allan
So now, one of the things I noticed is, like, you kind of said the ego thing. It followed me. It wasn't something I said, okay, I'm on my 20s, and okay, I got the ego, and I want to have the arms and the chest and the thing. And it kept following me every time I get in the gym. It's like, okay, just a little tad ego.
[00:20:06.520] – Tony
And as we get older, that can get you hurt.
[00:20:09.210] – Allan
It can get you hurt. That's why I tore my rotator cuff. Exactly. I was as strong at 51 as I was ever in my life. And then I tore rotator cuffs and then I wasn't so as someone gets older. 50s, 40s, 50s, 60s, are there things that we should just say, okay, look, those are childish things, I'm going to put them away and then I'm going to focus on things that are more suitable for who I am and where I need to be. And just kind of as a preface to that, how has aging affected your training?
[00:20:43.550] – Tony
Great question. Well, aging is inevitable, so therefore change is inevitable. It just has to be. But if you still have your high school college mentality and you're in your 40s, 50s and 60s, you're going to tear your rotator cuff, you're going to blow out your knee, you're going to screw up your back, you're going to end up with sciatica. And there are ways to mitigate those things. It doesn't mean that you have to stop training hard. You just have to start training smart. A lot of people can continue to do the workouts they did then, but they're going to have to maybe back off on the reps and back off on the weight, you know what I mean? I would suggest go to more body weight gravity type exercises and get away from trying to do the bench pressing and trying to do the heavy squatting, you know what I mean? And a lot of people who are still hung up on wanting to get bigger, no, live big. Get big. Yeah, that's true. But is it still necessary? Is it still that important to you? I mean, we're getting back to my first answer, right?
[00:21:46.050] – Tony
And I'll get into how my training has changed to a degree. What people need to do is add new stuff. So the recovery mindfulness category of this lifestyle is more important than ever, more popular than ever. I have foam rollers and I use them. I have a Theragon and I use it. I have an infrared sauna and I get in there. I have an infrared mat that I lay on. I have a cold plunge, which I absolutely despise, but I do it. I have a regular pre workout, post workout regimen. Warm up, cool down. Really important, right? I have a regular yoga practice. Every Friday is an hour, 15 hours and a half session. Always trying to work on that, you know what I mean? I have separate stretch routines that I do. And most people just want to start and they want to finish, and they don't want to do any of that stuff because I don't have enough time for that stuff. I barely have enough time for my workout alone. All right? And then the other piece of the part of the recovery is what you're putting in your mouth. Certain foods, certain beverages cause inflammation.
[00:22:55.950] – Tony
And that inflammation occurs not only in your organs and in your pancreas and your liver, in your esophagus and in your digestive system, and in your stomach and everything else. That inflammation happens in your joints. It affects your tendons and your ligaments in your body. The wrong foods that sugar, salt and chemicals over and over and over again at processed food is weakening the muscles, weakening the tendons and the ligaments and your bones. Right? So everybody knows calcium is good for my bones. Well, duh. You think your ligaments and your tendons and your muscles are like my new protein powder has HMB and vitamin D, three massive doses that helps muscles actually grow without having to do much. And when you do much, it's a whole lot better. I mean, I'm 65. There she goes, you know what I mean?
[00:23:40.490] – Allan
Flexing again,
[00:23:41.910] – Tony
still vascular, still strong. But at the same time, if you want to do what you did to a certain degree, you got to add all this extra stuff. And sleep is important. Most people are sleep deprived and dehydrated and malnourished. Right. Get that in order. Like, most people aren't drinking enough water, their sleep is terrible, they're not getting enough of it.
[00:24:05.520] – Tony
This is all part of the recovery process. And then last but not least, it's really learning how to change gears. Maybe you add pilates, maybe you go hiking instead of sprinting on the track. It's really understanding that age is happening. So change is happening. Can you change with the age as you age? And a lot of people just forget that and they don't understand that, and they don't know how to do that, and they don't know who to reach out to to help them get there. And it's about form and function, too. Like today I was on a stability ball. I'm doing tricep extensions with 75s, with the 75, not 275, but 175. Right? So first of all, I got to get into onto the stability ball, and then I got to get the weight on my chest, then I got to get it extended over my face, and then I'm doing ten or twelve reps with that because I've done it so many times. I've built so much the routines for so long that I can get in there and do that, you know what I mean? And it's also the other thing too is P 90 X was successful because there were twelve workouts.
[00:25:05.590] – Tony
My new program, the Power Four, has 24 workouts. So the same adage, we called it muscle Confusion, which was just a made up word term, like it's not real, it's just a term to explain what we're doing. It's not like it's scientific already, so relax everybody. But Jack Lane had something called periodization training. We called it muscle confusion, which was working on your weaknesses as much as your strengths. Yeah, you don't like yoga, we're going to make you do it. You don't like martial arts, we're going to make you do it. You don't want to lift weights, we're going to make you do it. Right. You don't want to work on your ABS? Well, we're doing Aberbarex you've decided to do it or not. And so it was avoiding the boredom and the injuries and the plateaus that come from doing the same things over and over and over again and expecting you're going to look gorgeous and you're going to be right for me. I work on my speed, my balance, and my range of motion as much and more than the resistance, weights and cardio, right? So these three are as important as those two.
[00:26:00.180] – Tony
And when you add all five, you know what I mean, then you're going to be able to do what? I can't jump as high and I can't run as fast, but everything else is pretty much in play for me because I've added the variety, and I have all the recovery aspects of my lifestyle now.
[00:26:20.230] – Allan
Well, I do like that you said form and function, because I think that's the missing piece. When you talked about the why at the beginning, it's like I said, I want to be the grandpa that can climb on the floor and do coloring books. I want to be the grandpa that can keep up with them when they're playing soccer or whatever the thing is. I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105.
[00:26:39.560] – Tony
Um, let's hope we get to 105, and we can.
[00:26:43.010] – Allan
Right? But the whole point being is a lot of people get to a point where they're not able to take care of themselves. They lose their independence because they lost their fitness, not the other way around. It's the function of living the life that you were intended to live, the way you want to live it on your own terms. And so the things you do and you talked about it mobility, balance, speed, keeping those things up takes work. It's not just something you lose. You lose it because you're not doing it. And so it's putting those all together and saying, what does my workout need to look like? I don't need to be able to press 160 pounds over my head anymore. I never actually probably ever really did, but I tried a lot of weight.
[00:27:26.360] – Tony
Over your head, man.
[00:27:26.990] – Allan
It is, but I don't need it now. The heaviest thing I put over my head is an overhead bag. An overhead bin. You put it up in the overhead bin, it's literally that. And that bag doesn't weigh more than 25 pounds. So from a form and function perspective.
[00:27:43.010] – Tony
You'Re good to go to you're 105?
[00:27:45.080] – Allan
Yeah, I can turn that down, but looking at that okay, so I'm sitting on the couch. I got to go to the bathroom. I've got to be able to hop up. This is not a slow thing. This is a get to the bathroom thing. You get there, sit down. That's squat, leg strength. I sit down, I do my work, and now I got to be able to do the paperwork. So that's Dexterity mobility, being able to move around and do things, and then it's standing back up. So there's speed, there's mobility, there's balance, there's strength. That's all built into just a basic function of human life. We don't think about a lot when we're in our 50s and 60s, but we're sure going to think about it when we're sitting on the couch watching, I guess Jeopardy will still be on different hosts. Yeah, different hosts.
[00:28:25.830] – Tony
But we're still we miss you, Alex Trebek.
[00:28:29.690] – Allan
Yeah, but we're sitting on the couch.
[00:28:31.570] – Tony
The other thing, too, that I think is important is and people don't realize that a lot of folks, as they get older, especially if they've never had any kind of a fun activity that they've done in their life, you know what I mean? They're exercising purely to lose a certain amount of weight or have a certain amount of certain kind of appearance. But what if you started training because you really wanted to go on a bike ride on the Appian way outside of Rome? You know what I mean? Like, you really train for these activities. For me, winter comes every year and I ski at least two months, not in a row, but two months worth days, like at least 60 days a year I'm trying to get skiing. And so my mindset the other three seasons, summer, spring, and fall, I'm always training for that one season because I'm out doing something. And maybe it's as simple. Like, I know a lot of people who rode bikes and didn't think about it, and now they're in their 50s and 60s and are afraid to get on a bicycle. Like, damn, man, that's just like, go buy your plot, you know what I'm saying?
[00:29:36.680] – Tony
Like, holy smokes. So what is it about you? I tell people, get a piece of paper and get a pen and write down ten things that are physical, fun things that maybe you did as a kid or you never did. Maybe it's surfing for some of you. Maybe it's just going on hikes on a vacation. Maybe for some it's ice. It's, you know, getting on a skateboard again or getting on a know when I had Ramsey Hunt and I balanced and my balance still isn't right, it's never going to be right. That's permanent damage in these nerves in my brain, but whatever, it doesn't slow me down. But I was wigged out about getting on a bike. And then when I got out one, it was like, oh. And then I did it about five or six times, and it wasn't like I fell over sometimes when I was trying to start, like, I stopped and I was on a hill and you get on the bike and you're trying to go up the hill. That wigged me out. But I go, what's the word? I'm going to scrape my knee. I mean, who cares, you know what I mean?
[00:30:32.330] – Tony
But that's a great motivator, having something else that you want to do physically that you enjoy, that you want to share with other people, friends, families, coworkers. I don't know what it is. And sometimes maybe your purpose is that along with wanting to feel good the day you do it, there's a lot of good reasons why.
[00:30:51.970] – Allan
Anyway, now, I know you're big, and you already spoke to it a little bit today about accountability and getting accountability and having accountability. I know you have people actually come over to your house.
[00:31:06.550] – Tony
Yeah, I've built my home. I have 1 2 3 4 places I work out on my property, three outside and one inside. And so it's a playground. It's an adult playground with stuff pegboards and 20 foot rope and 17 foot rope and parallel bars and a whole dang ninja course in the backyard.
[00:31:24.250] – Allan
But this is not Tony just getting up at 05:00 in the morning and going out there and doing his little ninja course. And it's not just a little ninja course. It's actually kind of exceptional. But you're bringing in people, you're staying in it, and they're holding you accountable. You're holding them accountable. One of the things that a lot of people will poo poo a gym. They'll say, I don't want to go to the gym. I don't like the gym. But to me, that's a ready made accountability group just already there somewhere in your neighborhood.
[00:31:57.810] – Tony
Park the car, go inside.
[00:31:59.480] – Allan
You don't even have to talk to them. If you're the 05:00 workout person, which I was when I was corporate, it's the same people in the gym every morning at 05:00.
[00:32:08.460] – Tony
Yeah, man.
[00:32:09.460] – Allan
And you see them and you nod, they nod, you get and do your thing. So it's not even like I could call them friends. I don't even know their names, but I just knew they're there. They're going to be there and pushed me to
[00:32:22.250] – Tony
maybe they become friends at some point. Hey, man, what's your name again? Especially, hey, will you spot me? Sure enough, tell me your name, blah, blah, blah. And you find out you have a lot in common. It becomes your best man at your wedding.
[00:32:33.810] – Tony
Those stories happen all the time,
[00:32:35.440] – Allan
and that goes to the gym. Wrong. You're some of the five people you spend the most time with.
[00:32:41.300] – Tony
Correct.
[00:32:43.090] – Allan
Some of those folks should be in fitness. Just saying.
[00:32:48.070] – Tony
Yeah, totally true, man. Totally true.
[00:32:51.340] – Allan
So I'm going to ask you this question again. I think you'll probably give me a different answer. It's been over three years. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?
[00:33:06.330] – Tony
I kind of covered them already, you know what I mean? Curiosity maybe is something I didn't really touch on, but being open to trying new things that you feel like you've never even tried before, because I talk about it in my book, The Big Picture, there's two kinds of love there's the thing that you just love to do. If you don't like fitness, there's probably not much that you love, but you got to be open to something, right? I mean, like a lot of guys just want to lift weights, that's all they want to do. They love lifting weights, but they don't want to try anything else. Like, yoga is not my favorite thing to do, but I understand how important it is. I love yoga like the last ten minutes of yoga, I love it the first hour, that's.
[00:33:46.810] – Allan
When you're laying on your back about to take a nap.
[00:33:48.580] – Tony
Yeah, when I'm in Shavasana, right, or whatever, I'm going through those final stretches and I'm in Vinyasana. I'm pretty Vinyasa is the flow. So curiosity is great, what is it out there? And again, break out your paper and your pen and you write down maybe some things that you've heard about. And by the way, there's Peloton, there's beachbody, there's my platform, there's Tonal. I'm on Tonal now, you know what I mean? There's running clubs, there's rock climbing clubs, there's just so many things, you know what I mean? And category one is what are the activities that you could do on your own, right? Like, if you're on the road and the gym is terrible and it's raining or snowing outside and you know that you need to move today, what is your plan? You know what I mean? What are you going to do? Me, I have this thing I call the warrior workout. I do a set of push ups, I do cardio for a minute, I do 30 sets of ABS, I do 30 sets of legs, 30 reps of legs and ABS. And I go three rounds, four rounds, five rounds, six rounds, whatever I got time for.
[00:34:53.340] – Tony
And all you need is the human body, gravity and mother Earth and you're good to go. And that just means, oh, I'm open minded, I'm curious, I'm trying things and it helps me stay consistent. And then again, you touched upon it too. You are the company you keep. And a lot of people, as they get older, they stop making new friends. They just, I got my friends and I don't want to meet new people. Well then you've just put the blinders on. Wham, you know what I mean? So everything in your world gets smaller because your friends are going to eventually a not to be able to do anything anymore because they're not on the same path you're on or they're going to start dying. All right, I meet new people and I invite them over to my house all the time, I've known people ten minutes and I go, hey man, here's my email address, email me if you want to show up for a workout. I do that all the time, right? So creativity, curiosity, when it comes to how you train, constantly searching, go to the gym and don't just look at the same people for six months a year and not say anything to them.
[00:35:53.620] – Tony
Go up and say hello. You know what I mean? I mean, if you're not a weirdo, then they'll probably be cool. I have so many friends. Like, some guy with an FBI agent was walking by my house with his dog and his daughter, and he came up, and he thanked me because I helped him get fit, and I just liked him. And, hey, you know, here's my email. Call me if you want to come over. And the guy was over here five days a week until he had to move to London. And then there was another doctor. It was an eye doctor, same thing. He's just some guy who I was at a restaurant, and he came up to me and thanked me because I helped him with his career, and now he and I are pen pals and email pals, text pals. And I'm always giving him advice and whatever. If you open up your world, then that's everything. And then the other thing too, that I don't talk about much. I mean, I just say form and function. But get in front of a mirror and watch what you're doing. Look to see if what you're doing is correct.
[00:36:50.690] – Tony
Your form is everything. I've been with friends of mine, and I'm always saying, go lower. Get in your heels more. Straighten your arms. You're too hunched over. And people are just kind of arbitrary going through stuff. And as you're training, you're doing the same things over and over and over again incorrectly. I lost you.
[00:37:11.020] – Allan
No, I'm here.
[00:37:12.160] – Tony
Did you hear all that? If you keep doing things wrong all the time, well, then you're even more vulnerable to injury long term, because you get out in the world and you want to try something, and that range of motion isn't there. Your tendons and ligaments and muscles aren't prepared to do what you're about to do because you don't have that flexibility. You haven't moved very quickly. Your form has been terrible for decades. You know what I mean? And that's like, oh, man, here I am. I've been working out. I'm taking care of myself, and now you're telling me everything I'm doing. My form sucks. Well, either you address it or you don't. You know what I mean? Because if you address it and you're willing to get your arms straight or get your squat prop get a proper squat or you're landing like a ton of bricks as opposed to like a kitten, these are things that are important, especially as you get older, because you become more and more vulnerable if you're not really paying attention to those types of things.
[00:38:03.690] – Allan
Thank you, Tony. If someone wanted to learn more about you and the things that you're up to right now, where would you like for me to send them?
[00:38:10.830] – Tony
Oh, there's so many places, tonyhortonlife.com. That's the easy, simple one. You can find everything. There's a lot of tabs, my equipment, my supplements, my live events, my clothing line that we still have a few of in a warehouse.
[00:38:25.500] – Allan
And your blog. And your blog.
[00:38:27.670] – Tony
And my blog. But if you want supplements, go to mypowerlife.com mypowerlife.com and put in the code tony30, which means you save 30%. Awesome. That's really good. And then our brand new my wife and I have got a new thing called Power Nation. In Power Nation, we have lots of our own trainers, we have lots of our own programs. Like I said, the power of four. I left Beach body and everybody said, where's p 90 x four? So we made one called The Power of Four. It's kind of like, what that's all about? But it's about exercise, it's about nutrition, it's about supplementation. And most importantly, the fourth leg of that very important table is the mindfulness component, which I think a lot of people are saying, oh, wow, I didn't realize that if I do breath work and box breathing and meditation and body scan work and everything else, that it just gives me the energy to be able to keep coming back. So the power of four is there. And our brand new program, which is designed I designed it with Dr. Mindy Pells. And Dr. Mindy Pells has done years of research on why women aren't getting the results that they want, is because they're doing the wrong things on the wrong days.
[00:39:37.500] – Tony
And women have a much more complicated hormonal situation than dude. Dudes, we got testosterone and some estrogen, and women are pre pedomopausal and postmenopausal and perimenopausal. And so some women have to train based on the moon. Some of them have to train because their menstrual cycles are gone. And now we added stop options, which means in a lot of these routines, there's two stop options at the ten or 20 minutes mark, at the 40 minutes mark. So that way if you don't like, oh, it's 55 minutes routine, I'm out, I can't do it. But I gave you a stop option. All you have to do is fast forward to the cooldown, and that gets more people in the room, helps them be more consistent. And then, of course, we have our power up and power down stuff, which we used to call modifications with P 90 x. So you can intent if you want, because there's somebody here that shows you how. And if you want to back way off, there's somebody on my other shoulder that will show you how to do that. So our two test groups are getting blown away. These women are getting in the best shape of their life.
[00:40:38.250] – Tony
They're losing weight for the first time because they're doing the right workouts on the right day. So men have one schedule. Women have like three and four based on where they are in their cycle. So we're really proud of that. And you can get all that at powernationfitness.com that's powernationfitness.
[00:40:55.150] – Allan
All right, well, you can go to 40plusfitness.com/613. It's actually episode 613. I thought it was twelve, but it's 13 613. And I'll make sure to have the links there so you can find whatever you want to find for Tony. Well, Tony, again, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.
[00:41:16.390] – Tony
Allan, my pleasure, man. I love being on with you and I think we struck some gold today.
[00:41:21.840] – Allan
I think so, too. I think we're going to get a lot out of this. Thank you.
[00:41:26.120] – Tony
Thank you, brother. Bye
[00:41:28.530] – Allan
bye.
Post Show/Recap
[00:41:31.070] – Allan
Welcome back, Ras.
[00:41:32.690] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. I'll just fangirl again for a minute. Tony Horton, he's such a name in the industry and it's been really fun to watch him all these years. So it's nice to hear he's got something going on these days.
[00:41:44.850] – Allan
He has a lot of things going on. Like I said earlier in the intro when we were talking before, the man has just so much energy. He's like a nuclear power plant. It's insane. And that's cool. I think that one of the things that is really interesting is, yes, he was a big, huge name through the 90s into the 2000s with p 90 x, x two and x three, and then he had all these celebrity clients. One of his best friends was Tom Petty and things like that. So it's he's he's in the industry. He's been in the you know, a lot of times people are in the industry and then they're not and then they're not the same person. And so he's had some health issues with his shingles thing, which was he had he had one of the worst cases of it. So it was not a good deal. But at any rate, he is the healthiest, fittest, happiest version of himself. And you can't compare yourself and I think this is where I can literally say, do not under any circumstances compare yourself to someone else. Because Tony wanted to do a pull up competition against me because he sees my pull up rack behind me when we're doing the video and I'm like, not a chance in hell, Tony.
[00:43:19.470] – Allan
I said, now, if you're stuck and I happen to be walking down the side of the road, I'm the guy you want because I can push your car. That's my skill set. So I'm not going to compare myself to Tony Horton. I'll never have that amount of energy and, as he put it, have hollow bones to be able to do a whole lot of pull ups. But I know my way, I know where I'm going. I know what I want for my life. And my training is effectively geared to make me who I want to be tomorrow.
[00:43:49.850] – Rachel
Well, I think that's an important concept. I think you said in his 60s somewhere I'm my 50s. And what we can do today is a little different than what we may be able to do in our 20s and 30s. I mean, there's something to be said for decades of change and maybe training smarter instead of harder. It's an important pivot to recognize.
[00:44:15.100] – Allan
I've been very open and transparent about the fact that I wanted to get super strong in my early 50s, I blew out, you know, tore up, ripped out a rotator cuff, and I did CrossFit until I realized, okay, CrossFit is fine. But at the time, my ego would often overshoot my capacity and I would find myself hurting after a workout and trying to do another workout before I had fully recovered. And so it was just one of those things of saying, okay, CrossFit's great if you can do CrossFit. CrossFit's terrible if you don't have control of your ego or you're doing it too often and not recovering between them. And so it's just kind of finding where you are being realistic about it and then pushing. Now, the way I say pushing is those gentle nudges that kind of get you just outside your comfort zone, not the extreme. I'm going to see what Tony's up to today and then I'm going to emulate Tony's workout. It's not going to be in your best interest, right?
[00:45:24.620] – Rachel
Well, it's important. That's right. It's important to know what your capabilities are and then how far you can push that without causing any injury. Like, I like to say I'd like to live to run another know. I don't want to overdo it and really get injured and then not be able to do the things that I love. But Tony was mentioning that too. He had an ego in his maybe younger years. And now you just need to find what you love. You talk about being fit for task, if that's important to mean. You just need to figure that out for yourself. We're all quite individual.
[00:46:01.090] – Allan
Yeah. And then the other thing that I really like that Tony got into was that this is not just about doing know, this is about doing you. And you is more than fitness, it's nutrition, it's rest and recovery and all of these other things wrapped together. And the funniest thing is, I'll talk to somebody and they'll say, well, I did a long run or hike on Friday or Saturday on Saturday, and then they're hurting on Monday. And I said, okay, well, what was your Sunday like? Because just to see if it was recovery, it's like, oh, well, there was a potluck at the church. And I said, okay, so how'd the nutrition go that day? Not so great. I had some of the cobbler. It was really good. I went back for seconds and I had this and I had that. So, yeah, I completely washed out on my nutrition on Sunday. And I'm like, okay, so you're hurting on Monday. Your knees and ankles and hips are all hurting on Monday, and you think it's the run you did on Saturday.
[00:47:06.450] – Rachel
Right.
[00:47:07.930] – Allan
You ate all that inflammation food, and they got inflammation. That's where the pain is coming from. And you think you earned it, you said, well, I was moving for over an hour and a half. I did this distance, and over an hour and a half, I felt like, yeah, I can have a few little treats. And like, okay, so you burned maybe 400, 500, maybe 600 calories. Let's go on the high end. And then you go and eat 700 calories worth of cobbler.
[00:47:40.770] – Rachel
Oh, jeez.
[00:47:42.370] – Allan
It's so easy to eat it.
[00:47:43.990] – Rachel
It is.
[00:47:44.450] – Allan
It's so hard to burn it.
[00:47:45.970] – Rachel
Right.
[00:47:46.800] – Allan
But we think we deserve it.
[00:47:48.760] – Rachel
Yeah.
[00:47:49.300] – Allan
And then we're hurting, and we blame the wrong thing for hurting.
[00:47:52.880] – Rachel
So true.
[00:47:53.770] – Allan
So now it's like, well, I got to cut back on my mileage.
[00:47:57.210] – Rachel
Yeah, well, that's an important concept, too, as we age, especially if you're a runner. We need to do all these other things to get those adaptations that we're trying to get in the gym or running on the road like I do. So you need to have good sleep, you need to have good nutrition, you need to do the stretching and mobility work. And if you're not, or worse yet, sabotaging yourself by not doing these things, not getting enough sleep or eating maybe the wrong foods, then you're ruining your own goals. You're really hamstringing yourself at this point.
[00:48:34.950] – Allan
Well, the worst part of it to me is that you have a goal and you want to work towards the goal, but then not that you're doing something specifically to sabotage it, but that you're just not doing the right things. Fine. If you want to have a day and it's a potluck at the church and it's important for you to be there, and yes, if you don't eat the pastor's wife's cobbler, we're going to excommunicate you, or whatever, have some cobbler. That's not where the real problem comes in. Where the real problem comes in is that you don't objectify it. You don't step back and say, okay, I need to have some cobbler, but I don't need to have a four pound piece. That's what they're going to hand you. They're going to hand you that cobbler on that little paper plate, and it's going to feel like you should be doing overhead presses with this thing because it's heavy. You don't have to have that much. You can have a taste of it, enjoy it, relish it, and then move on. But we kind of turn that off. We're like, oh, well, I have to have this, and therefore, boom.
[00:49:55.670] – Allan
Okay, it's a bad day. I screwed up. I'm emotionally upset about it. Don't be. It was fine. Not that you were entitled to it, but you're a grown person. You can have that decision. But you don't do the other stuff. You're not sitting on the floor, rolling around with the kids and doing stuff like you did when you were in your thirty s and now you wonder why it's so painful and hard to get down on the floor. Just because you don't do it enough. You just don't do it enough. I can sit down on the floor and get back up. I can roll around on the floor with my dogs, I can play. I can do all those things at 57 years old. And it's not because I'm some superhero fitness guy. It's just because I actually get on the floor practically every single day. I make a point of getting down there and moving around. Is it dedicated stretching? Is it dedicated mobility work? Do I feel like I'm working out when it no? I just get up in the morning, start my coffee, sit down on the floor and hope my dog doesn't bite me in the face because he's just a little too childish.
[00:51:05.770] – Allan
He likes to nip. It's not a bite bite. Lev is just a nip nip guy. But it's just one of those things of get on the floor, roll around, move around, get the hips open as often as you can, particularly if you had a sitting job.
[00:51:20.090] – Rachel
Yeah.
[00:51:21.210] – Allan
And then the other thing I'm on this interview, I've been on this call. I've got two interviews today.
[00:51:26.620] – Rachel
Oh boy.
[00:51:27.260] – Allan
So I set up my workstation right now where I can just be standing up. So I'm standing up right now. I'm not sitting down. So my hips are open, my chest is open. I can have a conversation with you, and I can do that like I have a phone call or anything and just not be sitting in the chair hunched over there's times that works very well. There are times I need to be sitting down because I got to take notes, I got to be doing some work, got to do some stuff. But I pick my battles and I say, okay, I can be sitting, I can be standing, I can be on the floor. And I try to be all three at different points of the day where it makes sense. So it's not that you have to do all these extra workouts. It's just look at your day and say, what can I do to be moving in a different pattern than I would be? Because if you're sitting for eight solid hours, that's really hard to undo.
[00:52:21.760] – Rachel
That's a lot.
[00:52:22.600] – Allan
Yeah, it's really hard. And I get it. Some people, you have to be sitting at the computer. You got to be typing notes while you're on the phone or whatever's going on. You have to be at the computer. Okay, that's fine. Get up, move around, do a stretch break. It's not like you're going to do a workout, but just do five squats. Five squats. A Samson Lunge. If you don't know what that is, look it up. But just different things that are moving your body to open you up, to get your body moving in a different way so that you're not getting locked into a position. And that's the thing, he has the time. And so he does dedicated yoga, he does other dedicated workouts. Heck, sometimes he's just out there throwing hatchets at a target. Oh God. Because he's made his house his playground.
[00:53:12.330] – Rachel
Yes.
[00:53:12.860] – Allan
And so it's not that you have to do that. I'm standing here in basically what was our living room of our apartment and guess what? It's a gym. I see. So it's easy for me to walk in here and just say, okay, well, I don't have time for a full workout. Okay, well, I'll just get back in real quick. I don't have time for the full thing. But I'll do a few pull downs, I'll do a few pullovers, I'll do a few rows. Takes me five minutes, put in a circuit and go. And so not that you have to have a bunch of equipment, but just have things that you do that are not sitting at your desk or sitting watching the TV, have other things that you do. And that's really kind of the lesson of all this, is that by doing, you take care of yourself.
[00:54:04.110] – Rachel
For sure. Well, I'd like you both. Well, Tony had said he wanted to be a super healthy, fit 60 year old or in his 60s. And I love that. And it means something different to everybody. And like you had said, we have watched him grow from the beach body days in, what was that, the 80s and 90s even to what he's doing today. And he's made being active and fit a daily activity for his entire life. And he is pretty darn healthy for somebody in his 60s. Super healthy.
[00:54:40.730] – Allan
Yeah, I would definitely put him in the top one percentile of people his age. There's not a lot of people that you're going to see in their mid 60s that can even hold a candle to what Tony's doing. And he had all the reasons to not. I mean, he went through that, lost 25 pounds. He could have just said, okay, done, because he's made enough money. He doesn't need it. He just enjoys being a part of this.
[00:55:06.630] – Rachel
That's it.
[00:55:07.170] – Allan
Enjoys doing it and being so that's what gives him drive. That's what makes him happiest, is when he knows he's helping other people. Me telling him the story about Anne and her stickers with the calendar, he lit up. He lit up because again, this is what he's doing. This is what he's dedicated his life to, is helping people find their health and fitness. And he has his message and his approach. I think it works very well for people in the next generation because we're fired up when someone else is fired up. And so again, the message is you do you, take care of you. No one else is going to do it for you. You've got to do you and just be cognizant.
[00:55:55.150] – Rachel
Just like you were saying, just simple movements throughout the day is enough to get you to be in a healthier, fit place each decade.
[00:56:05.630] – Allan
Each decade, each decade, all the way up to where I can wipe my own butt when I'm 105.
[00:56:10.950] – Rachel
That's right. You could be a super fit, 105 year old.
[00:56:15.100] – Allan
That is a super fit, healthy 105 year old. I can tell you it is.
[00:56:18.880] – Rachel
And that could be you.
[00:56:20.330] – Allan
It will be me. All right, well, I'll talk to you next week, then.
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