Let's Say Hello

[00:04:08.520] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:04:10.600] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:04:12.960] – Allan
I'm doing well. I had kind of run out of gas and so I was in a little bit of a panic mode. So I threw out, you know, reached out to four different guests just to see if I could get them on the show. And they all four said yes. I mean, the three of them scheduled for this week. I was like sitting there Thursday night and I get the last one to book and I'm like, they all booked in the same week.

[00:04:38.130] – Allan
So I have a Monday, I have a Tuesday and have a Thursday interview and I have some books to read.

[00:04:43.560] – Rachel
I was going to say, you got a lot to read.

[00:04:46.740] – Allan
They were good books. I'm looking forward to talking to all of them. And as you're listening to this, this is episode 497. And so I've now booked up the plan all the way through the end of August. And so I did that interview and will be doing the other interviews. So we're going be booked up through there. We're going to have our 500th episode coming up. So that's coming up. That'll be a solo show to discuss what we're doing here on the show and celebrate and talk about some of the things we learned this year that are different, maybe things I've learned in the past.

[00:05:20.820] – Allan
But, you know, five hundred is a big accomplishment. But we've got some really cool guests coming, talking about some topics. Obviously, a couple of weeks ago, we had someone talking about stroke and that was requested by a listener. I have another episode coming up that was requested. Someone was talking about binge eating. So we have a binge eating episode coming up soon. And so, you know, and then there's others that just they want something easier.

[00:05:48.100] – Allan
And so I've got a guy that, you know, kind of talks about how to manage moderation and do it, you know, do it the right way for yourself, customize yourself. So it's got some really good episodes coming up. So I'm pretty excited about that. And I've kind of launched this new thing on the Facebook group that you may have noticed if you're in the Facebook group. But every Tuesday night now I'm coming on and doing a Facebook live to answer any questions that anyone has, particularly about the episode that we did that week.

[00:06:18.870] – Allan
So if you're listening to this on Monday or Tuesday during the day, if you can go the Facebook group at 40PlusFitnesspodcast.com/group, get into the Facebook group and I do a live there. I'll answer any questions you have about this episode with Dr. Bubbs. So you know, anything that comes up and you want to know about, about the interview, something he said, something you thought about, a question that came up.

[00:06:44.940] – Allan
I'll do my best to answer on that live. So go to 40PlusFitnesspodcost.com/group and join the 40+ Fitness Podcast Group. And I'll be there live every Tuesday. We do a lot of cool things, challenges. You know, I post a lot of what I think are important things for us to consider in our health and fitness journey. So a lot of value I think there. Come join the group. It's not overwhelming there. You'll be with over sixteen hundred other people that love the show and want to get healthy and fit and we're all over forty, so it's a really cool place to hang out.

[00:07:20.130] – Rachel
Absolutely. And that sounds fun.

[00:07:22.590] – Allan
So what's been going on up there?

[00:07:24.420] – Rachel
Oh, we're doing good through the magic of podcasting. This will be a little bit later. But Mike and I celebrate our birthdays this week and we both turned fifty. So we're getting ready for that big celebration.

[00:07:37.470] – Allan
Congratulations.

[00:07:38.430] – Rachel
Yeah, I'm pretty excited.

[00:07:40.290] – Allan
Well, we need to share this. I think we've said this before, but from a birthday perspective and if I recall, Mike's older by one day.

[00:07:49.050] – Rachel
He is. Yeah.

[00:07:50.160] – Allan
And then your birthday's the very next day.

[00:07:52.350] – Rachel
It is.

[00:07:53.160] – Allan
And you're both the same age. Both turning 50. And so my wife would probably be able to answer this question for me. But when you're both the same astrological sign and the same Chinese sign, how does that work?

[00:08:11.070] – Rachel
We seem to make it work. I think we're a lot the same in many respects and a lot different in many other respects. We have enough yin yang, I think, to make it work. We've actually been married twenty-six years now, so we somehow made that work. Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:27.840] – Allan
But it's over half your life.

[00:08:29.760] – Rachel
It is. It is. Yeah. We both, cancer is known for being stubborn and that's my astrological sign is cancer and, and we're known for being stubborn and we both can be in very different ways.

[00:08:42.960] – Allan
he's in health and safety. So that's kind of a good feel to be in if you're saying

[00:08:46.980] – Rachel
it is. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:08:50.580] – Allan
All right. So you ready to get into our conversation with Doctor Bubbs?

[00:08:53.720] – Rachel
Yep. This will be great.

Interview

[00:09:26.920] – Allan
Dr. Bubbs. Welcome back to 40+ Fitness.

[00:09:30.020] – Dr. Bubbs
Allan, I appreciate you having me on. Always good to be back.

[00:09:32.970] – Allan
Yeah. Now, the last time I had you on, we were talking about your book Peak, and it's really where you had done a deep dive into just performance in general. What are the best athletes in the world doing? What does science tell us about why they're so good and why they're getting better? And then you wrote the book that I wanted you to write. I didn't tell you I wanted you to write it, but you wrote it.

[00:09:55.840] – Allan
And it's called Peak 40: The New Science of Midlife Health for a Leaner, Stronger Body and a Sharper Mind. That's a big promise.

[00:10:05.560] – Dr. Bubbs
That is a big promise in there.

[00:10:07.750] – Allan
But you delivered.

[00:10:09.130] – Dr. Bubbs
Well, I appreciate that. It's a funny thing when you're trying to write books. I mean, this one actually came out of the impetus was the book was really working in performance. The coaches and the performance staff were all, you know, like myself in their early 40s or beyond and leading busy lives. It was like, look, I need just the Coles Notes or the that's what we use and saying, you know, the abbreviated version of what I need to do.

[00:10:33.310] – Dr. Bubbs
Right. What are the big rocks? And so and that resonated with me as well with working in the general population. You know, people are so busy in their day to day lives that it's tough to have a big, long list of things to do. And so the goal here was to provide, you know, some of these big rocks, like we say, of how we get to the major things that we can really, you know, try to keep the ball in the fairway, so to speak.

[00:10:56.530] – Dr. Bubbs
You know, we use a golfing metaphor here. Let's keep it somewhere where we can play the next shot. And then all of a sudden people realize, like I'm sure you see in your practice, like all of a sudden we can make some pretty darn good progress if we just start layering in some of these real fundamentals.

[00:11:10.870] – Allan
Yeah. And we call him Cliff Notes in the United States. It's just not just the story. You call them Coles Notes. We call them Cliff Notes. But before I get in, I didn't really talked about this, but I was going back and preparing for this. And I just like this. I can't leave this moment without actually saying this is you talked about kind and wicked as learning environments. And I and it just resonated with me.

[00:11:35.380] – Allan
So I just want to share this and we can go into it a little bit if you want to. But a kind learning environment is basically where things just fall in line. You have immediate feedback, you do something, you see the result. Your golf metaphor is perfect because that's what you talked about. You hit a golf ball. If you hit it well, it went far. It went. We're supposed to go and you're happy with that golf shot.

[00:12:01.080] – Dr. Bubbs
It doesn't feel fine, does it, Allan? like it doesn't feel easier, but it does actually. The result immediately tells you if you know a golf swing, you know exactly what you did wrong in terms of swing playing and everything else. But it is obviously a difficult sport.

[00:12:13.930] – Allan
and so kind doesn't necessarily mean the answer you're getting, the feedback you're getting. It just means you do get that feedback. Whereas we're learning environments are where you have to just stick with it and it takes so much more planning and patience. And when we're over 40 and we're looking at trying to improve our health, you know, we go into the gym and we do a workout, we eat well for a week and we don't really get immediate feedback.

[00:12:45.550] – Allan
It's sometimes we don't get feedback or sometimes we even get negative feedback is not the feedback we wanted. Well, crap, I eat salad all week and I gained weight. I guess salads make me fat.

[00:12:56.800] – Dr. Bubbs
Exactly.

[00:12:58.870] – Allan
You know, so I just I wanted to tell you that because I think as we go into this, that was just really something I took out of the book that was not unexpected because it is the message. The message is if you don't have planning, which this book gives you the tools, which that's why it's so great of a book and the patience to execute on the things that you'll learn that Dr. Bubbs has written about. This is a great book to give you some huge fundamentals, those big rocks that you were talking about to really move the needle.

[00:13:31.330] – Dr. Bubbs
Well, it's interesting that you hit on a couple of things that I mean, one of them is the human aspect of this whole story, which is the fact that regardless if you're the most rational scientist, doctor, lawyer or whomever, the human part of us, even knowing your business in your work life or your finances, you'd never think you're going to, you know, you return on investment it's going to be 100 to one in a month. When we talk about weight loss, all of a sudden, you know, rationality goes out the window and we're wondering why in 30 days we haven't lost 30 pounds.

[00:13:59.290] – Dr. Bubbs
And of course, that's the message, you know, rapid transformation so much the message that we get. But compounding things is this idea of like a wicked learning environment. And it's interesting because years ago I actually lived in the south of France teaching English and the method they used, you'd have to speak to the French people only in English. You never translated anything. Of course, they couldn't speak English, and so they found it incredibly difficult to start with.

[00:14:26.450] – Dr. Bubbs
And it's interesting because research in this area compared this is what this program was built on compared to the classic, you know, you learn Spanish, you learn French and you memorize a bunch of words. And when the researchers then asked those students how they felt that they were doing, they all felt like they were learning really well. Now, the other group in the study was doing like I had done in France, which is they were in a full immersion.

[00:14:48.740] – Dr. Bubbs
So they no one could speak to them in their mother tongue. They had to just grind through it. And when you when the researchers asked them how they were doing, they said they were doing horribly. You know, I'm not learning anything. And of course, six months later, they do this sort of immersion test. And, of course, the people who scored 90 percent on their test because they memorized all the words, once you actually put them in an environment where they had to speak French or Spanish, they were awful.

[00:15:12.650] – Dr. Bubbs
Right, because they hadn't actually practiced it, whereas the ones who thought they were awful the whole time by being in this complete immersion could actually do it well. And so that idea of linear progression is what we're talking about here. We're so used to making progress in steps that to go to muddle through weeks and months and feel like you're not making progress, even though you are, because you're laying down the right foundations for how you eat the right habits, the right training.

[00:15:37.130] – Dr. Bubbs
And it does take some time. That's one of the hardest things. I mean, it's and ironically, it circles back to Pete because this is one of the reasons why elite athletes and Olympians are so great, because they find a way to get through. You know, it's not because they're doing some fancy new workout or they've got a special supplement. It's because they can get through all these day after day, week after week of this training. And they accept the fact that this trajectory is going to be, you know, slow.

[00:16:03.290] – Dr. Bubbs
Right. If you get one percent stronger, if you're an Olympic athlete, that's tremendous work in a year. Right. So it's up. But I think when people when we present that more to clients and we let them know that we've traveled down this road and this is the expectation and we're going to get you to where you want to go. And the best part, of course, is if you use that method to get there once you arrive, it's not a free fall back to where you started from.

[00:16:26.090] – Dr. Bubbs
Once you know, you make a mistake or you go off the rails a little bit.

[00:16:31.190] – Allan
Yeah. And so I just thought that was a really important concept because so many people expect that immediate I did this, therefore that like this, if that, you know, it's so but it doesn't happen that way. And so that was really cool. Now another thing you got into the book, which again is you got into it. I was like, whoa, that's a little deep because and I knew this empirically because, you know, when we look at the standard, so something says, OK, you should, your BMI should be this and your blood pressure should be this and your height should be this.

[00:17:08.060] – Allan
And, you know, we go through all those things and what we what you come to find out when you actually get down below it is that all of these things are really sort of averages for a general person, you know? And so, you know, I don't think any of us are average across the board. We're exceptional in some places and we're not so good in others. So as you look at fasting blood glucose level, I was like, this is interesting because what you which use some of the studies you touched on, one of them was in diabetes care and another was in scientific reports, and one of them was nineteen ninety nine, the others in twenty seventeen.

[00:17:44.520] – Allan
So this is research that's been ongoing is that even though you're in the reference range, as they call it, you might not be optimized, you might not have really a good chance that might actually be better from a longevity perspective, from a health perspective to be a little bit more optimized. And you talked about how the current range for blood glucose level might not be good enough. And we might actually want to start not just being high normal, but really pushing ourselves down.

[00:18:15.890] – Dr. Bubbs
Yeah. Again, it's that idea, like in our work life, if we're getting feedback, if the project isn't to that a standard that we want, we don't accept that it's a B and just say, oh, it's good enough. We investigate. We say, how can we make this a top class or A level? And so the challenge in medicine is that so many people are unwell. So for a GP who's sitting there all day long saying twenty or twenty four patients, two thirds of the population are overweight or obese.

[00:18:42.620] – Dr. Bubbs
And so they're seeing blood sugar levels in the nines, tens and elevens. And so when somebody walks in and they're fasting, glucose is five point eight or five point nine, for the day that's you know, that's actually pretty good. And so oftentimes they won't get a recommendation or the doctor won't tell them anything. And that's you know, I don't necessarily blame the doc for that. But it is this idea that we've got to start. You know, if you're the individual listening to this and obviously listen to yourself, they've probably got none of this already of just being able to compare yourself to yourself every year, because the first you know, the first post to the goal to meet is that you're in the normal range, that's the first place you want to get to.

[00:19:21.470] – Dr. Bubbs
But after you're in there, this idea that just because you're within the normal range, you're still doing well is a problem because I've had, as I'm sure you've had, you know, the client comes in, they're 20 pounds overweight, their waist is 40 inches around the belly or more. And they say to you that their doctor told them they're in perfect health and you can see their lives and say, wait a minute, you know, I got this is a bit of a stretch here because perfect is a little.

[00:19:46.720] – Dr. Bubbs
And so what we see in the evidence is the idea that if you're at this high, normal range, you're still at a much greater risk for cardiovascular events. And so the idea around midlife health is that, you know, in midlife works, really busy in the home life, really busy, and you might be caring for young kids or older parents or even both. And so, you know, we are more at risk for various conditions and low mood and other things are part of that, which actually ties in quite tightly to the story around blood sugars.

[00:20:14.950] – Dr. Bubbs
And so really, it's more conversation to have an opportunity really for. I do talk to tell clients, say, hey, look, you're doing well, but at five point eight, we can still see a significant difference if we could get that fasting glucose down towards five, you know, definitely less than five point four. And so it's a conversation to say, what are you doing on the nutrition front? What are you doing in the exercise front?

[00:20:35.380] – Dr. Bubbs
What does that sleep or stress look like? What lever can we move there to be able to get some more wins, you know, to be able to nudge things in the right direction? Because, again, the nice part is you don't have to make a dramatic change. You just need to make a few small changes. And, again, you know, repeat them over time. But to circle back, I think the biggest problem, as we see some of you are so sick that those others kind of fly under the radar.

[00:21:00.010] – Dr. Bubbs
And, you know, I'm sure you hear they get frustrated, too, because they're still not losing that 20 pounds and they still feel like their energy is low or they're not sleeping as well or the libido is not where it wants to be. And that's a part of this whole story.

[00:21:12.550] – Allan
Yeah. And then again, in the end, when we're talking about performance, it's performing for your life. So if you can make that better then this is an approach. And again, the connection to the longevity was really something that kind of floored me. It's like, oh, so I can actually be in the normal range. My doctors happy. He's got a big smile. He spent his seven minutes with me and said, oh, your labs turned out great.

[00:21:36.250] – Allan
I'll talk to you next time. Oh, by the way, you need to lose some weight. And then he walks out the door and

[00:21:42.700] – Dr. Bubbs
wait a minute, what am I? Am I great? I'm going to lose some weight? And this is where like an American unit to be less than ninety four is kind of what we aim for or in international units, 5.0 millimoles per liter. But that's a good fasting glucose is a really good marker or your HA1C is another one, you know, that's your HP1C that's your three month average for blood glucose and again less than five point four, five to five point four is what we're after.

[00:22:08.530] – Dr. Bubbs
And so those just act as a way to tell us, like, do you have the right diet for you, regardless if it's low carb or low fat or everything else in between? That starts to tell us, like, wait a minute, if you're still at five point seven or five point eight or your fasting glucose is at one hundred and five or 110, you know, you're not all the way home yet. We've got to continue this.

[00:22:29.320] – Dr. Bubbs
We've got to, you know, like detective work, start to unpack things a little bit more and figure out where those those gaps are.

[00:22:36.160] – Allan
Yeah. Now, I was very fortunate in my kind of fitness journey and health journey was that I fell into a lot of things. I got a little lucky is the best way I can say it. The things when I found the things that worked and one of the things that really worked well for me was fasted exercise.

[00:22:55.060] – Dr. Bubbs
Cool.

[00:22:55.480] – Allan
And it was just one of those things to me saying, you know, if I get up in the morning and what was it was twofold.

[00:23:00.130] – Allan
One, if I got up in the morning and did my exercise, it was going to get done that day. You know, it's kind of like. The general says that makes you make your bed because you have a small win. For me, it was like if I just get some exercise in in the morning. And so a lot of my programs that I would put together would just say, let's let's even if it's just going for a walk, a 30 minute walk, when you first get up in the morning, you know, hydrate, go the bathroom and then just take your dog for a walk or go for a nice little walk.

[00:23:29.440] – Allan
And I said it's literally going to help you lose weight faster. And the funny thing is, is there's still a lot of people that will argue and say, no, it's calories, a calorie. You're not going to lose fat or anything. But I just don't empirically. And it's anecdotal from my perspective, until you actually, again, pointed to a study because your book is extremely science based. And it basically was it was in the Journal of Nutrition in 2019.

[00:23:55.930] – Allan
That is basically if you're exercising before breakfast, you're giving yourself a competitive advantage for weight loss.

[00:24:03.880] – Dr. Bubbs
I mean, it's a fascinating topic, everything around breakfast and timing of exercise. And there's a group out at the University of Bath and it's called the Bath Breakfast Project. So the group of researchers that are investigating everything around breakfast in terms of the types of breakfast we eat and whether we exercise before or after. And the really cool thing here is that if for someone who is overweight or trying to lose weight. When you do exercise in the fasted state, it's amazing that our body, it needs fuel, right?

[00:24:31.510] – Dr. Bubbs
And of course, we have fuel on our bodies. So even if you're 10 percent body fat, so you're lean, you've got almost a six pack, you still have thirty thousand calories of energy on your body, which means you could run like seven or eight marathons with nothing. So you imagine someone who's 20 percent or 30 percent. We've got all this energy, right. So it's your point, you wake up in the morning, you might not feel like you have the energy, but the cool thing, if you do resistance training on the one hand.

[00:24:59.450] – Dr. Bubbs
The fat within your muscles, which is called intramuscular fat, you actually start improving your ability, your body does the ability to use that fat as a fuel source for your muscle. Now, it gets really interesting here because insulin is the blood sugar hormone. And if you're more prediabetic or diabetic or overweight with a lot of central adiposity, so belly fat, then you have really high insulin levels. And that's not a good thing for longevity. Some of the original research, Dr.

[00:25:26.300] – Dr. Bubbs
Gerald Evan Stanford Medical School back in two thousand show that that's a you know, that's a big risk factor for cardiovascular disease, cancers, dementia. And so, when you train in the morning, you do resistance training, you use more intramuscular fat, and that's really correlated with really lowering this insulin in, you know, your chronic levels of insulin. And so it's a great way to, you know, you're basically moving your body in a state where there's not a lot in the fuel tank coming from the food you're eating.

[00:25:58.370] – Dr. Bubbs
So your body has to use what's in the reserves. So your body fat starts to really kick things up. And it's amazing how that is a powerful signal. And it happens also on the aerobics side. So, you know, it's a little bit different in terms of the pathway. But when you haven't eaten anything and you go off and I love your point there, but like even walking, because what people struggle with is especially if they've exercised in the past.

[00:26:22.520] – Dr. Bubbs
And then I tell them, hey, look, just get up and go for a walk. And if there a type A personality, they think you're giving them like the lower version of things and they're all I don't want to do that. That's not you know, that's not intense enough. And they don't realize that the goal is actually just to train yourself to get up and do something. It's almost like, I don't care what you do.

[00:26:40.020] – Dr. Bubbs
I just want you to get used to waking up at six or six thirty or whatever it is and do something, because that's actually the hardest part right? The getting out of bed part. And I'm sure you've seen this. You get somebody walking and then by the end of the week, without even telling them they might start jogging a little bit or by the end of two weeks, they're running in the morning. But had you suggested that right off the bat, they would have gone, oh man, the first morning they wake up and it sort of feels too intense, then we've got some cool studies to show that right.

[00:27:08.370] – Dr. Bubbs
You ask someone to go down and give you 30 pushups and, you know, something like 30 percent of the group wants to do it. You ask someone to go down and give you one push up. Almost one hundred percent of the group wants to do it. And at the end of the day, both groups are actually quite similar to the amount of pushups they can do. So it's this idea like if you can just get the person down on the floor ready to do one, once they're down there, they're going to show you what they got.

[00:27:34.830] – Dr. Bubbs
And it's the same with that morning movement piece. And so, just what you said, I think the fact that life is busy in midlife is like if we can carve this out in the morning, is great. I know people's schedules are different. So for some people, could even be after dinner, you know, rather than, you know, we all fall prey to like the Netflix and Red Wine or whatever might be a bottle of beer.

[00:27:55.410] – Dr. Bubbs
But like, if we can do some movement after dinner, if that's the only time you can get it in. And that's a pretty good time, too. And that way you get into that natural rhythm and you can start making some progress.

[00:28:06.690] – Allan
Yeah. And I've actually seen a study that said if you do some movement after you eat, it actually helps with blood sugar regulation. So, again, there's no bad time to exercise. It's just when you can get it in and which you enjoy doing and just the consistency of doing it.

[00:28:23.160] – Dr. Bubbs
100 percent. I mean, that's one of the things where, you know, we're in an Olympic year this year. And back to that morning analogy like, olympic athletes don't wake up in the morning doing cartwheels like it's five thirty in the morning and they're jumping out of bed with a big smile on their face right there. They don't know. They don't want to get out of bed and trained a lot of mornings. But the big difference, and this is part of the notion that we talk about in the Book of Building Habits is that the rest of us wake up in the morning.

[00:28:47.900] – Dr. Bubbs
When the alarm goes off. We still ask that question, like, should I get up? Should I not get up? And do I really want to go for a run? Whereas the people in this example, the you know, the athletes, the Olympic athletes, there's not a question anymore. The alarm goes off that that alarm triggers the action. They roll themselves out of bed and they just get on with it. And you'll often hear people say, well, I could never do that.

[00:29:10.640] – Dr. Bubbs
And then I say to them, what? What's the first thing you do when you sit in your car? We put your seatbelt on, right? Well, you're not thinking about that anymore. You're not motivated or inspired or you start even disciplined. You just literally the environment of sitting in that chair triggers this automatic reaction. And it's interesting how we can you know, everybody does that and so we can start to use that to implement. You know, that's ultimately what we want to do in nutrition and exercise.

[00:29:35.030] – Dr. Bubbs
We don't want you to make decisions all day long. We want to start as best we can integrating some of these things that are just what you do rather than having to think so much about it.

[00:29:42.800] – Allan
Yeah, and with an athlete, the way you're talking to competitive athletes and Olympians is, you know, first they start off with a commitment. They're going to do this and then it becomes a habit. And, you know, it's the whole point of in a way I like to say it is if your spouse needed you to pick them up at the airport at five o'clock in the morning. Guess where you are at five o'clock in the morning? You don't roll out and say, I really don't want to do this and hit your snooze alarm and ignore their text and then the letter from your divorce attorney.

[00:30:13.670] – Dr. Bubbs
exactly.

[00:30:14.870] – Allan
You know, so no, you show up where you're supposed to be. And so it's just kind of getting that thing, that ball rolling. And to know that doing this physical activity first thing in the morning before your breakfast is actually doing you more good than just doing it really kind of needs to be a huge incentive to say, yeah, get up, do something, start something. That work, even if it doesn't feel intense, is really kind of changing you and getting you better and helping you with your performance as just being a good human and a healthy parent, a healthy grandparent and all of that.

[00:30:48.230] – Dr. Bubbs
100 percent.

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[00:33:02.560] – Allan
One of the things you got into in the book is you got into protein, and this is a topic I think I read about or talk about nearly every single day, you know, because, you know, if I'm talking to a vegan or vegetarian, then the topic will always come up is where do you get your protein?

[00:33:22.120] – Allan
And I tell people it's like it's in all of that. You just have to mix and match. And then someone who is like animal protein and like, that's great protein. If you want to eat animals, that's great, too. I loved your approach coming in, basically just saying to both, you know.

[00:33:39.430] – Dr. Bubbs
Yeah. I mean, it's I mean, in the book we basically set like a minimum level and people say, well, more it. Sure. But again, the idea with the book is that if we use a golf analogy, like if you play a par three with Tiger Woods and even if you're a 10 handicap, if Tiger hits a really good shot and you hit a really good shot, you're probably not too different in terms of where the ball is.

[00:34:01.550] – Dr. Bubbs
But the difference is if Tiger hits his worst shot he's got, he's still on the green, whereas if an amateur hits the worst shot, the 20 hours in the bush and they're, you know, they've lost their ball.

[00:34:11.730] – Allan
And so we heard a splash. We just heard a splash.

[00:34:14.080] – Dr. Bubbs
That's so it was like. And so this idea that we've got to start like, you know, the worst day that we have is just going to be better, right. Rather than always focusing on trying to be people want to be great, but then it's hard to maintain it. And then all of a sudden they fall off the wagon. And so, you know, the minimum the idea for this minimum of one point two grams of protein per kilogram body weight per day, which if you divide, you know, for Canadian or American, you take your body weight in pounds and divide that by two point two.

[00:34:42.820] – Dr. Bubbs
You know, this is a number that some of the best protein researchers like Stu Phillips of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and The US leads back in the U.K., in their research, have found that as we age, if we can maintain this amount of protein, minimum amount in the 50s, 60s, 70s, it really helps to fight off sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle associated with aging. And that's actually a huge problem when we talk about longevity and wellness.

[00:35:08.320] – Dr. Bubbs
Like once you start losing muscle mass, you know, a lot of bad things start to happen after that. And so, again, it's about setting up this rhythm that if you can just start to hit this as part of your daily rhythm every day and you just know that you're getting this one point two grams per kilo, you can actually stop thinking about protein a little bit. I mean, there's scenarios where you might want more, etc., but you can then, you know, focus on other areas like carbs or fats or whatever else.

[00:35:32.890] – Dr. Bubbs
But that's a really big one, because as much as people think they're eating a lot of protein and, you know, you mentioned, you know, plant based or vegan, they'll often say, well, I've heard that before, I'm fine. But I'm sure you've seen once you actually go through and calculate things, even for meat eaters, you're saying, well, wait a minute, you know, we're barely at the RDA, which is zero point eight.

[00:35:54.730] – Dr. Bubbs
And and we're wondering why, you know, we're leaving a lot of gains out here if we're not at least getting to one point two. And even there we see in the research, if you climb up to the one point six, you're still going to get some significant benefits. So, you know, it's a great place to start to build out your diet is like, where is the protein on my plate? And then from there figuring out, you know, the rest.

[00:36:15.200] – Allan
Yeah, you do center on protein as kind of the starting point of deciding which you're going to eat. And, you know, yes, I have a client. I meet a client, I start talking and we start looking at their nutrition. And it's like they're eating 60 grams, maybe 65 grams of protein in a day. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, you're about to start lifting weights with me. I need you to bump that up considerably.

[00:36:40.630] – Allan
And then there's this fear. They're like, well, won't that harm my kidneys? Can I eat too much protein? And you kind of dove into that, you know, that people might not be able to eat too much protein, can you talk a little bit about is there a protein limit?

[00:36:56.190] – Dr. Bubbs
I mean, that's one of the biggest hangovers that still lingers in medical schools, is this idea that if we eat too much, protein is bad for our kidneys. And this really stems from if someone has type two diabetic and is having renal failure typically is the issue where we do need to be mindful of the amount of protein because the kidneys struggle to cope with it. And of course, it's almost like lost in translation. That's then got the notion of, well, if anybody consumes X amount of protein or too much protein, they're going to have issues with their kidneys.

[00:37:23.130] – Dr. Bubbs
I mean, we have studies now that for the course of one entire year, individuals consumed three point zero grams per kilogram, which is almost triple what we suggest here. And there's still no adverse effects on kidney function. And so I think one of the things, you know, this obviously is safe for the kidneys, and that's what all the protein experts will tell you. And we see more and more doctors now realizing this. And the evidence is really clear.

[00:37:45.480] – Dr. Bubbs
I mean, it's not even you know, it's very, very clear. But in addition to this, the thing that I talk about in the book, as well as this idea that vegetables are great for you, eat lots of those, but when you increase your protein intake, you also dramatically increase your micronutrients data. So you bring on board more vitamins and minerals, which we often just associate with plants and the vegetables that we're eating, but animal proteins and plant proteins as well.

[00:38:12.360] – Dr. Bubbs
But I think animal proteins often get left out on this is they're tremendously nutrient dense. And so, you know, making sure you get those in is, in effect, acting like a multivitamin. You know, you're getting you know, you're one a day or all the key vitamins and minerals that you're after.

[00:38:28.710] – Allan
Now, one of the other concepts before we get off of protein that I thought was really important that I say this all the time. It's about the quality. So when we talk about the quality of protein, what does that actually mean and how do we how do we achieve that?

[00:38:47.570] – Dr. Bubbs
Yeah, I mean, I think this is interesting when we start to look at populations around the world and we could probably even expand this to just the overall diet quality like the quality of the entire diet, because the conversation, one of the reasons why we tend to fear animal protein is because if we increase saturated fat in the diet, we can increase LDL cholesterol, which is quote unquote, the bad cholesterol. And that plays an important role in the progression of atherosclerosis, which is the narrowing of the arteries, which predisposes you more to heart attacks and strokes.

[00:39:19.160] – Dr. Bubbs
And so, heck, that's not good. We don't want that right? Now, there's a lot of nuance in this whole story because, you know, first off, we often hear steak, eggs, dairy, watch out they're high saturated fat foods. They certainly do contain some. But, you know, almonds contain double two and a half times as many saturated fats as 100 grams serving of steak. And you don't hear people saying, well, listen, almonds are going to cause you problems or dark chocolate or whatnot.

[00:39:48.710] – Dr. Bubbs
And so, you know, the foods that are richest in saturated fat are things like pizza, grain based desserts, sausages, hamburgers, all these processed meats and processed foods. And so, you know, that's the first place that we look at. But it gets even more interesting when you look at the countries around the world, because there are certain countries that have removed this upper limit, which in America we still have this upper limit that says, you should only consume 10 percent of your total caloric intake from saturated fats.

[00:40:17.660] – Dr. Bubbs
If you go above that, it can be a problem. Now, it gets interesting because you go to Spain and by 20, 40, the Spanish will be the longest living people on the planet and they eat more than 10 percent saturated fat and think, OK, maybe that's a one off, we go to France. Same thing, one of the longest living countries in the world. They also consume more than 10 percent. And this is the notion where diet quality matters, like if your saturated fats coming from real food, from steak and eggs and these types of things, and you're eating a lot of vegetables and whole foods, it looks as though that's not as big an adverse impact.

[00:40:54.230] – Dr. Bubbs
Right. You're not going to have this adverse cardiovascular effect because we see, you know, in places like Spain and France, thirty two or thirty eight deaths per 100000 from heart attack, whereas in the United States we see almost 80. Right. So more than double. And this is the idea where if you're saturated fats are coming from all those ultra processed foods. Right. Like the take out pizza, the quick hamburger or the sausage, and you're overweight.

[00:41:20.690] – Dr. Bubbs
This creates the perfect storm for all these bad issues to happen. And so, you know, if you're someone listening in and you don't like to eat meat or you don't want to eat meat, we don't tell you this to force it upon you. But I think too often I see people who are overweight who are avoiding these foods because they think it's, quote unquote, bad for them. But an effect of that is we don't achieve the protein intake and the foods that they choose to eat actually have a lot more calories in them.

[00:41:45.920] – Dr. Bubbs
And now if we're not losing weight, then we're not going to be improving blood sugars. We're not going to be lowering inflammation. And this is where we get into a real problem, because now we're you know, we're really stuck in that risk is not going to go down.

[00:41:58.150] – Allan
Now, I see that too as someone to sit there and say, well, you know, I don't want to eat that much meat and I want to get my protein. So I buy this vegan protein shake at this certain place. And I go to that place and look up the nutrition information and say, OK, well, it's got, you know, thirty nine grams of carbs, I mean, sugar. And I'm like, so that's like drinking a so-called soft drink.

[00:42:20.650] – Allan
I mean, quite literally drinking a soft drink. And you might be getting 20 grams of protein out of that. But, you know, it's not just protein and it's processed stuff and it's a lot of sugar. And so, yeah, I think it's too easy to get roped into this. The simple is the way and it's just, you know, go ahead and avoid these, you know, set these simple rules, avoid saturated fat, avoid animal products, avoid that.

[00:42:46.930] – Allan
And you can get yourself roped into a just kind of making mistakes only because you're listening and trying to fit it in and and also because you like that particular flavor of shake.

[00:42:59.320] – Dr. Bubbs
Well, and the other thing, too. Yeah. I mean, if you're a plant based or vegan and oftentimes I see people have problems, I'm like, I don't see them eating any lentils. I don't see them eating any tempe and eating all these processed, you know, meat substitutes and say, wait a minute, you can't if you're plant based and you're still eating a processed food diet, that's still not good. And it might even be worse than an animal based processed food diet.

[00:43:22.900] – Dr. Bubbs
And it's like we've got to get back to your point here, like eating real food. You want 20 grams or 30 grams of plant based protein. Well, let's have some lentils. Let's have some tempe or whatnot or a shake that has less sugar than the one you mentioned, because otherwise, yeah, you're still causing a lot of the same problems just with a different type of strategy.

[00:43:43.630] – Allan
Yeah. Now, one area you got into the book that I think is far overlooked in the health and wellness space is because we're like, OK, well, here's your nutrition, here's your fitness. Go lose some weight, get stronger and you're good. And many people will sit there and kind of put this concept of when I get to a particular weight, I'm going to be happy. Yeah. Now,

[00:44:09.070] – Dr. Bubbs
when I win an Olympic medal, I'll be happy.

[00:44:12.820] – Allan
I'll be happy.

[00:44:13.960] – Allan
Right. And that day may or may not ever come, but you get to that weight and it's not there. And so you talk about awe and happiness and they're related in my opinion. Awe gives you happiness. Awe is the moments that you're happiest because you're just looking at the world in a way that's just it's opening you up to just what, what's possible. Why should we commit to all Awe.

[00:44:42.080] – Dr. Bubbs
I mean this is sort of the underpinning of the whole book with this idea that. Well, first off, Mindset's. You know, the six inches between our ears is the reason why we succeed or don't succeed. And so with that as the backdrop and again, this is regardless if it's you or I or someone working a nine to five is trying to achieve their goals or even an Olympian, it's still you know, that mindset that we bring is really what's going to make us or break us.

[00:45:07.420] – Dr. Bubbs
And the really, you know, at first kind of depressing thing in midlife is how I open the book with this U shaped happiness curve, which Professor David Blanchflower, Dartmouth University goes around the world than the one hundred and thirty five countries. They measure all these indices of happiness and realize that it doesn't matter if you're in America, South America, Europe, Asia by midlife and are between 41 to 48. Effectively, we have this dip, our lowest point of the happiness index, which on the surface sounds a little bit like, oh geez, really?

[00:45:38.440] – Dr. Bubbs
That sounds like a long time, seven years, but really more than likely reflects the fact that we're just at our busiest. We got all these demands on our time, we're sleeping less, etc.. Now, why is that important to this whole conversation? Well, if we don't if we know that, let's say if you don't sleep sufficiently, if you don't get that at least seven hours a night, it's more difficult to disengage from negative thoughts. Tonight,

[00:46:02.170] – Dr. Bubbs
You wake up in the morning. I think we'll forget that. I'm not getting up to run because, you know, we can make up an excuse, right. It gets harder now to build the habits that we need. And so this is one of the major roadblocks we see with clients in midlife is that, you know, the mindset is such that we're sort of stuck in this bit of a rut, if you will, or we've tried to achieve those weight loss goals, health goals so many times that as soon as something goes wrong or as soon as we get to a roadblock, you know, it's like a loop that plays back in our minds and we start self sabotaging and thinking it's not going to work out.

[00:46:37.810] – Dr. Bubbs
And so, you know, this connection to awe, really, how do we rather than this progression of if I achieve the promotion, if I achieve the weight loss goal, if I achieve my dream of the Olympics, then I get to happiness. The cool thing, again, from a performance standpoint, is in elite sport, they're flipping that whole model to say how do we create happiness in this person to allow them to express their potential? Because even if you achieve your weight loss goal, guess what happens tomorrow morning?

[00:47:08.800] – Dr. Bubbs
You still need to wake up and do something, you still need to eat something, you still need to train a certain way, like there's you know, the world keeps moving. And so how do we build that mindset? How do we start to reshape, you know, how we think and how we feel, you know, whether it's optimism, self talk, all these types of things? And this is where we circle back to this conversation are awe because I think with the backdrop of the latest pandemic, we've seen how people's moods have been impacted.

[00:47:37.060] – Dr. Bubbs
And so what's the easiest way to impact, you know, mood and happiness? And when we look, you know, there's two components to happiness. One of them is life satisfaction, which is effectively, you know, how satisfied are you with your life? And that actually does trend really closely with your income. So you tend to be more satisfied with your life if you have higher earning power. But the other part of happiness is the subjective part.

[00:48:02.750] – Dr. Bubbs
Which means, are you happy in your life? And that actually has no correlation with income. It might. In fact, when you get to a high enough bracket, it actually impacts negatively. And so the crazy part about awe, which is awe is basically just walking out into nature, you know, forests, seeing mountains and ocean, even pictures of it. Awe is even listening to, like a song that really resonates for you or a speech that makes you feel a certain way and that actually triggers both aspects.

[00:48:32.340] – Dr. Bubbs
It's a positive emotion. It triggers both aspects of happiness. And so, you know, some really cool research by Dr. Amy Gordon at Cal Berkeley and even our day to day lives, if you can actually in a week, find a couple of things that are, that allow you to experience that, so if you can scroll through your Instagram rather than comparing yourself to somebody, look through some landscapes or listen to some music, it actually has this really beneficial effect for, you know, emotions and positive emotions, which, you know, by itself isn't going to move the needle.

[00:49:07.740] – Dr. Bubbs
But it allows you then to take that step towards saying, I'm going to do a little bit more, you know, positive self talk exercise or I'm going to train myself a bit more to be optimistic. Because the funny part is these are actually like these are trainable skills. We often think of them as just traits like that's a positive person. I'm a skeptical person. But one of the analogies I like metaphors that's really great is this idea. Like, you don't show up to the championship game and expect to score 40 points if you've never practiced.

[00:49:38.370] – Dr. Bubbs
And how many of us really practice our mindset skills. Right. And until recently, it's really flown under the radar. And so I think for some of us in midlife, it feels kind of weird to sort of circle back to that. But, you know, one of the ways in which I outline is and which I've seen it, the experts that I work with and in sport right now is this notion of going back to your values. So if I need you to develop a new habit.

[00:50:04.090] – Dr. Bubbs
It helps a little bit if you want to hit a certain number on the scale, but it really helps if your values or the fact that you want to take care of your you know, you want to spend quality time with your kids and have enough energy for them, but you're 30 pounds overweight. And if you don't do it, it's going to adversely impact that relationship and your ability. Now, all of a sudden, we've got this you know, you can really see that the North Star there is that value.

[00:50:26.000] – Dr. Bubbs
And if you're staying up late watching, you know, crappy TV and snacking on things, it just becomes more obvious. And so that's been one thing over time that's really struck out for me in my practices, you know, limiting the amount of things that get people to do, being more just like here's the one or two things you want to do and allowing them the space to see that, you know, hey, this is your goal.

[00:50:48.530] – Dr. Bubbs
You want to be more energetic, to thrive in your business or at home. Well, these are the things that you're doing. Do you think those are in alignment? And when you can let people start and they make those connections quite quickly and all of a sudden it's amazing how almost like snapping your fingers, people who struggled to do a behavior for weeks or months can all of a sudden really jump on board.

[00:51:10.100] – Allan
Dr. Bubbs. I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:51:20.420] – Dr. Bubbs
that's a great question. I mean. The way again, this whole idea of being busy in the madness and hectics of midlife is coming back to simple rules that we can remember. When we're busy and when we fall off the wagon and we fall out, you know, we go off path, it's easy to remember these heuristics, right? These simple rules to come back to us. What I would like to tell people is, if you can start your morning well, in the book we call Master your morning.

[00:51:45.610] – Dr. Bubbs
If you can end your day well or not, let things go off the rails with all the late night eating because we know that's where, you know, more than 40 percent of all the calories we consume now come after six o'clock. So if you can start your day well, end your day well and eat enough protein through the day. Three simple things. You'd be amazed at how much progress you can make as the middle of the day actually doesn't matter nearly as much as those other points.

[00:52:07.360] – Dr. Bubbs
And so that would be kind of the quick tips I would give someone that they can go off with and say, hey, eat the right breakfast, try not to snacks in the mid-morning, don't succumb to the late night snacking and get that protein in. And you'd be pretty, pretty amazed at the progress you can make.

[00:52:24.050] – Allan
Awesome. So, Dr. Bubbs, if someone wanted to learn more about you about the book, and I believe you have a seminar, a peak 40 think coming up this fall, where would you like for me to send them?

[00:52:39.380] – Dr. Bubbs
100 percent. Yeah, I appreciate it. You can go to drbubbs.com/peak40 and you'll you know, you'll see some info there. We have a nutrition coaching we do every three times a year. The next one's in the fall, 2021. And so you can check out some information there. We got a peak 40 podcast as well, or a short form podcast, again, sort of 20 minutes an episode to give people some clips on this and how they can start to implement some of these things.

[00:53:04.430] – Dr. Bubbs
And again, you know, after 20 years of doing this and working on both ends of the spectrum with kind of elite Olympic athletes and the general population, it's really been, you know, a fun journey. But trying to figure out how we can help people, you know, make the most progress by doing that minimum effective dose is really the, you know, the impetus for the book.

[00:53:24.230] – Allan
Dr. Bubbs, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:53:28.160] – Dr. Bubbs
Allan, I appreciate it, man. It's been great to be on. And thanks for having me.

Post Show/Recap

[00:53:36.360] – Allan
Hey Raz, welcome back.

[00:53:38.160] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, wow, that was really neat of Dr. Bubbs to come back with a new book and they both of his books sound really interesting. I like the idea of peaking, but especially after 40.

[00:53:50.240] – Allan
Well, yeah. And I think that was kind of one of the things the first book was just it was intense because it was written for pretty much for professional athletes. And it was, you know, in their field, they need to peak at a certain time. So I'm not sure the show we're coming up on the Olympics soon. I think, you know, people won't be attending again because of the problems with covid.

[00:54:13.980] – Allan
But all these athletes over the course, the last several months have been doing what they needed to do to qualify for the Olympics, which is typically done every four years for most of these athletes. So they are doing world championships and other things. But for most of them, they don't care about that. They just want to make this one race. They want to do this one thing. And to do that, they spend all their time trying to peak to try to be at the best performance they possibly can at a given point in time.

[00:54:46.230] – Allan
So one, they make it into the Olympics and then two when they're competing in the Olympics against the best people in the world, that they're doing their best. So even if they don't win, you're seeing the best that that athlete can bring to the field. And the science that Dr. Bubbs talked about in his first book, Peak was everything we know about how that happens and how you can train for peak performance. I thought it was important to have him on here because we are training to be peak grandparents and peak this, you know.

[00:55:22.500] – Allan
So if you're planning a hike and you're going to do the Grand Canyon with your nieces and nephews or your children or whatever grandchildren you want to be, peak health, you want to be peak performance, you know, you want to be able to lift your own kayak. You want to be able to do your own, you know, your own marching and you don't want to have to sit stuff out. So peaking and being in the performance state I thought was really important.

[00:55:44.790] – Allan
And then he comes back with peak forty and I'm like, well, this is perfect. I didn't have anything to do with that. But like, this is perfect. And so. Yeah. And so basically this book is taking a lot of the basic science and things that were in peak and is applying it to the rest of us. So he was talking to that, that one percent of people out there with the first book and I, I tried to take that information and apply it for us and then he's gone and actually done it and even better.

[00:56:15.720] – Allan
So it's a really cool book, particularly if you consider yourself generally athletic, but doesn't have to be because there's still a lot in there for everybody. But if you're if you're an athlete, you see yourself as an athlete, there's a lot in there to help you just be as good as you can be. So if you're trying to get a PR on a five K or a half marathon boom, you're going to have some a lot of information in there to help you do that.

[00:56:42.660] – Allan
Or if you just want to be an awesome grandma when it comes to family vacation or the grandkids are hanging out with you. It's also that kind of book too.

[00:56:51.960] – Rachel
When you started the interview off with the big rocks, the major things, the big things that we can do to make a change in our lives. And that also resonated with me, too, because we're bombarded by data all around us. There's articles and podcasts and news clippings and and news headlines that we see on the news.

[00:57:11.100] – Rachel
And all this stuff is around us and we can easily get lost in the weeds. But I like bringing the focus back to the big rocks. What are the major things that we can do to move the needle on our own personal health and fitness?

[00:57:22.720] – Allan
Yeah, well, I brought this up in my book as well, the Wellness Roadmap was that we do have to focus on the big rocks. And I actually talked about kind of where that concept came from, its big rocks, little rocks and sand. And you're trying to get them all in the bucket and they all fit in the bucket. If you put the big rocks in there first, if you put the sand in there first, you won't get all the big rocks and little rocks in there.

[00:57:46.020] – Allan
And if you put the little rocks in there, you're still not going to get everything in there. So you've got to put the big rocks in first and then you put the little rocks and then you shake the hell out of the jar. And then you put the sand in and shake the jar and you eventually can get all of that into that jar. It doesn't look like it when you first start, but you can. And the concept is, if you focus on the big rocks first, you're going to make up a lot of ground faster.

[00:58:11.340] – Allan
And it and it works and it works in almost every aspect of your life. We get buried when we start focusing on the sand. So the question is, what supplement should I take? You know, I hear about this protein window after my weight training, do I have to have protein within an hour or is my training wasted? We hear all these things and it keeps coming out every day, you know, eat pomegranate, it's a superfood.

[00:58:41.440] – Allan
Those are all those things are good. But they're the sand. They're just sand in your progress of how far you want to go. So focusing on the big rocks means that you're putting your priority. You're putting your time, which is at a premium for us today. You're putting that on the most important thing. So, you know, you'll hear the statement, you can't outwork a diet.

[00:59:07.470] – Allan
people still try.

[00:59:08.870] – Allan
Yeah, well, you know, I'm doing an hour a day on the treadmill and I'm like, well, if you spent that hour food prepping. You know, cutting up some vegetables, pre cooking the meat and fish that you want to eat for the week and putting those meals together and putting them in the freezer that hour would do so much more for you than the hour you spent on the treadmill. Now, the hour on the treadmill might be important from a mental health perspective because many of us get a lot of mental benefit from the exercise.

[00:59:41.280] – Allan
So my big rock might not entirely be your big rock, but I will say I'm certain for 90, 95 percent of us nutrition, eating whole food is our big rock. If you're not eating mostly whole food, meaning it's not coming from a can, box, jar or bag, and I see those different every time I see them. But if it's not coming from one of those four things, then you're eating Whole Foods. It's plant.

[01:00:13.200] – Allan
Yeah, animal. And the less processed the better. If you're eating mostly whole food and as high quality as you can eat. That's most of our big rocks.

[01:00:24.780] – Rachel
That is a good one. That's a great one.

[01:00:27.300] – Allan
And then the next big rock. The next big rock is moving. Exactly. You need to be moving. Your body was designed to move. In fact, it needs to move to stay alive. You know, the toxins that are in your body, they're cleared from your cells and they go into your lymph system. Now, your lymph system doesn't have any pumps. Your heart is a pump for blood. Your lungs and the diaphragm work as a pump system to basically move oxygen in and take carbon dioxide out.

[01:01:00.480] – Allan
And that's working like a pumping action. But we don't have a way to remove our toxins with any pumping action, the way that works is through skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is the muscle that moves our body around. So if we're not moving, we're not clearing toxins. And they're sitting there and you might have heard some terms like, OK, well, I hope the cancer doesn't get into the lymph nodes because then it spreads.

[01:01:26.970] – Allan
And that's true. So movement is a way for your body to stay detoxify. It's a way for your body to stay cleaner. So we need to move as a function of our day to day life that makes us healthier and helps us avoid a lot of problems. And so those are the two big rocks that I would say if you're not doing those two things and it doesn't matter how much protein you eat, it doesn't matter how many hours you sleep, it doesn't matter anything else.

[01:01:58.110] – Allan
Doesn't matter if you're not doing those two things.

[01:02:01.080] – Rachel
Yeah, I have to agree with you on that. One food and movement are so critical. And he also mentioned the happiness and awe and mindset at the end. That's my other favorite word, mindset.

[01:02:16.080] – Allan
I was so happy to see the word, Awe. Because no one in the health and fitness field, to my knowledge, and I've read hundreds, thousands of books and articles, no one really talks much about that. You know, I talk about happiness, but awe takes it to a whole nother level. Awe is about the experience of life. And I think a lot of us missed that because we're too busy being busy.

[01:02:45.610] – Rachel
Oh, gosh. Yeah.

[01:02:48.380] – Allan
So I was really glad he brought that up, because I do think that happiness and awe are kind of a missed piece of a life well lived. So you can be super fit. And you can eat the best foods. But if you're not enjoying yourself and you're not having those moments of bliss of awe, then why live a year longer? You know, why? I mean, so the why that we go through the commitment is typically about

[01:03:22.930] – Allan
Those moments, you know, when I talk to clients and I say, OK, why do you want to do this? Why why do you want to lose 30 pounds? why? And it's the well, you know, I'll feel better. I'll be happier. And that's not the way it works. You will probably feel better. That's true. But it's so you can do what? And those moments should be, awe, you know, time with a granddaughter, time of the grandson.

[01:03:55.760] – Allan
Hiking Grand Canyon, going and seeing the Great Wall of China, the Galapagos, you know, having the health and wellness to do that stuff, because I can tell you, when you're standing on the sea cliffs of the Galapagos and you're watching the albatross fly and the sea wall is just like the sea just hitting these cliffs and spring up in the air. Those are moments that no one can take from me.

[01:04:24.230] – Rachel
I love it.

[01:04:25.280] – Allan
And so when someone tells me, you know, I'm too busy. I'm too busy to eat well. I'm too busy to work out those big rocks and then the fact that smaller, big rocks of sleep and stress reduction, I'm too busy to meditate, I'm too busy to do yoga. I'm too busy. When someone tells me they're too busy, that's one of the saddest things that I can hear, and it bothers me that that excuse bothers me more than any other excuse out there.

[01:04:58.400] – Rachel
Yeah, it's so important to make your own health a priority and then to work your life around that. And I'm a morning runner and a lot of the people in some local run clubs are morning runners. Some of us are evening runners. And I see the most beautiful sunrise and sunset pictures from other people's runs that are just breathtaking. And to have that moment of that beautiful splendor of the first light or the last light, it's beautiful.

[01:05:29.620] – Rachel
Who doesn't love a sunrise or sunset? And to just appreciate that moment or to see the wildlife we've got dear right now are dropping fawn. So we see a lot of fawns on our runs as well. And to see a deer and a fawn is such a special thing. And it's why I get out and run so often. And I just it just makes me so happy in that moment and it's such a special time. And I wish other people could appreciate that as well by getting up early and doing their thing.

[01:05:59.740] – Allan
And it's not that you have to go for a run to do those things. Sometimes it's as simple as getting in your car, driving down to a local park and going for a walk. And it's funny because I have a guest that's coming up and I don't want to blow the whole thing, but he just you talked about just petting and playing with a dog and some things like that. And I'm like, there's so many moments that you can take.

[01:06:26.710] – Allan
To put more happiness into your life, and so I'd kind of like to leave this with a challenge and the challenge would be write down three things that you really, really, really enjoy doing that just really make you happy. Write down three things and then commit to within the next month to do all three of those things. And it can be to sit with your loved one and watch a sunset. It can be to go back and watch a movie that I really, really enjoyed.

[01:07:06.010] – Allan
it can be to take up something that I did before that was athletic and just do it slower pace. If you need to pick up a tennis racket and a golf hit the ball against the wall.

[01:07:20.890] – Allan
You know, you don't have to be all of that. But if you enjoyed playing tennis, it's not that you have to give it up. You go do it. And so within the next month. Take those three things and just make a point to do them, and if you can do them easily like Sunset's. Other than when it's cloudy, those happen almost every day, lots of opportunity, whereas, you know, if it's I want to go to the beach again, maybe that's a little bit out of touch, out of reach for this month.

[01:07:54.100] – Allan
But think about the things that really kind of bring you joy, that make you happy and just spend a little bit more time doing that. And then, of course, if you're focusing on the big rocks, you have more energy, you have more fitness, and you'll be able to do more. And so, like I said, it just it bugs me when people say they're too busy. And I'm like, you know, really, if you care about your wellness, then they're listening to this point in the podcast.

[01:08:25.360] – Allan
So I think you care. You got to make the investment. You got to make the investment of time because big rocks take time. Big rocks take time because one, you're not going to get that immediate satisfaction of, oh, I had a salad for dinner, I should weight 10 pounds less tomorrow. Not how it works or I got on the treadmill today and I ran a mile. It's like, OK, you wake up the next morning and you hurt like heck because you haven't been running at all.

[01:08:56.200] – Allan
That's not how big rocks work. You've got to move them slowly. You've got to do the gentle nudges and then you've got to be patient and wait for those things, those good things to happen. And so the peak performance that you see in an elite athlete, the Olympics, are four years away for some of these kids. They started training when they were in diapers, learning a skill and then honing it and working it, working it, and hours and hours and hours and hours, thousands and thousands of hours of training.

[01:09:23.050] – Allan
Yeah. Just for the chance to be one of those athletes. And then they perform, and so the investment that they're making is huge over time. And it's that slow, they get there, they get there, and then if everything peaks, everything's right. They have that awesome moment. And what but I think that Dr. Bubbs is saying in this book is awesome moments are all around you. You don't have to wait for the Olympics to come.

[01:09:58.120] – Allan
You can have an awesome moment today. You just have to go out and do it. You have to know you want it and you have to do it. You have to make the investment of time, effort, money, put the time and you put the money and you put the effort in and you make special things happen in your life. And that makes your life better. It makes it more full. And so, you know, most of us are opportunity to go to the Olympics is over.

[01:10:24.520] – Allan
Our boat has sailed. And we're not going to be there. I'm not going to be in the NFL. You're not going to be NBA or WNBA. That stuff's not going to happen for us. But that doesn't mean we don't have things that we can aspire to, things that we can win, things that make us happy.

[01:10:41.770] – Rachel
Yeah, we can do great things. Allan, I mentioned earlier, I'm about to turn 50 and a couple of weeks ago I ran fifty miles.

[01:10:50.200] – Rachel
That's got to be one of the biggest accomplishments in my life. And I'm about 50. So there's still plenty of time to do great things, whatever they are. Well, just if you could start,

[01:11:01.060] – Allan
it might be the biggest so far.

[01:11:02.890] – Rachel
So far. That is true.

[01:11:05.410] – Allan
because you haven't been a grandma yet, you know. So there's. Yeah. And pushed that off a few years. OK, but since your kids are just not quite there yet. Yeah butthe whole point being is, Yes, that there's so much in front of us. And that's again why I love that word, awe. Is because if you start seeking out those things that do that for you, your life is going to be so much fuller.

[01:11:35.410] – Allan
And most of the time we get on here and we're talking about nutrition and we're talking about fitness and we're into the stuff that sometimes it's easy to forget. It's not always about putting more in. So I'm working that full time job, I'm doing this, and then I'm trying to exercise and I'm trying to cook and I'm trying to take care of my kids and and do all those things together. The reality is sometimes it's just taking a break and doing less and just doing something that you enjoy that just brings you that feeling.

[01:12:09.670] – Rachel
That's just it is finding that happiness and that joy and awe. Like Dr. Bubbs had said, it's important.

[01:12:17.950] – Allan
Yes, it is. All right. So, Rachel, I guess we'll talk next week then.

[01:12:22.930] – Rachel
Sounds great. Take care.

[01:12:24.850] – Allan
You, too.

[01:12:25.730] – Rachel
Thanks.

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