Sponsor

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

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Let's Say Hello

[00:03:37.670] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:03:40.070] – Rachel
Great, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:41.690] – Allan
I'm doing pretty good. A couple of things I'm kind of excited about one I went camping. I realized when I went camping here because place about 2 hours boat ride away from here. So we were remote. We were really remote. And I realized when I was camping, like, I haven't done this since I was in the Boy Scouts. I was in the army. Granted, we would be out and about in the Woods and whatnot? But because I was a light infantry group, we never set up tents.

[00:04:11.690] – Allan
We never started fires. We never did any of that stuff. If you were to sleep, you slept on the ground right there and you might cover up with a poncho if it's raining. But we never set up tents ever. And so just like to set up a tent, start up campfire, collect wood as got going back. And like, hey, I haven't started a fire in decades. Decades, many decades. And I was like, this is kind of crazy because I think it was probably about 15. So it's probably about 40 years ago was the last time I actually went camping.

[00:04:46.910] – Rachel
And what did you think? Did you have a good time?

[00:04:48.950] – Allan
It was good.

[00:04:49.550] – Allan
It was just 2 hours is a long time to be on a little boat. A little pangas, bang, bang, bang all the way there. And then bang, bang, bang all the way back. I was able to do a little fishing and that kind of thing. And we were camping with people that while I'm friendly with, I don't know, super well. So it wasn't like, deep friendships that you sit there and you have deep, meaningful conversations with them. It was just sort of okay. Yeah, we're hanging out.

[00:05:17.450] – Allan
This is cool. That's cool. Probably if it had been longer, it might have been more difficult because this is the point. And I'm an introvert by nature. So just being trapped on an island with a few people is kind of interesting.

[00:05:34.370] – Rachel
Sure. That sounds wonderful. I love camping. I grew up camping, not on a beach like you guys, but we love camping. We did tent camping as kids. And then when Mike and I got married and we had kids, we eventually made it up to the pop up type of camper. And now we have a trailer pulled behind kind of camper

[00:05:55.370] – Allan
that's glamping.

[00:05:56.750] – Rachel
Yeah, it is. I totally agree. I have a great mattress. I have a little bathroom in my camper. I am totally set, and I absolutely love it.

[00:06:08.450] – Allan
I had the shovel ready just in case.

[00:06:12.050] – Rachel
Yeah, it's a little different when you're roughing it like, you guys, but, yeah, it's still a fun experience to do every now and then.

[00:06:18.710] – Allan
Yeah. And then I'm pretty excited I'm going to do this new challenge. And I've started talking about it because you probably heard some of the conversations about it, but there's still time. There's still time to sign up for this because I believe this episode is going live on the 8th. Right?

[00:06:39.770] – Rachel
I think so. Yeah.

[00:06:40.610] – Allan
8Th. Okay. So there's still time for this. And so if you'll come to Crushtheholidays.com, I'm doing a little 40 plus fitness challenge this year, and it's just five weeks. And basically it's motivation. There's a pop up Facebook group for us to kind of support each other as we go through these holidays, because on the average, people are going to put on weight over the holidays. So if you're thinking, oh, I'll get started in January, we're going to talk about that a little bit later. I'll just get started in January.

[00:07:13.250] – Allan
Well, if you take two steps backwards between now and then, that's not so cool. So this challenge will start on November 20th. But don't wait. Go ahead and sign up. There is a small cost to the challenge, but there's also prizes. So I'm literally taking the money that I'm getting from the challenge and reinvesting that into the prizes that I'm giving out to make things. So there's going to be some 40 plus fitness podcast swag. There's going to be some books, some of my favorite books that I've had some of these folks on the show recently.

[00:07:44.750] – Allan
I'll be sharing their books with you. There's going to be Amazon gift cards. And for one lucky person in the challenge, I'm going to give away a six week, 40 plus fitness online training program that I'm launching in January. So I've been doing the GAS program. I've kind of revamped it a bit. And so I'm going to relaunch that in January, and it's going to be a little bit shorter, a little bit more condensed, affordable. But for the one person coming through the challenge, they're going to get it for free.

[00:08:13.730] – Rachel
Sounds awesome and like fun. Sounds like fun.

[00:08:16.490] – Allan
Yeah. So it's crushtheholidays.com.

[00:08:19.850] – Rachel
Great.

[00:08:20.870] – Allan
All right. Anything else before we get with this conversation, this really bold conversation with Deltorro?

[00:08:27.470] – Rachel
No. Yeah. I can't wait to talk.

[00:08:29.690] – Allan
All right.

Interview

[00:09:11.690] – Allan
Delatorro, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:09:14.390] – Delatorro
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Good honor to be here with you.

[00:09:17.030] – Allan
So today, we're going to talk about your book, Shift into a Higher Gear: Better your Best and Live Life to the Fullest. And I really love that title. And then also you use the motorcycle as kind of your vehicle for communication. And I just love that. I love that because you went through. And when someone does that, you know that they've spent a lot of time thinking which you probably did most of that thinking on the motorcycle, which was also probably pretty cool. And so really just kind of told a story about you that I really felt like a personal connection.

[00:09:52.190] – Allan
As I was reading through the book about who you are as a person and what you bring and the joy you bring to people's lives because you're there to help them live the better life.

[00:10:01.550] – Delatorro
Yeah. That's really what it's all about, man. I appreciate you saying that, Allan, because I really believe that when we commit to stepping into what it means to really transform people and shift people, right? I think we really have to go on this intentional journey to really let people into the parts of ourselves that sometimes we don't even feel are the most beautiful parts of ourselves. But they're the necessary parts that people need to see. And so I don't want people to just look at me and say, okay, he's super successful.

[00:10:31.610] – Delatorro
I want people to say, hey, listen, this guy's been on a journey. He's gone through some things. He's had to navigate some potholes, right? He's had to maneuver, right? He's had to deal with all these things to be able to be at a place where he can now reach back and inspire others to take it to the next level as well. So I'm excited about the book. I'm really, really grateful for it, and it's already making waves all across the planet. So we're excited.

[00:10:50.750] – Allan
Well, of course it is. Now you had this concept at the very beginning of the book, and I was like, I love this because it's kind of a mantra that I use a lot of the time is better me tomorrow. Am I doing today the things that are going to make me better tomorrow? And I think so many people think about the end game of where their finish line is, of what they want to accomplish, not thinking in terms of tomorrow. What can you do today versus thinking about this big thing later?

[00:11:19.850] – Allan
It's a snowball. Can you talk a little bit about that theme of will you be better today than you were yesterday? Because I think that's really the key.

[00:11:30.410] – Delatorro
So here's what's cool, right? It's the daily invitation. I believe that life really and truly does give us one open invitation every day, and it comes in the form of a question. Will you be better today than you were yesterday? Will you make the daily decision to better your best to top yourself just by 1% and that's the key, because a lot of people don't really can't quantify what that means. And so for me, it's how do you get better just by 1% how do you get 1% more forgiving?

[00:11:57.710] – Delatorro
1% more generous, 1% more patient, 1% more service oriented, 1% more fit, right? 1% more committed to your cardio. 1% more committed to your meal plan or meal prep. 1% more committed to your supplement intake or you're getting enough vitamin D by taking a walk in nature, right? It's about how do we every day do a little bit that's going to make the big difference.

[00:12:23.270] – Allan
And it's compounding interest.

[00:12:28.170] – Delatorro
You're exactly right, my friend.

[00:12:29.850] – Allan
Now in the book, we're talking about change. And you talked about the six phases of real change. And I thought these are really important because, again, everybody likes to skip to the end, but we really kind of have to take these steps. We have to take these little steps and go through these phases. Can you talk a little bit about the six phases of real change?

[00:12:50.370] – Delatorro
Yeah. So I want to encourage everyone who's listening right now to really think about something in your life that you want to change, like, right now we all have stuff that we want to shift.

[00:13:01.290] – Delatorro
But there are six phases to change. But just like you said, if we skip to the end and we don't do the process necessary, we might get a quick change, Allan, but it's not going to be permanent, and it's not going to be long lasting. So if we really want to create real change in our lives, we've got to go through what I like to call the six phases of change. So change phase number one is you got to say it must change. You got to identify the thing that has to change in your life because you can't conquer if you don't confront and you can't confront what you don't identify.

[00:13:32.370] – Delatorro
So you got to identify what it is that you want to change. Right?

[00:13:34.890] – Delatorro
Second thing you got to say is, I must change it. It's a simple phrase, but it's really powerful. So it must change. Lets us get clear about what needs to change. I must change it. Allows me to now be the CEO of the Correction. In other words, it's not up to the government to change it, Allan. It's not up to who's in the White House to change it. It's not up to who's, the governor or the Mayor. It's not up to society. It's not up to whatever things that we tend to externally justify and externally excuse a way or what I like to call interpersonal responsibility.

[00:14:08.370] – Delatorro
It is up to us to change it. It must change. I must change it. Number three, I can change it. You got to get excited. You got to get confident about the fact that you can get fit over 40. You can live the life of your dreams. You can take the vacations you want. You can have the kind of business that you desire, right? It must change. I must change it. Number three, I can change it. Number four, I will change it. Now, Allan, you and I both know there's a big difference between what someone can do and what they will do.

[00:14:34.530] – Allan
Yes. Absolutely.

[00:14:35.910] – Delatorro
Can is a statement of potentiality and possibility, and it evokes confidence. At the end of the day, we've got to cross the bridge from can do to will do, right. And I always say this your I will is more important than your IQ. I think it's so important that we have that determination, that fortitude, that grit, that fight, that hustle that says, I will make this change, right. And then once you get that, I will change it. The next phase, which is number five is I am changing it.

[00:15:04.050] – Delatorro
And when you're in the middle of a change process, I don't care what it is. It is uncomfortable, right?

[00:15:10.050] – Allan
Yeah.

[00:15:10.350] – Delatorro
Because you don't fit, Allan. You don't fit where you used to be. You're not there anymore or you don't quite fit where you're going because you're not quite there yet. So you're caught between who you used to be and who you're trying to be. And when you're in that conundrum, I think it's so vitally important that you celebrate. One of the things I always encourage people to do, Allan, is go to the party store, get some confetti, throw in the air and walk through their own little celebration, because at the end of the day, you're in the middle of a change process.

[00:15:35.670] – Delatorro
And it's a process. But I am changing it. I am changing my nutrition. I am changing my exercise. I am changing my podcasting process. I am changing how I people into my programs. I am changing my webinars, I am changing my parenting. I am changing my marriage and my relationship. So you're in that process of change. And final step, step number six is I have changed it. And this is where a Press release comes in, because you need to let Lotty Dotti and everybody know that you have changed something significant in your life.

[00:16:08.790] – Delatorro
And I ultimately believe that when we make it through all six phases of change, and when we really haven't changed, we've actually transformed, brother.

[00:16:16.350] – Allan
Yeah. And that's what way I kind of go about it is I called it Cargo in my book, and it was kind of like, okay, first, you've got to celebrate when you get there. Second, you've got to kind of almost re acclimate because you are different. You're a different person. Like you said, you transfer yourself, you've transformed. And then the R is reassess because there's always another journey. There's always another one.

[00:16:46.710] – Delatorro
I like that reassess. That's good, man.

[00:16:48.810] – Allan
And then go, just go do it. There's so much more that 1%, that 1%, that 1%. And then the reassess and saying, okay, what else? What keeps us motivated, keeps us moving. And then you go, like I said, you can just lay those six phases right on top of that and say that's the journey and that's the journey.

[00:17:07.830] – Delatorro
Just keep rolling.

[00:17:09.570] – Allan
Now, one of the things you brought up, I just kind of love this, too. I loved a lot of things in your book.

[00:17:14.010] – Delatorro
By the way, Shift into a Higher Gear: Better Your Best and Live Life to the Fullest. Grab it Everywhere books are sold, Amazon, Audible, Barnes and Noble.Com. Everywhere books are sold, the book is all over the planet. Pick it up in airports, you name it, it's available. Grab it.

[00:17:32.490] – Allan
Good.

[00:17:33.150] – Allan
Now, when you're riding a motorcycle, a lot of people don't know this, but if you haven't ridden a motorcycle to make a turn, you have to be very cognizant about where you're putting your weight. Your weight shift is what causes the terminal motorcycle. Now, I owned a Spider, which is the three motorcycle was the exact opposite. And if I leaned into a turn, I was going to topple. But just understanding, putting your weight into what we're trying to do and doing it long enough to wait is a big part of this.

[00:18:07.110] – Allan
Can you kind of get into that story and what that's all about? And why that's important.

[00:18:11.910] – Delatorro
Brother, I get chills, Allan. I get chills, brother. This is one of my favorite sections in the book. I love the whole book, but, man, I love shift your focus and put your weight into it, which is chapter four. And one of the things that we talk about is when you're riding a two wheeled motorcycle, right? It's important that you understand that a motorcycle takes its direction from your intention. And so a motorcycle knows your intention based upon where you place your weight right. So a motorcycle, you don't have to turn a steering wheel automobile right.

[00:18:49.650] – Delatorro
If you want to go left, you lean left. If you want to go right, you lean right. So a motorcycle takes its direction from your intention. Why is that important? I firmly believe that if we really want to live life to the fullest, there's not a single person that we admire or respect, Allan, that got to where they got to by half asking their way there. Everybody that I know put their weight into it. They went all in on something, right? Whether it's Elon Musk or whether it's Steve Jobs or whether it's Mel Robbins or Tony Robbins or whether it's Jillian Michaels, it doesn't matter.

[00:19:35.250] – Delatorro
We can do this all day. Everybody who's at the top of their game, they put their weight into their industry, whether it's Steve Harvey, right, whoever is at the top of their game, they put their weight into it, meaning they gave their best, they gave their all. They focused on leaning into excellence.

[00:19:50.010] – Delatorro
Right. But not only did they give their best effort, but they gave their best effort, watch this, long enough to get a result, which means not only do you have to put your weight into it, W-E-I-G-H-T. But you also have to put your weight into it W-A-I-T. And one of the examples I use in the book is how I've got one of the world's first inspirational business reality television shows based upon public speaking. It's called The Keynote. And from idea to television, it took me 839 days to get that book from concept to actually being able to see it on TV.

[00:20:25.890] – Delatorro
That's a little bit over two years. But I was willing to sit on that egg until it hatched. And the point is a lot of times, I believe, Allan, a lot of us don't get the results that we want in life because we're not willing to sit on things long enough until they hatch. So one of the principles that I teach in the book is you got to learn how to be like a stamp and stick to one thing long enough until it delivers. If you follow the metaphor, if you put a stamp on an envelope, let's just assume, for the sake of conversation that the stamp was animated and it could jump from envelope to envelope whenever it wanted to.

[00:20:59.070] – Delatorro
You're trying to mail something from Florida to California. And every time that envelope got to a different postal stock, it jumped from your envelope to somebody else's, the postage jumped from another. It would never arrive. Your envelope would never make it.

[00:21:11.370] – Delatorro
Why? Because the postage that was affixed to it didn't stay attached long enough to get delivery. And you're in the fitness you're into wellness. It's almost like certain supplements, right? There are certain supplements that are better for your body when you add black pepper extract to the supplement, because it gives your body the chance to absorb the supplement into your bloodstream. Same narrative, right? There's got to be certain things that allow that need to stick to us long enough to get a result. And then we can go on and take it to the next level.

[00:21:43.530] – Delatorro
So I firmly believe that if we really want success in anything, you got to learn how to be like a stamp. Stick to one thing to a delivers. You got to put your weight into it, meeting your best effort. Then you also got to understand that even in this Instagram, Instapot, Instafamous, TikTok, five G, four G LTE super quick microwave world that we live in, some things just take time.

[00:22:06.930] – Allan
Yeah, we see this a lot in my industry where someone will say, okay, well, I'm going to try this diet, or I'm going to try this program and they get into it. And maybe the first week is awesome, and then the second week is less awesome. And then there's just kind of this like this settling. And it's really hard at that point to not get frustrated. But you have to lean into this thing that you're doing and recognize that if the strategy is right, it will come and you have to lean in and keep at it and not just jump to the next thing.

[00:22:39.390] – Allan
It's like, oh, well, I was on this and all said I saw these pills at the store, and so now I'm taking these weight loss pills, and that didn't work. So now I'm back trying this other diet, and then someone else said, I need to go do this exercise, but it hurts my legs. So I quit that one. We've got to keep going if we want to get some real change. And that said at the beginning that 1% over time is going to really add up.

[00:23:02.970] – Delatorro
That's exactly right. You're exactly right, Allan. I totally agree with you, brother. We got to stick with something long enough to get the result and watch this. Part of the reason why we struggle with that is because we've got Shiny Object Syndrome, right? That looks good. That looks good. But another reason why we struggle with it. And I help high achievers. That's really my area of focus. I really love working with high achievers because this is going to sound like an oxymoron, but high achievers get ignored. And the reason why I say high achievers get ignored is because what we've been taught all our lives, the squeaky wheel gets the what?

[00:23:35.610] – Allan
The grease?

[00:23:36.690] – Delatorro
Yeah, squeaky wheel gets the grease, the grease, the oil. So in other words, if you're a problem performer, you get the most attention. But if you're a high achiever, you tend to get the least amount of attention. Right. So I really focus on helping high achievers get better, take their best and top it. Right.

[00:23:53.010] – Delatorro
And so one of the reasons why I think we struggle with this area of Shiny Object syndrome for high achievers, specifically is because we don't know how to score a touchdown. And what I mean by that is as soon as we as high achievers get close to the end zone, what do we do? We push the end zone back another 20 yards and say, yeah, but not quite right. We are never satisfied with a certain level of success. We always got to push the envelope and goal setting is huge, and it's important.

[00:24:18.330] – Delatorro
And goal achievement is big, which we talk about in the book. But as you also learn the book, I have a different take on goal achievement, but we'll get to that in a little bit. So I think it's important that at some point, we as high achievers, learn to celebrate the small wins, learn how to celebrate the process of achievement and learn how to celebrate the good things that we have in our lives and really take those things to the next level.

Sponsor

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

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[00:26:25.250] – Allan
There was another concept in the book that when I first got into it, I was kind of like, okay, that's not a big deal. And then as I got towards the end of it, I was like, Wait a minute. I need to go back and reread that. And as I went back and reread it, it just clicked and I was like, oh, wow.

[00:26:41.690] – Allan
This is phenomenal. And the reason I say that is in a motorcycle there's go forward or go home. I mean, you just go forward.

[00:27:22.670] – Allan
Because there's a lot more there than I'm able to articulate. But like I said, it was just a really exciting thing. As I got into it, I was like, if someone could just wrap their mind around, I only have one gear. I have one gear. I'm going forward because I can't go backwards. That's huge.

[00:26:50.990] – Allan
That's the gear. That's the gear. Now you can shift to a higher gear and go faster, but it's always a forward. There's no reverse on a motorcycle versus a car. It has park. It has reversed and it has neutral and has drive. So there's a lot of decision making there about whether you're going to be going forward backwards or whatnot. But if you're going to be successful at anything you're trying to do, you got to put it in gear and go. That's it just in the one gear. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:27:41.210] – Delatorro
Yeah, man, I appreciate you for underlining that and underscoring that for me, Allan. As a result of what you just said, brother, I'm actually going to get a T-shirt design that says, I only have one gear. That's really good, brother. I got to write it down. When the moment of inspiration hits me, I have to write it down in the moment so thank you for that.

[00:28:02.510] – Allan
You're welcome.

[00:28:04.550] – Delatorro
But seriously, so the notion is this and you kind of already spoke to it. What I love about shifting to a higher gear, and everybody, please make sure you grab a copy of the book. You can go to shifting to a highergear.Com. Grab the book, but also grab the campaign workbook that we've created, which takes the learning principles from the book so much deeper. One of the things that we do in the book is we help you understand the difference between living life, the automobile way and living life, the motorcycle way.

[00:28:29.270] – Delatorro
And I want to say this to everybody who's listening. You don't ever have to have ridden a motorcycle before. You don't even have to have an interest in riding motorcycles to be able to learn and apply the principles. Because the motorcycle metaphors are a backdrop to the deeper conversation that we're talking about, whether it's excuses or whether it's fear versus faith or emotional mastery, the motorcycle serves as a backdrop metaphor for the entire overarching concept. So automobile living allows you to have multiple gears in your life, many of which are ineffective for life and business, whereas motorcycle living only allows you to operate like Allan just said in one gear, and that's drive when you turn a motorcycle on and you put it in gear, it only knows drive, it only knows forward.

[00:29:14.570] – Delatorro
However, automobiles give you a whole bunch of other negative options. It gives you park, it gives you reverse, and it gives you neutral. Then the book, we go into great detail to explain the differences between those three different gears and how those gears, more importantly, how they show up in your life and business on a daily basis. How do you know when you're in neutral? How do you know when you're in park? How do you know when you're in reverse? And, Allan, I want to underscore something in the book that's really huge, which is I want to debunk something that most people not only believe, but they teach.

[00:29:47.450] – Delatorro
A lot of people teach that how you do anything is how you do everything. And I absolutely could not disagree more. And I'm going to use that chapter as a perfect example because I know people who are in drive in their parenting, but they're in park in their marriage, or they're in drive in their business, but they're in neutral when it comes to their financial portfolio. Let's just say their investments or they could be in drive in their hobbies, but they're in reverse in their fitness, right.

[00:30:24.290] – Delatorro
So they'll go smoke with cigars with their buddies, or they'll go to sporting events, but they don't take care of their physical body, right? They're actually going backwards. They're not even standing still. They're going backwards. Right.

[00:30:34.370] – Delatorro
So automobiles give us way too many options. That's why when you live life to bike way, you only know forward at the end of the day, because we live in time and time is going forward. We must constantly commit to moving forward each and every day in our lives. And I think that's where the real magic happens.

[00:30:51.410] – Allan
Absolutely. Like I said, that's why when I got into it, I was like, this is a lot deeper than I thought it was when I first started, because it seems simple concept. But then, as you got into explaining it, which you did so well in a book, it was just like, okay. Yeah. We all need to pick our thing and just drive. So the next thing you talked a little bit, you got into a little bit about goal setting. And this was another area where I really felt like you shine some light on it.

[00:31:19.490] – Allan
For anyone that's struggled to kind of make their goals happen. And we all struggle. But if you set up a good enough goal, you set the right goal. It's not easy. There is going to be some struggle here, but you go through the 8 hours to manifest your goals. Can you talk about those? Because again, there's so many ways people talk about smart goals, maybe even come up with a different acronym. But in this case, you're literally almost a roadmap, if you will.

[00:31:47.150] – Allan
How to Manifest Your Goals. Could you talk a little bit about that?

[00:31:52.070] – Delatorro
So first of all, I love this book. Every time I get a chance to talk about it, I get excited, Allan, because there's so much you and I both know, Allan, there's a lot of books out there that are filled with a lot of fluff. Right.

[00:32:07.010] – Delatorro
And what I love about this book is that and you can tell me your experience. And I'd love to hear it literally from start to finish. The pedal is on the metal, it's direct it's in your face. It's very Dr. Phil. The book comes right at you. Would you agree with that?

[00:32:23.390] – Allan
Yeah. The way I kind of put it together was and this fits directly with who you are. What you do is when you go into a good keynote speaker, they know they've got maybe 45 minutes to teach you something and change you to try to in 45 minutes, change you. And that means that they have to cut out every other word that doesn't suit the purpose. It doesn't get them on where they want to go. And so quite literally, yes, you open up a chapter, and the chapter might be 45 minutes.

[00:32:53.570] – Allan
It might be an hour, however long it takes you to read that chapter. But it felt like I was sitting there listening to a keynote.

[00:33:01.730] – Delatorro
Nice.

[00:33:03.650] – Delatorro
That's awesome, brother. I appreciate that. That means a lot. All right. Cool. So let's talk about this whole conversation of goals. One of the big things that we stress in the book is the fact that chapter twelve is shift, and this is another big thing people need to understand about the book, which I love is every chapter starts with the verb shift. And so, in other words, there's an action required, right. And so we did that very intentionally. And then the other piece that I think is important is that we understand this.

[00:33:32.870] – Delatorro
We got to shift from simple goal setting, which anybody could do to transformational goal getting. And I think that's the difference between the average person and, like super achievers is super achievers actually get the goals they go for it. One of the examples that I use in the book is I say, if three birds are sitting by a still pond or three birds are sitting on a branch and one bird decides to jump away or fly away, how many birds do you have left? And most people say you've got two.

[00:34:01.430] – Delatorro
And I said, no, you got three because one just decided, even though they said, I'm going to fly away. Right?

[00:34:09.050] – Delatorro
Deciding is not enough. Decision is not enough. And goal setting is a decision. It's a cognitive process. But there is a massive difference between cognition and creation, thinking and trying, dreaming and doing, wanting and walking. You know this, especially in the wellness space, how vitally important it is for people to shift from it just being something I got to do here into something I really want to manifest. So podcaster to podcaster. I have a podcast, too that I started a little bit earlier couple months ago. It's called Crushing Life with Delatorro.

[00:34:42.350] – Delatorro
And the goal of my podcast is to help people achieve one goal in four ways. I help people develop the mindset, the heart set, the skill set, and the will set to live and lead an extraordinary quality of life right now. The reason why I share that with you, Allan, is because a lot of times goal setting is done up here, but you and I both know we can intellectually know something that we don't emotionally embrace. Right?

[00:35:08.810] – Allan
Yeah.

[00:35:09.410] – Delatorro
We got to go from the emotional embracement to actually living it out, taking that tactical steps, and then they actually have the perseverance to push it through.

[00:35:16.850] – Delatorro
So goal getting, which we talk about in the book, is it involves what I like to call the eight R's. And so for the purpose of time, I'm not going to go into all eight, but I'll share two of them with you that I love. I love all eight of them, but eight is my favorite number. So you'll see a lot of eight represented throughout the book, but one of the big ones, that's a real sticker that I never hear people teach. Never hear people teach this, is the first R. In order to get to manifest a goal, the first thing you got to give your goal is Room.

[00:35:53.330] – Delatorro
Everybody wants the how to. Everybody wants the strategy. Give me the tactics. Give me the steps to do. But I believe the biggest issue that we struggle with is we don't create enough space for the thing that we want. Space in your heart, space in your mind, space in your household. When a couple is expecting a newborn baby, what's the first thing that they do? They create a space for a baby. It's got its own furniture. It's got its own clothes. It's got its own closet.

[00:36:26.870] – Delatorro
What's the first thing that the womb does when it's ready to actually, when conception happens. The womb creates space to handle this baby because it understands that the baby is going to take whatever space it needs in that mother's body and the mother has to adjust. Period. Your goal is the same way. So I firmly believe that no matter what your goal is, the first thing you got to do is you got to make room for it. So in other words, get clear about what you need to take off your plate before you put a whole bunch of other stuff on your plate.

[00:37:01.070] – Allan
Yeah. I think one of the examples you kind of gave in the book, which I liked was, you want to start working out, you got to look at your schedule and say, okay, when will I actually do this? If I'm going to train for something, when am I going to do it? And something else probably has to not be done. Like, maybe a little less Netflix.

[00:37:22.610] – Delatorro
Exactly. Right, brother.

[00:37:23.990] – Allan
And you can get the audiobook and listen to it while you're running.

[00:37:29.210] – Delatorro
You can go to audible right now and grab the audiobook and listen to the audiobook and shift into our higher gear. We didn't hire an actor. I read it in studio for five and a half hours. I did it. So you get my voice, which is awesome. I'm proud of that. But no, man, that's a big deal. And you're right. It's like no matter what it is. So one of the things that I help when I collect keynote for a lot of corporations and associations and things.

[00:37:52.070] – Delatorro
And one of the first things I talked to companies, sales teams about is I say, listen, whatever that goal is, your current schedule does not support it, or you'd already have the goal. Right?

[00:38:03.830] – Delatorro
So let's take stuff off your plate before we decide what really needs to go on it. And so it's that process of what do you need to pull back from in order for you to go forward.

[00:38:17.090] – Allan
Do you have time to go through a couple more Rs?

[00:38:19.370] – Delatorro
Yeah. I love these Rs.

[00:38:22.730] – Delatorro
So. Yeah. So the first one is room. So I love that one. Create space, another one of the Rs that I'm a big fan of, and I'm not going to go in any particular order here. But one of the other Rs that I'm a big fan of out of all of them, which I love them all is I really believe that you need a Roadmap. I think it's so important that you figure out okay, If I'm here, how do I get from here to there? You've got to have a roadmap.

[00:38:47.090] – Delatorro
And the best place to get a roadmap is from someone who's already done what you're trying to do. Because success leaves is clues. We just got to go find them. So sometimes the best way to get a roadmap is to say, okay, who do I admire and respect in my industry, who's done what it is that I'm trying to do, who is that person? And then once I get clear about who that person is, how do I begin to start to model the results that that person has gotten in order to model the results that they've gotten?

[00:39:15.110] – Delatorro
I've got to do what it is that they've done. I remember I had a chance to spend a day and a half. Dr. John Maxwell. And one of the things that Dr. Maxwell was teaching me, it was a leadership lesson. He said, Delatorro, a lot of people come up to me at events and they say, oh, Dr. Maxwell, I want to be who you are. I want the books. I want the stages, I want the lights. I want all the stuff. And he's like, great. He said, Are you willing to do what I did so that one day you can get what I want.

[00:39:42.470] – Delatorro
And I think the lesson there is we got to be willing to do the work. Once we find what the roadmap is, we got to be willing to take the steps that the roadmap provides. So you got to have a I mean, think about it as soon as you type into Google Maps or Waze. As soon as you type in where it is, you ultimately want to go. It's going to give you a roadmap on how to get there, right. But you got to be willing to follow the roadmap.

[00:40:05.390] – Delatorro
And another one of the Rs that I love to talk about is along your journey of following the roadmap. You've got to create some symbols of relief in the form of rewards. You've got to give yourself some moments of celebration. You've got to enjoy the process and enjoy yourself as you're going through. Because if all you do is work on achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement, achievement without any rewards along the way. The problem with that is you're not going to actually enjoy the process of achieving. And when achievement becomes boring, we quit.

[00:40:40.010] – Delatorro
So you got to be able to make sure that you have more fun. I teach productivity to corporations and associations. And one of the things that one of my top programs is called platinum productivity. Getting more done by having more fun. And one of the things that I teach is, according to neuroscience, your brain is more incentivized to do the things that need to be done if you attach more reward based things to it. But if your brain associates pain to productivity, you're always procrastinating. So I really believe in the importance of rewards, road maps and room.

[00:41:16.490] – Allan
Thank you for sharing that. Delatorro, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:41:30.230] – Delatorro
This is a holistic word, and I really believe that there's three things that I think we can easily do to continue to make wellness a priority. Number one, I'll go back to it. Make room for wellness in your life. That means getting an extra 45 minutes or early or staying up a few minutes later in the evening. So number one, make room for it. Make room for it in your schedule. Let it show up in your phone. Put alerts in your phone that you're going to go take a walk, you're going to go take your supplement, you're going to drink a certain amount of water.

[00:41:59.510] – Delatorro
Use the apps to help you to kind of manage certain habits, whether it's hydration habits where you're checking off, whether it's a fitness app on your phone, do something to make room for the thing that you want. Number two is do it with other people. One of the biggest concepts we teach in the Shift into a Higher Gear book is we teach the importance of doing things as a collective. So who's in your biker posse, who's in your biker community, who's in your tribe, and really getting clear about who those individuals are?

[00:42:30.470] – Delatorro
So making wellness something that you do with others, I think is an important step to keeping it a part of your top priority. And then number three is make it enjoyable. Not everybody loves going to the gym and pumping hard iron. But if your thing is racquetball, then do racquetball. If your thing is golf, do golfing. If your thing is swimming, do swimming. If your thing is, don't feel like you're not fit because you don't want to press iron six days a week. That might not be your way of doing it, and there's nothing wrong with it.

[00:43:00.410] – Delatorro
I think it's sensational, but I do think everyone is wired differently and you got to get clear about what wellness and exercise and moving your body and cardio and what that means to you and how you can find a way to make it fit you and your lifestyle. Do it with others and keep it scheduled in your life, and I think you'll be able to have fun with it.

[00:43:21.530] – Allan
If someone wanted to learn more about you, the things you're doing and your book Shift into a Higher Gear. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:43:29.870] – Delatorro
First of all, the book is available everywhere books are sold. We're driving a lot of traffic right now to Amazon, so please go on Amazon and grab the book there. It's also available in Barnes and Noble. Our website. Our primary website for the book isshiftintoahighergear.com. So the website is the name of the book shiftintoahighergear.com. We also have a Facebook community. So please make sure that you join our Facebook community, which is Shift into a higher gear global biker posse. All you do is type in, shift into a higher gear global biker posse on Facebook.

[00:44:03.290] – Delatorro
It's a public group. It's a free group to join. You just jump right on in. And we love to have you because we're creating a global group of people who are readers of this book and who are applying the principles and things of that nature. So we do exclusive lives inside that group. It's really exciting. So that's how people can get a hold of us. And also, if you want to have us come speak to your organizations, you can search us for all social media at Dr. Delatorro, that's at D-R-D-E-L-A-T-O-R-R-O. At drdelatorro for all of our social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, everything. And then lastly, our primary website for our speaking engagements is delatorro.com. D-E-L-A-T-O-R-R-O.com.

[00:44:47.030] – Delatorro
If there's anybody that's out there that's interested in any form of speaking or using public speaking and presentation to grow your business or your brand, I've been in the speaking industry for 20 years, and I've been endorsed by some of the greatest speakers on the planet. I've been a member of the National Speakers Association for 15 years, and I actually train and mentor people who want to become professional speakers, authors, coaches, and who want to make a living, inspiring people with their messages and their story. So I have a program called Crush the stage, which is a three day live boot camp that I do that helps people to master public speaking and presentation.

[00:45:22.250] – Delatorro
And so people can go to helpmecrushthestage.com that's helpmecrushthestage.com to learn all about our three day boot camp.

[00:45:29.390] – Allan
Okay, go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/511. And I'll be sure to have a link in the show notes there to all of those links because you're everywhere. So, Delatorro, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[00:45:44.130] – Delatorro
An honor indeed. My friend, Allan, thank you to your incredible tribe, your followers, your listeners. And I'm hoping to hear from them sometime soon.

Post Show/Recap

[00:45:54.970] – Allan
Hey, Raz, welcome back.

[00:45:56.890] – Rachel
Hey, Allan, your conversation with Delatorro is really fascinating. And I have to say, I love his analogy shift into a higher Gear, but also better your best. I think that's great.

[00:46:08.950] – Allan
He brings so much energy to what he's doing because he's also a keynote speaker. He's speaking to large, large groups. When you're on a Zoom call with him, it's actually a little intimidating. He's got so much energy. He's like, I got to try to keep up with this guy. Never going to happen, never going to happen. He just brought it. And, yeah, the analogies and the things he's doing in his book, The Higher Gear shift to Higher Gear is just really cool. He takes the Conversations motorcycle, which if you spend a lot of time riding or driving, it gives you time to think.

[00:46:40.630] – Allan
So he sat down. He thought all these things through, and he really gives you some awesome tools. We really only just scratch the surface of the things that he has in that book, and they're all really valuable. So if Mindset is something that you truly struggle with, I strongly consider you. You should strongly consider getting this book because it is a pretty powerful book.

[00:47:03.310] – Rachel
Absolutely. I particularly enjoyed his six Phases of Real Change, and I won't go into them all again. But I just like to point out the difference between I can change. I will change, and I am changing. Those are three very different mindsets. But there's also a gap in between them. And I think you had mentioned in the earlier podcast, and I'm going way back in your earlier days, but there's a big gap between saying I can or I'm going to do something and then actually doing it that follow through seems to just be a challenge sometimes.

[00:47:35.590] – Allan
Yeah. Well, I was 39, sitting on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, and I decided that I needed to do something. I was not healthy. I was not happy. I was miserable, called myself the fat bastard. But I made the decision, like, okay, I'm doing this. And then it was just fits and starts and this and that. And I never really got traction until I did that transition from not just deciding I'm going to do something but actually committing to doing it. And so that step from can to will is huge because it is.

[00:48:15.970] – Allan
I knew. Okay. I'm 39 years old. I should be able to play volleyball. I should be able to get myself fit again. And it just wasn't happening until I really bore down, really kind of pushed forward or leaned into it. As we mentioned on the podcast. And once I leaned into it, that commitment. Once I made that commitment, it started happening. And actually the reality of it was it was very slow at first. A lot of people will lose weight fast at the beginning. And then mine was almost like it was almost like I fell off a cliff.

[00:48:49.450] – Allan
I was just kind of putting along. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, I am like that swoosh. Oh, this is happening. I'm working hard. I'm getting stronger. I'm losing the weight. Things are working. I found my buttons. I found the things that work for me that make this go. And so, yeah, that transition from Will, can and do those are important. Every one of those is important. And you're absolutely right. We have to go through each one of them to make it happen.

[00:49:20.650] – Allan
The decision isn't enough. You need the commitment, and then the commitment isn't enough. You have to do.

[00:49:27.130] – Rachel
And the excitement between I am changing. And like you mentioned, it gets exciting when you can see results, whatever the results are, better blood work at the doctor. A better number on the scale, the feeling of energy when you wake up in the morning or before you go to bed at night and the power you feel when you're lifting better at the gym or running longer distances. All of that is so exciting. And if you just take that moment to celebrate those wins, no matter how little they are, it really will help propel you forward.

[00:49:59.410] – Rachel
Back to the analogy, though, he mentioned motorcycles only go forward.

[00:50:04.750] – Allan
Yeah, you can reach them backwards with your feet, but they don't have a reverse. The standard motorcycle does not have a reverse. It only has a neutral and a go. And so you're sitting there, you start that motorcycle and you drop it down in the first gear, it goes forward. And you'll see this. If you've never seen anybody riding a motorcycle, you'll see if they pull those first into a parking space and they need to leave, they literally have to walk the bike out far enough to get their nose out so they can drive forward, because that's all the motorcycle is going to do.

[00:50:36.310] – Allan
And all the other gears do is just help you go faster. So his book Shift to a Higher Gear is really about getting more, getting faster, doing more, seeing more, all those different things that are exciting about a motorcycle traveling faster. That fun part of it that inertia the wind, in your hair. If you had hair kind of stuff, that's it. If you just stay in first gear on your motorcycle, you're putting around town at 15 miles an hour, but you get to the second gear, third gear, fourth gear.

[00:51:07.270] – Allan
And now you're flying. And so that's kind of the point of the whole thing is the motorcycle is only going to go in one direction, so you've got to drive it. But you've got to keep shifting into that higher gear to fill that inertia and get where you want to go.

[00:51:21.310] – Rachel
I love that. And then the other part that I wanted to mention that I think people probably should pick up this book would be the eight Rs that he had put together, and he only discussed a couple of them. But the first R he mentioned was room and that you need to make space by taking some things off your plate so that you can add to it. And I think that is a particularly helpful tip, because when we decide to make these types of changes, like going to the gym every day or on a run or adding this exercise to our life, it's hard to find the time for that.

[00:51:53.710] – Rachel
I mean, if we had all the time in the world, we'd already been doing that. So I like his thought about maybe taking something away or rearranging your schedule to make time for these new things that you might add to your life.

[00:52:06.970] – Allan
Yeah, I prioritize sleep. I just always have. And I always will. So I'm not a proponent of getting up half an hour earlier just for the sake of working out. But that said, I made a point of putting on my calendar every day that I was going to get this workout done at this particular time, and it became my calendar. No one else could book on that time, and it meant, okay, I have to eat a little quicker. I might have to eat at my desk, which again, not the healthiest things.

[00:52:36.430] – Allan
But it was that trade off to say, I need to be in the gym for at least an hour, and this is my trade off is eating at my desk, making sure I have something that's convenient. I don't have to go out and get. And so it's right here. It's a packed lunch and just that kind of thing. And if you're in a relationship, obviously, you may not have the support of the people around you to do what you need to do. But you've got to figure out how to make that change.

[00:53:02.710] – Allan
You've got to figure out how to get them on board, at least to the point of allowing you the room, the space to get this done. So you get the hour you need, even if it's just two or three times a week, you get the time you need. If there are certain foods that you're like. No, that's my kryptonite. Please don't leave the cookies on the counter. They may continue to do that, but you've got to give yourself the room and where possible. Engage them to help make that happen.

[00:53:28.870] – Rachel
Yes, I love that. That's a great tip for moving forward.

[00:53:32.110] – Allan
All right. Well, Rachel has been great talking to you. I will talk to you again next week.

[00:53:36.610] – Rachel
Take care.

[00:53:37.570] – Allan
You, too.

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Let's Say Hello

[00:00:44.630] – Allan
Hey, Raz, how are things going?

[00:00:46.730] – Rachel
Good, Allan, how are you today?

[00:00:48.710] – Allan
I'm doing all right. Kind of getting back into the groove of being back in Bocas and things like that and social events and things. We had a fundraiser. We had a fundraiser for the local guy that takes care of all the cats. So we have street cats and street dogs. And so this guy, he's always kind of played a part in making sure that the cats and some of the dogs get fed. And then when they have a litter, he's always trying to catch the kittens and get them spayed neutered.

[00:01:19.070] – Allan
And so he's trying to catch cats and do all that. And so everybody calls him Papa Gatto, and he was doing a fundraiser. So just kind of go there, hang out with friends and buy a T shirt. I think one guy, one of the local guys here who's really talented, he was doing the tattoos. He's a tattoo artist, amongst other things. And he was donating the proceeds from all his tattoos he did that day, and he doesn't do it, like with the little gun thing. He has a little pin thing that he does by hand.

[00:01:53.930] – Allan
So he draws things by hand on people really talented. But, yeah, so they're doing a fundraiser. So it's just kind of being back into the theme of the island. And we're getting ready to get into busy season. So we're seeing more tourists, and a lot of people are popping up and opening restaurants, some that have closed, and then some that were just never there before, because this is kind of the season to do it. And there's one thing on this island that was kind of a big thing, particularly for the young backpackers.

[00:02:28.310] – Allan
It's called Filthy Friday, and it is exactly what you think it is. Hundreds of people going to like a disco tech with a DJ. And basically it's a pub crawl, if you will. But they hop from island to island. So typically, like, three places that used to be three places I don't know how they're going to run it now, but there used to be three places, so they all get together at one place. And then there's a series of boats to take them to the second place, and then a series of boats to take them to the third place.

[00:02:57.230] – Allan
And then it's over. So it starts at 03:00 in the afternoon and runs until they drop them off around six something, and then they can just hang out and enjoy themselves. It's terrifying. I would never do it because there's just too many people in a space. Actually, I kind of get hives every time they got a Billboard at the near the airport advertising there and there's like hundreds of kids standing on this deck and there's like, no room to move. They're all just standing like face to face now, pre covid that gave me the heebie jeevies.

[00:03:31.730] – Allan
This is that packed in with that many people, not my thing. But it is sort of one of those things that when that's going on, it draws a lot of people to the island. So you see a lot more young backpackers and people on the island. So it just kind of gives it more of that touristy vibe when you have that going on. So even though it's not something I would ever want to do or care to do, it's good to see that we're getting back to kind of a normal here.

[00:03:59.270] – Rachel
That's right. It sounds wonderful that restaurants are opening and all these activities are taking place again. It's nice to hear that things are changing a little bit.

[00:04:08.510] – Allan
Yeah. Now it doesn't mean it won't go backwards at some point, but at least at this point, they didn't expect to reopen. In fact, we were doing classes in the yoga studio, and they took over the studio because the yoga teacher quit because we couldn't pay the rent while we're closed. And then when they wanted to reopen, it still wasn't tenable for us to run our classes. So we had to move out. She moved out and closed up. The people that were doing this filthy Friday, they took over that space and they turned it into a big liquor store, but something to keep him going until he was able to get it.

[00:04:43.770] – Allan
His other business is more lucrative. Business reopened. So it's just good, even though the folks that come to that don't spend a lot of money on the island. It's just good to have them here because it gives violent kind of that healthy vibe.

[00:04:56.190] – Rachel
That's awesome. Sounds like fun from a distance.

[00:05:00.390] – Allan
You guys go over there. I don't mind seeing them walk up and down the street, walk right by the gym and go party butt off. But at the same time, it'll just be good to kind of see that starting to happen here.

[00:05:13.470] – Rachel
Sure.

[00:05:14.370] – Allan
How are things up there?

[00:05:15.870] – Rachel
Oh, good. We're in the middle of October. The weather up here in Michigan is sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening. The leaves are changing colors and dropping, which is always beautiful. And we are getting a little bit of rain today. We're going to hit 80, so that's kind of unusual. And sometimes in October we might see a few snow flurries, although that hasn't happened yet and probably won't after not for at least another week or so. But that's the fun part of October. But while I'm mentioning it, I want to remind everybody that October is also reserved for breast cancer awareness, and for all the ladies out there to make sure they schedule their mammograms as soon as they get the chance.

[00:05:59.790] – Allan
Absolutely do that. We've talked about screening, we've talked about cancer a good bit, and we'll keep talking about that. But the screening that you need to do it's critically important if you want to stay healthy. I did have one aside, though, that I want to do. This episode is going live on the 25th. And so we're less than a week away from Halloween. And so now there's going to be all this candy in your house. And if you have a sweet tooth, that's an issue. And so I did a little bit of reading on this because I did want to talk about it.

[00:06:30.810] – Allan
I thought I might end up being actually doing an episode on it, but then realize there's probably not enough content to do a whole episode, but a couple of tips that I found one of these I got from US News and Roll Reports articles five, six years old. But they made a few recommendations. So you get this candy. They recommended some things like make cookies. So you take the chocolate or cookie or whatever it is a candy bar, a piece of candy, and you make cookies and you put these in the cookies while you Cook them.

[00:07:02.010] – Allan
So they kind of make it part of the cookie. And then rather than eating them and just adding more to your candy, put those away as holiday cookies. And then you have ready made in the freezer gifts for when Christmas actually rolls around. So you get the Christmas tins, you Bake the cookies, put them in there, and you can repurpose those candies rather than eat them.

[00:07:23.730] – Rachel
Nice.

[00:07:24.390] – Allan
Another one was to basically donate them. And I had a couple here Ronald McDonald's House or even the troops, even though I know we're not as heavily involved overseas. Now, there still are troops overseas that you can actually donate your candy, too. So they'll take your candy for you and just ship it to them. You can look that stuff up online. I'll have a link to this US News and Roll Report article, and hopefully some of those links are still the same. The other is to look at opportunities for things that are coming up.

[00:07:53.370] – Allan
Like, for example, my daughter's birthday is on the 14 December, and so she was younger. I could take the candy and put it in a pinata for her birthday.

[00:08:04.170] – Allan
Okay. And the kids would have a pinata. That candy would go into the pinata. And there you go. And then the final one was bring it to work. And again, that depends on where you work and how those folks will feel about the fact that you're trying to offload your candy on them. Some people will love it. Other people won't. But, yeah, just taking it to work. Now, again, if you're going to put it on your desk, realize that that's going to be an issue. Maybe because it's sitting there and you might end up eating more of it than you'd like to.

[00:08:30.570] – Allan
So take it to the break room or something like that where this public area where they can get to it and you don't see it all the way. But one of the best tips I saw while I was doing my research was this when you're buying Halloween candy, buy something you don't like. I always made this mistake. I'd go out and buy the Snickers because the little bite sized Snickers and Milky Ways and things like that. And then the what is it? The Hershey's chocolate, the dark chocolate, because that was my favorite.

[00:09:01.830] – Allan
And then, of course, if you don't give out the candy, you're stuck with the candy. You can do one of these other things. But if you buy a candy that you don't particularly like for me, it'd be black licorice can't stand this stuff can't stand it at all. So if I had black licorice, that would be a perfect candy corns would also be one, although some people love them. I'm not one of those people that love them. So again, candy that I wouldn't use a lot of people the black and Orange peanut butter kind of candy.

[00:09:31.710] – Allan
I actually like those, which is sad because they're horrible, but I know they like them. So just kind of thinking in terms of if you're buying this candy as you're in the shopping, obviously, you don't want to be the house that gets egged because you've given out substandard candy. But just buy candy that you don't like that most people other people do like, and then you're less inclined to sit there and nibble and pick on them during Halloween and then having them in your house afterwards.

[00:09:56.790] – Allan
You're less inclined to deal with those. So have a strategy. I talk to my clients all the time when you go into a situation that you are familiar with, which this is it happens every year about this time. Have a strategy for how you get through this. If you know that you have a sweet tooth and you know that this is something that strips you up in the past, have your strategy so you can work around it.

[00:10:19.290] – Rachel
That's great. Great tips. Definitely.

[00:10:22.170] – Allan
All right. Are you ready to get into the episode on The Art of Quitting?

[00:10:27.870] – Rachel
Sure.

Episode

Today I want to talk about the art of quitting. Now, I know that sounds kind of odd to be talking about quitting when we're talking about health and fitness, because we as a people, particularly in the United States, we really appreciate perseverance. We appreciate those people, those stories where people have gone above and beyond and accomplished things way beyond the realm of what's possible or seemed possible at the beginning, like the movie Rudy or the book Rudy or the story of Rudy who tried to get on to and play for Notre Dame and actually did get on the field during a football game with the team through Perseverance.

And we love that story. There's also the children's book The Little Engine that Could by Waddy Piper. And again, it's a story about Perseverance and going at it and having the right attitude and sticking with it until you get something that seemed impossible done. We love those stories. But there are also stories that kind of push back the other way, like in Greek mythology, with Cispus pushing that rock up the Hill that's invariably going to roll down the Hill again. So no matter how much Perseverance that he puts into that effort, he's going to end up right back where he started.

Or we're watching Rocky four, and Apollo is fighting Drago in an exhibition match, and Rocky knows the next punch is going to basically kill his friend, but he doesn't throw the towel in. And a lot of people were upset about that in the movie. I was upset about it watching the movie. It was a very emotional point in that movie. And in a sense, we fought Rocky for not quitting, not throwing in the towel. And we know that that was because Apollo wanted to continue the fight all the way through to the end, and it ended up costing him his life.

And so there's these stories that we have about Perseverance and then about quitting. And they both have a place, particularly when we're talking about health and fitness. So I want to talk today about some times when quitting is actually the right answer that you're better off quitting something than sticking with it. Okay.

Sometimes when you quit, it just opens up opportunities and we're going to talk all the way through this as you look at how quitting might actually help you get to the results you want faster. So for this discussion, we're going to talk about big things. We're not going to be talking about quitting little things like quitting sugar, quitting this or quitting that. Obviously, you know, there's challenges and structure and things and strategies and tactics and things you're going to implement that will work and not work. And some of those strategies and tactics you just throw away because they're obviously not working.

But we're going to talk about some big things in the health, fitness and joy categories because in reality, this is literally life and death. Now, maybe not right now but some of the decisions you're making are going to decide which side of the aging curve you're actually on as you go forward in life. So we're going to talk about is the five key health and fitness drivers, the five key health and fitness drivers. And those are nutrition, which includes hydration, sleep, stress management, fitness and avoiding toxicity.

And that can be chemical, biological, or emotional. So we have those five key health drivers, and today we're going to go through those five key health drivers and look at some scenarios where it might make sense to not stick. It might make sense to quit. Okay, now, here's the other caveat as we get into this discussion, because I'm going to be throwing out some examples. And I want you to understand that sometimes the decision that you need to make is different than the decision I might need to make.

So as we go through this discussion, I'm going to go back and forth a little bit on that so you can kind of get a flavor for how to do this analysis, if you will.

So first, I want to talk about a few reasons why you should probably stick to what you're doing. If your strategy is sound and you just need more time. So everything's working, it's generally working, and you just need to give it more time for you to see the results that you want to see

That's probably a good reason to stick if it's working, but not as fast as you want it. Now, what there might be instead of quitting is just alternatives that you can add on to make it better. And we'll talk a little bit about that. And then another reason to stick is there really isn't another alternative. This is really the only way that's available to you based on who you are, what's going on in your life or anything else. We'll get into that as well. But what are the reasons that we should quit?

If the thing you're doing isn't serving you, you should quit and try to find another way. If you know, in your heart of hearts that there actually is a better way. You were just trying this as an opportunity and it's not working for you, and this other way would be quicker and easier. It's probably time to quit. And also we want to make sure that quitting won't hurt us, and that what we are doing is helping us. So if there's something you're doing that's not helping you, then quit and we'll talk about that as well.

So what I'm going to do for the remainder of this podcast is I'm literally going to go through each of the five drivers, and I'm going to give you a couple of examples, and then we're going to kind of talk through a little bit. Is that a good reason to quit? Is this something you should quit? And I'm going to give my opinion on it from my perspective. Realize, again, your answers could be entirely different than my answers. So your circumstances would be entirely different than mine. And you should think through these scenarios to kind of get an idea of how this process goes.

So the first key driver that I want to talk about is nutrition. So here's the scenario. You are three weeks into the carnivore way of eating. You even quit coffee and tea. And while you've lost weight, your energy level has bottomed out and you're constipated. So is this a stick, a stick and pivot or a quit? Now, obviously for some people, the carnivore diet is fairly extreme and it's very difficult to do long term for a lot of people.

Now, other people thrive on that kind of diet and that's fine. But if you're having issues with your energy level and you're just not feeling like you're losing weight the way that you should and you're dealing with other biological problems like constipation, it's time to think about that. For some people, it's obvious that you need to quit and maybe do something different. For others, it might just be a stick and pivot. So maybe you're not getting enough electrolytes. Maybe you need to implement something else like better sleep or something else to help you make sure that you're keeping your energy level up.

And then obviously with the electrolytes that I spoke to that can include magnesium that can include potassium and sodium. And in many cases the introduction of magnesium might help with that constipation. So you can kind of see as you go into this concept of I'm trying a way of eating carnivore and I intend to do it for a long time, but I'm starting to have difficulties with it. You can answer the question of OK, is this something I can just pivot, try some add ons and see what works, or do I really want to quit this?

And in many cases I would say if this was something you really wanted to do, try the stick and pivot for a little while and then if that doesn't work, quit. Here's a second scenario for nutrition. You cut your calories much lower than you used to eat. It was working for a few weeks, but you're hungry all the time and you find yourself binging at night, stick, stick and pivot or quit. Now this one is a little bit more difficult because a lot of people will want to follow the calories in calories out model.

And the reality is for a time that can definitely work. But over time your body is going to adjust to try to find Homo stasis based on the amount that you're eating today, based on the exercise you're doing today, it's going to find that balance. And so the question then is, is this low calorie going to work for you long term. For some people, just pushing through a little while can restart the weight loss. But you may need to do a couple of pivots. You may need to have a couple of days where your calories a little higher just to keep your metabolism, keep everything flowing so your body is not locked into 1200 calories a day thing.

Maybe just having a couple of days where you're up closer to 18 or maybe 2000 might be enough for your body to adapt and adjust to a point where it can continue to lose weight. That would be a stick and pivot. But for a lot of people, just cutting calories isn't enough. They need to focus on what they're eating when they're eating as well to try to figure this out. And so sometimes you just have to quit that low calorie and figure out a different way.

So I hope that made sense as I went through the nutrition piece of this, that there are different answers for each of us based on what we're dealing with, where we are in our lives and what's working and what's not. So there is stick, there is stick and pivot and there's quit, and you have to look and figure out which one makes the most sense for you. And many times, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes stick and pivot is the right answer, and then if that doesn't work, then you quit.

Let's move on to the second key driver of health and fitness and joy, sleep.

And this is one of my favorites. Okay, so here's the scenario. The first scenario. You usually go to bed at 10:30, and you've recently hired a personal trainer that can only work with you at 05:00 a.m. This only gives you 6 hours of bedtime and less than 6 hours of sleep. You know, you need more. Stick, stick and pivot or quit? Now, this is a tougher one because for a lot of people, their time is locked, and they're very deep into getting a lot done and being productive.

And the concept of sleeping more is often difficult for us. It feels like we're giving up feels almost like we're quitting something, but in a sense, getting more sleep can help you have more energy, get more done, be more productive, and definitely have fewer mistakes and issues. So the question then here is we've got two endpoints to the sleeping night. Now you could try to go to sleep earlier, but that might mean giving up family time. That might mean giving up time with your significant other time that you love to spend together.

Obviously, if you've made dinner, we've got to wash dishes, we got to get things cleaned up. So there's probably a limit to how far you can push your bedtime up and then on the other side, yes

You've hired this personal trainer that really only had that 05:00 window. Is there a way to move that training period to a later period or different part of the day, or is it better for us to go ahead and maybe find a different trainer if we really want to continue with the personal trainer that we have or that we're with a personal trainer? And those are tough decisions. I'm not going to say there's an easy answer here, but the reality of it is the bigger you make your bedtime opportunity, the more you're likely to sleep, the more you're likely to sleep, the better off your health and fitness are going to be.

So this is a tough one. It's probably a quit something, but we've got to figure out what that is for you and then you've got to decide how to make that happen. Here's a second scenario. Lately you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep. You pull out your phone to look at social media. You feel this helps you calm down. But the report on your phone shows your screen time is way up. Stick, stick and pivot, Quit?

Now, I have some pretty strong opinions about this to me. You've got to quit the Facebook, the social media stuff. You got to quit that in the middle of the night. The lights off your phone are actually keeping you up. The excitement and the dopamine stuff that's happening when you're on your phone is keeping you up. Whether you feel that way or not, it is. So the reality of it is you could do something better with that time and still be winding down. You can listen to a fiction audiobook and have the lights out.

You can actually get a hardcover printed book and turn on a candle, light a candle and read that book. You can go ahead and decide to go into the bathroom and take a warm bath with some lavender and some other scents that really help calm you down and get back to sleep a little bit faster. So I would say you quit the Facebook and then you implement something else in that place. Obviously laying in bed awake at 2:00 in the morning for hours is excruciating. But you've got to get your sleep.

You've got to figure out a way and getting on the Facebook is not going to be the answer most of the time. Now, how you do that? How you discipline, keep the discipline to do that? I can't help you there right now, but I can just say if you value sleep as much as I do, you won't turn on your phone, you won't turn on your computer, you'll figure out a way to calm yourself relax whether it's breathing, meditation, a warm bath with some oils, or reading a book, listening to an audio book.

Any of those things will be better for you than opening up your phone. So I hope that makes sense on the sleep side. You're going to have things, if you're going to try to improve your sleep, there are things you're probably going to have to quit. Screen time is a huge example. Having short sleep windows with early alarms. Another thing that you need to work around to get the sleep. You've got to be in bed and that requires you to push your windows around and have some discipline around that.

So I hope that helps you on the sleep front. If you've got some questions there, we can talk about it.

So the next key driver or key driver is stress management, and this is another big one for me, but I really only have one example. I want to walk through here. You've started setting aside 30 minutes to meditate each day, but you find you spend most of this time thinking about the things that you need to do. This leaves you even more stressed. Stick, stick and pivot or quit?

Now, this one is kind of also a little interesting to me, because a lot of people will just quit. They'll say, okay, I don't have time for this. I know meditation would be great for me. I enjoy it when it's working, but it's not working most of the time. So I want to quit. I'd like to give you an alternative. Instead of trying to meditate for 30 minutes, just try to do five, just five good minutes, clear concise minutes, letting your thoughts happen, letting things happen and relaxing and getting into it.

Now, eventually, you might be able to add a little bit of time to that. But obviously giving up five minutes is not a huge deal in the grand scheme of 24 hours, and it will feel more attainable. So you're not overwhelmed with the fact that you're losing a half hour out of each day to do this task. It won't feel as much like a task when it's only five minutes. And who knows, maybe you go a little bit longer even though you didn't plan to because you were able to relax and get into the right state of mind, helping your stress, helping you feel better.

And that's going to kind of be a positive feedback loop. So in this case, I would say stick and pivot until 30 minutes feels right, and maybe it never will. But at least you've given it a shot.

All right. Does that make sense? Okay.

The next key driver is fitness. Okay, so here's the scenario. Your fitness tracker shows that your progress is stagnating you're halfway to your set goal and hitting certain milestones. Now it looks like you won't make those milestones. So you've made progress, and you are making good progress. But now things are stagnating. You're not seeing the growth that you were seeing before, you're not seeing the strength gains or let's say we're talking about the number of steps or how fast you can go or your time or any of those things that you would want as a personal record or just some kind of measurement criteria for your fitness.

And now you're stagnating. And that goal is beginning to look unattainable at the beginning, it looked like you could get there, and now it's not. So do you stick, stick and pivot or quit? Well, I think quitting this particular time is not the right answer. You still have that goal. That's not going to go away unless you just completely changed the goal. But rather than sliding the goal post or the time to attain the goal post. This might be a good time to stick and pivot.

Maybe you just need to do something to change up your training. Maybe you need to take some rest. Maybe this is a recovery problem, and maybe this is a nutrition problem, so all of those can factor into your basic performance. So it's worth looking at. Is this a time when I change up my training? Is this a time when I change up my nutrition? Is this the time I look at other aspects that might be affecting my performance? And if I'm not approaching my goals as quickly as I wanted to just see if adding some of those differences, fixing tweaking some of those things gives you the benefits gets you removing.

I found times where someone was doing a back squat, for example, and their back squat was starting to Plateau. So they got to a certain strength, a certain capacity, and then they just seemed to slow down and they were really upset because they did have a goal of, say, being able to squat their body weight for reps. And that's admirable. That's perfect. That's a great kind of goal because it shows a level of strength relative to your weight. That's really important. So now they're not getting there.

They're looking at they're halfway to their goal, and they're just not quite getting there. So what I'll often do is I'll program other ways for them to work with the weight. That's different for some clients. I'll have them on the leg press because they're mentally challenged, not necessarily physically challenged. It can be challenging mentally to get underweight, particularly when that weight is approaching your body weight and feel like you're in control. So I'll put them on the leg press for other people. It's about their form and how they're pressing and what they're doing.

I may move them to a completely different exercise, like a front squat, which changes the angles of everything and gets them working in a different way. And then when we transition back to back squats, they find that they've either in the first scenario increased their leg strength significantly or in the second one, they now actually have better form and are able to perform the exercise better. So in both of those cases, the changes we did, those pivots are giving them the added capacity to be able to do more, and they start seeing that progression happening again.

So that's a situation where I think a stick and pivot can be really good for other people. They might just want to stick and keep grinding at it, and sometimes they're successful. Just push a little harder, do a little more, and they're there. So just recognize that there are options as you're looking at fitness. So here's the second scenario. You're doing a fitness class, and after an awkward movement, you feel a tweak in your knee. There are only ten minutes left in the class, stick, stick and pivot or quit?

Now, this is a tough one because a lot of fitness classes have you on your feet moving around both forward and backwards and side to side. And so there's a lot of opportunities there for you to injure your knees. If you're not careful with your form and how you're placing your legs and not locking out. And there's a lot of things that can go wrong. If you've already felt a tweak in your knees, then it's highly possible that you've done something to one of the tendons and leguments to flare it up.

That's what that pain is. And continuing and trying to grind out through that class is more likely to hurt you than not. It's definitely not going to help you. You're going to have to slow down. Most likely you're going to be ginger on that knee and you're not going to get the full benefit of doing the class. Now, does that mean you completely quit the class? And that might be no, it might be. Yes, it really depends on the nature of what you've done. But if you feel like all you've done is a little twist and maybe you'll be fine, just slow it down, go into just marching in place.

If you want to continue moving for the remainder of the ten minutes and not walk out in the middle of that class or actually towards the end of that class, then maybe the pivot is just you down scaling to a point where you're still moving and still getting work done and everything is great. I at one point in a CrossFit class hurt my back, I tweaked my back, and so I just quit. I tried to go a little bit further. I'm like, no, this is not working for me.

I can't do these movements as well as I want to. I can't use the form I want to and it hurts. I stopped, I quit, and that turned out to be a really good decision because I didn't do exceptional damage to myself. I had done some, but it was really just a strain instead of something that could have been much, much worse. So recognizing your body's limitations, knowing when it's time to quit, when it's time to stick, or maybe just stick and adapt a pivot. Those are good.

Now, these questions about stick, stick and pivot and quit when you start talking about fitness are really hard because we have two things happening. We have this drive for ego that a lot of us share, and then we have this drive to laziness that a lot of us have. If you feel like you're quitting just because it's getting hard or you're slowing down as a pivot just because it's getting hard, that's not necessarily a justified reason. Again, exercise is helping. You can do it. You're not harming yourself.

So in this particular case, there's not really a good reason to quit. But if you find yourself where you're pushing yourself past your boundaries, what you're capable of doing, and you risk injury. It is definitely time to quit or downsize to enough where you know you're not in harm's way. So again, that's a harder area, but it's one that if you want to stay in the game, which is key, you have to obey fitness rule number one, thy shall not hurt themselves. So managing how you do this and staying within that sweet spot of not letting ego get in the way and not letting laziness get in the way, that's going to be a key here.

So the fifth and final health driver is avoiding toxicity. So here's the first scenario. You're wearing a smartwatch and this could be Apple Fitbit, garmin, whatever. And you notice your heart rate goes up when you read posts from certain persons on social media, stick, stick and pivot or quit? Now, I know every one of us has some of these people that they turn social media into a battleground. They're always posting material that is just hard for you to stomach. They're a good friend, but some of the positions they take, some of the things they put on social media just really aggravates you.

They cause you stress, they hurt you. And maybe you've even had a few conversations with them there, and they've always ended up poorly. Is this a stick? Is this a quit or is this a stick and pivot? Now, for most of the time, because of social media, my position is just go ahead and quit. Don't respond to their posts. In fact, maybe you can even do the function that allows you to unfollow them. You're still their friend on Facebook. You just don't see their posts. And if it's more egregious and it's a problem, then you just block them on social media.

You tell them in person, I can't deal with your social media. So I'm going to block you, not the personal friend, but I don't want that on my feet. I don't want that in my life. So you quit in a sense, my social media, something that maybe I haven't talked about in here is that I break my Facebook up into two profiles. So if you actually went out and searched for me, you would see that I have two profiles on Facebook. Now, one is my business profile, and that's where I interact with you.

If you want to be my friend, you look up AllanMisner.CPT. And that's my work, my training profile. And that's where I have conversations with clients. I have great friends in the industry, and I enjoy the conversations there. And I don't worry about the political posts. I don't even pay attention to them. And then I have my personal personal, which is family and friends. I would say 99% of those folks I actually have met in person and have personal relationships with. And so yeah, some of them are going to post some things that whatever I don't agree with, but I only check that really to pay attention to friends and family and see what's going on here on the island.

I don't spend a lot of time on my personal personal Facebook because there's just not material out there that I'm all that interested in other than staying informed about what's going on with my family, some of my friends and what's going on on this island. So that's the only time I check back on that profile. And maybe once a week again, I saw that that was toxic. I saw a lot of toxicity in that, and I came up with a pivot and that pivot works very well for me.

You can also again do the other pivot where you're not actually blocking someone, but you're not following them or other settings within your Facebook, where you can control your feed and you're seeing the things that you really want to see without dealing with this much toxicity. The second scenario I want to talk about in the health driver of avoiding toxicity, you decide to read the label on your personal care products, and I'll tell you right now, the Environmental Working Group has a great app to help you do that.

It's go to www.Ewg.Org/apps and this site when you go there, you can literally scan the barcode with your phone, your smartphone, and it'll tell you whether this stuff is toxic or where it rates. So let's say now you've used that app and you've looked at your personal care products and you notice that your favorite shampoo and conditioner rank very poorly on this rating scale. And so now here you are. You love this condition of the shampoo. It works great. It makes your hair feel look good.

Everything is awesome when you feel when you're using this product, but now you find out it has some problems. It has some allergens in it, maybe some carcinogens, that type of thing. Do you stick, stick and pivot or quit? Now, the thing about toxicity is it tends to be cumulative. Rather, it's chemical, biological or social or relationship stuff. It tends to be cumulative. If you're in a toxic situation, it doesn't get better if you just reduce the amount of toxicity that you're taking in, it's still cumulative.

It's still adding in. So for many of these things, you need to get away from toxicity. And I would say the answer is going to be quit. It's very seldom that you can pivot on those types of things, but there are exceptions. So if this brand of shampoo and conditioner that you're using is a good brand and that particular type of product is the problem, maybe you move to another product that they have that's hypoallergenic or has less of these things in it, and that's a better option for you to continue to use a brand that you enjoy and works well for you.

But cut back on that toxicity. But in a general sense, I would say most of the time the answer related to toxicity if it's a product or a relationship is to quit. Now, that's easier said than done. But I have done it, and you can, too. So I hope this all made sense. I tried to come up with some examples that would show you on either side of the stick or quit model, and then some that were in that stick and pivot range. As you can tell, this isn't as simple.

And since there are thousands and thousands of things that you do every day, there's a lot going on. There's a lot for you to consider as you look at this. So for that reason, I would say, focus on the big rocks. Think about the things that you do or don't do that would move the needle. If you know there are things that you're doing now that just adversely affect you, like smoking. That's a no brainer. It's a quit. So there are things you're doing that really it's time to quit.

There are other things that you're doing that are actually for good, but they're not giving you the results. That's the time to reassess. And as you're going through this analysis, I think it's really important for you to keep your why and your vision in sight, because the things that you're doing should always align with that. If they don't, then it's a quit. So the why is the reason you're doing this? Why are you working on your health and fitness now? And when you come to that, it's this emotional, deep thing.

It becomes so important to you that there's no other option. You're not going to say no. Okay, so when you're doing these things, it's the question of am I doing it the right way? Can I pivot? And then if it's not working, find a different route.

Now, the vision is where you ultimately want to go with this activity, with what you're doing, with what you're eating, fitness, nutrition, all of it. All those things are driving you towards some vision of yourself. And so you're building these little habits, these little mile markers that are measurable as you're going through this process. And as you look at what you're doing, if you're not seeing the progress to get to that next mile marker, that's time to evaluate. And when you evaluate things, you have to get rid of things you can tweak.

And that's called the pivot. And then things you just bear down and keep doing because they are working. You just have to keep at it. So if you're interested in exploring these things a little bit more, whether you should quit, whether you should stick and pivot or quit, I'd encourage you to join us on Facebook at our Facebook group at 40plusfitnesspodcast.Com/group. And there you can go ahead and ask questions. Maybe you have something you're dealing with and you just like the sounding board of hey, what do you think?

What are some ideas here? Because maybe quoting doesn't really make sense to you, and maybe sticking to it doesn't make any sense. We've got to find that middle ground of the stick, maybe stick and pivot. So there might be these other alternatives that I can share with you in that forum. So again, go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.Com/group. Go ahead and start a conversation there about your particular situation, and we can try to figure out the right alternatives for you.

Post Show/Recap

[00:42:11.650] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:42:13.390] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. You know what I love about the concept of sticking with something, sticking with it and pivoting or just quitting it altogether is that you have to make an assessment and make a decision. And while I absolutely hate the word quit, it's really hard for me to quit anything. Sometimes that is absolutely the right decision.

[00:42:35.650] – Allan
Yeah. And maybe you find another word for it. For me. It's like, okay, sometimes I just need to be upright with myself that I'm pushing myself further and harder than I should and just taking that half step back or just overall, just quitting. You're in a toxic relationship, you really have to evaluate that relationship and say, is it worth me keeping? And sometimes the answer is no. As we were going through the pandemic and being locked up, one of my friends that she was a client even here on the island was having a lot of issues and was lashing out at everybody.

[00:43:18.850] – Allan
So it's like, no, I'm going to call her on her BS, and I'm just going to say, chill out and she didn't like it. And so we're not really friends anymore, which is fine. We still sort of see each other on the island anyway, but I'm cordial I'm not going to be a problem with it, but I don't need that negativity in my life. So I quit. And it's hard and it's hard but you have to think about this holistically of your stress management and your fitness.

[00:43:48.670] – Allan
I think it's easier. We can talk about the fitness side because quitting sometimes it just makes a lot more sense when we were talking about this. And you talked about marathon training as we get into the heart of marathon season, there's a lot of legs putting on a lot of miles and going through a lot of pain.

[00:44:10.070] – Rachel
October is the best time to run a marathon. The weather is probably the best it's going to be, at least in the north here. But marathon training is no joke. And there comes a point where you might be hitting those peak weeks where your mileage is going to be the highest it's ever been. Your speed drills and tempo work will be the highest it's ever been, and you're going to be hurting. And on the one hand, that's the intention of a peak week is to put your body through the wringer.

[00:44:39.290] – Rachel
But then you come off of those weeks, and you're backing it down into the taper and relaxing and recovering until you hit the marathon until the race day. But there's also that fine line where you could be digging yourself into a hole if you're injured. And if you've got that little knee pain or maybe a little pain in the quad or the hamstring or something. Sometimes runners are egos get to us and we go out there because we have to do the training. We have to go out there and run.

[00:45:10.550] – Rachel
We have to follow the plan. Otherwise, we won't succeed on race day. And unless you're paying really close attention and stop when you're hurting yourself, then you're not going to make it to race day. And sometimes our egos just shade that we just can't see ourselves in that light. It's really hard.

[00:45:29.390] – Allan
Yeah. It's kind of the interesting thing I noticed when I was doing that type of stuff, even when I do the tough Mudders and Spartans and things like that is there's so much freaking adrenaline going through my body. Quite literally I will do a lot better on that run than I trained for if I didn't train enough. What I found was I tended to over train. I tended to spend more time running longer distances than I really absolutely needed to do. For me technically, I kind of evaluate like this.

[00:46:03.530] – Allan
If I could run 8 miles without stopping, I could do a marathon because the rest of that race is mental.

[00:46:12.230] – Allan
and so as you're going through the training and you're thinking, okay, I'm in my peak weeks and I'm hurting and I'm going to start my taper. I just recommend people take five days off. In five days, you're going to be able to and drink plenty of water, make sure you get in your electrolytes, do all the things that you need to do to allow your body to recover. And over that five days, which you'll probably find is all the muscle aches and pains go away, which kind of removes a lot of static.

[00:46:41.990] – Allan
And now you can actually feel pain in other places, like joints and things like that. And if you're feeling the pain in the joints, that's not something that's going to go away. And it's not something you can train through. Muscle pain, you can train through. You can recover a lot faster. Those joint issues, you're not going to be able to, but a lot of people because they put so much stress on their body, they have both. And therefore they can't really isolate where they're hurting because they're hurting everywhere.

[00:47:13.610] – Allan
And so just realizing that it's not a quit, it's a pivot. My plan was set and then I'm like, okay, but if I'm going to be ready for the race or at least be able to complete the race, I have to take that little step backwards. I have to take that recovery time.

[00:47:33.590] – Rachel
Yeah, absolutely. It's time to pivot the plan. It's time to stick with the plan, but make a pivot and do the recovery that needs to get done. See a doctor. If you find an injury that you just can't pinpoint or need help figuring out the difference between a strain or an injury, and then if it's time to make that decision to DNS or do not start, it's imperative that you take care of your body because our runner ego is really strong and we want to line up and gut out a race no matter what.

[00:48:09.170] – Rachel
We signed up for it. We paid for it. We told all of our friends and family about it. We're going to be there no matter what. But like you had mentioned in your discussion, go back to your goal, because if you're running a marathon, you want it to be a great day. You want it to be a celebration of all the hard work you've just put in there. You don't want to run yourself literally into the ground and making an injury far worse than it already is.

[00:48:35.930] – Rachel
There's always going to be another marathon you can pivot and sign up for on another day when you're healthier and ready. So it's time to make those really hard decisions and they're hard.

[00:48:49.610] – Allan
They are. One of the ways I like to kind of give you a visual of how this whole process works is to think about each type of training that you're doing each time in nutrition or stress management. Think about those as like channels. You got your sides. I'm running. So this is a race. I'm going to be running a race, and I need to have this amount of stamina and speed and all that to be able to complete the race. And so then somewhere in that channel is your roof.

[00:49:19.490] – Allan
And somewhere in that channel is your floor. And as long as you're between your roof and your floor, you're doing what your body needs. If you start pushing up against that roof, which a lot of your hard weeks, that's what that's about. Let's push our roof up. Let's try to get our roof higher. Let's raise the roof. I guess.

[00:49:39.950] – Allan
Anyway, you're trying to raise that roof a little bit, okay? And if you push too far past it, you have the potential to injure yourself and break. So you've got to find that line and you've got to really listen to your body when you're at that point. So find your roof. Don't let your ego push you too far past that roof too often, occasionally. Okay, you overdid it. So your recovery is much more important, but in a general sense, you didn't break. So that's good. You're right there at that point of stressing and getting outside your comfort zone with that roof, the other side is the floor.

[00:50:13.310] – Allan
And that's just where you say, okay, I hurt so bad. Now I'm just going to quit. And again, you had a goal. You had a reason why you had something you were really after. That didn't change. So if you let yourself just fall through that floor, then the term again, not a term everybody likes, but it's laziness is keeping you from accomplishing your goal. So find your floor and always stay above that. Find your roof and only push that roof when you're in a particular point of training where it makes sense.

[00:50:49.130] – Allan
And then you've got to tap that ego down so that you're not breaking yourself. So find your square and find your sweet spot. And wherever you are in your training, you're going to have times when you're down in recovery. And guess what you're not doing. If you're in recovery, you're still above your floor. That's on your training plan. Not doing anything is still in your box. Not feeling like I need to be doing something, even though the training plan says to not do something, don't do it.

[00:51:16.010] – Rachel
Yes. The question you asked earlier, too, was, is this serving me? Is what I'm doing right now helping me achieve my goal? Or could it be hurting me or keeping me from achieving my goal? And it's a good question to ask when you're trying to decide whether you should stick with something pivot or quit it altogether. I think reminding yourself, is this helping me is a good question.

[00:51:40.430] – Allan
And that's where I was when I did my alter the 50 miles way back when it was okay. I wanted to do it. It was just felt like, okay, the percentage of people on Earth that can run 50 miles at one time at that point was very low. Almost nobody did it. Marathons were seen as this crazy out of the box. How would someone do that? Why would someone want to run twice as much see if you can?

[00:52:08.570] – Allan
And then I did.

[00:52:09.890] – Allan
And I noticed that one of those things realize, okay, that served the point. But I thought maybe I was going to run 100 or do something like, no, my body was very clear with me. You are not going to run 100 miles in a day, ever. Just don't even think about it. I knew where my box was. I knew where my roof was, but at the same time, I knew that just being in that high of a box on that channel in the long term would not have suited me.

[00:52:42.770] – Allan
It was cool. It's something I can talk about and enjoy. It's actually still out on the internet's. Internet was coming around in 95. I think so they published the results on the Internet. It was the first time my name was on the Internet, and so it's just kind of one of those things of saying, okay, I did it, done it. What's next? And finding another challenge, another thing that would keep me excited. And then staying in that box. Every time I've gotten outside of that box, I've either put on a lot of weight or I've broken something, so I kind of know where my box is and it's like, okay, if I'm going to be healthy and fit, I have to stay in my box.

[00:53:22.310] – Allan
And defining that box is the real challenge of all of this. Being comfortable. Pushing the roof when you need to is also a big part of this. And it's not easy. It's honestly not easy, but you have to listen to your body or get a trainer involved and listen to your trainer because they'll be able to see what's going on and tell you, okay, what are we measuring here? What are we doing? How do you feel? Some of it can be very subjective, but a lot of it can be what's your HvR HRV how are you recovering? The shorter, faster runs?

[00:54:00.230] – Allan
How's your speed going? Are you getting the times and the splits that you need for that? And if you're not, then maybe you're not recovering enough. And maybe there's something and a good trainer will see that. Whereas if you just have a program that you purchased or got downloaded for free off the internet, you have to do that for yourself. And that's really hard when there's an ego involved. And there's an aspect of, oh, I just not do this today involved staying in the box. That training is a lot harder, but find a way to stay in the box.

[00:54:33.770] – Rachel
That sounds great. Great points. Stick with it, pivot or determine whether it's time to quit. Really good rules with them here.

[00:54:42.170] – Allan
All right.

[00:54:42.890] – Allan
Well, Rachel, that's all I have for this week. I'll talk to you next week.

[00:54:46.670] – Rachel
Take care.

[00:54:47.690] – Allan
You too.

[00:54:48.710] – Rachel
Thanks.

Patreons

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Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

Finding your health and fitness pace

Less...

Let's Say Hello

[00:01:31.880] – Allan
Raz, how are things?

[00:01:34.070] – Rachel
Good. Allan, how are you today?

[00:01:37.140] – Allan
I'm doing all right. I had had a really, really good weekend with just a little bit of not such good thing. I lost my phone again.

[00:01:44.850] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh.

[00:01:45.710] – Allan
We'll talk about that in more detail later. But yeah, same scenario shorts out to Bluff coming back in the golf cart lost but not the same outcome, though. The phone survived with no damage. And a nice taxi driver that we actually know here on the island found it. And so we were able to retrieve my phone, but not without a little bit of frustration. And we'll get into that in more detail in a minute.

[00:02:13.040] – Rachel
Sure. Well, I'm glad it has a good outcome. That's a good ending, then.

[00:02:16.910] – Allan
Yeah. How are things up there? Way up there in Michigan?

[00:02:20.900] – Rachel
Good. Things are good up here. On Friday, I got my vaccine. I got the Johnson and Johnson one and done covid vaccine. So I took the weekend just to relax, make sure I didn't have any adverse reactions to it, which I didn't. Just a little fatigue and I'm feeling pretty good. So I'm pretty excited. Some of my family has been vaccinated. The other family members are getting the other vaccines where you need two of them, but we're just that much closer to having a little bit more normalcy. So looking forward to that.

[00:02:55.250] – Allan
Yeah, they're not they have vaccinations here. They don't have as many as they planned to have. And they didn't order enough to vaccinate the whole country. So I'm not going to take a vaccination from Panama. One, there's there's citizens there are a lot older and a lot worse health than me that need it. And then, it's Panama. And so, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to get it here, even though I could sign up and eventually being 55 would come up on the list.

[00:03:27.380] – Allan
I'm going to wait. My my wife and I are planning to come back to the States in September. And so we'll get tested before we get on an airplane. Don't worry. That's a requirement. Now for us to go to the States, we're going to have to have a test before we leave. So we'll get tested here and then we'll head back to the states and I think September time frame and then go ahead and get it there. We'll be in the States for at least three weeks. So if we have to get to the two stage one, we'll get one when we first get there. And then we'll get a second shot right before we leave.

[00:03:57.620] – Rachel
That would be great. That would be fantastic.

[00:04:00.860] – Allan
All right. So let's go ahead and get into this show, which is about mindset, which is yours and my favorite topic when we're talking about health and fitness. So here we go.

Are you prioritizing yourself?

Today, I want to get into a mindset. Topic that is actually probably one of the most important obstacles that many people face when they're looking to get healthy and fit, and it's not something that goes away without a little bit of work.

And so the question comes up is, are you prioritizing yourself?

Are you probably prioritizing your health and fitness? And it's it sounds like a simple thing, but it's actually a very deep, deep emotional mental adjustment to to have that kind of mindset where you are prioritizing yourself. So I want to dive into it a little bit. But before we go too far, we can start with something as simple as a little quiz. And so there's only three questions to this quiz.

So don't think we're going to be on here for a long time. It's not but three questions. And I want you to rate yourself from a one, which is this is completely untrue to a six – this describes me perfectly. OK, so again, one is the low end of the scale is completely untrue. Up to six, this is a good description of you. How how you actually feel, how you think.

OK, the first one is: I put others wishes before my own or else I feel guilty.

The second one is: I give more to other people than I get back in return.

And then the final one is: I'm so busy doing for the people whom I care about, that I have little time for myself.

All right, now add up those scores and think to yourself about what that number means, and I'll tell you what it means if that number. Is higher than, say, five or six, you might have a problem. You're not prioritizing yourself and what you're basically doing is self-sacrificing. You're taking others and saying they're so much more important than me that I can't do the things for myself that are necessary for me to be healthy and fit.

And I'm not going to jump into the whole airplane put your mask on thing. But this is a concept that unless you break through this effort of prioritizing yourself, if you are a self-sacrificer or you're really going to struggle to get healthy and fit and stay healthy and fit because it's never going to be the priority you need it to be.

A lot of people love those simple rules of the 80-20, and I try to tell people 80-20 is perfect when you're in maintenance mode. 80 at 20 is great. You can stay healthy and be healthy. The problem is for most of us, we're not already healthy. We're not at the weight we want to be at. We're not as strong as we need to be. And as a result, we need to put in more than 80%. If you don't prioritize yourself, that's just not going to happen.

So the first thing we have to look at when we are having this conversation is to actually think about the inner voice that we have, that voice that that tells you how you feel about something that's happening. So an event happens, maybe your alarm doesn't go off and you're late for work. You're going to be late for work. What does your inner voice tell you about that event? And that inner voice is the story, it's the story of our lives from an internal perspective. It often doesn't actually reflect reality.

And I want to take you through and this week, or at least for the next few days, I want you to think about some of the words that that inner voice is using, some of the things that you probably think. And the best way to kind of break that down for me is this phraseology called “absolute words.” And so I want you to pay attention to that inner voice over the course of the next day or two and maybe a little longer and see how often you use words like have to, need, must, ought to, should.

If you find yourself using those words a lot, those are absolute words. That means that your inner voice is feeding you something and saying this is an absolute necessity. You have to do it this way. And if that's the case, then you're not going to change. You're not. Whatever you think you have to do, you will do whatever you think you should do, you will probably do. Whatever you need to do, whatever someone else needs or you think is needed. And then obviously the word must if you must do something, it's something you've got to do and therefore you do it.

If you're not using those absolute words for your own health and fitness, then you're likely using them for other things. And if you are, that's a clear indication that you're not prioritizing your wellbeing. It's just not happening because these other haves, musts, ought tos, and shoulds are getting in your way.

So what's an easy solution for us with regards to these absolute words?

Well, one, when you catch yourself doing this, using those words and it's not toward you, it's not something that you are doing for you. Like I can say, I have to work out today. Obviously, that's not a bad phrase. It is an absolute. The absolute is about me taking care of myself. But if I say I've got to get the food for the kids, I must take them to the ball practice. I must do this and then I must make sure I get this report done at work. If I have all these other musts in my life, it'll be very hard for me to make sure that I go through it. So if I catch myself using one of these absolute words.

Again, there have to, need, must, ought, and should.

If you find yourself using those words with relation to someone else or something else besides your health and fitness, you need to stop and take a step back. And reevaluate if that is an absolute. In many cases, it's not. The world is not going to end if you don't do something that you had to do, that you should have done, that you ought to do, the world might not end. And so taking a moment to take that half step back and evaluate that statement that you just your inner voice just told you that is getting in the way of you being healthy and fit.

It's time to rephrase that and going through the practice of where your is telling you, you know, you must be home by 6:30pm so you don't have time to work out. Well, do you have to be home by 6:30pm. Just ask yourself that question. What happens if I'm not there? Then dinner's not ready at 7:00pm. Dinner's ready at what, maybe 7:30pm? Maybe your spouse can assist you by making dinner tonight. Maybe you go ahead and you order from a food company that delivers healthy choices and you order food in for the family.

So in many cases, when you catch yourself using an absolute word that is not geared towards you being healthy and fit when you really, truly need and want to prioritize yourself in your health and fitness, you've got to change the script. You've got to stop evaluate whether it's true. And I'll tell you, in most cases it's not true.

You're not going to get fired for being five minutes late for work. You're just not. Now, you might if you're constantly late. But for most people out there, a lot of the absolute words we have in our head are actually not true. They're stories that we're telling ourselves. They're stories that we're living to. And as a result, we're not getting the health and fitness that we deserve.

So I just used the word there, and I'm actually getting to a point in my life where I really kind of love words and those kind of things that they mean and what they bring up and how we relate to them. And so I'm using the word deserve.

And I can say with absolute clarity, you deserve self-care. You deserve to be able to take care of yourself. You deserve to be healthy and fit. So what does self-care actually look like?

Well, first and foremost, it includes self-love. I've asked many of my clients if they love themselves enough to do this for themselves. And it was funny because one of the first clients I ever had, her name was Sandy. She said she wasn't sure. Now, the problem came up and Sandy didn't follow through with everything we were doing, despite seeing good results at first. And I break it down to that point, she did not have the self-love necessary to make a change, to do the hard thing.

And so self-love is that expression where you care about yourself as much as you care about anyone else. It doesn't mean that you don't love other people as much because love is not this finite thing that we have that if I give this to this person, I don't have any left for me. That's not how love works. Love is infinite. And so you should be exploring yourself and understanding that if you don't start from my point of self-love, the commitment's never going to be there and you're not going to see the results. So if you find yourself having these kind of conversations where you're not liking yourself and that inner voice is actually a butthole. You need to work on your self-love. You need to actually sit down and start talking yourself through why you're worthy, why you deserve this, why you would love yourself. And I'm 100 percent sure you're going to come up with a ton of great reasons why you should love yourself and then you should love yourself.

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The next thing that comes in is you need to be frank and honest and you need to be frank and honest with not just other people. You need to be frank and honest with yourself. If the inner voice is, like I said, being a butthole, be honest about it. Understand, I have kind of a crappy self-image right now. What are the things I can do to improve that self-image? What are the things I can do to make that inner voice nicer?

Eliminating some of those absolute words is a good first step for that, but you've got to have this inner honesty. You've got to be honest with yourself and understand what's going on. And then, yes, you have to be frank and honest with the people around you. If you're going to do something for yourself, it often means that there's things that you would have been doing for someone else that you're now not able to do. They're going to live. They're going to be fine. But change in your life often means change in others.

I talked in my book, The Wellness Roadmap, about understanding the baggage that you have when you're traveling and how that can affect your path. Now, what I didn't say in there, but it should have been implied is you still need to have a vehicle. You still need to be moving forward. Your pace might be a little different, but you still have to be frank and honest with the people around you that the changes you're making are important to you and should be important to them, because in 99.9% of the cases out there, your why is them? You want to be healthy and you want to be fit for your kids, you and you and your grandkids. And you want to be there for your spouse and you don't want to be an obligation later in life to them because you want to be able to take care of yourself and you want that opportunity to be the person you're supposed to be.

And they should want that for you, too. So being honest and frank with them as far as what you need to be successful, is going to go a long way towards not having them resenting you for going to the gym every day or resenting you because you're not baking as often as you used to bake. Those types of things. So being frank and honest with yourself and others is a very important step towards self-care.

The next is consistency and frequency. You can't do something once and say, OK, that's my self-care for the month. It just doesn't quite work like that. Yes, going and getting a mani-pedi for some people are getting a massage is a great luxury for many and doing it once a month might be plenty. It would be for me. But to actually do what's necessary for you to be healthy and fit, it needs to become a part of a lifestyle that is frequent enough that it will elicit change. So if you're going to say lift weights, you can't lift weights once and say, well, gee, I don't understand why I'm not muscular. I don't understand why I didn't put on much muscle or because you didn't do it enough. Okay? So there has to be a frequency to it that is enough to stimulate a change in your body, to stimulate change in you.

And then the consistency part just means that doing something over and over and over is where you're going to get your real results. I had that conversation with Dr. Pontzer not long ago, and we talked about how you're not going to be able to lose a ton of weight really, really quickly without your body reacting to it at some level. And, so that reaction, which your body is going to do to change up your metabolism, that's going to happen. It's going to happen for all of us. Our bodies were made to do that so we can survive. But the consistency of doing the little things over and over and over, over time is where you kind of make this.

I was having a conversation with my clients the other day. And one of the things I said to them was the Grand Canyon was not built by something major coming through there and digging it out. It was that slow trickle of a small river over many, many years, millions of years, that made the Grand Canyon what it is today. And so you need that little trickle. You need that consistency to see monumental changes in your health and fitness.

So if you have a long journey to take before you're healthy and fit, you need the patience. But you also need that consistency. You have to keep showing up and you have to do it enough where your body recognizes the stimulus and reacts.

And then the final bit on the self-care, what it looks like. It's about an investment. If you're not willing to invest some time, effort, and money into yourself, you're not likely to see the results that you really want to have. Now, the biggest investment is going to be time and effort. You're going to have to make change and you're going to have to spend some time doing this. It's not just going to happen. As I mentioned before, we have a frequency and we have a consistency that has to happen. For that to happen, you have to invest time and effort towards making these things happen.

And then the money part can be a little bit of money. It can be as little as you're investing in some good quality shoes, or it can be as big as saying I'm going to build a home gym and I'm going to spend thousands of dollars to do that. For most people, the investment is somewhere in the middle of that. A small gym membership isn't all that expensive and it's hiring a trainer. When you look at the results that you get often isn't that expensive. If it's going to get you down the road faster.

My wife is working on building up a bed and breakfast, and the guy that was working it was him and his son. And he said, I've got these two other guys to come in and help. And she's like, sure. And the whole thing was by investing a little bit more each week, she's going to get the job done faster. So now she's got four people working instead of two. So the work's getting done faster. And that's what you have to think about with regards to where money can play a role in helping you with this whole thing.

So to kind of wrap this all up, if you did that quiz, that self-sacrificing quiz and you scored, twelve, if you scored thirteen or if you scored eighteen, then you have a self-sacrificing problem. And if you find that your inner voice is not your best friend, you've got a priority problem. Those are two internal things that you really have to get a grasp on.

And a couple of the ways that you can easily see this happening beyond just doing the quiz I talked about is to look for how often you're using those absolute words. They are using absolute words to define what you're supposed to do for someone else and not for yourself, something that would pull you away from doing something for yourself. Those are those trigger words. Those are the things that will tell you where you need to address your time and effort and you need to go and take that step back and analyze what that actually means. Is it actually true in most cases you're going to find it's not.

And then finally, self-care takes an investment. You have to love yourself. You've got to be open and honest with yourself. You've got to be consistent. You've got to put in a frequency of things happening so you can see change. And that typically takes an investment of time, effort and/or money.

So I hope you took something valuable from this lesson. If you did, I'd love to talk to you about it in more detail on the Facebook group. You can go to https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group, and we can have a great conversation there about your inner voice, about whether you are prioritizing yourself so you can get the health and fitness you deserve.

Post Show/Recap

[00:24:26.720] – Allan
Rachel, welcome back.

[00:24:28.460] – Rachel
Hey, Allan. Yep, mindset is one of my favorite topics of discussion. That was a really good episode you laid out for us.

[00:24:37.700] – Allan
Thank you. The interesting thing was that I recorded this episode last week and then this week and I lost my phone. And I have to say, there are no perfect people. And I think a lot of things you'll see on social media and Facebook will have you believing that there's something wrong with you and there's something right with everybody else. And particularly as we get into the health and fitness field, I'll just tell you, we're not perfect either. None of us are. And, I'm sitting there really, really angry with myself and the language that was in my head, was not kind. It was not kind at all.

[00:25:22.550] – Allan
Losing my phone the same way twice in really less than three months time. And this is not a cheap phone. This is a 1300 – $1300 phone. Really had me upset. So I'm walking the through the jungle right back to where the howler monkeys were, where I took the video and then that's why it fell out of my pocket was I didn't seal it in my pocket properly, went right back to those howler monkeys and they were just looking at me like I was the monkey.

[00:25:54.500] – Allan
So I just realized, OK, you know, as I walk, I've got to forgive myself. I slipped up. I made a mistake. I got to forgive myself. I've got to think about, Okay, you're letting this happen. This is a theme: going to Bluff, riding in a golf cart, wearing swimming trunks. Losing your phone is now a theme.

[00:26:16.370] – Allan
I have to think about that. I have to make sure I have a plan to make that not happen again. But that has to start with self-love. That has to start with the forgiveness of it. So just be aware that you're never completely on the other side of this, prioritizing yourself and finding self-love and doing those things. It's always a work in progess. You always have to manage that relationship and be aware when it's slipping up, when you're arguing with yourself.

[00:26:44.380] – Rachel
That's so true. Absolutely. And that was a very frustrating time for you, I'm sure. But it's good that you take a minute to assess the situation, kind of troubleshoot problem solve. And hopefully the next time you go find some howler monkeys to take pictures of, you won't you'll be better secure with your phone.

[00:27:03.860] – Allan
Yeah, well there was a lot of things I got on the front end and, and even then once it happened because I wasn't of sound mind, I guess the best way for me to say I was, I was very frustrated, very angry.

[00:27:14.930] – Rachel
Sure.

[00:27:15.380] – Allan
Myself. And it was, I was all that went inside. I wasn't thinking. So there were things that I could have done that would have made my search maybe easier. I found my phone on the Find My iPhone kind of thing. So I knew about where it was. And I just wanted to get there as fast as I could. And so as a result, I didn't think about, well, why not put find my phone on Tammy's phone? So while we're driving, if it starts moving around, we might see that. It didn't cross my mind till we were driving. And the interesting thing about an Apple account, when you try to log into it from another device, is it always wants to send you a code. Now it's going to send that code to one of your Apple devices. I happen to use a Mac, so if I had been sitting at my desk, I could have got her logged in to find my phone there. But because we were already halfway to where we were going, I couldn't actually use Find My iPhone on her phone. I could log into my apple account, but then it wanted to send me that code and I'm like, well, if I had my phone with me, I wouldn't need this code.

[00:28:20.840] – Allan
So I was not real happy with Apple either. Someone just has an iPhone. I don't even know what they do. But I guess they don't find their phone from another device. Anyway, that was my day. Or at least it was it wasn't my day. It was a part of my day.

[00:28:37.940] – Rachel
And that's just how it happens, though. And when life hands you these weird situations, it's easy to get flustered and all of your common sense and all of your reasoning and logic sometimes just goes right out the window until you can just take a minute and breathe and solve your own problem.

[00:28:55.100] – Rachel
Yeah, mindset is a tricky thing. And I guess when I was listening to what you were saying about having an inner voice and being able to prioritize your own health and fitness, it brought me back to the days when I was overweight. And not a lot of my friends knew me back then. But after I had two kids, I had a little bit of extra weight. And it's hard as a mom, for many moms, or moms with the small kids that you can't just leave the house, you can't just leave your kids unattended to go for a walk or run or do something.

[00:29:30.110] – Rachel
And so when I was at that point in my life, I would put the kids to bed at night. My husband was home and so I would go for a run around the neighborhood. I also had workout videos, VHS, aging myself here, but I had workout videos. And so when the kids would lay down for a nap, I would put in a 30-minute workout video and workout in the basement. And so was it an ideal situation? No, but that was the best that I could do at that time to put my health as a priority.

[00:30:02.900] – Rachel
And I did have weight to lose. I did have some things that I need to take care of so that I could be a healthier, happier person for my kids. So you just find these weird ways of getting around these situations that life just throws at you?

[00:30:17.990] – Allan
Yeah, I like to tell my clients quite often that life doesn't get in the way, life is the way.

[00:30:24.710] – Rachel
It is.

[00:30:25.550] – Allan
You're not going to get around it. You can't sit there and say, I'm going to wait to do this until I'm not as busy, or oh I screwed up. That will never happen again. I'm like, well, how often does that happen? Every time?

[00:30:39.830] – Allan
And so the point of this is, one, there's not another day. Every day you put off doing the right thing for yourself is lost forever and you're not going to get that time back. If you're looking at it and you're thinking, Okay, I need to prioritize myself but my kids and that's valid. You can't just leave a two-year-old and four-year0old alone in a house and go for a run around the neighborhood.

[00:31:09.770] – Rachel
That's right.

[00:31:10.760] – Allan
Even if you can still see your house from there, some people would call that irresponsible. So you've got to come up with another solution. Now, what does that take? Well, it could mean that you hire a babysitter when you go train. And I know not everybody can afford to do that, but that's an investment. Maybe it's that until your kids are old enough to somewhat be autonomous and be left alone, you invest in a treadmill. So you're like, okay, I've got a two-year-old, a four-year-old. I buy a treadmill. And for about the next ten years, I'm running on the treadmill when my significant other is not here to take care of the kids. And that's your investment in yourself. And so you've got to be willing to make that investment.

[00:31:52.730]
It's time, it's effort, it's money. And it can look like a lot of different things. But it's got to be a solution that you find because you have self-love, because you have to solve this problem. You can't just ignore it and say, oh, I'll wait till my kids are 12 and 14 before I start. Because it won't get easier.

[00:32:13.340] – Rachel
No, it doesn't. And you really have to remember, I know you didn't want to use the analogy of putting the air on when you're going down on an airplane, you put the air on you before you help the people next to you. But that's exactly it. You can't pour from an empty cup. You need to be full and happy and strong yourself, and you need to be healthy. And the more healthy and happy you are, the better person you are for those around you, your family and your friends and your coworkers and everybody else. And it's just so important. You are so important. And you really do need to put yourself first as best as you can.

[00:32:51.890] – Rachel
And often it's striking a balance. Sure, you've got family responsibilities, work responsibilities and all sorts of things, but you are so important to so many people and you should take yourself make yourself the best priority you can.

[00:33:04.400] – Allan
Yeah, it's you know, and it goes it goes even deeper than the being there for them while they're kids. I mean, we're in this I guess the term they use the sandwich generation and the concept is that many of us will be taking care of children at the same time we're taking care of our parents.

[00:33:21.860] – Rachel
Right.

[00:33:23.480] – Allan
Because people are having children later in life, they're putting it off and they're having them later in life. And as a result, they're beginning to have to take care of parents at the same time that they're still taking care of their kids. Now, I can tell you that only one of our boys has a daughter and she's older. It's from a prior relationship. So it's not his. But he's been in the kid's life since she was 10 months old or something like that. So she's dad and he's adopted her and all that.

[00:33:52.970] – Allan
But our other kids are already in their late 20s, early 30s, and they're not even thinking about kids in many cases. So, yeah, I'm going to probably be in my sixties before our daughters really start deciding that they're going to start afamily. And if that's the case, I don't want to be the 80-year old that she's just sending kids off to college. And now I've got to take care of dad.

[00:34:21.320] – Allan
You know, that's. That's not who I want to be, and so this self care is not just this selfish thing, it's really thinking about holistically who you are as a person and where you fit in to this whole scheme of a family and realizing that the healthier and stronger you keep yourself, the less of a burden you are on anybody in, the more you are able to help.

[00:34:45.880]
And so I can just imagine my daughters , look, hey, I'm fine. I'm 80 years old. Send my granddaughter down here to Bocas for six weeks. Come on down, bring her down and maybe we take her back up. But yeah, she can come down. I've got to be able to run on that deep sand and Bluff Beach. And I've got to be able to do the things that she wants to do and keep up with her. To be that individual that can be that caregiver without requiring caregiving myself is really the way I kind of like to couch this. You know, I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. It's a funny way, I like to say it, but what it really means is I want to be able to run in deep sand with my granddaughter when I'm 80.

[00:35:36.940] – Rachel
Yeah. For sure.

[00:35:38.230] – Allan
That kind of thing. So, as we get into this, just realize that you have to love yourself. You have to do this every day you give away and don't do it is a day lost and you really need to turn this around. It's really about getting aware of that story in your head and trying to make it a different ending.

[00:36:02.410] – Rachel
Yeah, that sounds great in it. And if anyone listening has any questions or doesn't know where to start, reach out to Allen's Facebook page or email or anything, we would love to guide you and how to make these choices or how to figure out how you can make fitness a priority in your life. We'd love to help you with that.

[00:36:21.160] – Allan
You can go to https://40plusfitnesspodcast.com/group and join the awesome Facebook group that we have out there. There are weekly challenges and we're always having discussions about things that are going on in the health and fitness world. And there's a lot of fun, too. It's not just this and that. I post the pictures of the of the beach there and I believe I put even some pictures of the monkeys that kind of made a monkey out of me. I wouldn't have had those videos if I had found my phone. Those videos are alive and well and you can go out on a group and actually see them right now if you'd like.

[00:36:58.870] – Allan
So anything else you want to go over, Rachel, before you know that?

[00:37:02.680] – Rachel
That was great. Thanks so much.

[00:37:04.510] – Allan
All right. You take care and we'll talk next week.

[00:37:06.760] – Rachel
Yep. Take care.

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