Let's Say Hello

[00:02:25.680] – Allan

Welcome, Ras.

[00:02:26.710] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:28.510] – Allan

I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Pretty excited. Well, we still haven't gotten any rain. Much rain anyway over the course of the last few days, but things are going good. I'm feeling good. I'm healthy again and moving around and lots of sunshine. Just having a good time.

[00:02:45.960] – Rachel

Back to your long walks.

[00:02:47.680] – Allan

Back to long walks. It's slowed down at Lula's a bit because we're heading into the low season, so things just aren't quite as busy. So it gives me a little bit more time. Southern Miss is playing well in baseball. Nice. They're going to the Super regionals. By the time you hear this, the super regionals will be over and they'll probably end of the College World Series. But they're one step closer to getting into the World Series.

[00:03:11.700] – Rachel

That's exciting. That's always fun to watch. Very cool.

[00:03:15.140] – Allan

I enjoy the College baseball and football. A lot.

[00:03:18.500] – Rachel

Of course.

[00:03:19.960] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:03:21.540] – Rachel

Good. Same thing. We haven't gotten a lot of rain either. So it's hot summer, beautiful, great to be outside as long as you get out early. So yeah, just making our way through the summer.

[00:03:33.610] – Allan

Good. Are you ready to talk about physical therapy?

[00:03:38.160] – Rachel

Sure.

[00:03:39.270] – Allan

All right, let's do it.

Interview

[00:04:02.350] – Allan

Dr. Walters, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:05.300] – Dr. Walters

Thank you so much for having me. Excited to chat today.

[00:04:08.050] – Allan

I am too. This is a book. It's called Rehab Science: How to Overcome Pain and Heal From Injury. And there have been a couple of times in my life when I hurt myself really bad, usually doing stupid stuff, but having fun while I was doing it. And then I would find myself going to a doctor who knew a little bit, and then I would end up in the office of a physical therapist who knew a whole lot and did a lot of good for me. I turned my ankle really bad when I was playing volleyball when I was in my 20s. And I went into the first doctor, he's like, It's broke. And he took X rays and it wasn't broke. And he gave me this cast or this thing to wear. And so I try to put it on. I couldn't get my shoe on. And I'm walking around elephant foot for three weeks. And I'm like, Okay, I got to do something. So I go into a sports specialist doctor and he's like, Okay, cool. He says, It's broke. And I'm like, Well, that other doctor said it wasn't. So we did another X ray.

[00:05:02.880] – Allan

He says, Man, it'd been better if you broke this thing because you've done so much damage down there. And then I went into he said, I want you to go over to this physical therapist in the office and he'll take her. And I walk in, he's like, Why don't you have that brace inside your shoe? And I'm like, Look at my elephant foot. There's no way I get my foot in the shoe. He says, Well, that brace is supposed to work with the shoe. If you don't have the shoe on, the brace doesn't do you any good. And so here's a doctor, gives me something to do, to use, doesn't really know how to use it, so he doesn't tell me how to use it. I walked in, they did ice therapy, elevation, and constriction all in one move. Put me on the table, lifted my legs up, ice water on my ankle. They got my shoe on before I left that office 25 minutes later. With that brace, I was walking around. He says, You need to be walking around on it, not those crutches. Just throw the crutches away. You need to be walking on this.

[00:05:56.430] – Allan

You need to be moving. This is what the ankle needs to heal. It needs movement to heal. The exact opposite of what every other doctor had told me, stay off of it for six weeks. So I have a whole lot of respect. And to see you put this in a book where now it's in our hands to do our own prehab, rehab structure. I just really like that.

[00:06:17.600] – Dr. Walters

Yeah. Well, thank you. You hear a lot of stories like that, right? I have a very similar story. From high school, I was an athlete and had had knee surgery. It used to be more like that where doctors would immobilize people longer. And I think the treatment of these injuries is slowly getting better. But I had a very similar type of thing where I was immobilized and not really given much direction and ended up developing a contracture. I couldn't bend my knee past 90 degrees. It really atrophied and eventually made my way to PT. And that was my first experience seeing how I was an athlete. I knew I only really thought about exercise and movement at that time for performance, getting stronger, jumping higher, all the things I was doing. I was in taekwondo, so I was kicking. That was my first experience with movement and exercise in terms of just muscloskeletal health and rehabilitation. I think these things are slowly getting better. But yeah, that was a huge goal of the book. Just like you said, of course, sometimes it's appropriate to have a temporary period of rest, but too often people are just prescribed rest and without a lot of clear direction after that.

[00:07:32.790] – Dr. Walters

And they end up resting too long. And we know now that there was actually an article a couple of years ago published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine where they looked at what are the best interventions for managing soft tissue injuries. And immobilization is not one of them. And movement, though, protection, elevation, compression, movement, all these things are really important, of course, in the right amount. You have to be smart about the movement. You don't want to just sprain your ankle. I'm just going to go jog in two days. But that was the goal of the book was to take basically what we do in rehab and create programs that have three phases and help people navigate, walk them through the process, gradually exposing the system to more stress, going from less challenging mobility exercises more and then to transition to strength and resistance based exercises to help people get back to normal function, get rid of pain. Because so much of this stuff, if you have the right education, you can just do yourself.

[00:08:38.560] – Allan

Now, I think a lot of us understand that certain people feel pain differently than other people. And in the book, you got into it. And the term you used was bio psychosocial. Can you talk a little bit about pain being bio psychosocial?

[00:08:56.530] – Dr. Walters

Sure. Yeah. The first five chapters of the book are on pain. Pain science is a really important area of science for all of us humans to know a little bit about. And that was why it was the beginning of the book. Pain is the number one symptom any of us really go seek medical care for. And years ago, we used to look at pain in the physical body from a more mechanical standpoint. It's like you think about something's broken on your car, you go to the mechanic and you get it fixed. And that was how I was trained in pain and injury when I came out of physical therapy school. And how most people were trained. It was what we used to call the postural structural biomechanical model. So all pain was looked at from posture, anatomy, biomechanics, how you moved. So it was very mechanical in that way, very physics based. And what we realized over time in the pain science research is that there's a lot of people who have pain that can't be really linked to tissues in their body or how they move. It has less to do with physical forces and things.

[00:09:59.750] – Dr. Walters

And so those studies pointed towards other factors, like how you think, your thoughts, your beliefs, your emotions, stress, sleep, things that might promote inflammation in the body, social factors. We see that people who have chronic pain, for instance, are often more socially isolated. They laugh less. It just becomes more complex. And so the biopsychosocial model came out of that and really this concept of, let's look at all of these factors that go into pain. If we're really going to do anything about pain, because we know the medical system really isn't very good at treating chronic pain, chronic conditions in general. The medical system is great at you fractured your tibia. We can pin it back together, put you in a cast or whatever and fix that thing. But if you've got chronic low back pain, a lot of people that have chronic pain that just suffer with it, and nobody really has a great answer. The biopsychosocial model is, I think, moving us in the right direction of looking at the whole person and trying to figure out what are the primary factors contributing to their pain experience.

[00:11:05.070] – Allan

And I guess the way I thought through that is you've also got into the whole idea that just because you have an injury doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have pain. And just because you have pain does not necessarily mean you have an injury.

[00:11:17.270] – Dr. Walters

Exactly. Yeah, that's so important, that one for people to separate. Chapter 6 of the book, we really separate pain from injury and talk about that because most people do are under the assumption that if I have pain, I've injured something in my body. And just like you said, we have lots of cases where most pain things that people come to see me in physical therapy for are more just irritations. They didn't have a trauma, something cute, injury didn't happen to them. They just slept funny or they tweaked something a little bit. And it's not like something… If you did an MRI or an X ray, you wouldn't see any damage. There's nothing that would be inconclusive. There'd be nothing there, but they still have pain. So for sure, you can have situations where you have pain and no injury. And then you have people who have injuries and don't experience any pain. And a lot of the pain science research actually came from those situations. A lot of it came from phantom limb pain where people have lost a limb and still have pain. So the injury isn't there anymore. You'll hear of people who have pain in a foot, even though, and maybe they've had everything from their knee down amputated.

[00:12:19.470] – Dr. Walters

So their foot is not there anymore, but they still have pain in that foot like it's there. And so those cases and research really, in a lot of ways, started the pain science research. And some of the best examples for injuries that don't create pain are studies where they do MRIs on people who are asymptomatic, who have no pain. And they'll find lots of us, almost half the population, have disk herniations in their neck and low back, have meniscus tears in their knee, labral tears in the hip and shoulder, arthritis in various joints. Those would technically get classified as injuries. If you went in that had pain and had an MRI and say, Oh, you have this injury, and your pain would be blamed on that. But we're finding more and more that it's just complex and you have to think about everything as a piece of a puzzle and see how it all works together and try not to rely too much on what your physical body looks like on a picture.

[00:13:17.320] – Allan

Now, pain is important, obviously, because if it's a signal, it's telling us something's not the way it's supposed to be, even if that's not coming from an actual injury. But in the book, you talked, and you just a minute ago talked about chronic pain, this is one of the three types, but you mentioned the three types of pain. Could you go through those? Because I think these are important for us to understand, the treatment has to follow along with the type.

[00:13:41.240] – Dr. Walters

For sure. Yeah. So when you have pain, you can, in most cases, break it down into these three types. Most people are going to have… If you've had an injury, like you're talking about an ankle sprain, like you sprain your ankle, that's going to fit into the first type, which is the most mechanical type of pain. Sometimes it's called nociceptive because it has to do with these… In our body, we have nerve ending called nociceptors that detect danger and they relay danger to our brain. And so if you turn those on and it creates pain, then that's called nociceptive pain. And that's usually what happens if you break a bone or you twist your ankle or you do something that's traumatic to your body, then you'll have that mechanical pain. You could be picking something up heavy and strain your back. It's something that happens usually in a sudden moment, and it's very localized. It's obvious why it hurts in that spot because you notice that you hurt that spot. Then we have neuropathic pain, which is the nerve type of pain. It's injury to the nervous system itself. Most people, from a general population standpoint, will have things like sciatica or carpal tunnel syndrome.

[00:14:48.860] – Dr. Walters

Even if you hit your funny bone, you bonk your all nerve in your elbow, that's in a type of acute neuropathic pain. It's a sudden stimulus to a nerve. Those are the big ones that most people will think of. That neuropathic pain is the pain that we think of as radiating or traveling. You might even have, maybe you do have a disk hernia that's irritating a nerve in your neck or your low back, and then it shoots down one arm or down one leg. A lot of people are familiar with those. That's called radicular pain. Nerve pain will often travel along the nerves path. That's another type. Then the third one is chronic or oftentimes now we use the term persistent pain because chronic carries a whole set of negative meaning with it. People often feel like you say chronic pain, that means they have no chance of getting better. So the term persistent pain is used more. But that's a type of pain that's been around longer, usually longer than 3 to six months. And it's the type of pain that doesn't do a good job of accurately telling you what's going on in your body.

[00:15:55.220] – Dr. Walters

So it tends to spread. It's more vague. People might think about fibromyalgia or a chronic low back pain or neck pain that's been around for a long time, maybe years and years. And you know you don't have an injury, but it just gets set off. Maybe you get stressed out and it gets set off, or you had a couple of nights of bad sleep, or some people even say they get a cold, they get sick and then their back starts hurting. So you'll hear these things where it's a pain that's been around for a long time, but it's not really telling you something helpful about your body.

[00:16:27.060] – Allan

This is the weirdest thing. I know I read that and that must have put something in my head because I'm coming down with a bit of a cold and I was feeling sore in the back. And it's almost like that got planted in my head. It had to have because I don't have any back problems. It's just weird. Pain is a weird thing.

[00:16:46.670] – Dr. Walters

It's super strange. I think this happens. I've always been interested in this where you might read about… This happens to me often when a patient comes in with a particular pain problem, I will sometimes experience that pain for a day or two after they've been here. We do see… You think about visualization with athletes where you can think about doing a movement and it fires those same circuits in your brain. I often think that maybe when we read about something painful or hear about someone talking about it, maybe we fire some of those regions in our brain.

[00:17:18.280] – Allan

Yeah. You talked about dry needling. And in my head, I could refill the pain of going through dry needling sessions before with a therapist. And I was like, Okay. And so you're right. Yeah, you can feel pain for no reason whatsoever. And it's important to get to the bottom of that because I don't need surgery on my back because I have a little bit of soreness to my back today when I was walking over here. I know it's psychosomatic. It's just coming out of my head and it'll probably go away as soon as I stop thinking about it. Now, when we're going to go through the process of overcoming pain, I think this is important because there were three phases that you mentioned. And I think a lot of times we actually skip the last two. We get stuck and we do the first one and then we don't really follow through. Can you talk about the three phases?

[00:18:07.920] – Dr. Walters

For sure. Yeah. I'm glad you're high telling this because I do agree. I think a lot of times people do skip the last two. I think sometimes that they feel better and so you're just not motivated to keep doing those. Sometimes it could be your insurance ends and you're going to physical therapy and you just stop doing things. And that's where trainers and PTs are such good compliments to each other.

[00:18:28.480] – Allan

And this book.

[00:18:30.180] – Dr. Walters

Totally. Yes, exactly. That was something actually my co author, Glenn and I talked a lot about was using this because we don't want to tell people don't go to physical therapy. Of course, there are times when there's a lot you can do on your own. But if you're not getting better, then you go and the book can be a compliment to that. And it could be something that helps you continue when you're done. But when you look at those phases, the first phase is really about reducing pain and reducing sensitivity, helping the system calm back down, really desensitizing it so that you don't just keep it flared up. You want to try to get rid of that acute pain state and not prolong it. Maybe you've got an injury, you're moving on it too much and you're creating more inflammation, stirring it up. Maybe it's just a non inflammatory… It's a low back pain that you've had before and you just want to try and let your nervous system desensitize and calm down. Most people are pretty good about that. It hurts so you're going to try to do things. But then after that period, as it starts to calm down, the next thing that we'll look at in rehab is addressing impairment.

[00:19:34.590] – Dr. Walters

So trying to resolve impairment, which are really things that would limit your function. So maybe a mobility loss, maybe your joint, you can't move it as far because of that pain. Maybe you've got a strength deficit, maybe you have a balance or appropriate receptive type deficit. So a lot of it in phase two, that second phase, a lot of it revolves around mobility and control, how well the person moves, the quality of their movement. And we really want to work on mobility early because… Your ankle sprain example, right? You don't want to let someone be totally immobilized for too long. And my knee example, because people can get stuck, their joints can become stiff. And as time goes on in the area of heels, it's much harder to gain that range of motion back. So we really try to start right away as soon as pain is coming down to work on mobility and movement control. And then the third phase is all about rebuilding capacity, which is really focused on resistance training. Any good physical therapy program should ultimately turn into a resistance training program where you're using your body weight, maybe external tools like dumb bells, bands, barbell, whatever you do that you eventually get back to where you are loading the system externally and building strength.

[00:20:49.250] – Dr. Walters

And that will help your tendons, your muscles, your ligaments, your bones, everything. A lot of times in the PT world, we'll talk about increasing capacity of the system. And that typically means by strengthening it with resistance training, because we know your musculoskeletal tissues are physical tissues. We're putting load and stress on them all the time. So the stronger they are, they're naturally going to be more resistant to tearing and being injured.

[00:21:14.750] – Allan

Yeah, I know this from experience because I asked for a tore rotator cuff about six years ago. And I mean, tore tore, it was not a partial tear. It was a tear off the bone. Bad, bad one. But I kept training. I kept exercising, I kept lifting. I just told my personal trainer, strength trainer at the time, I said, okay, I can't do pressing movements right now. That's just not going to happen. I can't do presses, particularly overhead. We tried some different things, and that was just a no go. The pain was there, and I knew I was just compensating too much with everything else, and I really wasn't getting any work on my chest of any substance. So I didn't do any pressing movements, but I continued to do lap pull downs and rows and dead lifts because that didn't impact that injury at all. But as a result of doing that work, I felt like I felt less pain. So there's a tie to exercise and pain that even beyond resistance training, just even you mentioned in the book, aerobics and everything else. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:22:13.250] – Dr. Walters

For sure. Yeah, we talk about this a lot with pain that movement and exercise are one of the most powerful modulators of pain. A lot of people probably will recognize this. Sometimes when you're really sedentary, maybe something's come up in life. Maybe you're on a vacation or on a plane or whatever. When you sit more, often people will feel worse. Once they get out and walk and just move, there's something I think our nervous system really craves, movement. Like you said, it doesn't have to be resistance training. It can just be active mobility work, whatever. It could just be going through range of motion exercises. Just moving tissue tends to really be helpful in terms of pain. What was the second part you asked on that?

[00:22:53.180] – Allan

Well, the connection of the two. I just felt like I didn't feel pain the way that I would have felt it because a full tear of a rotator cuff and you're moving in a gym doing stuff, you would think I would be in intense pain, and I wasn't. Now, at other times, I did certain movements that would cause pain. But at the same time, I was out running, I was out lifting, I was doing things. And in the end, it actually worked out great because doing those lap pull downs and those rows, the range of motion in my shoulder after the surgery was exceptionally better than it would have been if I had just put it in a sling and sat at my desk for three months while I was waiting for surgery.

[00:23:36.450] – Dr. Walters

Yeah, it made me think. Yeah, exactly. There's a couple of things there. I think we're often trying to encourage people, and I think this has been a change in maybe the last 10 to 15 years, but just that exact idea of keep training as much as you can. So if you've got an injured shoulder, you injured your rotator cuff, you found all these things that you could modify your workout and keep strengthening. And we know that people, like your example, where if they're working on mobility and getting stronger and they do end up having surgery, they recover faster. And we see that people, say you can't even work that side, working the other arm and your legs. We've seen in the research with resistance training, there's this cross transfer effect where actually people lose strength less if they keep training, even if they're not even working the side that's injured, if they work the other side, it transfers over. And I think the other cool thing about movement, especially when you start looking at more chronic, longer lasting back pain, such a good example. A lot of times it doesn't have to be real fancy specific exercise for low back pain, for example.

[00:24:37.930] – Dr. Walters

Things like Pilates, yoga, walking, aerobic exercise, just stretching programs, resistance training, they all have been shown to have a significantly positive impact on chronic low back pain. So I think sometimes people get in this mindset, again, because of probably outdated narratives, but I've just got to do core strengthening if I've got back pain. And really the research is saying more and more, you just need to move, just find something that moves. And if you do have some of the exercises that do target the low back area, that probably is good to add in. But a lot of times it's just moving. Just try to move and find something that you enjoy and isn't threatening to your system. A lot of times when we're talking about pain, that's what we're trying to help people with is you don't want to just blow past your pain, past that flair up line. You want to find something that challenges it, goes up to that line. But it's not considered really threatening by our nervous system. And over time, you can desensitize the system and help get rid of that pain.

[00:25:36.280] – Allan

But do no harm. Don't continue to injure yourself. Do what you can. Like I said, twist your ankle. You're not going out for a jog two days later, but you are walking around with compression socks or compression brace and doing the right things to help that heal.

[00:25:52.780] – Allan

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

[00:26:01.780] – Dr. Walters

Yeah, I would say in thinking about this one, the three that I would focus on right away would be sleep. Sleep is… We know there's so much research on sleep, and it definitely applies to the musculoskeletal system. Our musculoskeletal system remodels while we're sleeping. And whether you're looking at performance in the musculoskeletal system or healing from pain and injury, just getting enough sleep should be the foundation, in my opinion, before you even think about these more physical therapy based exercises and interventions. Sleep, and then I would say exercise movement. And like we're alluding to, I always say exercise movement because we just talked about how powerful just basic movement is. So it doesn't always have to be you're getting your heart rate up or doing something that's strength based. It could just be range of motion exercises or activities of daily living that you might do around your house, just moving. But then, of course, exercise, especially aerobic exercise and strength training, can have huge benefits for helping to reduce your chances of having an injury and helping with all kinds of different pain issues. Even just aerobic exercise for people with chronic pain has lots of research for reducing inflammation and sensitivity in the nervous system.

[00:27:14.610] – Dr. Walters

Sleep, exercise, movement. Then the third one, I would say, really revolves around how you think in your psychology. There's a huge degree of stress, fear, and anxiety that comes with pain and injury. That really goes back to that bio psychosocial model. We've been trying to spend a lot of time educating people about pain and injury, the differences between them, what's going on in their system, how their pain system works. And you see lots of studies where the fear of injury, the fear of pain is almost more limiting than what they're actually experiencing. And a lot of times when you're looking at pain, fear and anxiety can actually ramp the nerve system up because you're basically telling your brain that there's something to be worried about, that you need to be threatened. There's something threatening going on, there's danger. Your brain is going to tap into that and be more likely to output pain because it thinks it needs to protect you. That piece, trying to figure out, learn about pain as a strategy for reducing fear and anxiety. Then if you don't have a lot of fear and anxiety around pain and injury, then I would say stress management, which goes in that same category.

[00:28:27.690] – Dr. Walters

Just trying to maybe it's meeting with a PT, maybe it's implementing meditation, mindfulness based things. Even just laughing, trying to find something that makes you laugh. Injuries suck. Nobody likes being injured. You see a lot of people who with true injuries like ACL tears or something, your likelihood of being reinjured is higher if you're fearful of that injury happening again. So there's a lot to be said for, I think, that your mindset and your mental framework than how you look at pain and injury.

[00:29:02.420] – Allan

That's why this book is really helpful because you have the protocols in the book where you can somewhat, let me say, self diagnose, but if you know you have an injury, you're working with a PT, or you're through working with a PT and you want to keep working to work your way through these three phases of recovery, all that's in the book set up exactly like that. So you say, okay, I hurt my shoulder. What can I do to strengthen, to resolve this problem over time and make sure that I'm at least as good, if not better for it? And it's all in the book. The book is called Rehab Science. If someone wanted to learn more about the book or about you, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:29:42.510] – Dr. Walters

Yeah, thank you. So yeah, the book, like you said, Rehab Science, how to overcome pain, heal from injury. The best places are usually Amazon and Barnes & Noble. If people are in the United States, there are groups for international individuals. Black Wells is a bookstore in the UK that's useful. And then people can always message me. I'm at Rehab Science pretty much everywhere on social media. Instagram and YouTube are the big platforms where I'm the most active. But people can always reach out to me if they have a question or want to know where to get the book or how to navigate it because there's a lot. There is a lot of content in there. And I think, like you said, most people are going to come to this for the programs because they're looking for a program, they've got some pain and they want to see some exercises they can implement. My hope is that that will then motivate them to look at the first 10 chapters, which are the science of pain and injury, and then that will give them that framework we talked about because it is so… It's like putting an armor on yourself.

[00:30:37.650] – Dr. Walters

I think if you have that education, you're probably going to have pain or an injury again in the future. The book covers the 50 most common. They're all the things that most of us humans get. So if you have that framework, that toolset to know how to approach a future pain or injury, it just makes it that much easier and it helps reduce some of the fear and anxiety about it. So my hope is though people will be interested in the science, and we try to write it in a way that we were thinking really about the regular person, just somebody who doesn't have a rehab background that wants to learn about these concepts. Of course, I think movement and medical practitioners will benefit from it, too. But we were thinking about both of those groups. And a lot of people asked me, it's not just for practitioners. It was really at the beginning just for the regular person.

[00:31:22.370] – Allan

Well, I'm going to have a copy on my bookshelf.

[00:31:24.960] – Dr. Walters

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

[00:31:27.730] – Allan

You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/595, and I'll have the links there. Dr. Walters, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:31:37.640] – Dr. Walters

Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:31:49.290] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:31:50.780] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. Right off the bat, I have to tell you, I think having a physical therapist is just as important as having a general practitioner doctor. They can play such an important role, especially for people in my running community. We get injured a lot, so we'd rather be back on the run, and a physical therapist is the guy that's going to get you there.

[00:32:11.530] – Allan

Well, yeah, I go with the concept of fit for task. And as you try to be fit for task, if you injure yourself, guess what, you're not until you get it fixed, until you actually get out there and say, Okay, I'm going to do something about it. And it's unfortunate that most doctors don't necessarily want to stay in their lane on some things. If you're a general practitioner, I apologize, but you're not a physical therapist, and those guys can work magic. And so I don't mean anything when I say my general practitioner let me down. I just went to the wrong doctor. It wasn't until I said, Okay, this isn't getting better the way he said it would. I've got to go to an expert. And I went to a sports doctor. The sports doctor knew more but still didn't know how to fix me at that point because I wasn't in his world broke.

[00:33:07.890] – Allan

He was effectively a carpenter and there was nothing to fix. It was just, Okay, we've got to get the swelling down. We've got to get this boot on. We've got to have the pressure. And so it was just, okay, now you got to do this contrast therapy and all the things that probably are outdated today. But what I did back then, and so it was just a function of getting to the right person, which was the physical therapist when it was all said and done, that knew the thing. Same thing when I tore my shoulder, it was okay. Not playing around with this. I did not go to a general practitioner. I went straight to a sports doctor, told him it was broke. He told me it was broke. He said, Let's get an MRI. We got the MRI, it was broke. He goes in and does his carpentry work and staples me back together, shaves off a little bit of bone and says, Okay, just go do physical therapy when it's time. And I thought, Well, no, he didn't really say when. So this was Thursday. I made an appointment with a Division 1 football physical therapist.

[00:34:17.450] – Allan

He'd been with the Division 1 football team the year before. So he had seen breaks. He had seen stuff like this. And I told him, I said, I don't want to just recover. I want to be back to exactly where I was before this all happened.

[00:34:32.090] – Allan

And he helped me do that. So yeah, they are among my favorites. But what I really liked about this book was it does allow you to do some self work.

[00:34:44.550] – Allan

When the injuries not as bad as what you would require physical therapist. And if you have a physical therapist for an injury, this is going to be additional aid that will help you because you can pull this book out and sit down with them and say, here's this injury. What do you think about this workout? Because they're going to give you a little Xerox piece of paper that's grainy because it's a copy of a copy of a copy that's been around for 15 years and say, Here's your prescription for homework. Here you can say, well, this guy recommends this training. What do you think about it? And the physical therapist will say, Yeah, that'll do the same thing. But you'll have it in your hand. And so if it's a minor injury, you'll know how to recover from it. Well, if it's a more major injury, then I would say go seek medical attention. Don't be your own doctor.

[00:35:39.190] – Rachel

Yes. Well, I want to just highlight that section right there because we all go down the rabbit hole of googling this symptom and that symptom, and you can get 20 different answers of what your ailment or injury could be. And it is really important just to go straight to the doctor, the sports ortho, or if you can get a consultation with a PT and get the test done and get a proper diagnosis and then do what needs to get done because you're not a doctor, I'm not a doctor.

[00:36:10.510] – Allan

But I want to flip that a little bit. You still are the CEO and their advisors. So if you know there's something wrong and the doctor says, Well, you're just going to have to live with it, that might not be the answer that you want to hear. But get a second opinion. Or if surgery is the only way that, Oh, well, it's a partial tear of this or that. Surgery is your best option. Let me cut you open, please. No, let's take a step back. Is there a way for me to rehab this? So go get the second opinion. Have some conversations. Understand the risk, understand the likelihood that that's going to pay. I knew with my shoulder it was a complete tear. There was no not getting a surgery. I wouldn't have been able to scratch the top of my head ever. So I needed surgery because I would not have been able to lift my arm up over parallel from the floor. And so from that perspective, I knew I had to get the surgery, got it on my own terms. And when it was the right time for me, I did live with it for three months.

[00:37:15.210] – Allan

And I also did a spartan with it, and that was part of it. I didn't want to miss the spartan for the surgery. I was like, I can't tear it more, so I'll go in when it's time to go in. I kept moving my arm. I didn't brace it and hold it and nurse it. I was careful not to hurt myself because I don't like pain anymore than anybody else does. But it was just this concept of, I know I'm going to need the surgery. I'll fit it in when it makes the most sense. And then I'll do the physical therapy like a madman to recover as quickly as humanly possible.

[00:37:51.250] – Allan

And my range of motion was great within a few weeks. Reality is the strength took a lot longer to get back to the strength I had before. Now I'm a smarter man because I know there's no reason for me to be lifting that much weight over my head with dumbells. My shoulders are just not going to be able to handle it. And I assume whatever happened on my right shoulder could invariably happen on my left. And I don't want to have to go through that again. So I'm just a lot more careful. But I still weight train. I didn't stop training because, oh, I might hurt myself. I still want to be fit for task. And that includes scratching the top of my head.

[00:38:31.580] – Rachel

Yeah, that's important.

[00:38:33.290] – Allan

When it itches. When it itches. So make health care professionals your partners. They're your advisors. Put them on your team. Anytime you learn something about yourself. It's an illness, it's a cancer, it's a this or it's a that. Get some professional advice. Dr. Google is fine for you to get some base information. But if you get on one of those forums and someone says, Well, I just made this tea with ashugandha and all this other stuff in it and that cured my cancer, maybe. But that's just a bit of information. That anecdotal post out there on the internet is not a study. They might be right. But again, take it under advisement and do what you feel is right for your health care, for your well care, so you can be the person that you want to be.

[00:39:22.630] – Rachel

Absolutely. And a PT is a good guy to have on speed dial.

[00:39:26.520] – Allan

And this book is like having someone like that. So I would trust what's in this book over anything you're going to search on Google because this guy knows his stuff.

[00:39:37.650] – Rachel

That sounds awesome. Great interview. Great book.

[00:39:40.530] – Allan

I'll talk to you next week.

[00:39:42.490] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:39:43.600] – Allan

You too.

[00:39:44.420] – Rachel

Thanks.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

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

Thank you!

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:15.950] – Allan

Hey, Raz.

[00:03:17.250] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:19.420] – Allan

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

[00:03:25.240] – Rachel

Good.

[00:03:25.890] – Allan

Just catching up.

[00:03:28.050] – Rachel

Glad you're feeling better.

[00:03:29.780] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:03:31.300] – Rachel

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

[00:03:37.350] – Allan

How many days in a week are there?

[00:03:38.950] – Rachel

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

[00:04:22.550] – Allan

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

[00:04:26.030] – Rachel

Yeah, we're hitting them all.

[00:04:28.060] – Allan

Like shuttling kids to soccer practice.

[00:04:30.490] – Rachel

Exactly it.

[00:04:34.870] – Allan

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

[00:05:51.330] – Allan

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

[00:06:50.130] – Rachel

Awesome. That sounds great.

[00:06:52.020] – Allan

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

[00:06:55.480] – Rachel

Sure.

Episode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

[00:15:21.190] – Allan

Welcome back, Raz.

[00:15:22.830] – Rachel

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

[00:15:47.470] – Allan

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

[00:16:49.860] – Allan

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

[00:17:54.700] – Allan

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

[00:18:58.730] – Rachel

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

[00:20:04.180] – Allan

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

[00:21:13.850] – Allan

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

[00:22:17.630] – Rachel

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

[00:23:04.750] – Allan

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

[00:23:45.660] – Rachel

That's awesome.

[00:23:46.500] – Allan

Or really darn close, for sure.

[00:23:49.390] – Rachel

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

[00:23:55.060] – Allan

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

[00:24:55.380] – Rachel

That is right.

[00:24:56.460] – Allan

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

[00:26:13.180] – Rachel

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

[00:26:31.160] – Allan

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

[00:26:34.910] – Rachel

Rachel take care. Allan you too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

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

Thank you!

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Are your feelings blocking you from losing weight

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:17.230] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you doing?

[00:03:19.200] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:21.230] – Allan

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

[00:03:57.130] – Rachel

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

[00:04:24.420] – Allan

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

[00:04:36.060] – Rachel

No, me neither. Interesting.

[00:04:39.220] – Allan

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

[00:05:07.030] – Rachel

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

[00:05:11.590] – Allan

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

[00:05:18.030] – Rachel

Sure. 

Interview

[00:05:44.730] – Allan

Satyen. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:05:47.560] – Satyen

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

[00:05:50.480] – Allan

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

[00:06:47.830] – Satyen

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

[00:07:18.810] – Allan

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

[00:08:08.830] – Satyen

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

[00:09:27.250] – Satyen

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

[00:10:22.020] – Allan

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

[00:10:55.410] – Satyen

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

[00:12:06.550] – Satyen

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

[00:13:22.920] – Satyen

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

[00:14:35.390] – Satyen

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

[00:15:11.490] – Allan

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

[00:15:44.600] – Satyen

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

[00:16:57.170] – Satyen

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

[00:18:03.590] – Satyen

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

[00:19:11.330] – Allan

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

[00:19:28.790] – Satyen

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

[00:20:48.640] – Satyen

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

[00:21:03.940] – Allan

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

[00:21:10.940] – Satyen

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

[00:22:25.620] – Satyen

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

[00:23:01.370] – Allan

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

[00:23:09.490] – Satyen

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

[00:23:47.460] – Allan

My list would be pretty long, too.

[00:23:49.060] – Satyen

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

[00:25:00.660] – Satyen

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

[00:25:38.360] – Allan

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

[00:25:45.890] – Satyen

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

[00:26:27.640] – Allan

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

[00:26:37.540] – Satyen

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

Post Show/Recap

[00:26:51.010] – Allan

Welcome back. Ras.

[00:26:52.460] – Rachel

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

[00:27:29.990] – Allan

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

[00:28:34.930] – Allan

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

[00:28:58.830] – Rachel

Yeah.

[00:28:59.870] – Allan

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

[00:29:54.280] – Rachel

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

[00:30:55.420] – Allan

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

[00:31:08.950] – Rachel

why waste your time?

[00:31:10.380] – Allan

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

[00:32:01.880] – Allan

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

[00:32:33.410] – Rachel

That sounds awesome. Yeah, sounds really great.

[00:32:37.250] – Allan

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

[00:32:40.550] – Rachel

Take care, Allan.

[00:32:41.750] – Allan

You too.

[00:32:42.600] – Rachel

Thanks.

[00:32:43.380] – Allan

Bye.

[00:32:44.200] – Rachel

Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:21.050] – Allan

Hey, Ras, how are you?

[00:03:22.780] – Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:25.020] – Allan

I'm doing okay. We're getting packed up for our trip and heading back to the States for the wedding, Summer's wedding. So this is daughter number two. All kids married out. Two are going through divorces already. But the cycle of life.

[00:03:44.310] – Rachel

It happens.

[00:03:45.600] – Allan

It happens. It happens. And they'll be happy with it when they get done with it. But it is what it is. Anyway, so we're headed back. We'll see family. We'll do the wedding stuff. And then Tammy and I will spend a weekend together in that whole three week period of time traveling around doing stuff. And then we'll head back. Hopefully, it's just an uneventful get in a rental car, drive around, see everybody, have a good time, and then I'm back.

[00:04:14.790] – Rachel

That sounds wonderful. Yes. Well, it'll be nice to see your family and celebrate the wedding. It'll be a lovely time to make those connections again and then go back home to your retreat.

[00:04:29.920] – Allan

Yes. Beautiful place. And so this weekend we adopted another dog. There was a guy, he got married and they want to go on a long honeymoon, like six months, seven countries. And he had this dog and they were posting a picture of the dog. The dog and the dog looks, on the picture, it looked almost identical to our dog Buster. Angel passed not long ago. Buster's been by himself, the only dog. And then so we look at this dog and it could be Buster's little brother. I mean, it's just weird how close together these dogs look and how much they act alike and the whole thing. So anyway, we brought him over. His name is Love. Love will be with us six months or maybe forever. It's just when the guy gets back, or I guess at some point he'll decide if it's just better for Love to have a home, a steady home because he's going to want to travel, is what he was saying. So he was just like, Maybe can't. So we might have Love permanently or part time, but however it works, he and Buster initially were not seeing eye to eye.

[00:05:34.350] – Allan

They had a few doggy conversations and now they're getting along a lot better.

[00:05:39.930] – Rachel

Good. I'm glad they're getting along. That's awesome.

[00:05:44.410] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:05:45.950] – Rachel

Good. I mentioned last time that I had hit menopause, and that my…

[00:05:53.180] – Allan

It's not as… You've been running this ultra marathon for 50 some odd years. And then, yeah, you thought you were going to finish line.

[00:06:00.680] – Rachel

Yeah, I need a T shirt to celebrate this with.

[00:06:04.970] – Allan

Yeah. So my guess is who's got my kid, dude, where's my kidney?

[00:06:09.840] – Rachel

Yeah, exactly. But it's part of this. My thyroid is broken and so I've been taking this medicine for my thyroid. And I told you that I have to take it in the morning and then wait 30 minutes before I can eat or drink anything. And if you know me, coffee goes in my body the first time in the morning. If I wake up, coffee is going in. And so this 30 minute leg time is quite a challenge for me, to put it mildly. But I decided that I would start doing yoga in the morning for that 30 minute period. And truthfully, it is difficult. It's a hard habit to break, but I have started doing yoga as soon as I get up and I feel great. It feels really good. I really need the stretching. I need the gentle way to wake up and the movement, and it's really hard to change habits. I'm not even going to kid you, but I am making changes and seeing progress, and it feels pretty good.

[00:07:06.850] – Allan

Awesome. That's outstanding.

[00:07:08.560] – Rachel

Yeah, thanks.

[00:07:09.940] – Allan

Great. Now, there's one other thing I wanted to say. I was on a podcast episode recently because I told you guys I was doing some of this. Well, the name of the podcast is called direction, not perfection. And the host of that is Lindsay House. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/lindsey. That's L I N D S E Y. And you can hear my episode, which was 225. And basically we talk about Fit For Task. But I give a lot of tips in that. And so it's again, it's the name of the podcast is direction, not perfection podcast. You can find it anywhere that you like to listen to podcasts. But if you'd like to go to a link where I have it on the web, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/lindsey.

[00:07:55.040] – Rachel

Cool. That sounds good. I love that Fit for Task stuff. That would be great.

[00:07:58.850] – Allan

All right. Well, Rachel, are you ready to have a conversation with Katy Bowman?

[00:08:03.050] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:09:12.930] – Allan

Katy, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:09:15.890] – Katy

Thanks for having me back years later.

[00:09:18.240] – Allan

Years later. I did miss a book. I apologize for that. But interestingly, we were having this conversation before. You're in Costa Rica and I'm in Panama. So quite literally, we're probably not more than 150 miles away from each other at this point. So it's interesting where you find yourself. The name of the book is Rethink Your Position: Reshape Your Exercise, Yoga, and Everyday Movement One Part at a Time. And I love movement and personal trainer and nutrition coach and doing all that thing. But what was really interesting about your book as I got into it was it was completely backwards to everything I've ever been coached or told in my entire life.

[00:10:06.250] – Katy

Wow. I want to know more about that.

[00:10:10.080] – Allan

Because everything else always starts from the ground. And works up. Your book started from the top and worked down. And at first I was like, okay, I'm really interested in why Katy would do that. Obviously, I've read the book, so I know why Katy did that. Will you tell me, why did you start from the top and work down rather than the floor and work up?

[00:10:38.730] – Katy

That's the first time I've done that. I usually always do it the other way, like so many other people. But to mix things up a little bit is like the general answer reading is such a sedentary activity. I knew the reader was going to be engaged with this material for the next few days or weeks or however long it takes you to read a book. And I wanted to start off right away with a movement that could be done in volume while you are reading the book to make my point that movement is something that transcends the experience of exercise. It can go on to an activity like reading. And that movement was the head ramp. It was a head and shoulder adjustment. And so for that reason, I decided to go from the top down.

[00:11:28.780] – Allan

Yeah. And that's what was so cool is you literally were changing my behavior while I was reading your book.

[00:11:35.930] – Katy

That was the plan.

[00:11:39.360] – Allan

Okay. Your evil plan came true. Or actually not evil, but… Okay. Why is body alignment so important?

[00:11:49.710] – Katy

I do think we tend to think of posture as something that affects how you look. The reason that you do it is for how you present to the eyes. But alignment is different than posture in that it's about the way things work. And so our body, not to get too overly mechanistic, is not a machine. It's biological, it's organic, it grows, it responds, it adapts, but it still operates similar to machinery in a lot of different ways. And so the alignment of our body is important for the same reason. The alignment of our car is important, or the reason that you don't run your coffee maker on an angle counter to 30 degrees is because the orientation of things affects the way things work. And that goes for your car and that goes for your coffee maker, and it goes for your body as well. And that's why alignment matters quite simply. That's the most simple way I can explain it is there's a lot of things happening in the body. There's a lot of physical experiences not so pleasurable. The way we view aging, a lot of times has more to do with the orientation of our parts, the way we've organized our body relative to gravity and the frequency with which we do that, it can have negative outcomes.

[00:13:19.730] – Katy

Just knowing like, oh, you have some options here when it comes to the orientation of your parts, that's the message that I'm trying to get across.

[00:13:27.870] – Allan

Yeah. Now I'm on an island and we get a lot of surfers and hitchhikers and whatnot. I watch them walk. As I'm walking to work, I'm around them, I see them. I know you're a people person, watch your person too, because it's like fascinating to watch how people move. I'm watching them carry a very heavy pack on their back or a very heavy pack on their stomach or both. They're like camels walking through the streets. But one thing I've noticed, and this is very young people, I'm not talking about people in their 40s and 50s, but people who are in their 20s and I'm thinking, Wow, you keep doing this and 20, 30 years from now, this is going to be fantastic in a terrible way. But this is this thing called tech neck.

[00:14:15.130] – Allan

Where they're at their phone or on their phone so much with basically their shoulders hunched forward, their chest is compressed, their elbows are down, their head is down. And it creates this thing technique, I guess, is what it's been classed as. Can you talk a little bit about that and how someone who… Well, quite frankly, we almost have to be on our phones because that's how we communicate with everybody now. And nobody shows up where they're supposed to. My generation is like, Hey, I'll meet you at the restaurant at six o'clock. We all just showed up at the restaurant at six o'clock. We didn't think about it again. Now it's like, No, let's go to a different restaurant. Now there's a whole chain and we're all going to go somewhere else. And we never make it to the restaurant we were originally going to go to. That's quite normal. So as we get older, we're still doing this and we're changing our head structure, our neck structure, and the whole kinetic chain. Let's talk about tech neck and what we can do to manage that.

[00:15:12.600] – Katy

Well, tech neck is just a rebranding. It feels like a rebranding to me. That posture is old posture. It's an upper body forward curve and a neck. The upper body rounds forward. It's called hyperkifosis. But the neck really bends back in the opposite direction. It's like hyperlardosis. So you get this deepening of the upper back and the neck curves that is similar to what we would have found in older populations over a longer period of time. That wasn't tech neck, that was just hyperkifosis and hyperlardosis. But we are seeing that body position now not show up when someone is in their late 80s. We're seeing it in teenagers. We're seeing it in 20 year olds who are otherwise active. Maybe that's why it gets a rebranding because it's no longer associated with age or a particular level of physical robusticity. It's just a shape that is brought about when you look down at a device quite a lot, you get that same set of curves. And to go back to that first question, why does it matter? Is it simply about how it looks? And no, not really. It's about I in the book, I try to show swallowing is affected by this position.

[00:16:31.100] – Katy

Space for the lungs to deploy fully is affected by this. Spinal loads to the disk and to the bones of the spinal column are affected by this. Shoulders and the way that they can move are affected by this position. This position, this tech neck, forward head, position of the body ends up reducing the total amount of movement of things like your shoulders and your head. And it's not talking about the fact that you just drop into the position. It's when your body strengthens and stiffens in this position and you can no longer stand up straight. You can no longer slide your head back because everything is so stiff and tense and habitually in this position that it ends up affecting how things work from the head to the rib cage, breathing, swallowing, and then the way things feel, achy in the upper back, achy in the headaches and things like that. So it's important to realize that the environment that we're choosing to be in quite often is setting us up for some of these issues. But as I try to point out in the book, your phone doesn't require that you stand like that.

[00:17:53.730] – Katy

That's just the way we use our phones mindlessly. So that's another one of the early exercises also. I figure you're going to be spending a lot of time reading this book right now and also if you're like most people on some device. So you can adjust those curves quite simply. It's not required. We're just not being thoughtful about positioning our body when we're on the phone, like we might be thoughtful about positioning our body in other situations. We have mindless phone tech use habits, and it goes all the way into the body. So it's just developing more mindful physical practice around all the things that we do, including when you're using your phone. You're going to do those same upper back and head adjustments. And then you might have to hold your phone up a little higher, but so be it. It makes using your phone better for you.

[00:18:45.420] – Allan

I want to take one step back because, like I said, you changed my behavior by putting the head and neck in the front and then working your way down. And you gave us this exercise in the book of basically bringing your head back in alignment. Can you talk us through that?

[00:19:04.890] – Katy

Sure. It might be easiest for folks to try it against a wall for those listening. You don't have to have a wall, but standing against the wall helps. And if you reach your hand back behind you and if you feel where there's a part of your rib cage, the middle back where a heart rate monitor strap would sit or a bra strap sits, that goes against the wall. It's touching the wall. So your upper middle back is against the wall. And for many people, that would mean their head is now off in front of them. So the exercise is to keeping that middle back touching the wall. Low back doesn't have to touch, just the middle back. Sliding your head back towards the wall as well without tipping your head back. So you're not tipping your head back where your chin lifts. It's sliding the head back. But because of the way the vertebrae are shaped in the upper back and the neck, sliding your head back also means sliding your head up. So if you think of lifting your head up towards the ceiling, that often brings your head back on its own. So you're doing two directions.

[00:20:14.610] – Katy

You're actually doing three, but we'll just make it easy. Your head is going back and your head is going up towards the ceiling at the same time. And then what that does is it reduces that excessive curve in the upper back and it reduces the excessive opposing direction curve in the neck or what's called lardosis. You get two curve adjustments for one movement, which is, again, why I led with it. It is such an impactful, simple move that requires no equipment that you can do no matter the activity you're doing. So why bury the lead? Put it in chapter one. Put it in the first part of chapter one.

[00:20:52.180] – Allan

And unlike your grandfather, you'll be taller for it.

[00:20:55.270] – Katy

And that's right. My dad. That was my dad.

[00:20:57.320] – Allan

Your dad. Your dad. That's right.

[00:20:59.780] – Katy

So yes, and showing how this changes height. The book is done in essays, so you can really drop into it wherever you want. You don't have to read it through. But if improved swallowing or addressing why maybe the shoulders aren't functioning isn't that motivating. You can go simply through, you'll be taller by the time you're done with this exercise.

[00:21:20.170] – Allan

There you go. I love that. Now, you wrote a sentence in your book, and then you actually re-repeated it because it's probably the most important sentence that's ever been written for someone who's really looking at the way to maintain their body, maintain their joints. And I think this should be printed out and put in every gym in America and around the world because it is such an important statement. I'm actually going to probably end up saying it twice myself. The ligaments are not the breaks of the joint. The muscles are.

[00:21:55.860] – Allan

Could you take a moment to talk through that? Because when I read that sentence, it was the same thing. I was like, Whoa, that's important. This means something. And so many people are going through pain of movement because they don't understand this fundamental thing.

[00:22:16.400] – Katy

Right. We're not really taught movement. We're not modeled moving well. And so it's no wonder. But yet we are still fairly dynamic. As sedentary as we are, our bodies are our vehicles, our vessels are moving around from point A to point B. So what that statement means is, what's the best way to explain it? You're using your joints all the time to pick things up and set things down. Talking about your arms, your legs are also essentially doing the same thing as your arms. Only the thing that it's picking up and setting down is your torso weight and your arms, the rest of your body. Musculoskeletal muscles are contracting and relaxing. And when they can do it with control, when you're able to generate enough force to move you and to lower you, well, the muscle does the work throughout the entire arc of, let's say, a movement, getting up out of a chair, walking down a flight of stairs. Different muscles are doing different things at different times, but some are holding and lifting parts, some are slowly lowering parts and gently setting you down. That would be the optimal situation where your muscles are able to carry, yes, your total body weight, but really the way muscles work is that each set of muscles are carrying the weight of various segments to and fro.

[00:23:44.850] – Katy

So you might be able to be like, look, I can stand. I can carry my body weight. I can move across the floor. Yes. But if you're walking with a really heavy landing, like every foot strike is a thunk or a thud, you've probably read it many times, walking is just controlled falling. I disagree with that. I think that a lot of people are in a controlled falling state, but that would be an example of your muscles are not strong enough to carry you through a gait cycle. So there's these heavy landings. And instead, what you're using are the ligaments. You're using more passive connective tissues. And some connective tissue like fascia can generate a little bit of force, but it's not in the same way that you don't want to use your connective tissue in lieu of your musculoskeletal muscle. You want to be using that as a primary force generator with everything else supporting. Right now, we're getting a lot of crash landings in all of the movement that we do. And that means that these tissues that don't have the same adaptive property as muscle… One of muscle's amazing defining properties is that it adapts to load and gets bigger.

[00:25:01.400] – Katy

It gets more voluminous. It's like, what are you doing with your body? How can I assist? Let me feel that. Let me increase in mass so that you do that better and more safely. We're rarely using our musculoskeletal system. We are using the more connective tissue that does not have that same, let me feel what you're doing and adapt and change. It has to take it. So like a seat belt in your car, if you're going fast towards the wall, the best thing for the car parts and the body inside of it is to apply the brake. That's the musculoskeletal system. What we tend to do is hit the wall and depend on the seat belt to stop the impact. And if you imagine doing that in a car over and over again, not only would you total the car, which is a joint, so to speak, the seat belt, the ligament, begins to after a repetitive load in that way, and it does not have the properties to adapt like muscle does, you begin to thin or fray or otherwise damage the ligament, loosen, however you want to think about it. And then there's some people who have connective tissue issues or disorders who already have connective tissue that is more lax than others.

[00:26:30.840] – Katy

And that group tends to use their ligaments for deceleration. So in a culture where people are so sedentary or when they do move, it's so repetitive, everyone, whether you have a ligament issue that already gives you loose… Loose is the easiest way to understand it. Or you've already done some damage to ligaments. In either case, learning how to use your muscloskeletal system better with more control over a greater range of motion will benefit not only your musculoskeletal parts, your joints, the part that tend to hurt, it also makes you more metabolically healthy. You end up addressing those metabolical reasons that we are moving more when you approach it that way. So yeah, thanks for bringing that up because I do love that sentiment.

[00:27:25.330] – Allan

And the way I broke this down myself was I see people who know they have a problem with their knees, and so they do quarter squats or half squats. And that's using the ligaments as breaks. And that's part of the reasons why they're still hurting. They want to do something. They want to squat. And they're like, just get down into the squat. Keep your weight reasonable, your load reasonable. Get down below parallel. And now it's your glutes that have to fire because they're the only breaks left. And it's a lot easier to do that than to really focus on your quadriceps or the breaks because, again, you end up with the ligaments taking the brunt of that. And the walking downstairs, I liked how you went through the process of explaining how we can drop our hip and basically, again, use our glutes as the primary muscle that's the break and then holding us as we bring the other foot forward. So can you talk just a little about that, about how we can focus on those muscles and use them the right way. In the book, I think you did it brilliant, and you did a little exercise you called the pelvic lift.

[00:28:37.360] – Katy

List.

[00:28:38.000] – Allan

List. Okay. Can you talk just a little bit about that?

[00:28:42.580] – Katy

Well, culturally, we share a lot of movement habits. The biggest one is that most people listening to this, grew up in a culture where chairs are fairly ubiquitous, which means we're not really comfortable dropping our hips down below the height of our knees. Our cars, our desks at school, our desks at work, the chairs in our home, getting down to the bed, our toilet, everything is at the height of the hips getting to the same altitude or elevation as the knee. So what's happened is we are a culture that is stronger, more used to using the front of the thigh. We don't really use the back of the thigh. We don't use our glutes, we don't use our hamstrings, nearly to the same degree that we use the front of our body. You can see it in standing posture is when the hips rest forward, we're even standing at rest. We're using the muscles on the front of the thigh to hold us up, and the back of the thigh and the glutes don't do much for our entire life. And so for many people, knee pain is going to resonate. And also knee pain while taking the stairs, usually going upstairs, but downstairs is usually the killer.

[00:29:58.750] – Katy

A lot of people can go up, but they can't come down. And I'm trying to flesh out why that is. It's because when you're trying to lower your body down something, we come with all these joints to share the work distribution over our body. Well, we don't share it. When you think of the human skeleton, think of the pelvis. Think of the… If you've never held a femur, which is that upper thighbone in your hand, it's massive. And it's massive because it has to be able to withstand the tension that is placed upon it by these musclesthat can carry our body weight with every step, but have never really had to do it. We've given it to the quads, and the knees are like, I can't carry you down this hill. I've carried you every other step that you've taken in your entire life. And I'm sorry, we don't go downhill anymore. That's a little cartoon, but that's really what the narrative is. We can't do it. That body part is tapping out of going downhill, which is fine because that's not really your downhill primary mover. You've got these massive lateral hip muscles that have really great leverage that come with strong bones that could have strong bones.

[00:31:12.670] – Katy

If you would use this piston like action, I'm using my hands because we can see each other, but those listening can't. There's a piston action to your size. When you have one leg that's free and you drop one hip when your pelvis lists to one side, that is an easy way to get your heavy mass, adults are heavy, down something without having to use the knees. And so a large part of what I do is say, let me reintroduce you or introduce you for the first time to large parts of your body that have been pretty much unused most of your life, even if you're already an active person. I have Olympian athletes who will come and go through this same process of having these major sedentary spots within their otherwise fit and active body. So you can be full body sedentary or you can be part by part sedentary. And learning how to list, again, is one of the most important things we can do to preserve our knee joints, but more importantly, to preserve the activities we'd like to do with our legs that our knees are tapping out of.

[00:32:27.380] – Allan

You mentioned earlier the chair. Some people might argue, the best invention ever, because I get to sit down and it's easy and then I can get back up. I can watch what I want to watch and do what I want to do, sitting there comfortably for hours and hours. And then you mentioned my favorite workout implement, I think it might be yours too, the floor.

[00:32:51.120] – Katy

The floor is great. It's right there. It's just right there. It's always underfoot.

[00:32:55.780] – Allan

Yes. Let's talk about the floor and how this can be a big part of your overall fitness and movement. Just getting.

[00:33:04.240] – Katy

Down to it. Again, it's one of those things. It's always around for the most part. We've done a disservice to ourselves by putting all of our understanding of movement on this thing called exercise, where you go to the place and you use the thing, the equipment, and that's it.

[00:33:23.410] – Allan

And usually sitting there, too.

[00:33:25.470] – Katy

Oftentimes, a lot of times people will take their exercise sitting down. Again, because they're not paying attention to the fact that the legs have lost the ability to hold up the body for a long period of time. And the idea is, but I'd still like to exercise, which is great, but functionally speaking, there's a lot of experiences that you carrying yourself around on your body weight opens up. And so because we've pulled fitness a lot of times out of the practical because we see it as something I need to do 30 minutes for my heart or my lungs or for my cholesterol or for my resting blood pressure, we forget that movement is a feedback loop of when you move your body in a certain way, you become more able to move your body in that way. And that exercise is great medicine in that if you can't currently carry your body well on body parts like your legs or your arms, you can't use your limbs. They're not able to carry your weight around. You can use movement as a tool to restore that ability in many cases. And that's a much richer definition of movement versus using it, taking it and sitting down.

[00:34:42.480] – Katy

So anyway, to go back to your question about the floor, it's very practical to get down to the floor and get back up again. That is a major exercise, if you will, in that it mobilizes multiple joints. It challenges the muscles of many parts to be able to get back up. It's a very nutritious food, so to speak. There's a lot of nutrient density to that move, and yet it's very hard to make us do something like that. So floor exercises are great because there's always this period of time where you have to get down and get back up. But just getting to the floor and getting back up can be an exercise itself. Just getting down to the floor, sitting in three different positions while you're down there and getting back up is equally an exercise that you adapt to, just like anything else that you're calling exercise that uses similar muscles. So get more familiar with the floor, not only during exercise time, but during non exercise time. If you take in entertainment in the evening, get down on the floor while you do it. Once you're down on the floor, you will feel just the pressure.

[00:35:56.260] – Katy

Chairs aren't only problematic for their geometry, that they reduce the full range of motion of our parts, they're often usually covered in fluff, which means we are missing out on pressure. Pressure itself is another movement our bodies are not only accustomed to throughout the human timeline, but need. We have all these sensors all over our body that need physical pressure, and we've made the world quite soft. So get on the floor and just roll around on the floor, roll from your back to your front. It's very similar to what happens when you're getting a massage. It's not as enjoyable, I'll be truthful, but it uses more of you. It's tenderizing your body. It's breaking up. Same thing that you do to other meat when you're trying to break up some of that overgrown connection that's happened between parts. We need movement, we need pressure to be able to deal with that. Yeah.

[00:36:49.960] – Allan

And you said functional, and I think that's why I really like this is because I can tell you a story. My wife, at the time, she's my girlfriend, her son was dating this woman who had a daughter. And for one reason or another, the daughter was just terrified of me, just terrified. And I wanted to fix this. And I'm like, Okay, how do I fix a relationship with a child? And I'm like, Well, I'm not going to fix it by being an adult. I'm going to fix it by being a child.

[00:37:21.390] – Allan

And so I literally took my laptop and I put on Sponge Bob, which I knew was her favorite. And I went over on the floor and I set my laptop down. I started watching Sponge Bob. And she came over and sat next to me. And we sat there and watched a few episodes of Sponge Bob together, and it changed everything. And so when you start looking at, Okay, what if I fall? What if someone else falls? What if I want to get on the floor and crawl around with my grandchild or me now, I've got some dogs and one of them has hip dysplasia, and so she can't move around a whole lot. I make a point once a day in the morning while my coffee is brewing to go sit on the floor and just hang out with Angel. She loves it. It's like, I'm at her level. I'm down there with her. And it's a tile floor. It's not comfortable. But it helps because what I found is that I can just get down and I can get back up and then I can get back down. And so it's not exercise, it's movement, it's function.

[00:38:21.880] – Allan

And me having a great relationship with my granddaughter or having a great relationship with my dog or just knowing if I found myself on the floor, it's no big deal to just get back up. I think that's really important. And so I am glad the floor is there, and I think people should use it more.

[00:38:40.640] – Katy

I agree.

[00:38:41.830] – Allan

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

[00:38:51.280] – Katy

Well, I imagine that the easy answers would be intake excellent dietary nutrition, regular movement, and good sleep. Those are the three, but I imagine those are three are given all the time. So I'd want to modify those three. And one would be… I mean, I want to modify one of the three movement because that's my field. And one would be get movement every day, but one, make sure some of it's outside. Expose yourself to some nature through your physical movement. That could be doing your exercise outside. That could be just taking a walk outside. That could be gardening. It could be spending time with animals or kids outside. It's this idea that you are consciously going, I need to move my body outside a little bit every day, which is just a level up from move every day. Another one would be to add community, to add some community to your physical time. You're going to be most supported. You're going to be able to move more when you try to overlap your need for movement with your need for others. And the pay off is, like you said, there's more to movement than just health.

[00:40:14.350] – Katy

There is the relationship aspect of it. And when you get down to the floor and invite other people to get down there with you, you're changing the movement culture a little bit. And then the third step for me is I like to be grateful. I always am most grateful for my health when it's poorest, when something hurts, if I've injured something is when I long most for when my body felt really capable and felt great, which seems like it was just yesterday or three days ago, whatever it was from the time of the injury. Those moments remind me to check in daily with appreciation for all that you can do. It's really easy to focus on all the things that you can't, what you feel like you've lost, this way that you feel that's bad. We need to give more attention and awareness to how much of us feels good and how capable and able we are. Even if we're not choosing to use it all the time, it's a form of gratitude practice. It's just giving a little bit of gratitude to yourself every day. I'm so glad that I don't hurt today or make my back hurts.

[00:41:30.090] – Katy

I'm so glad my shoulders feel so great. Let me just move them around a little bit. That little gratitude for your physical capability, totally able to be scaled to what you can do, I do think is a part of our whole wellbeing, physical and mental.

[00:41:45.100] – Allan

Thank you. Katie, if someone wanted to learn more about you and your book, we got lots of books, but your current book, Rethink Your Position, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:41:55.230] – Katy

You can go to rypbook.com or your local bookstore. And you can get it any place books are found. But if you come to my website, I think there's a discount code for podcast guests.

[00:42:08.920] – Allan

Okay, well, we'll get that offline and I'll make sure to list it in the show notes. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/590, and I'll be sure to have a link there. Katie, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness,again.

[00:42:23.470] – Katy

Thank you for having me. I'm 40 plus. I love it.

Here is a discount code for 25% off Rethink Your Position if purchased via nutritiousmovement.com.

Code: RETHINK25 (active 5/1/23-12/31/23)
Direct link to book: 

Rethink Your Position: Reshape Your Exercise, Yoga, and Everyday Movement, One Part at a Time—PAPERBACK

Post Show/Recap

[00:42:36.400] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:42:38.800] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, I love listening about posture. It's such an important reminder because I do spend quite a bit of my own time hunched over. When I eat, I eat hunched over. When I do dishes at the sink, I'm hunched over. And of course, I'm on my phone like everybody else, hunched over. So it's good to have the reminder to be a little bit more cognizant of my posture periodically.

[00:43:03.880] – Allan

I have the workstation, it's a movable desk. It rises up and goes down and I have my camera. So if I'm on a call, it's up high above the monitor. I probably could put a little higher and it would be better. But basically I'd like the monitor up. And so right now it's generally at eye contact level. And so that helps a lot. But I do read a lot and I'm on my laptop a lot. I'm not on a phone a lot. A lot of people get on their phones. I don't like reading anything on a phone. I just don't.

[00:43:33.360] – Rachel

It's too small.

[00:43:34.250] – Allan

I don't like typing on a phone. I can type about 120 words per minute. So when I get on a phone, it's like I feel like a caveman. And so I okay, Allan, you are a caveman because you don't want to use the phone. Go back to your computer, caveman. But it's easier. It allows me to have a better posture, a slightly better posture than I would if I was on the phone. Given the amount of time that I spent, if I was going to read a book, a digital book, and I'm going to read the heads down. And so it was just funny when she first starts the book, it's like, I know you're going to be hunched over reading this book or looking at it on the screen, like on your Kindle or something. And so I want you to do these exercises. Suddenly, your whole… You just change. You're like, Okay, crap. Now I've got to do this crap. And as I went through her book, I did, which was great. And it was just interesting that she and the Starretts and Jill Miller all came out with books around the same time because it's a similar topic.

[00:44:34.660] – Allan

Our bodies were made to move. They were made to move certain ways. And if we move the right way, we're doing the right things for our body, we're going to be healthier and fitter as we age. And things that you see happen to other people, particularly when it's posture related, you see it like the hunch back women and the old rickety men that can't straighten their legs. There's a way to age that way. And if you're spending a lot of time on your phone, you're probably already experiencing some of that. If you get headaches, if you notice, okay, there's backache, it's probably a posture problem. So working on the posture is going to go a long way towards eliminating pain or preventing it in the first place.

[00:45:20.060] – Rachel

Well, she mentioned standing up against the wall to realign and feel where your head and neck are sitting. And you had just recently mentioned about maybe getting on the floor instead or on a workout bench or something.

[00:45:32.320] – Allan

Yeah, I can tell if I've been reading a book on my laptop, it's about 6 to 10 hours that I have my head lunch down because my laptop is sitting on a desk and not raised, I notice I go to lay down on the bench and my head doesn't immediately just go down and rest on the bench. There's a little gap there. I'm like, okay, I've been looking down too much. I need to go to my office, raise my desk up and spend more time looking up. It might be more uncomfortable to type that way, but so be it. I'm reading a book, I'm not typing. So just look for ways that you can change your work, change your posture, change your movement. It's going to go a long way.

[00:46:15.960] – Rachel

Well, like Katy had mentioned, too, with the tech neck, with that forward leaning head and your shoulders hunched over, she mentions it's not good for swallowing. It compresses the lungs, so you're not giving deep breaths. And with the shoulders in, which I do also, I have my shoulders in quite a bit, it just restricts your movement. It just doesn't feel very good. And just notice, be body aware and feel when this is happening, and then just make the cognizant change to do something about it, to stand up straight or stand against the wall or lay on the floor and try and get yourself real aligned. Yeah.

[00:46:53.480] – Allan

Well, there's a productivity trick or hack called the palmodoro method. W hat the Palmodoro method is, is this concept that we really weren't designed to sit and focus on something for hours and hours and hours. Our brain isn't wired that way. Our bodies aren't wired that way. We're wired to move and look for differences and keep moving. So if you're going to find yourself sitting and working, what this palmodoro method is, is where you would set a Timer for 25 minutes and then you would focus. You wouldn't take phone calls, you wouldn't answer emails. You don't do anything but focus on that one task for that 25 minutes. When your alarm goes off at 25 minutes, you get up and move around for 5 minutes.

[00:47:40.670] – Allan

And what they found is that you can get more work done in an hour taking 10 minutes off to five minute rest breaks. You get more work done in that hour and it's higher quality work.

[00:47:55.370] – Allan

So when you say, I don't have time to exercise, I don't have time to do stretches. You do. You just have to structure the way you think and work a little bit differently. And the Palmadoro method is a great way to say, Okay, 25 minutes, focus, get this done. You may not get it all done, but 25 minutes over, stop and get to moving. Stretch out, move around, do something, walk. Just get yourself out, work on all that, and then come back and focus on that task and you'll get it done. But you'll get more done in that hour than you would have if you just sat there and tried to grind it out.

[00:48:31.430] – Rachel

That sounds awesome. That sounds like a good reminder.

[00:48:35.030] – Allan

Yeah. And there's even apps you can put on your phone or on your computer that every 25 minutes just runs the numbers for you. So you go through your work day, you're like, yeah, I've got to sit here for eight to 10 hours. Well, set your Timer, set your alarm, do your 25 minutes. What's the task? I got to get done. Focus on the first one first and then just run through them and just look for ways to do shortcuts. I've got another one for you here. It's an application I use every day, every week. Sometimes it saves me hours a week. And it's called Text Expander, and it's an app. You do have to pay for it. It's on my computer. And what it does is if there's something I type a lot, like my signature on an email, or maybe there's just a phrase like when I'm going to invite someone to the podcast, I have a template that I use. Or when I'm going to do my show plan, I have a template that I send out. Instead of typing all that stuff up or going and finding it and copying and pasting, I just do hot key stroke.

[00:49:33.800] – Allan

So I've got a little system where I know what those key strokes are. And so three or four key strokes and it types the whole thing. And so because I'm not having to type it each time, it's saving me that amount of time that it would take for me to type it. And so each week, I get a report from them. This week it was you saved 24 minutes, and this is 60 weeks in a row of using this app. And so this app has saved me hours and hours and hours over the course of the last year plus just not having to type the same things or going and finding it on another document and then copying and pasting just to save the typing. And so it's a lot fewer key strokes, a lot less time on the typewriter or on the keyboard. Yeah. Again, caveman. But it's just a lot less time doing that stuff. And so I can get a lot more done. And it's really up to you as how much memory you have in your head as how many key strokes you'd use. You can leave a cheat sheet somewhere.

[00:50:36.780] – Allan

This is like, okay, here's all my codes. Here's the things. So I know my hot codes to do. But literally, once you get it set up, every time you find yourself typing the same thing again, you can just make it a text clip and text expander will do the work for you. And so that's just another one where you're saying, okay, it's hard for me to get enough time to do something. Well, if this thing saves you 24 minutes in a week, well, that's a workout.

[00:51:05.980] – Rachel

Yeah, that's a lot. That's great. Super cool. Yeah.

[00:51:10.770] – Allan

All right. I guess with that, I'll talk to you next week, Rachel.

[00:51:14.640] – Rachel

Sounds good. Take care.

[00:51:16.210] – Allan

You, too.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

Dynamic Aging with Katy Bowman

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:19.710] – Allan

Hey, Ras. Long time no see.

[00:03:23.870] – Rachel

Right. How's it going, Allan?

[00:03:24.920] – Allan

Yeah, it's going again because I'm taking the trip back to the States and there might be some disruptions of when I can record when I can't. We've decided to record two of our sections at the same time. So we were just talking a few minutes ago and now we're here again. So we're going to go ahead and jump into this episode with Marjory Wildcraft.

[00:03:45.930] – Rachel

Perfect.

Interview

[00:04:06.190] – Allan

Marjory, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:04:09.110] – Marjory

Hi. Thanks Allan. Appreciate you having me on.

[00:04:12.120] – Allan

The name of your book is called The Grow System. True Health, Wealth and Happiness Come From the Ground.

[00:04:18.860] – Marjory

Yeah, I actually have a copy look at that.

[00:04:24.050] – Allan

What was really interesting in it is I've had other people on, we talked about growing our own food and the value, some of the value of doing that, but okay, fine. I do a little bit of herbs in my kitchen window sill and that's great. I can throw that on my food. The step of saying that I'm going to produce a large percentage of what I eat, it can kind of seem a little overwhelming. But I think your book does a really good job of breaking down that process of how we get there.

[00:04:52.690] – Marjory

Yeah, well, there's this prevailing myth. It's almost like a story that kind of like a lot of the other stories that are going around throughout the human population that are just not true. And one is that it's really difficult to grow food or only migrant workers do it or whatever. I actually had a podcast series with several dozen extremely high level, high level executives with divisions of 2000 people or high tech entrepreneurs with 25 and $50 million budgets. And the characteristic was that they all grew some of their own food and every one of them said that was the most pleasurable part of their day, every day. So it's a myth and that you, you know, or you're going to work really hard and all you're going to get is a tomato. You can actually produce about half your own food very easily in a very reasonable amount of time. So we'll talk about that some more.

[00:05:47.300] – Allan

Yeah, we absolutely will. Now, one of the interesting things you put here is you say the five keys to true wealth. And these were interesting to me because I don't think people think of farmers as being wealthy. So if I quit my day job and started farming, I don't know how far that would get me. But you have a great point. Can you talk about the five keys to true wealth?

[00:06:12.860] – Marjory

Sure. When I talk about wealth, most people immediately are thinking or stocks and bonds or gold or financial instruments, the equity in my home. And that's actually one form of wealth, but it's really the least significant form. And the number one, you're going to appreciate this with the Fitness Over 40 podcast. Your number one form of wealth is health. Your health, right? Let's say you've got billions of dollars but you're tied to an oxygen IV thing and you can't move. Like what good is money? So health I would say, is your number one form. Your whole worldview comes through the health of your physical body. So if you're sick, no matter what's going on, that overlays all of your experience. But if you're healthy and vibrant and happy so that, I would say is the number one form of wealth. The second form of wealth and people don't I think people started to realize this during the COVID experience and that is your family having people that you have been involved with all of your life or all of their life. In the case of your kids that know you from up and down and when you were married and from when you were divorced and from when you did this and then can help you through all those years and remember or piece that together or be there for you in the 04:00 in the morning when something happens.

[00:07:33.220] – Marjory

Or to share that graduation, or that you just got a blue belt in Jiu Jitsu or whatever. To share your celebrated wins and your losses. That family is a form of wealth. You can't buy that. You can't buy that anywhere, right? In fact, that is a big problem for people who are extremely wealthy. It's finding someone who can genuinely be in their life for them, right? Another form of wealth is an extension of your family and that's your community. So if you have people in your life, your neighbors one of my favorite stories is about some families that we all really hung out together and we formed a group and I was as comfortable in every one of their kitchens as I was in my own. We spent that much time together and did that much stuff together. And one time I got a big laceration on my leg and I mean it was just one phone call and we had people there to watch the kids while my husband got me to the hospital. Or one time I got a trailer full of tomatoes and I mean it was only 15 minutes and I organized a whole group where we had a bunch of us canning those tomatoes up and everybody went home with two cases of tomato sauce.

[00:08:44.710] – Marjory

And again, it's an extension of family and the birthday parties and the trading of good things. You've got extra eggs, they got extra squash, taking on challenges of like city hall says this but we're like we want that or whatever it is, right? Having community that you deal with, the fourth form of wealth is actually doing meaningful work. And this is even regardless of whether you're retired or not, that's kind of irrelevant. I think all of us want to work. There's no such thing. I think if somebody just sits around and does nothing or I don't think they're going to be alive much longer if that's what they've been reduced to, doing something really meaningful. I've one time had an acquaintance and he was an elder gentleman, and he went to work for the IRS. And I'm like, Ian, you got to be crazy. Like, what are you doing? It's a survival job. And I said, there is no ever any need to do a survival job. You are totally destroying your own dignity by doing that. I said, that's ridiculous. You should never do a survival job, right? Even if it's a job you feel like you have to do for money, there has to be some are you helping your coworkers?

[00:09:57.300] – Marjory

Is it benefiting the world in some way? And the more you have work that's meaningful that you feel you're contributing, then the more fun it is, the less it is work and the more it is why you get up every day. And that is a form of wealth. Again, that's something that just can't be bought. Sometimes that takes a lot of soul searching. Sometimes in our midlife, we lose track of one thing that was real important and then we're in this free period for a while before we find the next thing that is it. But having something that really is me. And again, I really appreciated, regardless of the COVID experience and what that really was, it was a great wake up call for a lot of people. Like my accountant, they got really shorthanded. And I said, what's up, Don? And he says, well, you know, some of our team realized they just didn't really want to be accountants. God bless them. Hopefully they're doing what it is that they truly want to do. So the fourth form of wealth is doing meaningful work. So we have health, your health, your family, your community, doing meaningful work.

[00:11:02.550] – Marjory

And then the fifth one is almost an encompassing of all of it, and that's living a life of purpose. And so, yes, we all go through changes and different things, but knowing why you're here and living purposefully, this also starts after 40 we start looking more at legacy. What are we leaving behind? What have we done? What have we contributed? And more and more we start to live a life of purpose of every day I get up and I'm like, what is my purpose today or in any situation? What can I do here to better this situation? And again, that's not something you can't buy any of those things. And I will note that growing your own food in a backyard space fulfills all the five forms of well, first of all, you're going to get healthy. Growing your own food. And it's not just eating the high quality, high nutrient, vibrant foods, but the process of growing food, I say, is even more health giving than actually eating it. Family, I've been reviewing a lot of baby boomers. I say, what's your favorite memory of your grandparents? And it was never, oh, they took me to the skating rink, or we saw a movie.

[00:12:15.090] – Marjory

It was always something of like, well, I went with Grandma and we collected eggs from the chickens. Or one of my own memories of one of my great aunts was she had an apple tree in her yard, and we made applesauce. It always involves food harvesting and preparing, gathering, collecting food, every single one of them. Community, there is this myth of the lone survivor and the whole survival preparedness movement, of which I happen to be the female leader. Oh, my God. Anyway, guys think they're going to get their guns and head way off in the hills and survive this, and that is a complete disaster. You'll never make it. We need each other. And growing food and sharing food. The holidays, they always center around food, except for a couple of places where they fast and they're not really holidays. Those people are miserable, you know, and meaningful work. I mean, what more meaningful work? When I had my kids at home, we were homeschooling, and I was growing not all, but a significant amount of food for the family. I'm going to tell you, that is some incredibly meaningful work. When I knew that I was producing food that was going to have my children and my husband have the most vibrant and healthy bodies that they could have, incredibly meaningful work.

[00:13:35.560] – Marjory

And then the purpose, it's an incredibly purposeful activity. Also, I think my father in law, Pops, he has a variety of tomatoes. We were in Central Texas. Texas super hot in the summertime. Tomatoes do not grow in the superheat. And Pops had managed to find a variety of porter tomatoes that were very, very heat tolerant that he had actually developed over the years. Now, we won't say they were super tasty, but when it's July and August in Texas and you got any, tomato is better than none. And, you know, that variety of tomato is something that I certainly keep, the rest of the family keeps. We'll be passing that down for generations and generations and talking about pots and telling stories about pops. I mean, that's something you can do in your backyard, and that is a true legacy. There's lots of other ways to achieve those five forms of wealth, but growing food is something you can start doing right now.

[00:14:30.070] – Allan

Now, you've touched on a little bit of this, but I'd like to dive in a little bit deeper about why growing and raising your own food matters.

[00:14:40.210] – Marjory

Yeah, well, the largest destructive force on this planet is commercial agriculture. There are dead zones around every coastline of every continent. The Gulf of Mexico is a gigantic dead zone because of the agricultural runoff. Let's not go into all the soil erosion. Let's not go into all the toxicity. We used to say, be a perimeter, shopper at the grocery store. And now I'm like, just don't even go in the grocery store. There's nothing in there. Over the decades, the nutrition in the food has just been dropping and dropping and dropping and dropping and dropping. Like, for example, my mom lived to 94. She was born in 1920, back in 1920. And when her body was being built, there was real food with real nutrition in it. And she kept to the old ways for most of her life, eating whole foods and sourcing the best quality food. That's why she lived in 93, 94. That's why all these centenarians that they've been interviewing, they live that long. The kids born after 2000, even the CDC is saying, like, one third of them are going to have diabetes. Now, wait a minute. One third of kids are going to have diabetes?

[00:15:49.210] – Marjory

Like, what kind of life are these? Kids are not going to live to a 90. They're not going to live to 70. If they live to 50, they're going to be miserable because they're going to have all that stuff that comes with diabetes, of blindness, swelling legs. See what I'm saying here?

[00:16:02.600] – Allan

Yeah.

[00:16:03.320] – Marjory

You got to be growing it's like, way past time to be growing your own food. If you're interested in your own health, which you should be, because that's the number one form of wealth that you have, you really need to be growing your own food.

[00:16:14.570] – Allan

And just another aside, and I don't want to get political here it happens for why it's happened, but with inflation just in the last few years, and my wife and I go back to the States, it's like, food is so much more expensive than when we left four years ago. And so it's a huge contrast for us. It hasn't been this slow drip, drip, drip that I know a lot of people are experiencing up there. But just to go back and realize, wait, this used to be $25, a grocery store bill. Now it's 50 to buy the same stuff, and you're like, Holy moly. But if you've managed the seeds, you've managed the animals, you've managed the things that you need to manage this next round of crop or all, it doesn't cost you a dime more. It's the same ten minutes that it was. So you're basically giving yourself a raise.

[00:17:11.530] – Marjory

It's an investment. I was telling somebody, like, look, why do you have you have these 50 gallon drums full of beans and rice. Why are you doing that? I'm like, because those beans and rice a year ago cost $300, and now they cost $600. It's an investment. We have a thing called de dollarization coming along, and there will be the inflation is only going to get exacerbated to the point where, I mean, let's talk about Weimar Germany is going to happen in the United States, all the fiat currencies around the world. We're in that time frame, and we don't need to go into that in this podcast. Here the other thing and most people are not watching global crop production because why would we? But global crop production has been down everywhere, and there's not a lot of hope about it coming back around in the foreseeable future. So we have a constraint on supplies happening. And then we also have a financial system that's imploding. I'm here because I love the positive message of it's healthy and it's fun and it's the most rewarding activity you can do. But there is definitely a survival angle to this. Absolutely.

[00:18:26.770] – Allan

My wife has always said she has a black thumb. Can't grow anything. But it's kind of actually easy down here in Panama because you pretty much plant something and it grows. And we usually get plenty of rain, so it grows fast. But how can someone think about it? I've got this little backyard I want to get started. How does someone go about just making those first steps?

[00:18:52.270] – Marjory

So I, too had a black I mean, my first degree is in engineering. Later on got into business. I wasn't exactly, like, born in some hippie commune knowing this stuff. Right? Because I learned it all right. And you can learn it all. I would like to point out people often think about growing food and they immediately think of a garden. And I would like to say that actually animal products. And there are lots of ways for this to do it for the vegans. I don't want to alienate all the vegans, but animal products by far a lot easier and more prolific in terms of calories and nutrition than gardens. So even a backyard flock of six laying hens is what I recommend people start out with. It's 1500 eggs a year, which is basically three egg omelets you have for the entire year. So you have breakfast covered, and then you'll have 33 dozen eggs left over to barter or trade or give away or use in other recipes. And you can get that up and going in just a couple of weeks. So it ends up being about 95,000 calories, which I know historically the calorie has been a bad word, but the calorie is about to become the unit of currency.

[00:19:55.630] – Marjory

But let me go also address the black thumb thing. But I did want to preface that conversation with animal products are another great way to produce food. It doesn't always get outside of the garden bumps. The secret to a green thumb is actually the soil. And I know most of us are used to like, you wipe your feet, get that dirt. I don't want that dirt in my house. It's just dirt, right? It's dirt. Get it off your clothes. We don't normally think about how important soil is and a really vibrant, healthy soil with a lot of minerals and a lot of life, a lot of microbiotics going on there with either bacteria or fungi in it. The plants will be healthy and strong. Insects and disease, just like for animals, are the predators of the plant nations. If you are weak, then you will get sick, right? It's a fundamental thing. And if your plants are weak, they will get sick or have tendencies to have insect outbreaks. The way that plants get nourished is having adequate sunlight and water, but also soil the relationship in the soil of their roots with the microorganisms, the roots of the plant can't break down the rock and get a mineral.

[00:21:13.610] – Marjory

The roots of the plants have these relationships with soil microorganisms that break down and get them the minerals that they need. And in return, the plants will make types of carbohydrates that it exudes out of its roots to feed the microorganism. There's a whole lot more going on in there. So my advice is to get the highest quality soil you can and your garden will be way more forgiving of your erratic watering schedule. It'll be able to hold water better, you'll have way more nutrients and minerals and more life. Your plants will be healthier and stronger. And really having great soil is the secret to a green thumb.

[00:21:53.950] – Allan

And then in the book you do share some other things about how you can get into composting and things like that that are going to help you keep that soil. Because you can't just keep planting and taking you've got to put back in.

[00:22:09.200] – Marjory

One of the other wonderful things about this is it's also circular. And we're used to living linear lives. And when you start growing your own food, you start becoming very much in touch with these circular and relationship, which I think we're talking about relationships with other species, which is a real broadening of your interactions. And your backyard starts to become a whole ecosystem that you're involved with and participating with and helping. That's another thing that makes it so magical and wonderful.

[00:22:39.370] – Allan

Well, right, because just two things that would come out of that. One is if you're composting, you're throwing less away, which means the landfills get less and your food is right there in your backyard. They're not having to truck this stuff in from Mexico and all the fuel and everything that that would take to get the food to you. And you don't have to drive down to the grocery store to get it either. It's like literally walk out there, clip off your greens. It's going to keep growing. Pick some tomatoes, some cucumbers and make yourself a really great salad.

[00:23:10.710] – Marjory

You'll get it at the peak of freshness and the peak of nutritional content and the peak of flavor. By the way, if I could dovetail 1 second for those that go, oh, I got a homeowners, I can, or the rules or whatever. So the city of Austin is a great example. When I moved there 25 years ago, having chickens in your yard, people were like, you just lowered the property values. It was like Bubba Bill, you can't have chickens. Hated it. And there was a group, actually, a gentleman named Selwyn Pollock really said, hey, wait a minute, these things are great. Fast forward 15 20 years, the Austin chick stuff, they go crazy. And they now have a tour called the funky chicken coop tour because people build all these crazy chicken coops and they go nuts with it. But the city of Austin also regularly has classes on how to have a backyard flock of chickens, and they will subsidize you buying a chicken coop, and you might say, why would the city do that? And it's a very practical reason is they found out that people who had chickens had like 34% less waste that they were putting into the landfill.

[00:24:22.150] – Marjory

And they did a big cost benefit analysis, and they found out that if they had everybody in the city owning chickens, they would have this way less. It made more sense to subsidize the chickens in the city than it did to keep trying to fill up the landfill.

[00:24:38.790] – Allan

So, again, we're part of this ecosystem. We just get to choose a little bit about how we approach it. Now, you mentioned earlier that it was in our best interest, if we're looking at doing this for food, is that we're going to get a lot more bang for the buck with animals. And in the book, you got specific on the laying hens, the chickens and how to go about that. And you also talked about rabbits, because, again, I think of a farm or food. I'm thinking a cow and a pig and got to live by a river so I can fish and but let's talk about chickens and rabbits.

[00:25:09.710] – Marjory

Yeah, I want to live there, too, but the truth is most of us don't live there where we can have a pig and a cow and go fishing by the river. So, yeah, the book is really designed for the average American with the resources they have. And I have by the way, I visited Cuba to interview a bunch of the people that went through the government calls it the special period, actually, economic collapse. And they raised pigs in their backyard. What's? One woman this time, she raised a pig in a bathroom, like, oh, my god, the plumbing didn't work anymore, so why not? But, yeah, you don't really want to do that. That's just an extreme case. Rabbits are great. There's a distinction between an herbivore and an omnivore. People like, why don't you raise chickens for me? And actually, my family did that for years. We'd get 100 baby chicks, and we'd raise them up as a three month project, feed them, take care of them, and then the whole family, over a couple of weekends, we process them all, and then we had organic free range chicken in the freezer all year. Wonderful project, but it requires a lot of food.

[00:26:11.420] – Marjory

Chickens are omnivores, and basically they like to eat what you like to eat, right? Grains and vegetables and fruits and they're omnivores. They will eat some greens and things, too. Absolutely, yeah.

[00:26:22.810] – Allan

But I'm not a big fan of mice, rats and insects that they'll eat. But they are going to eat some meat.

[00:26:29.590] – Marjory

Yeah, they will eat that, too. But rabbits are pure herbivores and they're easier to feed. I'm coming from a survival and preparedness background, and when the grocery stores close, the feed stores are going to close too, right? You're not going to be able to buy animal feed. Rabbit, rabbit hoods, when you can grass and landscape trimmings and in the northern climates, bark in the wintertime, so you can much more easily and sustainably feed rabbits. You can basically take a lot of greens and a lot of forage that you can't eat, and the rabbits will turn that into protein and fat for you. They breed like rabbits.

[00:27:12.070] – Allan

Like rabbits.

[00:27:14.010] – Marjory

You get a lot of them, right? You can produce a lot of them in a small space.

[00:27:18.540] – Allan

Yeah, I learned so much in this book. I didn't know you could eat acorns, and I was like, Holy crap, I can't remember how many times. It was just so many acorns. I lived in a house in Massachusetts in the trees, and it was such a pain to rake up the acorns, rake up all the leaves. Leaves are a little easier because the rake works. But the acorns were the ones you just rake, rake, rake, rake, rake. If I'd known I could eat those things, man, that saved me a lot of time.

[00:27:45.450] – Marjory

They're really good and they're not that hard to process, and they're oh, my goodness. That angema pancake stuff is complete awfulness when you've eaten acorn meal pancakes. Oh, my God. So delicious. Real food. Yeah. There's places in Austin the homeowner tell you a funny story. So she had this big five oak tree in her front yard and she had this concrete sloping driveway, and it was perfect because all those acorns would hit that driveway and then roll down to the intersection where the edge where the street was, and I was like, oh, my God, let me just see. All you had to do is shove it in a bag. You didn't even have to rake it up. And I was out jogging one morning. I was actually in Austin on a business trip at some marketing conference or something, early in the morning, out for a run and saw these Acorns, and I had a bag, and I'm like and the woman who was the homeowner comes out on her porch, and she's looking at me, and she's got her hands on her hips. And I thought, oh, no, she's going to be mad because I'm taking her Acorns.

[00:28:48.270] – Marjory

And I said, oh, hi. And she goes, you want those things? Yeah. She says, take them all. Thank you.

[00:29:06.030] – Allan

But it just goes to the fact that how much we've lost touch of food, of what food is and where we can get food and how we can grow our own and raise our own. So that's something I really enjoyed about this book and the things that I was able to learn just with this little introduction.

[00:29:22.070] – Allan

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

[00:29:30.580] – Marjory

Yeah. Well, of course I'm going to tell you to grow your own food because that leads you to all the five forms of wealth. And actually, pretty soon, growing your own food is going to make you money too. Growing your own food is like printing your own money. I also really enjoy being physically fit and active. And then I think for me, the other most important thing for me is just to always be following my heart. If it's time to stop doing something, I'll know, and then I honor that, even though it kind of looks kind of crazy, or if it's time to start something, just following your heart and really trusting, there's a lot of wisdom.

[00:30:05.960] – Allan

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. The book goes into a lot of detail, but it's kind of one of those things where the more you know, the more you know, you don't know.

[00:30:15.970] – Marjory

Really. I'm not even an expert.

[00:30:18.190] – Allan

Right. But you've put together a webinar called You Can Grow Food. And what I did was I went ahead and just set up a little link for that so you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/grow. And I'll have a link to that webinar because I think that's a really good first step for folks to get out there. Can you tell us a little bit about what we would learn on that webinar?

[00:30:39.810] – Marjory

Yeah. So I'll go into a very simple three part system that will show you how you can grow half of your own food in the size of three parking spots. Like, oh, you can do this. And I'll show you the calories it generates, what it looks like, what those meals look like. And the time is really less than an hour a day. I'd say about a half an hour a day. So this is something you can easily integrate into your life. You'll come with a plan for getting those three going, which will be getting you producing half of your caloric need, and you'll have a plan of how to get started today, regardless of where you live. And then what are the next steps to take. And once you implement those first three, which are the simplest and easiest to go for anybody, then the whole world opens up to you, and we talk about all other ways to grow food or produce food and just basically go through those introductions, answer a lot of really great questions people have about growing food. And it's just a very empowering class. Again, I do have that whole survival and preparedness background, so I always have this pitch toward, you might be in a grid down situation.

[00:31:46.850] – Marjory

And then a lot of people I really appreciate this audience is probably fitter than most, but this is also targeted for people who maybe they're overweight or out of shape or older, which makes the rest of us he's like, oh, great, that's easy. So they'll come away with a whole plan of action, what to get started with today and empowered on how to grow half of their own food.

[00:32:11.480] – Allan

Awesome. You can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/grow and find that webinar. And it's a free webinar, right?

[00:32:18.800] – Marjory

Yes, it's a free webinar.

[00:32:20.290] – Allan

Awesome. Marjory, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:32:24.290] – Marjory

Well, thank you, Allan. I really appreciate you. And we'll come on some other time and a lot of other topics. Fun to talk about.

[00:32:30.400] – Allan

There are a lot of other topics. Thank you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:32:33.330] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:32:34.650] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. That was a really fun discussion. I would just start off with health as the first form of wealth. Even when she said it, it caught me by surprise, even though it's something that I think about all the time is how important our health is. We could have all the money in our retirement fund or all the money in the bank account in the world, but if we're not healthy, there's no way to enjoy it.

[00:32:55.960] – Allan

Well, even being on that, if you're spending money on curative health care for chronic diseases. So that's high blood pressure, that's high cholesterol, that's heart, that's blood sugar, that's all of that stuff. Every time you write that check, every time you pull off that credit card to pay a copay, every time the insurance comes out of your paycheck, that is an indication of your investment or payments that you're making to keep yourself alive. And if you don't take care of yourself, you'll be on more medications than you would have otherwise. If you're not doing the right health care things, health style lifestyle things, you'll be spending more money for health care. I think I read that a person with diabetes spends $22,000 more per year on health care than someone who doesn't have diabetes.

[00:33:52.980] – Rachel

Wow, that's a lot.

[00:33:55.240] – Allan

It is a lot. And maybe you don't financially see it coming out of your pocketbook because you have a good insurance program or something like that, but invariably the money is coming from somewhere, and it's going to be coming from us directly or as a pool, but it's still coming out. And if you notice that your premiums go up every year, maybe your employer takes on a big chunk of that that's great. But they still see that as a chunk of your compensation. And so rather than them being able to write you a bigger raise, they're now paying it out in healthcare costs. And so you're getting less of a raise if you're missing a lot of work because you're sick. I was a hiring manager, and I can tell you the person that shows up every day, I like her, I like him. Okay, they're going to get the promotions first, they're going to get the raises first. And you can say, well, that's not fair. I was out sick. I shouldn't be penalized. It's not fair, but it is what it is. You're not there. You're not contributing at that point. And it's just unfortunate, but that's what it is.

[00:34:57.540] – Allan

And so when you start looking at what you could make, what you could do, or what you are spending, your health and lifestyle, they actually are part of that formula. And you want to be healthy when you're older. You don't want to be sickly. You don't want to be put into a home earlier than you need to, right? So the things you do to take care of yourself from a fitness and a health perspective are really, really important. And so what Marjory is talking about is if you're eating good quality food, and you know it's good quality food because you raised those chickens, you raised those rabbits, and you were the one who got the soil together and planted those plants and kept them and fed them and did what was necessary. You know, the quality of what you're eating is good and so much fresher and better than what you would ever get from any store or even a co op. And so it's just this opportunity for you to have complete control over what you eat, what you and your family eat. And granted, she said 50% was a good, steady goal for sustainability, but she's talking about someone who just has a backyard.

[00:36:07.950] – Allan

It's not someone who has acres, because you definitely feed your whole family practically with acres and maybe others, but just in your backyard, because the chickens will take up about a parking space, the rabbits will take up about a parking space overall, and then the plants are just the space that you choose to plant. And the way she looks at it is, she's doing planters that are maybe 8ft long and 4ft wide, which allows her to easily manage them. They're raised beds, and so you can plant as many of those as you want. She recommends one to start and then the second one. And at that point, with just two of these planters and the chickens and the rabbits, you could be growing half of your own food.

[00:36:50.050] – Rachel

That would be so awesome. Now that we're back in Michigan, where we've been for about four years, we've been trying to work on our own gardens here. And I'll tell you, I have a black thumb. I just kill anything I touch. My husband and my daughter, they're the ones with the green thumbs. They're the one that makes it all work. But when we have our own garden, we plant the foods that we want to eat. So we'll have tons of tomatoes and we'll have lots of onions. My daughter's experimenting with different lettuces right now, and sometimes it's a process. We also have rabbits and groundhogs and deer that like to eat our food before we get it. But we have to learn. We're learning how to adapt. And I'll tell you what, when you raise your own tomatoes, there's nothing that tastes better than having your own tomatoes. And that's probably one of the easiest things to grow, too. And then if you have a bumper crop, you can can them and use them in the winter for chilies or soups or whatever else. It's just a wonderful thing to do, and not to mention the chance to be outside during the best time of year.

[00:37:53.900] – Rachel

So it's a wonderful thing to do.

[00:37:56.230] – Allan

And that's the other part of it. She's like, you're going to spend more time outside, but not a huge investment of time. I mean, she's literally talking about ten minutes for your garden. Once you get it going, you're out there for ten minutes tending to it per day. The chicken is kind of the same thing. You're out there checking their food, checking their water, just making up the eggs, and then you're out with the rabbits again, just checking their food, checking their water, making sure they're taken care of, sometimes rotating them around the yard so they're getting different parts of the yard, rotating that around. And then she did the raised beds as a way to help eliminate some of the rabbits and things getting into your garden and cross contaminating your soil. Because if one of your neighbors has been using pesticides and herbicides and fertilizers and stuff on their yard, that runoff could be in your yard over years and years and years. You don't necessarily want to use that for your food. So she encourages you to buy soil, do the raised beds, and then you have complete control over the environment that your plants grow in.

[00:39:04.030] – Allan

And she agrees to start small. Her webinar is going to be a great way for you to get a good exposure to what she's talking about. The book is great, too, but the webinar, I think, is going to be where it really will make a lot more sense, and she'll be able to answer all your questions. So if you go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/grow, that's going to put you into that webinar and you'll be able to go through that and watch that webinar, it's going to be really cool and a lot of value there. So even if you think maybe I want to grow a few things, I'm not necessarily into the rabbits and having to kill them and eat them. And maybe chickens are okay, but she says you don't have to have a rooster to lay eggs. So it's not like you're going to be disturbing your neighbors with this rooster or yourself with this rooster every morning. You don't have to have the rooster. So she talks about that, getting your laying hands, how you'd organize them, how you'd set up. She puts all that together with the resources. But I think the webinar is going to be just a really good concise way for you to get a really good idea of how her growth system works, because it is a full ecosystem, so it's all encompassing.

[00:40:12.760] – Allan

If you're doing all four of these things, basically, plus foraging and maybe hunting, you set yourself up to basically be getting almost all of your own food at some point, and that's kind of cool.

[00:40:26.100] – Rachel

That would be awesome.

[00:40:27.160] – Rachel

I love it. Might have to check out that webinar myself.

[00:40:30.120] – Allan

Again, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/grow to sign up for that webinar and learn a lot more about Marjory Wildcraft and then her book, which is called The Grow System: True Health, Wealth and Happiness Come From the Ground.

[00:40:46.370] – Rachel

I love it.

[00:40:47.320] – Allan

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

[00:40:51.080] – Rachel

Take care.

[00:40:52.040] – Allan

You too.

[00:40:53.060] – Rachel

Thanks.

[00:40:53.860] – Allan

Bye

[00:40:54.730] – Rachel

Bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

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Another episode you may enjoy

How to get high-quality, real food with Tyler Dawley

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:03:19.230] – Allan

Hello, Ras.

[00:03:20.690] – Rachel

Hey, Allan, how are you today?

[00:03:22.760] – Allan

Well, I'm juggling. Juggling episodes. Juggling traveling. Well, we had a guest, and her episode is supposed to go live when this episode goes live. So probably last week you had heard me say such and such will be on this week, and this ain't that episode. Well, her book got delayed, and so we shifted things around. So we may have a couple of episodes in the near future where there's not a hello episode. Hello part of the episode. And I apologize for that. Well, I may play it anyway, but if you're like well, he's already there, and now he's talking about going there. If that gets confusing, I'm sorry. We're time travelers here, and we're this in the future. It is what it is. I want to make sure that I help the authors the best I can when I can. So this episode was not the one I promised you last week. It's a new one. So that plus, yeah, I'm traveling. We're currently in Ashborough, North Carolina, which was the county I was born in, the city I was born in. My mother lives here. My sister lives here. We're visiting her before we go over to Asheville, which is where my daughter's getting married.

[00:04:27.570] – Allan

So when you're listening to this, our daughter would have gotten married on Saturday, so you're listening to us on Tuesday. Normally we're not that tight. Normally we're two or three weeks out, but right on that. So if the next couple of weeks sound weird, was like, yeah, I'm planning this trip. I'm about to go. I went and I got there.

[00:04:45.850] – Rachel

Time has no meaning.

[00:04:49.210] – Allan

Yeah. Message from future.

[00:04:51.370] – Rachel

Time has no meeting anymore.

[00:04:53.710] – Allan

How are things up there?

[00:04:55.020] – Rachel

Beautiful. We have spring. The trees are budding, and tonight is actually run club night for me. And I cannot wait to get down to the trail because the turtles that we have in the river should be starting to do their nesting. And so I can't wait to see what kind of wildlife we'll have pretty soon. So looking forward to seeing my turtles tonight.

[00:05:14.090] – Allan

Cool, because now they're going to listen to a future episode, and it's like she just said it was freezing a turtle.

[00:05:20.590] – Rachel

Well, today's a spring. You never know. It's Michigan.

[00:05:25.190] – Allan

So are you ready to talk to Kashif?

[00:05:27.880] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:06:08.700] – Allan

Kashif, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:06:11.280] – Kashif

Good to be here, man. Very good pleasure. Happy to be here.

[00:06:14.500] – Allan

Yeah. Now your book is called The DNA Way: Unlock the Secrets of Your Genes to Reverse Disease, Slow Aging, and Achieve Optimal wWellness. In reading the book, it was very interesting because as you went, you went through great examples of different people, including yourself, and how their genetics were driving their outcomes, their health outcomes, sometimes without them even knowing it. Obviously mostly without them knowing it. It was there and it was real. By the time you started writing the book, it was about 7000 profiles of people that were out there. So I do have to ask this quick question, is have you figured out the perfect genetic profile yet?

[00:06:54.050] – Kashif

I wouldn't say perfect, but there is one gentleman who we met with who was the founder of a four M, the anti aging conference. And this guy's in the Guinness Book of all the records for like, 13,000 sit ups and some number of thousands of push ups, and his genetics were almost flawless. He's so healthy that he's recovering while he's pushing himself, and that's why he can do the 13,000 sit ups. I think his name was Robert Goldman. But other than that, everybody has a red flag for the most part. He's literally the only person we've seen that's wired like this. He's a genetic freak. But everybody has something, whether they know it or not, that needs support.

[00:07:28.980] – Allan

And that's why we're here, because I know I'm far from perfect and I need support, a whole lot of support. Now, you used a term in the book. It's the first time I've actually seen this term in a book. And that's why it really caught my attention, because it was just one of those it stops you for a second when you're reading. You're like, Wait a minute. That's really important. And the term was informed choice. If we know what the answer is, if we know the right choice, we have a choice. We have the opportunity. Can you talk a little bit about informed choice, what that is and what it means for us?

[00:08:03.800] – Kashif

Yeah. So in this context, what we're saying is we are constantly making choices when it comes to health or wellness, even if we don't think we are. Every time you decide to eat, to breathe, to expose yourself to anything, it's a choice towards health or a choice away from health. Literally every choice you make. And most of the time, we're not even consciously aware of that. It's outside of our awareness. And so once you start to develop the habits of understanding that your choices do equal your health outcome, when it comes to chronic disease, aging, the way you perform, the way you sleep, and it truly is in your control that a lot of these things that we think are, oh, yeah, there's diabetes in my family. There's breast cancer in my family. No, there's some underlying genetics of optimality that drives that thing to thrive. And if you understood what that root cause was and you started to make the right choices, then you can decide whether or not you have disease. You can decide at what pace you actually age. You can decide how much energy you have. And this is one thing I learned about myself.

[00:09:02.480] – Kashif

I sit here in front of you, perfectly healthy. When I used to have five chronic conditions, which I really thought I had, that I didn't realize until later, I developed through the wrong choices.

[00:09:11.060] – Allan

Now, one of the interesting things that we got into this was there's what we would call, I guess people just call common truths. It's like we all believe this is the right way to do this. And if you're doing this, you're doing the right thing. And generally 80 20 rule is probably working out. But there is some counterintuitiveness to this whole genetic makeup. You had a buddy who was golfing four times a week, and I think most people would say, well, that's awesome. That's a good amount of walking. Even if you're in a cart, you're still doing a good amount of walking and exercise and getting outside. But this was actually detrimental to him. Could you explain that?

[00:09:45.320] – Kashif

You nailed it. The reason why he did the golfing was for the walking because he had a cholesterol issue. And this guy, a dear friend of mine, 38 years old when this happened, and he was a pharmacist, so he, on the medical side, understood himself. Right. He had been trained, but that number kept going up and his dosage kept going up, and he couldn't understand, what am I doing wrong? So the walking was part of his therapeutic plan. Let me walk this off. Right. What was actually happening was he was missing some of the key detox genes that instruct Glutathione utilization in the body. So your body's ability to bind onto toxins, send them to deliver, to metabolize and clear and so in missing them when he was walking on that golf course and breathing in. And by the way, this is in Canada, where the regulation on what chemicals are allowed to be used in golf courses are a little lax just because we have a long winter in most provinces. And so they allow more stuff to be used. And he's breathing these things in for three, 4 hours at a time, four days a week, which is not typical human capacity, even with the best detox system.

[00:10:48.670] – Kashif

And he had the worst. So what happens when you have toxins in your body? They cause inflammation. Your cellular structure was not designed to cope with these types of toxic insults. And so when the endothelium or the inner lining of the blood vessel, the wall that the blood actually touches, gets exposed to toxins, it gets inflamed. And your body will then use cholesterol as a hormone to reduce the inflammation. That's why it's actually sent to that location so if you don't deal with the underlying root cause, which is I have no detox system and I'm consistently exposing myself to toxins that are causing inflammation. But instead you wait to treat the disease that comes out of it, which is what we call cholesterolemia. All you're going to ever going to do is it's like a boat with a hole and you're just throwing buckets of cholesterolemia while the water is still coming in. Why not plug the holes? And that's what we were able to do with him. And guess what? He's not on a prescription anymore. No more pills.

[00:11:40.210] – Allan

That's awesome. That's awesome. But so counterintuitive that okay, play golf a little less and choose a different golf course.

[00:11:47.170] – Kashif

Well, it was a couple of dials to turn. It was that it was adopt new habits. But it was also now that we know that your body doesn't do this job well, how can we supplement it? So there's two dials to turn, get rid of the exposure. That's not always easy. Let's also support your body's biological function. We made a cocktail form as a friend. I made him some supplements that supported detoxification of the body cellular resiliency, mitochondrial function. And then his cells started to behave as if he did have the good version of the genes.

[00:12:18.960] – Allan

Awesome. So now you brought up something in the book, I think with onslaught of diabetes and you have some experience in your family and you're up with this. Is that some point everybody's going to have insulin resistance and diabetes even if they not have a genetic preference. But can you talk about how genetics drives insulin resistance?

[00:12:37.850] – Kashif

Yeah. So right now, the United States is presumably 95% metabolically unhealthy. This is coming from the CDC. They're saying only 5% of Americans actually have good metabolic health. And that's mostly driven by our food supply. The high carb, low fat myth that was completely wrong and the road we went down and where we're now at. And so the actual straight out insulin response is genetically driven. There's a gene called TCF seven L two, which determines how efficiently you actually manage your insulin levels and how do you respond to glucose in the bloodstream. And are you bouncing up and down or is it more even keel? And if you're not doing well, there a big red flag. Points to diabetes. AMY1 is a gene that helps you break down starches and metabolize them and use them as fuel. Some people do really well there and we don't tell them you need to go on a low carb diet. They actually thrive on carbs. A lot more people, however, don't do so well there. Then there's also fat metabolism. I can't tell you how many people we have to tell them that the reason they don't feel good is because they're on a keto diet.

[00:13:40.050] – Kashif

And I'm not saying not go on a keto diet for the person who's wired for it. There's nothing that will make them feel better and healthier than that thing. But for the person who's not wired for it, who has the suboptimal version of the ap2 gene, as it's called, they may feel good in the first two or three weeks because ketones start firing. The brain feels good, you're using fat as fuel. But five, six weeks into it, you start to get sluggish. And you don't blame it on the keto because you felt so good in the first two, three weeks. So you start looking for other problems. Right. And a lot of people, we've had to unwind and change their diet. So all of these things equal metabolic dysfunction, which then lead to insulin resistance, which then lead to a whole scope of problems, from cardiovascular disease to cancers, to diabetes to dementia and Alzheimer's. We need metabolic health as a baseline foundation for other chronic diseases to not set in.

[00:14:30.040] – Allan

And I think this kind of speaks to the whole idea that, well, it worked for him, it should work for me. I watched them do this way of eating, and it works, and they're just in brilliant health and I want some of that, and then I eat that way, and my results are just not even close to that. Can you dive a little deeper into how our genotype affects the nutrition that our body needs?

[00:14:54.990] – Kashif

Yeah. So this is a big challenge in today where information is so easy to access. And so you go to YouTube or you go to a podcast like this, for example, and you hear something that the person speaking says, this changed my life. And they're probably correct. But if you ask them how they got there, it was probably five, six, seven years of trial and error. And that's why exactly,

[00:15:20.440] – Allan

you got me eight years.

[00:15:22.550] – Kashif

But, yeah, eight years of like, this sucks, this sucks. I'm like, oh, wow, I feel incredible. And you feel so good that you want to scream for the rooftops and tell everybody, and that's why you have this incredible podcast. Right. But the pain it took to get there, we don't talk about. And all we're saying is that, yes, it works for you. If a genetic you comes along, it will also work for them. If they're not wired like you, they're going to say, this doesn't work. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Right. So all we're saying is, day one, there's an instruction manual in each one of your 50 trillion cells that's telling your cells how to do their jobs. And those manuals are not the same for us. So when it comes to nutrition, like you just asked, if we aren't precise in terms of what our bodies need, yes, you can trial and error it until you figure out what feels good, and then eventually you'll be great. That takes years, typically. Or you can go straight to the genes that direct all these processes, starting with the brain. When it comes to diet, nutrition, the first thing we usually look at is how do you even perceive food?

[00:16:21.900] – Kashif

There's genes around satisfaction of the palate and people that need to binge and snack because they can't get satisfied. I need my doritos, I need my cookies. Right? Then there's genes around satiety of the gut and your ability to actually feel full. And that signal from the gut to the brain is just sometimes slower for people. And so we have to structure their food. Then there's people that can't experience pleasure as efficiently as others. Their dopamine pathway is broken, so they become addictive or they become bingers, and they use food as coping mechanism because their emotional pathways are off. So decoding the brain step one is really important in terms of decoding how to eat the way you want because you may think you're doing it, but depending on the day and what you're exposed to, you probably aren't.

[00:17:02.410] – Allan

Yeah, so this is talking about our relationship with food and satiety and how we approach it. It's talking about how we metabolize the different macronutrients and it even gets as deep as how we deal with the micronutrients and how we balance that out. I haven't done mine. I will. I promise. I'm on it. Back to the States. I'm a spit in the tube, but I have a problem with low sodium and low potassium and I have to kind of manage and make sure that I'm getting a sufficient amount of that in my diet. I only know that from the error that happened.

[00:17:35.920] – Kashif

Right.

[00:17:36.280] – Allan

And every time I go get blood test, I have seen that it's low. And I'm guessing there's probably a profile in my genetics that is putting me at a predisposition for that.

[00:17:46.700] – Kashif

Yeah, likely the ability to actually metabolize. So there's different steps to using nutrients. There's getting it in the blood, which is what we measure, but there's also using it. So there's a big difference between understanding how much is in the blood and how much is in the cell where your body actually needs it. And genes that drive those steps are unique and separate. And so we can get really precise, especially when it comes to vitamin D. It's a really complex pathway. But vitamin D is probably the most important micronutrient that you need out of the 22,000 genes that make up your Genome 2000. So almost 10% of your human biology requires vitamin D at the adequate right level to express your genes properly. Meaning that for your genes to do their jobs, whether it's hormones, brain, bone, skin, whatever, if you don't have the right amount of vitamin D, you're not doing those jobs well. And vitamin D has a complex pathway because if you think of our ancestral traits, they were out in the sun. Here's you and me indoors on a zoom call, right. That was not the reality of what worked. Like 200 years ago and then go beyond many thousands of years.

[00:18:52.800] – Kashif

So we now have this ability to mitigate and reduce our vitamin D utilization, which doesn't fit our current lifestyle. Step one, there's a gene that takes vitamin D from D Two from the sun and converts it to D Three. So how efficiently do you do that? Step two, there's a gene that then transports it to the cell where it's actually used. How efficiently do you do that? Step three, there's a gene that binds it and actually gets it into the cell. And how efficiently do you do that? So now not only do we know how much vitamin do you need, but maybe how frequently. If you don't transport and bind it, the first dose, you might only use 20% of what you put in. So you need to take two or three doses in a day. That one thing. I can't tell you how many problems we fix just by fixing this. From anxiety to bone issues to I can't get out of bed with depression and issues. So much get fixed just with this one thing.

[00:19:44.330] – Allan

And I think that's why a lot of people notice when they start eating right, they start feeling better. These feelings and emotions, all this stuff, it's like, well, food is not supposed to help me with depression, but yes, it does if you eat the right food.

[00:19:57.230] – Kashif

Yeah, there was a report that just came out that if you take the best antidepressant drug and then you compare it to exercise, exercise is a 50% better outcome than the number one antidepressant drug, which, by the way, only works 40% of the time because it's just masking the symptom and hiding the fact that there's biological dysfunction. And it usually has to do with gut and body, like not moving your body and not supporting your gut, which both equal brain problems, neural inflammation, disconnect in general. So yeah, food and exercise will resolve most mood issues.

[00:20:34.170] – Allan

So let's do that. Let's jump into fitness and talk about how our genotype drives the type of fitness that we should be doing. Because I know some people sit there and say, well, you can look at this person and they're long and lean and they do yoga. Well, yoga didn't make them long and lean. They're good at yoga because they're long and lean. Or you can look at a sprinter or you can look at a marathoner and say, okay, two totally different body types that make them better at their sport. But when we look at training, though, there's still training that's best for us. How does that all work?

[00:21:05.640] – Kashif

So that's a big thing that we talk to parents about because you can imagine the five, six, seven year old child where it's like, hey, I want my kid to play football. I want my kid to be a hockey player. Do you know what they're going to look like when they're 15 and imagine all the effort you're going to put into this to see them fail because you didn't pick the right path, when guess what? Their hormones tell us exactly what they're going to become. And that's also true for you and me, the 40 plus crowd, right? We understand exactly why we've been challenged and why we hit plateaus. So take me, for example. I produce a lot of testosterone. My genes say that very clear, but I also clear it very quickly. So I have this use it or lose it type hormone profile, where if I do actively go to the gym regularly, which I do, I can fairly easily maintain the physique I want. But as soon as I stop, it all comes crumbling down, right? I can't get big and I can't deadlift 400 pounds because I don't make enough estrogen, which is there's a myth that strength and weight comes from testosterone actually is driven by estrogen.

[00:22:08.340] – Kashif

So I don't make enough estrogen to get the mass. I'm more of a Captain America and less of a Dwayne Johnson, let's say. Right? If I do everything right, there's a certain body type that my hormones are already dictating, and that helps me determine how I need to work out. For example, I used to do four or five sets of everything and I was over training, and my recovery didn't facilitate that. Well, now I do two sets, and every single trainer I talk to says, that's not how you work out. Well, guess what? I'm in the best shape of my life and I'm able to go to the gym more often. And I feel better mentally because that's exactly what my body needed. And yes, it's unique, but great, that's what I need. It doesn't matter to me what works for everyone else, right?

[00:22:50.600] – Allan

Yeah, exactly. And so by getting your genetic profile done, you're going to have some ideas, okay, how's my body going to respond to exercise? What am I going to get the most benefit from? How is my recovery work? Which is going to also then help you understand, okay, what volume should I put on myself? And so many people just think more is better, but that's not the case.

[00:23:11.630] – Kashif

Since I reduced it, I have far better outcome. So recovery, the word you use, is very important. So we're in Toronto and we work with a lot of NHL hockey players. It's like a mecca of hockey training up here, right? So in the offseason, they're all here, and recovery is always a question mark. So we work with a lot of players and we have to show them that their regimen is the problem, it's not the recovery. They're just over training. And when we reduce their training to align with their mitochondrial resilience so we can actually determine how efficiently the mitochondria functions, which then determines how quickly they recover. So, again, we turn both dials, we supplement them to help their mitochondria and to help them recover faster, but we also adjust the load to make it align with what they're designed for. And all of a sudden, again, they thrive. They actually don't need to train as much, but a guy like me, I need to train consistently, meaning every day, but a small load per day, right. There's some guys that we tell them, you got to go three days a week and you got to go heavy.

[00:24:09.460] – Kashif

Right. There's some days people that got to go heavy every single day. So it depends on who you are and how you're wired. And all of a sudden, when it's aligned and personalized, you get the best outcome.

[00:24:18.220] – Allan

Yeah, and that's so hard for people because they just say, okay, well, this person's working so hard, especially a professional athlete, but just everyday people, you go in the gym and you see someone working really hard, and they built this body, and it's like, oh, wow, well, I want that body. Genetically, that body might not be possible, but beyond that, you have to put in the right kind of work, the right amount of work, and at the right times to make this all work out. And a good genetic profile like what your company does, will give us that information to help us understand our fitness and recovery better.

[00:24:50.160] – Kashif

And the other big area is the delineation between male and female training. So most of what we know and understand is based on, how do I take a 20 year old guy and make him a weightlifting champion? Right? That's where everything comes from because that's the industry. It's competitive training is at a youthful age, and it's around men. It's recently become a phenomenon with women, with TikTok and all these videos and everything. So everyone wants to look like everybody else now, right? So women, whereas men have a daily hormone cycle, and your genes will determine sort of little nuances in that cycle for a man. We have a menstrual cycle every day. Men have a hormone cycle, right? Sorry, I should say a Manstrual cycle. Women have a menstrual cycle. They do it every month. So the exact same thing that we do every day, women do it on a monthly basis. So it's stretched, meaning it's not, here's what I do every day, or here's what my week looks like. What does my month look like? Because the hormone levels in week one are here, and then they're down here, and then they're back up here.

[00:25:51.540] – Kashif

It's a roller coaster. So your body whereas in the beginning, for a woman, it's more akin to weight training and putting on muscle. Then in the following week and your estrogens go crazy. You're more prone to injuries. You want to get off the heavy weights. Right? Then in the following week, your body wants to get into recovery mode and start prepping for that lining release. So if you understand the cycle, which we map out a lot. And you understand. Are you more estrogen dominant, more testosterone dominant? Do you make toxic hormones, which then causes inflammation, which you need to reduce? Then you can be really particular on how to make that ideal month. And then women get unstuck, let's say. They really feel stuck all the time.

[00:26:31.840] – Allan

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

[00:26:41.260] – Kashif

So I would say the big sleeper that gets ignored isn't spoken of is environmental health. So the thousands of people that we reviewed, the one thing that consistently was a drip of toxic insult that was outside of their awareness was what's in their environment? What are they breathing? The chemicals on their desk, the pesticides that make their lawn so beautiful, the Teflon coated frying pan could be something that your neighbor sprayed in their garden. So the toxic chemical burden that we have versus what we're wired for, giant misalignment, huge problem and is the root cause of a lot of problems. Right. So I would say that's the number one thing to look out for, number two is to understand that we walking on this planet, have genes, an instruction manual on our body that is approximately 200 to 250,000 years old. We haven't changed since then. Now, our current reality is a post 1950s reality. So compare that to 250,000 years, a tiny, tiny blip in time in terms of food, stress, sleep, chemicals, everything. Right. We are not designed for how we live, which is why we have a $4 trillion health care budget, of which 90% truly is spent on chronic disease, all of which is preventable.

[00:27:54.670] – Kashif

So $3.6 trillion a year the United States spends on treating things that never needed to happen in the first place. Right. So just understand that in order to truly be healthy, this thing that you're walking around in is not ready for the environment you're walking around in and the food you're eating and for the stress you're having and for the lack of sleep and all. So you need to work on all of those things. Try and be more like your cavemen ancestors if you can. Right. Number three thing I would say is consistency. And I've learned this from myself, in myself, trying to be better and eliminating five chronic diseases. I don't have any of them anymore, and I haven't had them for years. When I had five years ago, all five of them at the same time. Things can come back. We get sort of comfortable. Right. And consistency is key. You can never stop doing the work. You have two choices. You either do the work now or you pay for it later. And you can pick one. You cannot do anything. Fine, then, okay. Enjoy the medical system, which is, I will do whatever I want.

[00:28:57.160] – Kashif

And when I break myself, it's the doctor's job to fix me that's one way or I could understand what might break and prevent that from happening and go into my 90s, riding my bicycle and playing with my grandchildren. That's a very different way to live than the American dream right now, which is the last 15 years or spent in treatment. That's actually the average. So that becomes a choice. In order to maintain that choice, you have to be consistent. It's not a task, it's a lifestyle. It's every day you wake up, you're working on your health.

[00:29:24.080] – Allan

Excellent. Now your company, the DNA company, is going to give the listeners of the 40+ Fitness podcast a 10% discount on the DNA workup. You go to thednacompany.com/40plus. So the discount code is 40 P L U S. You can go there and get a 10% discount off of the test. Is there somewhere else that you'd like me to send them, Kashif?

[00:29:46.240] – Kashif

Sure, I mean, anyone that's interested in learning more the book, which was big news for us, is coming out right around the corner. So if you go to thednaway.com, you'll be able to be connected to a retailer that can supply the book. But this was really exciting for us because one of our patients was a CEO of a publishing company and when he heard what we're doing he's like, well, you guys need a book out there because everyone needs to know that this tool should be part of their toolkit. And most people don't. Most people don't know that they can prevent and reverse and read their human instruction manual. And so I spent late nights for a good year writing this book. It wasn't my intention to be an author, but when I started I couldn't stop. It was a really pleasurable thing to do and so it's now finally being released and our mission is that we can bring personalization to health and wellness. Even just by reading the book, you can understand my journey and how I fixed myself, which allows you to start thinking about yourself in a different way. So again, that's thednaway.com, and it's launching May 16.

[00:30:47.790] – Allan

Great. And that was what was really cool was that you took the time to walk us through your DNA and how that's changed your lifestyle choices. So it's a really good practical way to demonstrate the benefits of how this all works, plus lots of opportunities shared with different people that you've worked with and how you've helped them set their course. Thank you for that. Kashif, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:31:10.850] – Kashif

It was a pleasure. Amazing talking to you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:31:14.010] – Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:31:15.650] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. I always love talking about DNA and it is still on my list of things to get done. But now I've got something to think about because my hospital network can do some genetic testing. They also accept genetic testing through another outside platform. But then it sounds like Kashif has a different company, the DNA company, that might be even more thorough. So now I kind of got to compare to see apples to apples what I can get out of this DNA testing.

[00:31:46.570] – Allan

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, the testing that they do. Everything's a step change as things go, and technology changes, and the costs come down on some things, always going to go up on other things. But as they come down on these technologies, they're able to do more. As they learn things, they're able to do more. One of the interesting things about his company is at this point, they've served 7000 people. And that doesn't maybe not sound like, but that's a nice size sample of looking at people and their situation and then looking at the lifestyle changes that those individuals make and what it means in their life. So when you kind of take it from that context, it's like, this is a pretty cool deal. The 23 AND ME was kind of like the first one out the gate doing this stuff. And when they did it, they tried to tell you things like, you have a propensity for Alzheimer's or not, you're probably going to be lactose intolerant or not, you're going to be bald or not. They could do that, and they could also then start telling you about your heritage and where you're from.

[00:32:54.820] – Allan

Now, they got in a little bit of trouble at the beginning because the FDA is like, you're diagnosing diseases. So there was a whole lot of fighting infighting things that was going on between the government and that company. Fortunately, they got past a lot of that stuff. So while your DNA cannot diagnose an illness, it can tell you a lot about the way that you do things in your body that can give you the information to make better choices. Okay. And where that's valuable is if you say, okay, well, I like fruit, and it's like, great, you like fruit, but your body doesn't process fruit the same way as someone else. So you can have some fruit, but just not as much fruit as you might be eating today. So I know everybody's like, well, it's natural food. Yes, it is natural food, but your body might not process fructose as well as somebody else, and you have to take that into account or not. I mean, it's your choice. That's why I wanted to start I started that conversation with him about informed choice about that, because if you have the information, then you can make those choices.

[00:34:02.450] – Allan

And there are privacy concerns. Who has access to your genetic information, and how can that be used in the future? Right now, nobody knows. But it could be, and it's something to think about, because if someone has your genetic information and decides they don't want to write an insurance policy for you, that could be a big deal. So there are some concerns. There some things for you to think about, but here's a way, and mine's been tested, so if they want to clone me, please go right ahead. Nobody wants to clone me, but if you want some information, some data that's going to help you, this is the way to go.

[00:34:44.680] – Rachel

Well, the interesting thing that you touched on briefly is about cholesterol. I think it was his friend that had high cholesterol and was trying to go golfing and walking and being outside and wasn't helping his cholesterol. And then maybe he got this DNA testing and found out, well, there's other problems to how he was attempting to resolve a high cholesterol. I know that with menopause, my cholesterol is expected to raise. My dad's got high cholesterol. It could be a genetic factor, but it would be interesting to know, well, if I should be on statins, or if statins won't work, it should be nice to know that. Or like when you talked about choosing different diets, maybe I should try a Mediterranean diet or vegan. But I sure would like to know whether my body would respond as well to that or another. I mean, it just would be nice to cut through the chase and instead of experimenting with all these different things to try and control my cholesterol. What can I learn from this data and implement a lot faster?

[00:35:48.110] – Allan

Yeah, well, again, you can go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/dna that'll take you to the page. And they run discounts, they do different things, but it's not out of reach for most people to make this investment and kind of know those things with his friend, kind of the scenario was that his friend was an avid golfer and he was out on the golf course all the time. Now they're up in Toronto, so their golf season is like, over the day it starts. It's pretty short to keep the grass going and to keep everything they used a lot of chemicals and everything to keep the grass growing all the way through the winter and have it ready for the season. And so it was just really that exposures to toxins that this guy was not his body was not equipped to do very well. And so daily, almost daily, like four times a week, exposure to toxins was causing some issues. Now it's one of the weird things of traveling up to North Carolina. Our days down in Panama are twelve and twelve. I mean, like literally 6:30 6:30 daylight period. We're up here now. Last night we're like, walking around at 8:30 and it's still daylight.

[00:36:56.680] – Allan

We're like, this is insane. Up in Toronto, it's even more insane. Like I said, up in Canada, their days, so he can get off work at 05:00 and play a whole round of golf before it even starts to get dark walking. And so this guy's out there playing golf, and he's getting some good walking in. He feels like he's taking care of himself and his body's just not dealing with the toxins, and that's just causing all kinds of problems in his body. And so nobody would know that. They'd be like, this was a healthy guy. He played golf four times a week. Why is he having a heart attack? Nobody would know that. And he thought he was doing everything right and it wasn't working out. So it's just kind of one of those things. This technology right now is available to you, which is what's important to take away from this call. Eventually, this information will be a part of how your doctor cares for you. Your doctor is going to say, Well, I know, okay, there's eight statins on the market right now, and I know you're not going to tolerate any of them.

[00:37:57.930] – Rachel

Right.

[00:37:59.530] – Allan

What we're going to do is we're going to prescribe this other medication, and we're not going to make you go through the grief of struggling with the statins. And so you think about that, where instead of a practice with this trial and error stuff, with all the different drugs, they'll literally know this is the drug that's most likely to help you right now, based on what we know about your genetic profile and what will work for you. And when we get to that level of personalized medicine, then our life expectancies can go astronomical, because you're not going to waste a whole lot of time trying to treat something the wrong way.

[00:38:36.200] – Rachel

That would be so wonderful. That's what I love about this DNA, just the science. And like I said, cutting to the chase sure would save a lot of time and money and effort instead of the trial and error things that we do right now.

[00:38:49.600] – Allan

Yeah, if you're interested in all this, you can go to their website, 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/DNA, and that'll take you to the website. And I don't think they gave me a discount code, but there are different codes out there you can use if you want to book one of these. Maybe 40plus.

[00:39:06.260] – Rachel

40plus.

[00:39:07.090] – Allan

40plus. Okay, I wrote it. Okay. Yeah, use the discount. 40plus, they'll give you a discount. They might be offering one. That's better. That's fine. Take the discount if it's better, but get some money off of it. Again, if you want to act on data and you want to kind of go to the next level with how you approach your health and fitness, this is not a bad tool to have.

[00:39:29.260] – Rachel

Yeah, that's really cool. Well, thanks.

[00:39:31.560] – Allan

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

[00:39:34.310] – Rachel

Sounds good. Take care.

[00:39:35.850] – Allan

You too.

[00:39:36.730] – Rachel

Thank you. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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

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

Clean those dirty genes with Dr. Ben Lynch

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:02:38.130] – Coach Allan

Hey, Ras. How are things?

[00:02:40.310] – Coach Rachel

Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:42.480] – Coach Allan

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

[00:02:50.040] – Coach Rachel

Oh, jeez.

[00:02:50.750] – Coach Allan

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

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

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

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

[00:04:01.180] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:04:04.900] – Coach Allan

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

[00:04:46.960] – Coach Rachel

Awesome. That sounds fun.

[00:04:48.730] – Coach Allan

How are things up there?

[00:04:50.180] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:05:33.370] – Coach Allan

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

[00:05:36.350] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:05:57.890] – Coach Allan

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

[00:06:02.350] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:06:15.350] – Coach Allan

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

[00:06:25.540] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:07:38.760] – Coach Allan

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

[00:08:12.420] – Coach Rachel

Sounds great.

Interview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post Show/Recap

[00:23:54.000] – Coach Allan

Welcome back, Ras.

[00:23:56.540] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:24:27.510] – Coach Allan

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

[00:25:53.810] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:25:56.050] – Coach Allan

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

[00:27:02.380] – Coach Allan

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

[00:28:25.220] – Coach Allan

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

[00:29:39.930] – Coach Allan

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

[00:29:52.900] – Coach Rachel

Yeah.

[00:29:53.490] – Coach Allan

And the good things are happening.

[00:29:55.250] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:30:48.110] – Coach Allan

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

[00:30:53.350] – Coach Rachel

My gosh, I would have laughed.

[00:30:55.870] – Coach Allan

Yeah.

[00:30:56.850] – Coach Rachel

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

[00:31:03.350] – Coach Allan

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

[00:31:15.520] – Coach Rachel

It was.

[00:31:16.250] – Coach Allan

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

[00:31:36.080] – Coach Rachel

Right.

[00:31:37.010] – Coach Allan

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

[00:31:49.970] – Coach Rachel

Yes.

[00:31:51.970] – Coach Allan

That's made all the difference.

[00:31:53.620] – Coach Rachel

All the difference, yeah. For sure.

[00:31:57.030] – Coach Allan

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

[00:32:00.950] – Coach Rachel

Awesome. Take care, Alan.

[00:32:02.620] – Coach Allan

You too. Bye.

[00:32:03.710] – Coach Rachel

Thank you. Bye bye.

Music by Dave Gerhart

Patreons

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