Let's Say Hello

[00:03:03.680] – Allan

Hey, Ras.

[00:03:04.890] – Rachel

Hey, Allan. How are you today?

[00:03:06.630] – Allan

I'm doing all right.

[00:03:07.920] – Rachel

Good.

[00:03:09.310] – Allan

Been a busy week. We had that flood here in the gym, and so we've been trying to work on the roof and keep that going. So that's been pretty massive. And then, of course, they took the holiday break, took a couple of days off, and it rained for two solid days. Which was great. No, it actually ended up being great. We were like in a rainforest and a tree, like almost like a Treehouse thing. And it wasn't really technically a tree house, but it felt like it based on where it was on the Hill and then just sit there. I read two fiction book novels.

[00:03:42.650] – Rachel

How nice. What a nice change.

[00:03:46.140] – Allan

Yeah. I mean, I don't hardly ever read fiction anymore because I'm constantly reading nonfiction. In fact, I think I've got a book I've got to read today. But, yeah, it's kind of crazy. I sat down, I brought two books with me because I just wasn't sure how far I would get into the first book, and I ended up finishing both of them.

[00:04:05.070] – Rachel

That's awesome. Would you recommend either of what you read?

[00:04:09.160] – Allan

Well, one of them, yes. I suppose. I don't know if you get on Amazon and prime and the Netflix kind of stuff, but on Amazon Prime, there's a show called The Man from High Castle.

[00:04:22.730] – Rachel

Oh, I've heard of that.

[00:04:24.050] – Allan

Okay. And it was a really good series. And so this was the book that basically was the basis for that television show. And obviously when you have a television show with all the episodes and all that, there was a lot more into the plot of the show than there was in the book. But it was really interesting because particularly since I knew the characters from the show to get into their head, because now this was told from basically the Omnipotent perspective where you're in his head, each of these characters head. So that was good. But it's a good book. It's interesting. And then the other one was called Bocas del toro. But oddly enough, none of the action in the book actually happened in Bocas del toro.

[00:05:15.050] – Rachel

So I wonder what the inspiration was for that name.

[00:05:18.660] – Allan

Well, that's where the guy ended up. The main protagonist, I guess, of the book. He ended up in Bocas del toro at the end of the book, but it was kind of he said it was based on some actual facts and things that had happened to people. So you have to assume that this was a person that actually dealt with this.

[00:05:38.330] – Rachel

Cool. Very cool.

[00:05:40.260] – Allan

So how are things with you?

[00:05:41.800] – Rachel

Good. I actually just finished a book myself. I read this book probably once a year or so. I just finished reading The Old Man in the Sea by Hemingway.

[00:05:51.730] – Allan

Yeah.

[00:05:52.340] – Rachel

It's a classic tale. It's a quick read. And I've been thinking about why I was so drawn to it. And it's about endurance. It's about a man holding onto this fish for as long as he could and after several days of holding the line. But one of the things in the very beginning of the book that amuses me so much is that the old man is in Havana in the, gosh, when was that? Prior to the 1950s, I think. And he liked baseball like a lot of Cubans did. And probably still do. But his favorite player was DiMaggio and he was talking with one of his friends about baseball, and he said he needs to watch the Tigers of Detroit as well as the Indians of Cleveland, who have changed their name recently to Guardians. But it was just interesting to hear him talk about the Detroit Tigers, which is our team. So it was just really a fun little twist at the very beginning of the book, but great book. I would always recommend it.

[00:07:01.930] – Allan

Cool. Well, you ready to have a conversation with Alan Aragon?

[00:07:05.820] – Rachel

Sure.

Interview

[00:07:53.730] – Allan

Alan, welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:07:56.610] – Alan Aragon

Hey, Allan, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

[00:08:00.210] – Allan

Now your book is called Flexible Dieting: The Science-based, Reality-tested Method for Achieving and Maintaining your Optimal Physique Performance and Health. I've read a lot of books. You're probably my I want to say close to 330th interview over the time I've been doing this podcast and I read every single book and there's at least I would say 100 citations that I earmarked or just made notes of that I want to go back and read because this was so well researched, so well organized and put together in a way that when you get through it and you would kind of admit this yourself, there's points where it feels a little trudgy because there's science and it's hard not to. But when you get done, you're like, this is what science is supposed to be, not some of the stuff we've been doing for the last few years, not what nutrition science has been doing for the last several decades. This is how you do science. And I really appreciate the way you put this book together.

[00:09:16.990] – Alan Aragon

Oh, cool. Yeah. Well, thank you. The book's title is kind of misleading. I was asked to do the book and then I said to myself, you know, this is my opportunity to leverage the powers of a large publishing house to write the ultimate evidence-based nutrition book that covers how to optimize body composition and athletic performance and just go fully science-based with that and try to make it readable for the mass audience. And so calling the book Flexible Dieting, it sounds like some almost like a pop diet book that has some sort of a hook. But then when you go through it, it's like gosh, if I wanted to learn about all the macronutrients, if I wanted to learn about different ways to enhance various sports, and if I also wanted to kind of learn what flexible dieting is that's in there, too, among a million other things? It's an interesting book, man. I commend you for getting through it. It's like an encyclopedia.

[00:10:38.330] – Allan

Well, it is and it isn't. Yes, it is. It is. From the perspective of when I have a question about when is the best time for me to take my protein? I have a chapter on that. I've took a couple of chapters. Whether I'm dealing with performance, whether I'm dealing with strength, whether I'm dealing with fat loss, whatever my goals are, I literally now have a reference book to go back and say, okay, at least from a baseline of what science was in 2022. So this is one of those books where I'm sorry, but in about five to ten years, you're going to have to I think you've tied yourself into a second and third edition or something like that. I think there's a rule. Yes, but at least what we know today. Yes. We're going to start with because it is important flexible dieting, because that's the hook, if you will. But that is a part of the fact that there is so much information out there, and there are what a lot of people call the hard and fast rules, the rigid. You must do this. You must do that. And a lot of us really struggle with that.

[00:11:51.820] – Alan Aragon

Yes.

[00:11:52.720] – Allan

And what we're talking about is the continuum of dietary control. Could you kind of go over what that is and why that's really important for us to understand because particularly weight loss or muscle gain and they're kind of on other sides of each other. But if we're really looking at changing ourselves and we want to eat the right way, common sense would say, well, find a rigid plan and just do it, grind it out, even if you don't like it. And that's going to get you the best results. But for a lot of people, that's not true.

[00:12:26.650] – Alan Aragon

Yes. Diets are all effective as long as you stick to them. And the $64 million question, well, in Elon's case, the $44 billion question would be how do you stick to a diet? And so what I feel is the magic answer to that is you have to find an approach that works for you. You have to find methods that work for you as an individual. And this is going to be different from everybody. It just varies from person to person. And there are certain immutables. Like, for example, if you wanted to lose weight, you have to impose a net caloric deficit by the end of the week, technically, not necessarily by the end of the day. If you want to gain weight, you have to sustain the opposite hyper caloric conditions or caloric surplus conditions. And as is the major public health issue of obesity, there is a problem with the general public eating too much by the end of the day, the week, the month, and you can take anybody on the planet and give them a script and say, hey, follow this 100% and they are going to lose weight as long as that script imposes a caloric deficit.

[00:14:09.650] – Alan Aragon

Now, the minute that deficit gets swallowed up or just gradually stamped out over time, then the diet will stop working. And so flexible versus rigid dietary control, that concept attempts to capture the difference between on one far end, handing somebody a specific menu with very specific foods and the timing of the foods and the exact grams and gosh, even whether the foods are organic or not, you hand them that script and you say, okay, just follow this. And on the very far end of flexible control would be telling somebody, Eat less of this stuff and maybe more of that stuff and you'll be fine. So somewhere along that continuum is the proper approach for the individual. This is the most non hookish hook ever. But flexible dieting is really the flexibility of the approach that you take to accomplishing the goals. Because honestly, some people do really well with rigid dietary restraint. You tell them, okay, this is what you need to eat. And then they're just most comfortable doing it. And they're comfortable and they actually have fun plugging numbers into a God forsaken app. You know what? That is that particular individuals psychographic, if you will, and that's perfectly fine for them.

[00:15:59.590] – Alan Aragon

Whereas if you take somebody who hates that idea and you tell them, okay, you're going to need 100 grams of protein, 200 grams of carbs, and 60 grams of fat a day. Here's your app, plug it in. Here are the allowable foods. And then just make sure you accomplish this every day. If they don't like to do that, they'll honestly, they'll last like two weeks doing that, and then they'll just throw their phone out the window and say, screw this, I'm going to try Keto or Paleo, see how that works. Flexible dieting. The approach as sort of an overarching principle is that everybody needs to establish their own personal approach to dieting. And the concept of rigid dietary control versus flexible dietary control is sort of a sub concept where rigid control involves dichotomous concepts like good and bad foods. And you have to either be precise or it's all or nothing. And flexible dietary control is the idea where it's not black and white, there's not absolute good and absolute bad foods, particularly when you think of how they fit into a diet. You can create a good or a bad diet, but the good diets can still contain a margin of in quotes, naughty foods, bad foods.

[00:17:34.630] – Alan Aragon

So, yeah, it can get a little bit intricate when I attempt to explain flexible dieting. But yeah, that's it one thing flexible dieting is not. And this is what everybody kind of gets wrong because of how the diet culture ten years ago propagated this idea. But flexible dieting, and if it fits your macros, those are not the same thing. People just kind of conflate those terms, which is false, because if it fits your macros, A IIFYM is not a diet to begin with, and B IIFYM is not what people have been led to believe it is, which it was propagated as a junk food diet or eat whatever you want as long as you hit your macronutrient target. So that's not flexible dieting. Counting macros is not necessarily flexible dieting, but everybody calls it that because a rumor got started and then it just spread across the Internet. And then that was the end of that. And I watched it happen. And I knew with the flexible dieting research and the literature what that attempted to get across. And it has nothing to do with counting macronutrients. It has everything to do with not seeing dietary approaches as an all or nothing thing with good or bad foods and flexible dieting as a protocol.

[00:19:11.170] – Alan Aragon

It really just says, look, if you're one of these people who likes to be more rigid with the type of restraint they apply to the diet, then good that's you if you're somebody who likes a more qualitative or habit based approach and you don't want to crunch numbers and you don't want to weigh stuff and measure stuff all day long, great. And that's the approach that you take. Keeping in mind, regardless of your approach, if you want to lose weight or body fat, the approach you take has to default you to eating less calories, or somebody will correct me fewer calories by the end of the week, month, year, et cetera, in order to lose weight.

[00:20:01.690] – Allan

One of the reasons why the IIFYM kind of concept really took off, I think, is one you're on a message board. So anything on the message board or Twitter, the fewer characters you use, the better. So it's quick and it answers a question like, well, here, but it doesn't answer it exactly. There's another concept that you've got into in the book that I really do. I think this will take a lot of people further down into understanding this concept of flexible dieting because I think at times we might sit there and say, I really kind of want to have a beer with my dinner or I'm going out with friends on Saturday and I know we're going to go to my favorite Italian place. And so you start looking at what your food plan is and how you're planning on going about your day. It's the concept of discretionary calorie allowance, and I like that because it keeps you aware of the goal line. It just doesn't tell you what every step you have to take is.

[00:21:09.070] – Alan Aragon

Yeah, that's true. And the concept of discretionary calories is basically it's organized moderation, I guess you call it. It's moderation with a plan. So how do we execute moderation? This is an observation. It's not, amazingly, there hasn't been any controlled research comparisons of one approach to moderation versus another approach to moderation, but it's been a long standing observation over the decades that up to about 20% of total calories can come from basically whatever you want. And as long as the other minimum 80% of the diet is from wholesome stuff, whole foods, minimally refined foods, the inquote good stuff, clean stuff, I guess you could call it. Then you will be perfectly fine, and you will get as good results as somebody who attempts to be 100% perfect with their diet all the time. And it may even be more sustainable to keep a diet going in the long term if you allow this 10-20% margin of Yolo foods or foods like desserts, alcoholic beverages, deep fried stuff, and things that would normally be taboo on a stereotypical clean diet. So as long as 80% to 90% of the diet is wholesome, then you're doing great.

[00:22:59.770] – Alan Aragon

And then that 10 to 20% discretionary calorie allotment will provide you a respite or a margin of sanity. If you want to let your hair down once in a while and eat some fun stuff or some naughty stuff, and then you can sustain the program a lot better than thinking you have to just kind of grit your teeth through the whole thing for weeks and months until you reach your goal. And it just doesn't work like that. I want to throw in a little wrinkle here for folks kind of confused about the idea that we need to add naughty foods into the diet. If you're the type of person who doesn't like those kinds of foods, if you're the type of person who just hates the idea of eating cakes, candy, cookies, ice cream, alcoholic beverages, fried foods, et cetera, then you don't have to. Eat 100% Spartan if that's what makes you happy. And that's what you want to ride into the sunset with. But we have to be aware that the vast majority of us are going to be able to sustain the diet for a lifetime more successfully if we allot discretionary calories.

[00:24:28.010] – Allan

Yeah. And the cool thing is you are paying attention to your nutrition, so you're getting the nutrition your body needs, and you're keeping your calories in line with what you need to hit your goal, whether that's to lose weight, gain weight, all of that's in line because you know what you're supposed to be doing and you're staying within kind of this flexible, okay, pivot here. I need to be a little bit more rigid. I can be more rigid because my wife's not here for the next two weeks. So I can be really rigid if I want to. Where she's going to come back and want to socialize and go out to dinner and do things. So there I know for the next two weeks I'm probably going to have a lot more of those discretionary calories hitting my palate. And as long as that doesn't trigger me and cause me to kind of say, okay, one beer becomes two and then two becomes four. As long as I'm not triggered by what's going on, then that can be a really good way to sustain this. Now I'm looking at my notes, and this is sad because this is more about me.

[00:25:28.720] – Allan

It says a lot about your book, but it just looks like a hodgepodge of things. I was having so much time reading the I'm like, I want to talk about everything. But the core of it is there were a couple of concepts that were in the book that I've never talked about here. We've talked about the importance of eating protein and getting enough protein, but I've never talked about the reason why we need enough protein. And that relates to protein turnover, muscle protein turnover, and the fact that being over 40, our ability to maintain and retain our muscle and maybe even gain muscle is that formula is changing for us as we age. And so the importance to me, the importance of protein goes up substantially over the age of 40. I think that's what was one of the thoughts that was in my head. And then in the book, you talk about the protein intake hierarchy of importance. Can you talk about those and again, one, why is protein what is this turnover thing that's happening? Why do we need protein? And then how do we get our protein? What's the hierarchy of intake? Okay, a lot of ideas.

[00:26:47.030] – Allan

I know, but it was like as I was reading, I was like, this is so good. And I kept doing it. So pardon the question not being a question, but I'm asking for an essay.

[00:26:59.390] – Alan Aragon

That's cool. It's funny, because when I answer these questions, it hits a point in my answer where I'm somewhat self aware that, oh, gosh, I've been rambling for about five minutes now for one question.

[00:27:11.210] – Allan

I'm totally cool with that. You guys need to take a potty break and come back in the middle. That's also good. It's here at the podcast. You can hit pause.

[00:27:19.910] – Alan Aragon

Great. Yes. Dear audience, you may take a break. Yeah. The concept of muscle protein turnover. You have two sides of this cycle. One side is muscle protein synthesis or the build up side, and then muscle protein breakdown, which is the catabolic side. So this cycle is a perpetual thing that goes on in the body on a 24 hours basis. And so when muscle protein synthesis is equal to muscle protein breakdown, then you're basically just maintaining your muscle, which is a good thing. And then you've got muscle protein synthesis exceeding muscle protein breakdown, and then you've got muscle growth. And then you have the loss of muscle when the breakdown side of the cycle exceeds the synthesis side. So that's kind of the idea of muscle protein, what we call turnover. And so for the older population, there is a phenomenon called sarcopenia, and there's even a related phenomenon called sarcopenic obesity, which is sort of a combination of pathology. So sarcopenia is an age related loss of lean body mass. And sarcopenia is underneath the umbrella of a larger phenomenon called frailty, which happens with advanced age, with just a general loss of function that's related to undue weight loss, specifically the loss of lean tissue mass throughout the body.

[00:29:11.450] – Alan Aragon

And under frailty, we've got the loss of muscle tissue, which is sarcopenia. And this is a major problem in the aging population. And a lot of people don't realize that getting enough protein is crucial to successful aging. And that's because as people age, there's not only a tendency to not move around as much, but there's also a tendency to not push and pull and squat as much. So non-exercise activity goes down. Exercise activity goes down as well. And this can be a gradual sort of insidious thing that sneaks up on people where they're just sitting a lot more, lying around a lot more and just not moving as much and certainly not making formal visits to the gym or the track or the field or the pickup basketball game. And what happens is a phenomenon called disuse of the muscle tissue. And there's an interesting thing that can happen where you can take young people and put them on bedrest, and their muscle structure and function will just start to resemble somebody who has aged muscle or almost sarcopenic muscle because you can create muscle that resembles muscle, that is of somebody of an advanced age if you just impose disuse on the muscle.

[00:30:57.990] – Alan Aragon

And so this can happen at the macro level where you're just looking at muscle mass. And it can also happen at the micro level where you impair the so called muscle protein synthetic response, the MPS response to feeding. So in bedridden muscle muscle protein synthesis in response to protein feeding is actually lowered after a relatively short period of disuse. And in older people, this just happens more gradually. And it happens over time because of a gradual progression of disuse. And there are other factors too involved with aging muscle and the deterioration of its structure and function. So protein's role is to make sure that you minimize these age related muscle losses. But just as importantly, protein intake synergizes with resistance training to create an environment that prevents a physiological environment that is not the interior decoration of your home office, but it creates this physiological environment, the combination of protein intake or enough protein intake and resistance training. That combination will prevent muscle loss and can even oftentimes cause muscle gain in folks who really need it. The good news about preventing sarcopenia is that it is possible and it is even possible to reverse the earmarks of Sarcopenia.

[00:32:55.730] – Alan Aragon

And anybody at any age can just start performing resistance training, as long as you do it safely and gradually enough. And then you can get muscle structure and function back. And protein plus resistance training is the recipe for that. And there are other factors, too. You can't just do it on no calories. You have to be eating enough calories, because the recipe for muscle growth really is enough protein, enough calories, and then make sure your resistance training. So that is the role of protein and the importance of it. When we're talking about muscle protein turnover and how it relates to aging and with the older population, their dietary habits are really kind of crappy in terms of achieving enough total daily protein. So it usually begins at the first meal of the day where a significant amount of protein or any real amount of protein at all is basically neglected. And then lunch has a moderate ish amount of protein, and then dinner will contain a substantial hit of protein. But by the end of the day, you're really looking at sort of like one and a half meals that have enough protein to total by the end of the day in order to make sure that this particular population is getting enough protein, let alone are they resistance training.

[00:34:32.770] – Alan Aragon

So let's imagine they are resistance training. There are still challenges to getting enough protein in the older population because the total amount that you need to consume is usually about 50% to 100% more than what's typically ingested. And it's not the easiest thing to tell somebody who's in his fiftys. Sixty s, seventy s. Hey, bro, you need to double your protein intake and you need to start weight training.

[00:35:03.090] – Allan

I have that conversation all the time. So yeah, okay. That's why we're having this conversation. Now, your publisher, because you brought it up. I'm familiar with your publisher because I've had lots of their authors on they tend to be in the Keto space. They tend to be in the low carb space, from my experience. And you did start talking about Keto. So I was actually when I got this book, I was like, oh, flexible dieting. And then this being a predominantly Keto publisher, maybe they're branching out and that's good. But I was almost expecting a Keto book, to be honest with you. So I was kind of surprised we didn't get into Keto. But then you did. And then I was not surprised why we didn't get into Keto, particularly if you start looking at what the goals are here, which is to gain muscle, to increase strength, to improve endurance. As you said in the subtitle, was it optimal physique performance and health? And you pretty much did in the book talk about how Keto works within all of those realms. Could you kind of go through that with us?

[00:36:13.920] – Alan Aragon

Yeah, sure. And before I go into that, I just realized I needed to quickly answer the hierarchy of importance with protein. So with respect to protein intake, there is a hierarchy of importance that's worth touching upon. And of most importance with protein intake is total daily amount. That's tier number one. And then the next tier down is the distribution or the pattern of protein doses throughout the day. That's of secondary importance to the total amount that you have by the end of day. And of least importance, there is the timing of protein relative to the training bound. And so, Interestingly, we could go into an hour on each one of those tiers.

[00:37:07.140] – Allan

Yeah. And you do. And that's the cool thing in the book is you literally do talk about the science behind, because I get the question, should I be doing a protein shake after my workout? Do I have that 1 hour window? All those questions are actually answered in your book with citations, lots of citations, lots of evidence, lots of science. Again, you've answered the question and you answered over and over, depending on what the goals of the person training are. So the hierarchy is important, but the core of it is get enough, get enough throughout the day, and then the rest of it will take care of itself, particularly for those of us over 40, if our training volume is not professional caliber, those other two tiers actually mean a little bit less than they would otherwise, in my opinion. But the sign says get enough. That's the first tier. Get that done. And for a lot of us, that's a struggle because it's in our food. But many of people are trying to do multiple things at once, trying to lose weight, trying to eat a certain way, trying to live our lives, and having ready protein when packaged snacks are a little bit easier.

[00:38:24.030] – Allan

Sometimes not so easy. But you do dive into this deep. That's why we're scratching the surface here and get into the book, because the science is there. The advice is there. The actual grams are there. It's all in there.

[00:38:40.720] – Alan Aragon

Yes. If anybody listening to this episode wanting to know, well, then how much protein do I take? I can give you a gram number, but do you know how to translate those grams into chunks of food? Well, some of you do. And for those who do the gram amount, that kind of encompasses what most people require to optimize their total daily protein intake is somewhere between .7 to 1.0 gram/lb in quotes, ideal body weight or target body weight. And I say that because if somebody is obese and they base their protein intake on their total body weight, they will be consuming an unnecessarily high amount of protein in a lot of instances. So protein targeting would be based on target body weight or goal body weight. So that's zero, .7 grams to 1.0 target body weight. So for those of you listening who are dying to know what's the sweet spot? Total daily protein. Well, that's it.

[00:39:52.660] – Allan

Yeah.

[00:39:54.410] – Alan Aragon

Okay. So on the keto.

[00:39:55.710] – Allan

Yeah. Let's jump into keto.

[00:39:57.200] – Alan Aragon

With keto. Keto is an interesting thing because it works very well for weight loss. And the caveat to that statement is it works very well for a temporary period for most people who try it. And that's because there appears to be a general inability to sustain strict keto, which by most definitions is 50 grams or less a day of carbs. Most people cannot sustain that for the long term. And the people who try to, their carb intake ends up roughly tripling over the course of a year of attempting keto. So it ends up tripling from the original assignment of eating less than 50 grams a day. And so that is the main issue with keto is that it works really well for fat loss and weight loss. And the way that it works for those things is that it removes a lot of options, a lot of food options. And the options it removes usually are foods that are hyperpalatable carbon fat combination foods that are very easy to over consume. And so when you remove those options, you simply are defaulted to eating less total calories by the end of the day, end of the weekend of the month.

[00:41:35.570] – Alan Aragon

And so there's a lot less variety in the diet. There's a lot less opportunity to overeat in the diet. There's a lot less motivation to sit there and overeat your fatty piece of meat. So that's how keto works. Of course, the problem is most of the majority and I can't put an exact number on what that exactly means. But more than half of the subjects who get on keto end up reaching the upper limits of keto by six months, certainly by twelve months. So for those of you who are on keto and have been on it for a few years and love it, and that's the way you do it. I don't care, man. That's great. You found what works for you. That's wonderful. But my issue with keto is when people go around saying that keto is the best keto superior, keto does special things, and it's actually a double edged sword to keto. When you look at long term health and when you look at the optimization or the protection of cardiovascular health, because with keto being a high fat diet, you're looking at 65% to 85% of the diet coming from fat, then you better be pretty Dang careful about the type of fat that you're eating because that's the predominant source of calories in your diet.

[00:43:04.050] – Alan Aragon

And if all you're eating is land animal fats all day mixed with there are other crappy kind of vegetable based fats as well, then you're setting yourself up for dyslipidemia and then the development of cardiovascular disease and then potentially cardiovascular events. So it can be a double edged sword but the thing about keto and the good thing about keto is while you're on it, you're probably going to be losing weight.

[00:43:36.170] – Allan

And I kind of put this in that continuum of dietary control as keto fits in the kind of the rigid range. And it is something that you do have to manage because from a nutritional perspective, if you're not eating certain vegetables, as you mentioned, if you're eating certain foods and excess to try to make that happen because keto didn't get the nickname of being the bacon diet for no reason, people were like, oh, sure, you can eat all the bacon you want. And that's not really the right way to do keto. And keto is a way of eating. I use it. I use it as a tool. It's a temporary tool. Like I said, for a period of time I can get over into the rigid mind frame and mindset, and it works fine for me. But when it comes to wanting to put on muscle to get stronger, keto might not be the best approach for us. And surprise, endurance athletes might not do well on keto either.

[00:44:32.690] – Alan Aragon

Yeah, that's definitely true. And that definitely is what the research evidence shows. So the collective literature on keto and performance is that it's a bad bet for that. But that's not too far fetched when you consider that athletic performance is really a carbohydrate based thing. It's based on the availability either from what you ingest around training or from what you store in your muscles. So glycogen being the stored form of carbohydrate, if you are under fueled from a carbohydrate perspective, that will always compromise the potential for maximally performing. Now there are alter endurance athletes who try to lowball their carbs, and that's fine. But they are more the exception than the rule in terms of the elite in that area and even the ultra endurance athletes who have done really well and claim to be low carbing when you look at their actual programs, they're consuming carbs throughout the race, so they just happen to be consuming less than what's normally recommended by the major organizations. So keto is something that if you have a lot at stake in terms of trophies or medals or endorsements and stuff, then you're not going to be a keto athlete who is compromising or jeopardizing his or her potential for maintaining that elite status.

[00:46:22.910] – Alan Aragon

It just doesn't happen. Now, if you're a weekend warrior or a regular guy just trying to look good at the pool or the beach or at the high school reunion, then under carving is not an issue. If you want to do good at the weekend soccer game, you might be compromised a little bit by being on keto, and you might not make the score the most amount of points out of the rest of your buddies. But it's not that big of an issue. Where keto becomes an issue with athletics is at the elite level and the professional level, you're not going to see many pro athletes at all even going near Keto because it's a liability.

[00:47:07.430] – Allan

Yeah, I think where you kind of hit the road, the rubber hit the road for me when we were talking about endurance was I think a lot of us look at endurance and think of it as a, oh, I'm going to start with this pace and I'm going to run that pace for the entire part of the race. But for most people that have done any competing at all, they know there are periods of time when you're going to try to go a little bit harder, a little bit faster. For a lot of us that are just recreational athletes, that's once you see the finish line and it's right there, you're going to try to sprint to the end. And the reality of it is you may not have the kind of gas you wanted to have during some of those sprints or faster bits of work because you don't have the muscle likage and necessary to make it happen.

[00:47:52.130] – Alan Aragon

Yes, that's correct. And it's those moments that separate the top finishers from those who don't place. It's the so called race winning moves being climbing uphills either running or cycling, passing that ending sprint towards the finish line is going to be a high intensity effort. And so those who are under carb simply do not have the biochemical reserves required to power those race winning moves. And, yeah, it can make the difference between winning and losing.

[00:48:32.870] – Allan

Now, there was one other thing that you had in the book that I could not leave without talking about because to me, this solved kind of a question I had because you're trying to work with a client or someone's trying to work with themselves. And they're like, well, I'm trying to chart my calories and my macros and my food. And like you said, they've got that app. And they're like every day, every day they're in the app. And then in the end you're like, okay, well, How'd you do today, How'd you do today, How'd you do today and one bad day, then kind of can become this bad cycle, particularly for individuals who've struggled in the past. So if you've gone through something and you struggle and fail, you work and fail, and now you're trying this again. But this quick single digit adherence rating system, I think this could be the key for a lot of people that have struggled with that start and fail cycle that they go through every time. So if you get nothing else from this flexible dieting book, I think this system is key. Could you tell us about this system?

[00:49:44.290] – Alan Aragon

Sure.

[00:49:44.700] – Allan

How it works?

[00:49:46.190] – Alan Aragon

Yeah. This is something that I put together and started implementing back in 2005, 2006. And it first appeared in the self published book I did in 2007. And I used to call it the calendar method, where you just write a number down from one to ten where you're basically rating your performance or your adherence or compliance to the program, with ten being perfect. And so when the calendar is up on your wall and you're seeing a bunch of eights and nines and tens, and inevitably you see progress at the end of the month. So you are marching towards your goals. Whereas if you see just a bunch of five, six, and seven s littering up the month, then you have a sense of self accountability and a sense of awareness of why your progress is not happening. And so this real quick self grading system on a scale of one to ten, how good did you do? The fact that it takes like 1 minute to think about and write down the number was kind of a big win because people, well, clients who hated taking detailed records, they loved this method as long as they could be honest with me and honest with themselves about their performance.

[00:51:12.120] – Alan Aragon

On a scale of one to ten, it just took them 1 minute or less. It took them 10 seconds to think about how they did and write down the number and send it over. And nobody's going to be sending over nines and tens and then at the end of the month wondering what the hell happened. It just doesn't work like that. When you can establish a certain level of trust with yourself or with your clients, then they really can't. Once they're familiar with the program, they know whether they're following it or not. A lot of times with people that they're very honest about why they're failing at programs, they're like, I know what to do, I just don't do it. And you know what? That's true. So let's see if we can establish some accountability here that you can either have with yourself or with your coach or your practitioner, your dietician, your trainer, and let's just do a self grading system. I call it the accountability rubric, where it's one to ten. And over the years towards the 2010, I developed a way to make that rubric, that one to ten scale a little bit more concrete.

[00:52:36.840] – Alan Aragon

So it's more of a checklist. It evolved into being a checklist where there's ten specific points or tasks that you need to have completed throughout the day in order to grant yourself that number. And if you hit all ten of those things, which could be drink enough water, get enough sleep, get enough protein, eat two to four fruits a day, two to four servings of vegetables a day down the line, ten things, ten healthy things, then give yourself the ten if you got all ten and so on and so forth. And so that made the accountability rubric a little bit more real and a little more concrete for people to kind of think about. But at the same time, it still took about 25 seconds to look down the list and see whether you hit all those checkpoints, and then you can take a look at the month. If it's littered with eight, nines, and ten s, you're going to be reaching your goal. I'm glad that you found that system helpful, and there's a bunch of different things like that in the book that I hope that the readers will resonate with at least one of them.

[00:53:51.510] – Alan Aragon

But yeah, this is something that I've used pretty extensively in my practice.

[00:53:58.810] – Allan

Cool. Even doing it for yourself. It's just to say if I want to start implementing a new habit, a new action, I want to get better sleep, more sleep. It's a one to ten. It's a simple thing. You wake up in the morning, how is my sleep? And guess what? They still sell paper calendars. You can still buy them. You can still have one of them, and you can still sit there and look and say, okay, if I'm not doing better than a six or seven, what's going on? You can catch yourself pretty early in the month. As you start seeing that slide, it's like, okay, what am I doing here? That's not helping me do this, because I know this action gives me the result that I want. Like I said, I really appreciate that tool. And there's like you said, a lot of that just good stuff in there. I told you before the call, I could spend two, three days talking to you about this.

[00:54:55.420] – Allan

Thank you

[00:54:57.490] – Allan

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

[00:55:08.330] – Alan Aragon

The first one, this might be really cliche Allan, but get enough sleep, get enough good quality sleep. And per the scientific literature, it is a low probability that you're going to be optimizing your health if you consistently dip far below 7 hours. And I know a lot of healthy people and people who are just very vigorous getting five, 6 hours a day. But that's them. And that's how they're wired. And that's how they're built. And per the scientific evidence, they're not in the majority. So statistically, at the population level, you would want to get at least 7 hours of sleep a night or at least try to. And if you're not one of these people who can and you feel amazing with that 6 hours a day, great, fine. But just know that statistically people sleep is optimized at seven and up. And so that would be the first. The second thing would be, for God's sake, lift stuff if you can. And it doesn't have to be Olympic lifting and powerlifting and bodybuilding and flexing in the mirror between sets like you and me, people can do activities that do involve resisted joint movements that aren't necessarily at the gym.

[00:56:42.770] – Alan Aragon

They're not necessarily in the weight room where you're fighting for spots with the gym Bros. A lot of people are intimidated by the word resistance training. They're just picturing barbells and dumbbells flying around. But any kind of movement that you can just involve your joints with resisted movement. There's a million resources and ways to do it. You can go outside and do it. You can go to a park and do various things. It doesn't have to be at the gym. Get resistance training in your life. Get enough sleep. Make sure you get resistance training as a foundation, as a non negotiable part of your training. Some people think that all you need to do is go for a bunch of walks throughout the week and you're good. Well, okay, as good as walking is, that's not going to save you from sarcopenia. That's not going to save you from the ravages of aging. That's not going to allow you to age, amazingly like Allan Misner. So what people need to realize they have to do a certain amount of pushing and pulling and maybe some squatting or some at least leg extension and hip extension and things to stimulate the lower body on a resist basis, whether it's more primal and organic type of movement outside or whether it's in the gym.

[00:58:08.330] – Alan Aragon

So I'll be number two. The third one, eat the foods that you personally like most. Forget about whatever diet book is telling you are the super foods that everybody needs to eat. That's just a load of baloney, really. If you take a survey of all the centenarians in the world and super centenarians, they all eat different foods. They all have a different list of favorite foods, and almost all of them list a bunch of crap they include in their diet every day too. But yes, stick with the foods that you enjoy personally, because there's psychological and physiological signature reasons why you gravitate towards those foods. And we as humans are not completely devoid of any instinct. We have a feel for what we like, and there's good reasons for that. So you will be able to stick to your diet long term if you stick to the foods that you like within a healthy eating pattern. Right? I'm talking about foods within the food groups and you should be getting the food groups. So those would be my three if I could boil it down to three. And I guess maybe if I may add a little sub thing under the eat the foods that you like.

[00:59:35.220] – Alan Aragon

Eat them in the pattern that fits your personal preference and schedule. There's a lot of color blue going around about when you should eat your foods. How much should time restrict the eating window? Can we only eat from 08:00 a.m. to 04:00 p.m. in order to maximize? That's all majoring in the minors. That's not going to make somebody freaking awesome at 70 compared to maintaining their exercise program and a decent overall food selection of the foods that they love. When you eat your foods in the day, that should be determined by how you prefer it. Do you like to eat dinner at 08:00 P.m. Instead of 06:00 P.m.? Cool. Eat it now. Do you like to have a pre bed snack? Great. Have that. Do you like to skip breakfast? Is that how you function best?

[01:00:31.400] – Alan Aragon

Cool. Skip the hell out of breakfast. It's not going to make or break you. There are very silly books going around saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and you have to stop eating, x foods or stop eating carbs that you have to make sure you don't eat like 3 hours before bed. That's a load of crap, Allan. And I can't emphasize that enough how trivial that advice is in the big picture.

[01:00:59.390] – Allan

Thank you.

[01:01:00.100] – Alan Aragon

My advice is do what you can stick to within the context of an overall healthy selection of foods.

[01:01:09.800] – Allan

Great. Thank you for that. If someone wanted to learn more about you, learn more about your book Flexible Dieting, where would you like for me to send them?

[01:01:18.410] – Alan Aragon

AlanAragon.com. And then we've got the various links to my stuff. So I have a research review as well, a monthly research review for the nerdy types who like to really dig into the details. And then I've got my book Flexible Dieting, that's going to come out on June 7, but it's available for preorder, as you and I are speaking.

[01:01:46.430] – Allan

But this episode is going to drop on June 7th. So, yeah, the book is available now wherever you want to get books. You can also go to his website alanaragon.com, if you go to 40plusfitnesspodcast.com/541 I'll be sure to have links there. So, Alan, thank you so much for being a part of 40+ Fitness.

[01:02:05.030] – Alan Aragon

You got it, Allan. And you as well. Thank you so much.

Post Show/Recap

[01:02:15.930] – Allan

Hi, Rachel. How was that interview?

[01:02:18.070] – Rachel

Oh, my gosh, it was great. It was really interesting because right at the very beginning you drew me in with the title of the book Being Flexible Dieting. But the $64,000 question, how do you stick to a diet? Isn't that the question of the year?

[01:02:34.560] – Allan

Yeah. Well, he went to a publisher and sometimes publishers want to change the name of a book. You might think this is the name of the book. So there was discussion about flexible dieting in the book. In all fairness, it was a part of it part of the conversation, which is an important part of, like you said, sticking to a diet. But really, what this book is about is about nutrition for performance or physique.

[01:02:59.760] – Rachel

Okay.

[01:03:00.760] – Allan

And health. So it was science based, meaning he went to the science, the studies that were out there. He didn't pick a side of a conversation and say this is what it is based on his beliefs. He literally went through and said, okay, what is out there? Everything that's out there. And then based on what's there, can we draw a conclusion? And in some cases, he didn't really feel like we could. But for a lot of it, he literally would go through and say, okay, based on all these studies, this is what it says. And this is the bet if you want to perform well at strength training, this is what you eat, literally giving you the calories, giving you the macro breakdowns, all of it. The flexible dieting comes around and, okay, that's all good and fine if I know what I'm supposed to eat, but can I stick to it long enough to see that performance improvement? And that's where the flexible dieting comes in of saying, okay, if you're getting the nutrition you need and you've got a little bit of buffer calories in there that you have maybe 90, ten, you say, so 10% of my calories.

[01:04:13.530] – Allan

So I'm going to eat 2000 calories as I'm trying to cut weight of that. Or 200 calories can be, for lack of a better word, crap. It could be chips. It can be a candy bar or maybe half a candy bar, depending on how many calories are in it. But you see where you can go and say, okay, I don't have to eat perfect all the time to see these things. If I go in and I at least know that I'm getting the nutrition that I need, that's the first one. And then second, I'm not just overeating because of these lack of a better word, empty calories. And then the way I would say it is, enjoy the heck out of it. So don't make it just any old candy bar. Make it your favorite candy bar, or make it something higher class, higher end stuff. Don't just drink just any beer. Make it a beer that you're really going to enjoy. That kind of mindset makes it a lot more sustainable.

[01:05:15.120] – Rachel

Well, the other thing that really attracted me was that he said that your calorie deficit doesn't have to be a daily thing as long as you have a calorie deficit over the week or the month or the year that it takes for you to get to your goal weight, if that was the main goal. But yeah, you don't have to be really rigid with your eating rules day by day. So I like that approach.

[01:05:39.610] – Allan

Yeah. Even though there's a lot of things about the human body that are built into the rhythms of a day or a month or a year, the reality of it is there's nothing magic from the calories in a day. You can gain weight in a day. You can lose weight in a day, but you're not going to lose a whole lot, and you're not going to gain a whole lot. If you do notice the scale move any at all really much on a day to day basis, that's mostly just water shifting around. You went pee one more time than you did the day before, you weigh less simple. And so I think the key of what he's talking about there is just know that there's sort of a target of what you're burning doing the work that you're doing. And you don't have to create an accounting system like it's General Electric. You can go through and say, I know these foods. I know this is how my body reacts to it. I know what a serving size looks like. I know about how much. And for many of us, we do eat the same foods as staples on a fairly regular basis.

[01:06:53.050] – Allan

So if you know, okay, this is my dinner. I have it probably once a week. You don't have to look it up every time. You don't have to say, okay, what are my macros? What are my calories? You just know. I'm getting a third of my protein in this meal. I'm getting half of my carbs in this meal, and I'm getting 35% of my calories in this meal. And if you just know those kinds of things, it's just plug and play and enjoy your food and then occasionally flexible. If something happens and you need to be flexible, then just let it go. You're not destroying yourself in a day.

[01:07:27.830] – Rachel

Yeah, right.

[01:07:29.160] – Rachel

The other thing I really enjoyed was the part about protein and how usually people 40 and over or maybe even 50 and over or even 60 and over have a strange relationship with protein in their diet. It seems like they skip it for the morning and maybe have a tiny bit at lunch and then throw it all at dinner hour when it seems more appropriate to spread it throughout the day.

[01:07:51.510] – Allan

It's easier to get if you spread it. That's absolute truth and unfortunate. Food guidelines, foods that's available, they're highly dense in carbs and not the nutritionally dense carbs, but bread. So there's pizza, there's hamburgers, all those foods. And you say, okay, what's the protein? And they have some protein. But you look at the protein in the cheese and the pepperoni, assuming you even got that on there. How much protein is in a pizza? And I'd say, probably not a lot. I haven't looked it up, but I would say less than 20% of the total calories is coming from protein breakfast cereal. Maybe there's some in your milk if you're even drinking regular milk, because maybe you're doing the soy milk or maybe you're doing the oat milk and you start looking at the protein of that and the protein that was in the cereal. And you're kind of like, okay, 75% of my calories are coming from carbs, 20% from fat, and now 5% protein. So it's almost devoid of protein.

[01:09:06.690] – Rachel

Right.

[01:09:07.490] – Allan

And most of us should be eating more protein than we are. It's hard to shift over until you actually make a concerted effort to get protein into every meal.

[01:09:20.170] – Rachel

Well, yeah, exactly. I don't think we don't pay that close attention to how we eat, our habits of our eating. And if you're in a habit of having cereal for breakfast or a sandwich or something at lunch, you just don't notice that you're not getting the adequate amount of protein probably. The other thing he mentioned, too, was the ratio for how many grams of protein per body weight. He mentioned that it's not the body weight that you're at, it's at your goal body weight for the purpose of weight loss, which that is something I don't know that I paid attention to. I don't know that I've heard it like that before.

[01:09:59.850] – Allan

Well, yeah, because what they would typically base it on is they would say your lean mass. So what you're thinking in terms of this, let's say you're at 30% body fat and you want to get down closer to say 20 or 15. Okay. Then you're going to want to lose the body fat. And if you were to do that, you lose that amount of body fat to get down to, you're going to be closer to your lean body mass weight. So realizing now you're carrying less fat. So the way you are is closer to lean body mass weight, particularly if you're like a bodybuilder and you're trying to get down into the single digits, you're carrying very little fat and most of the mass that you have is your lean body. So that's where that number comes from is really just a function of saying rather than think about it from lean body mass. Because for a lot of us, that's hard. Unless you go get a DEXA scan and they tell you your body mass is this amount of fat, you don't know. So it's easier to just base it on where your goal weight would be and just use that.

[01:11:08.140] – Allan

Now that's going to overstate it a little bit from the numbers, but it's not significant. Again, if you're just thinking unless you're trying to go from 50% body fat to 40%, then if 40% is your target, you're going to probably be overeating some protein because that's not really a lean body mass. But you see, for most of us, it's like we want to get down to that 20 to 15 range. So that's where that number is coming in.

[01:11:35.080] – Rachel

Yeah, that was great. It was a great discussion. Really interesting.

[01:11:37.930] – Allan

Yeah. This goes down is so far my favorite book in 2022.

[01:11:43.270] – Rachel

Wow.

[01:11:44.020] – Allan

If anyone is really looking at improving their performance, I would strongly encourage them to read this book because it's going to give you a formula for how you can eat to optimize your performance. And whatever you're trying to do, get stronger, run further, faster and just look better.

[01:12:02.260] – Rachel

Awesome. Great discussion.

[01:12:04.400] – Allan

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

[01:12:06.330] – Rachel

Great. Take care.

[01:12:07.510] – Allan

You too.

Patreons

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

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Let's Say Hello

[00:02:26.580] – Allan
Hey Raz, how are things?

[00:02:28.940] – Rachel
Good, Allan. How are you today?

[00:02:31.220] – Allan
I'm doing all right. We got a lot of rain this weekend, so I wasn't really able to get out and do as much as I wanted to, but I'm getting there.

[00:02:39.470] – Rachel
Good.

[00:02:40.360] – Allan
It is a very rainy time and then I'm getting prepared for my vacation. So I think this episode goes out, I will actually be on that vacation. Really, really close to getting on a plane for that vacation on my way, for sure. So I am going to take a week off and the only work I'm going to do during that week is going to relate to taking care of my clients, existing clients. I've kind of let that roll down a little bit. And so if you're listening to this right now, I'm not taking new clients, and I won't be taking new clients for a little while.

[00:03:17.560] – Allan
But I will be starting back up with the training in October. So look for something coming out in a few weeks. Probably once I get back or get my feet under me. When we're traveling around the US, I'll start putting together when I actually want to come back to work.

[00:03:34.560] – Rachel
Isn't that a nice feeling?

[00:03:36.840] – Allan
And then when Tammy and I get back in October, I'm going to be launching this. I'm also probably, I'm thinking I might start seeing if there's some interest on personal training in person, some small group stuff, maybe in focus here. And then, of course, Tammy is doing the bed and breakfast, so she'll be opening up the bed and breakfast, and I'll be doing these things. So October will be a really busy month for both of us. But I'm going to down shift and really down shift for the first week.

[00:04:11.140] – Allan
I'm just turn the car off, throw the keys away.

[00:04:14.880] – Rachel
That sounds wonderful. You got to do that every now and then. That sounds great.

[00:04:20.220] – Allan
Well, and we missed it. You know, it's like we had scheduled the trip to take the vacation, and then it got canceled. We did go last fall to see family, so we do need to go back. But it was like one of those things, we had the vacation plan. It's like, this really doesn't seem to make sense right now. And then we moved it. And the airline I booked with was a bad airline because they wouldn't even refund the money. They're like, no, you canceled it. Every airline on Earth is giving you a credit.

[00:04:47.980] – Allan
At least give me a credit. And they're like, no, if you're not on the plane, I'm like, Is the plane even flying? Anyway, so this whole other story. But anyway, it was just one of those things where this is timeshare. And every year I build up a week. And one of those it's not a lose it or use it, use it or lose it thing. But it's just one of those where I now have two weeks to use in one year. And I don't know that I'm going to go back twice, so I just need to make sure I use this week and push and see if they'll let me roll my weeks out.

[00:05:19.160] – Allan
We'll see. So this is just a good time for us to go back, get some sun, maybe have a few cocktails, play some volleyball. And this place I'm going is where my whole story started for my health and fitness journey as I was there. And I was really unhappy with my life and my things, and I need to change. And so going back there is going to be kind of interesting again, because it's just that all that stuff is there, the feelings, the emotions and where I come and where I was and how much things have changed over that time, because this is episode 501.

[00:06:00.460] – Allan
So if you'd ask me back, then, do you know at some point in your life, you're gonna do a podcast? Well, actually, podcast didn't exist then, but it's a very different lifestyle than I thought I would have at this point in my life.

[00:06:14.030] – Rachel
Well, Allan, that sounds like a great time to reflect on how far you come. I think it'll be really incredibly rewarding for you to have that time back there.

[00:06:23.560] – Allan
And place some volleyball. And then when I get back, get back, hopefully have some energy then that travels through the Southeast. I'm going to stop everywhere these serve oysters because it's been over a year, almost a year as I've had any oysters. So I'm going to eat all the foods I can't get down here and do it with reckless regard because I'm off, and I'm going to take that break as a detour. And then when I get back, get busy with my businesses and get busy with myself and make the right changes and get back on that highway.

[00:07:01.630] – Allan
And right now, I'm just kind of thinking about what I want to do next. What's the next challenge? What's that next fun thing for me?

[00:07:09.380] – Rachel
Neat. That sounds like a great way to start your vacation. I hope you have the world of fun.

[00:07:14.180] – Allan
How are things going for you?

[00:07:15.990] – Rachel
Good. You know, I was in Hell the other day. Mike and I did a race in Hell, Michigan. The race is called the Run Through Hell. It's been on my wish list for years, and I've just never been able to be in the right place at the right time to participate in this race. So it was a five miler in hell, and it was so it was just a load of fun. We both did really well. Mike got second place in his age group, and I got third place in my age group at that race.

[00:07:49.190] – Rachel
So we ran well in Hell and had a fun time doing it, and we made it through. We're back home now.

[00:07:57.590] – Allan
Well, you know what Winston Churchill said?

[00:08:00.380] – Rachel
What was that?

[00:08:01.020] – Allan
If you find yourself in hell, keep going.

[00:08:03.380] – Rachel
Oh, that's what we did.

[00:08:07.700] – Rachel
Yeah. Perfect.

[00:08:10.110] – Allan
Okay. Well, you ready to have a conversation with Chuck?

[00:08:13.050] – Rachel
Sure.

Interview

[00:09:02.350] – Allan
Hey, Chuck. Welcome to 40+ Fitness.

[00:09:05.380] – Chuck
Hey, Allan. Great to be here. Thank you.

[00:09:45.280] – Allan
So your book, Customize Yourself: Nutrition- And What I learned From 110-Year-Old mother, obviously as a health and fitness guy, I'm intrigued. Someone's on this Earth for 110 years. They're obviously doing something right. And if your mother is 110 years old, that tells me you're right in my sweet spot demographic of probably being in your 40s, 50s, 60s, maybe even older. Yeah, but no, that's cool because you're in terrific health. Your mother is in good health. I think since I wrote the book, I guess she's 111, maybe 112 now.

[00:09:56.520] – Chuck
She will be 111 in August. I may have to change the title of the book, but the book just came out, so she's only 110. So the oldest person in New Jersey now.

[00:10:45.590] – Allan
Okay. Yeah. I was reading some statistics that said they fully expect by the year 2030 for someone to have lived 120 plus years. I know there's one or two I've heard of, but they're fully expecting 100 years old to be something within the realm of possibility for a large number of people. And I actually saw another statistic that said by 2060, they expect there to be over half a million Centurions in the United States. So we are getting older, particularly as a baby Boomer generation is coming through because we had a lot more information about health and welfare and taking care of ourselves.

[00:11:20.690] – Allan
So people are living longer with better medicine, better science, better just to sometimes doing the right thing. But there's a large percentage of us that are not. Obesity and overweight. We're talking astronomical numbers, and that's getting bigger, too, which is kind of frightening. Your book, though, goes through a kind of a process of saying, okay, if I want to reinvent myself, my path is not everybody else's path. I get to choose my own path ergo the title Customize Yourself.

[00:12:05.880] – Chuck
Yes, absolutely. If you look at I actually have a customized yourself fitness book coming out next year, which I've already written the first draft. If you look at why people fail with diets, why people fail with fitness, and you're a trainer, you see it all the time. It's because they are told to stop doing what you're doing with diets. Stop eating what you're eating. You know, you've gained weight. You're eating not a great diet. Stop that. Now eat this. It's such a shock to not only to the system, physically and psychologically, you know, consciously, like, well, maybe I don't love all this food, but unconsciously and subconsciously, there's all sorts of alarm bells going off that you're not even hearing yet because it's such a radical change.

[00:12:34.090] – Chuck
And I think that's the same thing with fitness. You probably will lose a student if they just get scared after one or two sessions because my knees hurt, and I'm afraid to tell this guy that my knees hurt. So if you don't think to say, how do your knees feel when you're on that leg machine, they won't say my knees hurt. So really, it's so critical in the beginning with these changes, or if you're a couch potato just to get up and walk down the street just to walk one block if you're not used to it.

[00:13:05.750] – Chuck
I mean, you and I work out seven days a week. A 1 hour workout for us is probably nothing. For me, I do it every day. I need it. I need it psychologically as much as physically. But to get people, you have to do it gradually. That's why I say to customize yourself approach. And I found that when I was reading and looking for things to educate myself with, everything I found was like either a radical approach or a horrible approach. There was no gradually do this one step at a time thing.

[00:13:37.340] – Chuck
And I think you'll find that you're your best students, your most loyal students are the ones that you break in slowly. I've watched for over 30 years. I'm going to be 69 years old this week. I've been in gyms for 40 years. I have watched in gyms in Los Angeles, New Jersey, Florida. You know, I was a total gym rat until the pandemic hit. I've watched trainers work with first time clients, and what they do usually is the same thing with each first time client, which is absolutely wrong because they're not all the same.

[00:13:59.790] – Chuck
And they literally scare their clients away because they don't say, hey, you're scaring me away, but you can see it in their eyes. Like, I'm not comfortable doing this. And it's like, how do you get comfortable? You have to customize. And so I have this very simple approach that I've been using for myself for 50 years. So I went to look for that approach in books, and I couldn't find it. So that's why I wrote the book.

[00:14:36.190] – Allan
Yeah. I think you see it a lot in the fitness industry. You see it a lot in nutrition, too, but it's just not as visible because someone will come on a website and say, okay, or on Facebook. And they'll say I'm going to change my entire diet, and I'm going to go carnivore, and I want to lose. I know all these guys I see all these success stories of people that went carnivore. And so they're asking, well, is ketchup carnivore? And everybody on the group is like, no. I think what happens is people get excited and they want to do something extreme for themselves, and they want to do it all.

[00:14:56.560] – Allan
And they want to do it all now. And so they kind of run at this with an all or none approach. And there's some of us, like myself, I'm wired for all or none. I'm the kind of guy where I put my head down and just do it. So if I decide that I'm going to do a certain thing, I just do it because that's how I'm wired.

[00:15:26.360] – Allan
Now, I know like you said, a lot of my clients aren't some of them are, but a lot of them are not. So what you're providing with this book and the subsequent books that are going to come out in this area is that this is for the person that wants to have a structure to moderation. So it's not an if for this and get away from that or thing. It's all okay, look at something, make a decision about it intrinsically, and then start walking yourself away from it.

[00:16:00.070] – Chuck
And, you know, I think it's also if you want to be an Olympic athlete, I would say use my approach and take five years to become an Olympic athlete. You're not going to become an Olympic athlete in four weeks. And I think it works for an absolute couch potato. And I think it works for somebody who is a regular into their nutrition or into their fitness and has gone halfway down the road to take the additional steps. Like, I hope it works for them, too. But you're right.

[00:16:29.450] – Chuck
I think if you're going to dive into something, maybe it's an age thing. Maybe I Dove into things when I was younger. I don't know, but I like that I'm skeptical about everything. So I like that gradual approach. I want to feel good with this. I don't want to do anything I'm not going to stick to. I mean, I do 1 minute of yoga a day. Now, I know I should do 1 hour a day, but because of my weight lifting, running, swimming and biking, I can't do 1 hour of yoga a day and still get my work done.

[00:16:38.000] – Chuck
So there will come a day when I do one hour but I want to do it right. That's me. But I still do 1 minute. So I know how good it is.

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[00:16:57.500] – Allan
But that's what I like about your book, because it just kind of has a different feel to it than most of the stuff that's out there, because it goes through and tells you all this bad stuff. Don't eat this stuff. Don't do that stuff. Don't do this. Do this and eat this. And for someone who's coming at it, it's a lot.

[00:16:59.270] – Chuck
You're not going to stick to it.

[00:17:30.980] – Chuck
I quote a few studies in the book and just in general. And I want to compliment you, too, because I've read some of the transcripts of your podcast, and you do a tremendous job getting your point across without using too many numbers. Like earlier in our discussion, you mentioned obesity. I would have immediately jumped on and said the CDC said the obesity rate was 42% in America in 2018, and the New England Journal of Medicine just came out with a study in January saying it's going to be over 50% in 29 out of the 50 States in America.

[00:17:56.450] – Chuck
And you would I had to put a bag over my head to stop. I just would have kept going with statistics. I love the way you get your point across without doing that, because I think some people blur when you do that, I get excited. I'm like you jumping into something new. I want all the numbers. I want all the details. I want to read all the studies, but I think most people are like, stop. You're killing me here. I'm not going to process all this stuff, but I love that you do that in your podcast.

[00:18:00.650] – Chuck
I think that's a great strength. And I forgot what I was going to say because I had to tell you that.

[00:18:33.010] – Allan
Well, I appreciate that. And it is part of saying, okay, each of us has our own individual path. Each of us okay. Do I need to lose some body fat? Do I need to get a little stronger? Could I use more stamina to keep up with my grandkids? We know that for ourselves. And one of the approach you take here, I love the phrase that you use to basically more harm than good foods. And I think most of us know those foods, the foods that are not serving our body.

[00:19:05.420] – Allan
But the thought of going like cold Turkey and you mentioned ice cream, a particular ice cream, and all of that, you would not want to live your life without that ice cream, at least occasionally. And so you've listed some what you call them more harm than good foods, and you actually have a little table. And so there's a kind of where you make a commitment to just making a reduction. I want to go through some of them that you have in there, because I think these are really important.

[00:19:10.130] – Allan
And I think most people will see these as their top not with more harm than good thing.

[00:19:13.400] – Chuck
I got to tell you one more compliment. Before you do this.

[00:19:37.070] – Chuck
You use a great word and I noticed this in your other podcast. The word commitment. That is so much better than saying you need discipline. You need motivation, which are wonderful things. But commitment is such a great word. I just want to thank you for stressing that because we all have commitments to certain things. That's something we all have in common, you know. And I love that. Sorry to interrupt, but go ahead.

[00:19:37.700] – Allan
That's fine. Can you kind of talk through just a little bit quickly the process of the more harm than good foods, the table and how you make a decision on what you're going to do and how you track it? And then, of course, the very end my favorite part is the party.

[00:20:31.540] – Chuck
Yes. I found this simple way of doing this and I discovered it by reading. I went to the Barnes and Noble in Monmouth County, New Jersey, this giant store. I went through the health food. I'd say about 500 books in the health related sections looking for a better way to do this. And I read or skimmed 100 books and the best 100 books, It took me 20 visits, and I couldn't find something as simple as this. It's so simple. A lot of people get turned off when their dietitian or their advisor says, you got to make a list.

[00:20:56.890] – Chuck
You got to weigh your food. You got no, no, it's much simpler. Your list is just foods that, you know, do more harm than good. You can list ten foods. You can list three foods. You can list one food. If you're having ice cream four times a week and you know that's too much, most people would say, look, stop eating ice cream. That would be the best thing you could do. All that animal fat that's not serving your well, it's winding up on your gut. Sugar and fat too much.

[00:21:27.470] – Chuck
Okay, but people won't do that. It's too hard to do. So what you do is you just say, okay, I'm eating ice cream on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. I'm going to skip Friday. That's it just one day. And if I get to a Friday and I'm craving ice cream, I know I can have it on Saturday, and I will have it on Saturday. So there's no loss there. So what you do is you just say that one day, one day of ice cream, then on your calendar, whether it's on your wall, on your iphone, on your wrist, wherever your calendar is six months from that date, You write 25% less ice cream. And you do two things when you get to that date, it's really easy.

[00:21:49.280] – Chuck
After the first week, you're not going to miss one day of ice cream. You're going to enjoy those three days even more. But if you stopped eating ice cream, you'd probably be miserable. I know I would. So you get six months down the road. You get to the calendar. It says 25% less ice cream. You do two things. One, you celebrate. It really is something wonderful. That's all you do.

[00:22:13.430] – Chuck
You do nothing else. You don't reduce your bagels, pizza, bacon or French fries. If you just reduce your ice cream by 25%, you really have accomplished a lot. It really will be good for you. And you should celebrate. The second thing you do is you ask yourself a question. Now, I'm going to put this down on my calendar again in six months. 25% less ice cream because I'm going to celebrate again. But I have an option here. It's only an option. You don't have to do it.

[00:22:45.170] – Chuck
Just think about it. I might put down 50% less ice cream. I might cut out one more day of ice cream. I might only have it two days a week. But you don't have to do that. And if your list has more than one item more harm than good. If you have French fries and Donuts on there, you can say or bacon or whatever rolls or I was killing myself with rolls. I had to reduce my roll intake, but I did it slowly, and it worked a few weeks from now after you used to having ice cream, do it again, you can have another party six months after that.

[00:23:06.880] – Chuck
You can be having parties all over the place celebrating your success. And you should. And then you decide whether to reduce it or not. And you'll see this mught work with your fitness clients. You can do that with exercise, too. You can do that with running. You can do that with distance. You can do it with time. You can do it with swimming. You can do it with biking. You can do it with weights on a machine that same flow. Like, I'm just going to do this a little bit, see how it works.

[00:23:32.590] – Chuck
And if nothing hurts a certain amount of time from now, I'll go on to the next level. And that's how you become an Olympic athlete. Or you just stay at that one level. If you've only reduced one harmful food by 25% and you took my book and used it to wrap fish or in your bird cage, it would be great. I'd be happy. I feel like I succeeded. And it's that simple. I couldn't find that anywhere. That's why I put it in the book.

[00:23:39.010] – Allan
Now the first food that you go after in your more harm than good foods is French fries.

[00:23:39.300] – Chuck
Oh, I love free.

[00:23:45.730] – Allan
Let's talk a little bit about why French fries might be first on the list.

[00:24:12.950] – Chuck
I can tell you stories about French fries. I'll try to keep it short because we don't have hours and hours, but when I was a kid, I love French fries. In the winter I had a scheme to get them three or four times a week. In the summer, I could get them five or six times a week because my parents couldn't keep an eye on me. I even went so far as to dip my French fries in ice cream. That's how much I like French fries. And as I got older, I realized that fried foods were really not good for you.

[00:24:45.770] – Chuck
Unconsciously, without knowing I was doing the customize yourself approach, I reduced my intake of French fries. Another thing in just one anecdote here. I spent ten years as a lifeguard on Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, and somehow people would always come up to us for advice. I don't know why 18 19,20 year old kids, adults who would ask us what to do with their lives, but I guess they had nothing better to do in the summer. And we also used to track these teenage girls who were always under 18 and they were too young, but they would fall all over us, and they would want advice, too.

[00:25:21.890] – Chuck
The one line we came up with, which seemed to stick, and I don't know who said it was an anonymous lifeguard was, this was our advice to these girls, stay away from French fries and married guys. That was the best thing we could come up with. That line stuck for some reason. And I find the thing with French fries, if that's your thing, if you're eating French fries four times a week and you just cut out the French fries one day when you get to that six month celebration, think of that's 26 weeks later, that's 26 orders of French fries that you didn't eat.

[00:25:51.400] – Chuck
Think of that mountain of 24 pile that giant hunk of French fries that's not on your gut, that's not on your butt, that's not on your thighs. It's there on the floor because you didn't need it. And you really can celebrate. And then six months later, you'll have another mountain of 26 orders of French fries or you'll have 72 because you went to 50%, which is optional. But I think French fries is a perfect example. I actually cut out all fried food within a few years without any work, without any effort.

[00:26:05.980] – Chuck
But if you tell somebody who's living on fried foods, just stop eating fried foods. I mean, it's good advice, but it won't work. It's just too much of a shock. They won't do it. But let me tell you, the gradual approach works. I've done it, and it's absolutely simple. Anyone can do it.

[00:26:41.600] – Allan
Yeah. Because what ends up happening in this situation is okay. I tell myself, no fried foods whatsoever. And then I go to a family reunion or I go to a football game or I go to something, and invariably I smell it. I see it, I want it. I eat it and then eat more of it. And then the next day I'm back at a fast food restaurant eating more fries, and I'm frying food at home. Healthier, right? Having worked in fast food, I tell you, if you're frying at home, it's probably a healthier, because if you don't want to even look in those Friers at the fast food.

[00:27:11.780] – Chuck
If you fry, this at home, if you really want to prove something, eat a baked potato with dinner and weigh yourself. The next night, eat fried potatoes and weigh yourself. You'll probably notice that you've gained a half a pound or a pound, just the difference of eating a baked potato and eating a fried potato in one day. I think, again, just as a demonstration. I did that once, and I did it twice, and I proved it a couple of times. It really does happen. That extra grease just lays there.

[00:27:13.070] – Chuck
It doesn't go away so fast.

[00:27:41.360] – Allan
Now, one of the other foods that I want to talk to, and that's when we talked about a few times on the podcast. But I really want to send this home. Is that for a lot of people that are against meat eating and particularly for ethical reasons, but they're, I think, more focused on the factory meat. And you consider factory meat one of those more harm than good foods. Can you talk about factory meat and why we should be avoiding it?

[00:28:10.600] – Chuck
Absolutely. Factory meat. Now, I decided to stop eating me 30 years ago, and I talk about in the book how as a kid I craved me. I had to have it twice a day. I couldn't live without it. Once a day was not enough. And somehow I figured it out step by step by step. That all the problems, heart disease, cholesterol, and now all the environmental factors involved. And then I stopped eating meat a long time ago. But what we know about factory meat now, factory meat is toxic.

[00:28:41.580] – Chuck
I mean, if you're going to eat meat, I'm not going to talk to you out of eating meat. What I'm going to say is stick to grass-fed organic meat and in reasonable portions and you'll be fine. But if you're going to eat meat, really avoid factory meat because there are so many, if you look at pre COVID-19, there are several epidemics that have broken out that have come out of meat packing facilities because they're just full of virus and blood and guts and they're really unsafe and unhealthy.

[00:29:27.620] – Chuck
Also, millions of acres of in Central America, South America are just being wiped out for cattle grazing. The methane gas coming out of cow butts and mouths is about 15% of the CO2 problem for climate, and you can go on and on it takes to make 1 pound of beef. Now I learned as a freshman in College to make 1 pound of beef. It took 8 pounds of grain. And I thought, wow, I was also taught in my ecology class that you could feed the world. You could wipe out hunger easily if people ate less meat because it's 8 pounds of grain for 1 pound of beef.

[00:30:00.630] – Chuck
What I didn't know then. It also takes 2000 gallons of water, one gallon of gasoline and all sorts of other resources to make that 1 pound of beef. So at the rate we're going, we will literally kill humanity with beef production in I don't know how many years, but at the rate we're going a couple of decades or 50 or something like that, we really have to cut down to save the planet. Besides saving your heart, your arteries and a few other things. So there's just so many reasons why factory meat, I'm forgetting half of them.

[00:30:13.530] – Chuck
I go through it in the book. I mean, there's just so many reasons why factory meat is so bad, but I'm not completely anti meat. If you're a meat eater, just do it the right way. That's all I'm saying.

[00:30:48.520] – Allan
Yeah, the struggle I have because if I'm going to get meat, I want to get it from a local vendor, local farmer, grass fed grass finished that's what I want. Most of what I eat is that way. The issue I really have with factory meat is that these are not well cared for animals. They're crowded, they're put into little places, and they're fed grains, which is not their natural food. They're fattened up. And if they get sick because they are going to get sick, they don't even wait for them to get sick.

[00:31:17.410] – Allan
They're shot up with antibiotics. They're shooting them with steroids to make the bigger. And just like some of our vegetables, they've bred these animals to basically outgrow their frame to be bigger, heavier fatter than they were ever intended to be as happy animals. So that's just for me, it's the toxicity of the antibiotics and steroids and just unhealthy animals.

[00:31:36.170] – Allan
There's no way I feel that that's giving me the nourishment I need. And what I found is, if I go ahead and pay up for a steak and get a grass fed, grass finished steak, what I am paying, like maybe two to three times more than I would pay for the regular steak and same for hamburger. But what I found is I eat it about two thirds or half less. And so, you know, not to throw a lot of statistics at you there, but you could do the math and basically see, it doesn't really cost you much more to buy a higher quality product.

[00:32:06.930] – Allan
If you can get the nourishment you need by eating less. And so that's how I approach it is I don't eat as much beef or chicken as I used to because I don't need the large portions because I get the nutrition I need from the smaller portions. Therefore, it doesn't cost me any more to eat the way I eat.

[00:32:44.310] – Chuck
I would emphasize what you just said about, do I want to consume these hormones? Do I want to consume these antibiotics? Do I want to consume these steroids? When I eat that factory meat, I'm consuming all that. What is that going to do to me? How long am I going to live consuming all those steroids and antibiotics and hormones? I mean, what's that going to do to my health? The business about what it costs? I would say when you look at what you spend on sugar or liquor or going out to eat, even if you go out to eat a lot, even if you spend a lot of money there.

[00:33:12.420] – Chuck
Now, compare that to what you spend on your mortgage, insurance, car, clothing, children's education. Food is really not that big an expense. If you wind up spending 20% or even 50% more eating healthy, Organics, whatever the benefits far outweigh. And plus, if you're even a couple of pounds thinner, you're gonna spend 50 or $100,000 less on medical bills and the rest of your life. I mean, you really come out way ahead of the game financially. If you just take a few basic steps.

[00:33:15.780] – Allan
It's way better than investing in the stock market, for sure.

[00:33:18.430] – Chuck
Even that. Food is better.

[00:33:25.290] – Allan
Okay. You mentioned it. So let's jump into that. Let's talk about why sugar is one of those more harm than good foods.

[00:33:56.710] – Chuck
Yes. Sugar is just, you know, sort of as a Lark. As I was writing the first draft of the book, I started writing about comparing sugar to cocaine, and I thought, well, I'll just do this for fun. And then I realized I started looking at the pharmacology of sugar and the pharmacology of cocaine and the business of sugar and the business of cocaine. And it became a couple of short chapters in the book because it's amazing when you compare sugar to cocaine, how much they have in common. And the biggest difference, I'll just give you the bottom line.

[00:34:26.890] – Chuck
The biggest difference between sugar and cocaine is sugar is cheap and legal, and cocaine is expensive and illegal, and you really, really should cut down on your sugar. That's the reason why you're overweight. That's the reason why you're buying these expensive food products instead of food. And again, make that distinction. Always try to buy food, not food products. We could talk about labels for a while. If something doesn't have a label, you're better off with it, then you don't have to read the label. But I read a thing today.

[00:35:09.190] – Chuck
I went to USC and I was reading this USC science article, and it said that American diet is made up of 16% sugar. I didn't even know that. I thought it was much lower than that. The average American their diet is 16% sugar. It's really easy to cut that in half, and it will make such a drastic change in your life. You'll be thinner, you'll be more vital, your brain will work better. Everything. If you have cancer, it won't explode as fast. I mean, there's so many reasons to cut down on your sugar, and it's really not that hard to cut it in half, but certainly 16%.

[00:35:09.800] – Chuck
I was shocked when I read that.

[00:35:11.320] – Chuck
I just found that out today.

[00:35:36.400] – Allan
With my clients, when I start working with them and I have them chart their nutrition and we start that conversation. Many of them are just shocked with how much sugar they actually eat because they don't feel like they're eating a lot of sweets. They feel like they're just eating what they've always eaten, regular food. But unfortunately, the food companies, they love making us eat more. They love keeping us addictive.

[00:35:43.290] – Chuck
They make money off it. The more sugar, the more they sell. The people buy the sweet stuff. I put more sugar and they buy the sweeter stuff.

[00:35:51.310] – Allan
Right. And so the best way for someone to know how much sugars in their food, if it's in a box, bag, can or jar, is to read the label.

[00:35:51.750] – Chuck
Absolutely.

[00:36:01.490] – Allan
So talk to us a little bit about reading labels, what we should be looking for, and how now we're getting good stuff versus stuff we don't necessarily want to eat.

[00:36:24.380] – Chuck
Absolutely. I found out the problem with reading labels when I happen to mention to a few people, well just read the label, and people I know with College degrees, we're yelling in my face, how dare you tell me to read a label? I'm a busy person. I don't have time to read labels. Well, you don't have to go in the store and read every label in the store. Just read one label. Each time you go in, pick up something you're going to buy. Just read that label, and I'll make it even easier for you.

[00:36:51.190] – Chuck
Don't read the whole label, don't read anything on the label, but the ingredients. Don't read the endorsements. Don't read how good you'll feel. Don't read how long they've been in business. Just that one little square or rectangle that's white with black printing in it that says ingredients. Just look at that. They'll take you 20 seconds. You will be shocked how much sugars and everything you're buying, and you can easily there's something probably right next to it that as they have the sugar that you'll be just as happy with.

[00:37:21.660] – Chuck
And the most shocking example is this giant supermarket that I go to that should remain nameless because I'm hoping to work with them from the inside. They have built up this huge natural food section, the likes of which few supermarkets, except they're really expensive, like Wegmans they have it. But they have this huge section and they have, like, a whole aisle of box cereals and package cereals. And I started reading the labels on those. I could not find a single item in there that had less than 6% sugar, and most had 8 or 10 percent sugar.

[00:37:48.680] – Chuck
And this is in the Health Food Isle. Cheerios and corn flakes and the other side of the supermarket have less sugar than these so called natural foods. I mean, it's just shocking how much even the natural food industry is packing their stuff with sugar. And they may call it cane sugar. They may call it Brown sugar. They may pull it maltodextrin. There's 1000 names for sugar, and I got 50 of them in the book. I mean, they're just a fructose that you look for corn syrup.

[00:38:07.250] – Chuck
Okay. You know, that's bad. But even the fructose that's in fruit, it's sugar. I mean, you add all that up, it adds to your sugar. It's just shocking how much there is. So if you're a little bit aware of it, you can cut way down on it with very little effort. You can find substitutes that you like that you're happy with, and it really will change your life. I mean, it's such a huge, huge thing.

[00:38:28.010] – Allan
Just swapping one or two things can drop the sugar dramatically. But the only way, you know that is to look at the label and see, because we've lost that capacity to taste a lot of this sugar because we're eating so much of it. And then as a result, it doesn't taste sweet, but there's quite a bit in there.

[00:38:33.680] – Chuck
And you know what? When you cut down on sugar, you'll be amazed other food start tasting better because you can taste them. Your taste buds adjust.

[00:39:10.000] – Allan
Which leads me to my next item on the agenda, vegetables and fish. The two of my favorites. I try to have fish two or three times a week. I have vegetables every single day. They make up most of my dinner plate, and I eat low carb. So a lot of people think, okay, we're all just meat eaters and we don't actually eat healthy foods. It's not true. You can eat healthy any way of eating you want to eat. But I would say that most of us are not getting enough vegetables and fish.

[00:39:49.940] – Chuck
Absolutely. I mean, I hate to admit it, but I hate fish five or six times a week. And the reason I say I hate to admit it because there's a lot of issues with plastic in the ocean now. And I'm working on projects to, you know, help out a little bit. Just do whatever I can. But if you eat organic fish or small fish, I eat sardines once a week, not because I like them, but because they are small fish and the bigger fish, I really try to avoid tuna, although there's a couple of tuna companies that only sell small Tunas, which have less Mercury and chromium and everything else and aluminum and zinc and everything.

[00:40:29.860] – Chuck
If you can eat smaller fish, that's better. Vegetables. Everybody can find vegetables that they love. If you don't love certain vegetables, if certain vegetables don't love you. I mean, I know, for instance, for myself, I have problems digesting cruciferous vegetables, so I found the ones that don't bother me so much. Kale is a phenomenal cruciferous vegetable, but don't eat too much of it. It's like anything else. Don't overdo it. But you really if you play around, if you experiment, if you customize, you can find a mostly plant based diet that you're happier with, then you're mostly not plant based diet pretty easily, and you don't have to go vegan.

[00:41:01.630] – Chuck
You don't have to go all the way, but you can just go a little bit of the way. You're absolutely, you'll feel better. You'll be better. Everything will function better. Everything in your body, down to the molecules will work better because those nutrients are what you really need to function well and be healthy and live a long time. I credit vegetables to my success. I'm going to be 69 years old this week I work out with the Manasquan Beach Lifeguards. They're one of the best lifeguard cruise on the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:41:31.740] – Chuck
These guys are great athletes. They're mostly in their 20s. I can pass the Lifeguard test. I can swim and run fast enough to be a lifeguard. Every summer. They offer me a job there, and I'm thrilled to be offered the job. But most of the people I know my age can't do that. They're overweight. They're stuck on the couch, and a lot of it has to do with they're burdened with sugar. They're burdened with not enough nutrients because they're not eating enough vegetables. It's amazing how good vegetables are for you.

[00:41:36.680] – Chuck
I got them on the cover of my book. There's Vegetables. Can I show the book? Is that okay?

[00:41:36.890] – Allan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:42:05.170] – Chuck
My two favorites here are bananas and carrots. So if you're stuck on a tropical island or in Panama like you are, you got plenty of bananas. If you're stuck somewhere else, you'll find the carrots. Those are my two favorites. But any vegetable that you like, you can absolutely make your life better with and they'll fill you up. It's better filling yourself up with bananas and carrots than it is filling yourself up with bread and French fries. And I can attest that because I've done it both ways.

[00:42:26.500] – Allan
Yeah, I agree. And it's not again, to customize yourself approach here is not a you must do this or you must do that. It's really a okay, you know the foods that are not serving you and you mentioned one that everybody else would be able of course, you want to eat more of this blueberries. You struggle with blueberries.

[00:43:04.710] – Chuck
Right. So I found blackberries. Now I have been hearing, I think all the news and marketing on blueberries. A lot of that is created by the people who sell and market blueberries, who have convinced you that blueberries is the magic food or super food. A lot of things are called superfood walnuts. Superfood, another superfood. I have an issue with. Walnuts make me vomit most people, and it's a great superfood. Blueberries don't agree with me. But then I found blackberries. Blackberries agree with me just fine. So if there's a great super food that people say, oh, you got to eat this.

[00:43:29.370] – Chuck
Like I just told you to eat bananas and carrots. If those don't agree that those don't work, try something else. You'll find that's why I say the whole customized thing. You'll find stuff that you like. I mean, I gave up on blueberries after trying many times, and then I discovered blackberries by accident. I was at somebody's house, so there was a BlackBerry there, and I said, oh, that works. Now I buy blackberries every week, but I buy organic blackberries. The thing with berries is they really, the pesticides.

[00:43:30.030] – Chuck
Stick to the berries. So I know it's a dollar or two more, but really, if you're going to spend anything on organic food, do it for the berries, the strawberries, the raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, whatever Berry you're into, find one or two you like. And I really urge especially organic there, because the pesticide problem is great with that. But it's the same thing. I've gotten way into nuts and seeds, and as a kid and a young adult, I hardly ever had nuts and seeds. I didn't realize how much I even like them, how good they are for you.

[00:43:59.820] – Chuck
And again, find the nuts and seeds that work for you. Walnuts didn't work for me. So I go to cashews. I go to Pistachios. I go to almonds. I mean, again, customized, find out. Try different things. You'll find stuff that you love. It works like magic.

[00:44:16.440] – Allan
I was very fortunate my mother would fill our Christmas stocking with nuts so that she didn't have to give us as much candy. But I fell in love with Brazil nuts as a kid. And so I'm very much a rabid nut eater.

[00:44:32.960] – Chuck
Selenium, don't go overboard.

[00:44:35.430] – Allan
But I know, but I love them. And so, yeah, I don't go overboard on them. But I do have them from time to time.

[00:44:42.000] – Chuck
And I eat one a week. That's how much selenium. But I could eat ten a day. I mean, they're great.

[00:44:47.940] – Allan
They are great. They are great. So, Chuck, I define wellness as being the healthiest, fittest and happiest you can be. What are three strategies or tactics to get and stay well?

[00:45:00.080] – Chuck
Well, you know what? I know you're going to ask me that. So I wrote down a few things. One is what we talked about. It's slow and steady wins the game. It's the gradual approach we really went over that most of these things I know you love to jump into things. I don't want to dissuade you of that. But I have just observed in the gym in life with food, with weight issues, with weight control, that if you take this gradual approach, that's the one I advocate.

[00:45:32.110] – Chuck
And the way I would describe it is think evolution, not revolution. I think that you're going to evolve. A revolution is sexy and dramatic, but you can also get shot between the eyes and it's over like that. But evolution, it really is why we are still here on this planet. So that's what I urge. The other thing I've noticed is I call the book Customize yourself. But I could also call it customized for yourself, because I have run into a lot of people, especially older women in their 40s and 50s, who are having weight issues.

[00:46:08.980] – Chuck
They sort of know that as you get older, your metabolism slows down and you gain weight. And that is the fact. I mean, you really have to. It doesn't take much. You can exercise ten extra minutes a day and not gain that pound a year that you don't even notice as you're getting older past the age of 30. But what I've noticed is a big problem is they'll go home to their mother or their grandmother or their spouse or their group of friends or their roommate or whoever with a different way of eating, and they're like, oh, no, don't do that.

[00:46:39.210] – Chuck
My grandmother taught me how to make this bread or taught me how to make this stew or whatever. It's wrong if you change the way you eat, because our family has proven this is the right way. And there's a lot of people who are like, oh, God, I'll feel guilty if I don't eat my mother's home cooked baked bread or whatever it is. You really have to get over that. You don't have to proselytize. You don't have to tell your mother she can't eat a bread, but you really have to think about it for yourself.

[00:47:06.600] – Chuck
And that's something. I've noticed it. And be grateful for it because you have something that is will help you to get older and be healthy and not just be vital and not deteriorate like everybody else. So I proselytize. You proselytize world how to. But to everybody else, I just don't let somebody lay a guilt trip on you. Like, oh, don't do that because the family doesn't do that or something like that. And the third thing I would say is don't rely on food to make you happy.

[00:47:37.340] – Chuck
A lot of people are literally ingrained with, it's very simple. Everybody's heard this before. Don't live to eat. People live to eat, don't live to eat, eat to live. First time I heard that, it's just a light bulb on off over my head. Well, that's really easy. I can do that. And I find most people live to eat. And if you eat to live a better thing and find other things to be happy. So I'll give you one more thing, and this is a guaranteed way to make be happy.

[00:48:07.870] – Chuck
That's another thing I want to compliment you on,you make a point in wellness that happiness is an important component of that. I have never heard a trainer say that. I have never heard, you know, even nutritionist say that. I think it's so important that you include that in what you teach to your students and what you tell your listeners. Because people do want happiness. It's one of the things that we have in our Constitution, happiness. So I will give you a sure fire way to be happy.

[00:48:36.980] – Chuck
And again, no trainer ever told me this. I guarantee this will make you happy every day. Play with a dog. If you don't have a dog, find a dog, play with your neighbor's dog. Go to a dog park or get a dog. I'm telling you, five minutes playing with a dog. Two minutes playing with a dog a day will make you happy. I just guarantee it. And you can find simple things like that. It is really that simple. Don't make it complicated. Make it simple. So play with a dog is my last one.

[00:49:04.290] – Allan
Yeah. One of my favorite quotes is I aspire to be the guy my dog thinks I am.

[00:49:09.300] – Chuck
Oh, yeah? Or just watch a dog. Look how happy the dog. I watch dogs and I go, Why can't I be that happy? Why can't I jump in the air and do a back flip and roll around on my back and run up to another dog and nip their ear. You can't do that with people because you'll get in trouble, but yeah, I wish I could do that.

[00:49:29.840] – Allan
Chuck, if someone wanted to learn more about you or learn more about your book Customize Yourself Nutrition. Where would you like for me to send them?

[00:49:38.080] – Chuck
You can go to either Amazon. Amazon is where you can buy the book. Just look up Customize Yourself: Nutrition. Or you can go to my website, which is Customizeyourself.org. Very simple. Customizeyourself.org. Either way, you know, you can find your way to me and I'll be happy to be your friend and I hope I can help a little bit.

[00:50:00.470] – Allan
Thank you. You can go to 40PlusFitnesspodcast.com/501 and I'll be sure to have the links there. Chuck, thank you so much for being a part of 40+Fitness.

[00:50:11.240] – Chuck
Allan, thank you so much. Anytime. I had a blast, I will do this with you anytime. I am at your service.

[00:50:17.220] – Allan
Okay, well, you got the nutrition book coming out next year, so we'll be in touch.

[00:50:21.680] – Chuck
Okay. Great. Thanks a lot.

Post Show/Recap

Post show wit

[00:50:29.670] – Allan
Welcome back, Raz.

[00:50:32.210] – Rachel
Allan, oh, my gosh. We have a lot to talk about here. But before we talk about customizing ourselves, which is just brilliant, I got to go back to what you guys said at the beginning about having a half a million Centurions by the year 2060. How is that even going to be possible?

[00:50:52.300] – Allan
It's really just a function of numbers. Okay? It's not that there's going to necessarily be a larger percentage of Centurions than there are today. Just means there's going to be a lot more people. So our population is unless something tragic happens, our population will continue to grow. We're approaching 8 billion people now. By that time, my guess is we'll probably be somewhere in the 9 billion, maybe closer to ten somewhere in that range. So you just added over 20% more people. When you have those more people, then of course, the percentage of whoever's going to make it to 100 goes up.

[00:51:34.160] – Allan
And then the other thing is there's an expectation that technology will extend our life expectancy, some. At one point, our life expectancy was below 45. And then within 100 years, we now have it up to, I think for women is something like 78.8. For men, it's hovering somewhere or just high 77 point something. So you look at it, the average person in general is going to live until they're late 70s. And then you have these statistics is a Bell curve of people that are going to live one standard deviation longer.

[00:52:10.870] – Allan
That's a few years, and two standard deviations and three all the way out. And then those outliers that they live to 100 is just like on the other side of that average of the kids that die at birth. And so the average is really just a function of math to say, okay, if we can keep more kids from dying and making it even to age one, then that shifts the average. But when you start looking at the outliers, it's really if you have more people and the even the number of outliers goes up.

[00:52:42.150] – Allan
So it sounds like a big number, but you can take it and round it. I kind of look at it from a percentage of people 50 million relative to, say, 10 million, 10 billion. You still see it's a very small fraction of people. It's effectively a rounding error, if you will. It sounds terrible, but what it speaks to is when people know there's the potential to live longer because they're fixing the medical care, they're making us live longer. The question isn't, will I make it to 100?

[00:53:19.070] – Allan
It's like, how much am I going to like being 100 in the last ten years of my life? What are those going to be like? So I want to be able to wipe my butt at 105 comment is really me acknowledging that there is a potential for me to live that long. And if I'm going to be here that long, what do I want my life to be like?

[00:53:44.500] – Rachel
That's a good point. I had mentioned to you earlier that I had great grandparents that live until 103 and 104, when they both passed within about a month of each other. And they are like my example of what potential I have to have a long and healthy life because they didn't leave their home. They lived in their home until they were 97 years old, and then they went into assisted living. And I recall my great grandfather used a cane, but I don't recall either of them requiring a wheelchair to get around until maybe later.

[00:54:24.810] – Rachel
But they were both very healthy people until, obviously, until they decided to get some assisted living. I think they were just tired of the upkeep of their farm property at that point. And God bless them, they deserve to relax a little at that point. But, yeah, I've always had that example in my life, and my grandparents did live into their 80s and 90s. So I do have some not quite Centurions, but close. And they all lived very long and very healthy lives. And I think Besides the genetics, their lifestyle kind of rubbed off on me.

[00:55:01.960] – Rachel
So that's probably why I'm as healthy as I am.

[00:55:05.040] – Allan
Yeah. And that's one of the core is that genetics is sort of the blueprint, if you will, for what's possible with your body. If you have the right genetics, then you can be an elite athlete, if you do the training. It doesn't mean you're an elite athlete just because you have the genetics of an elite athlete. So you have to do something to make those genetics matter. And so I like to think of it in terms of the blueprint, and you can decide if you're going to build your house out of steel and wood or whether you're going to build your house out of fluff.

[00:55:41.580] – Allan
And so if we're building our house the right way and we're using good materials, those materials will serve us over those years. The house I'm in right now, I mean in Lula's. This house was originally built over 80 years ago. Now it's been rebuilt over and rebuilt over and everything else. But we tore up the floors here in this particular room, we could see where they had literally just set wood on dirt. And you just don't do that. If you want that house to stand for a long, long time, that's how you do a barn.

[00:56:15.910] – Allan
People build barns, and sometimes they do that. Sometimes they put footings, but a lot of times they'll just let the wood sit on the dirt. And that barn is not going to last more than 20 years. And then it's going to be gone. So the fact that this thing was still standing was huge, and we didn't realize that they started tearing out the wall, and some of the structure was gone. As a result, we saw the house starting to shift. You couldn't open the doors in here.

[00:56:39.740] – Allan
And so when the contractor showed up that day, I'm like, we got to do something, because when you can't open a door, it's an indication that something bad is happening. And so the main contractor got in here. Yeah. We got to shore up these walls to day.

[00:56:54.580] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh.

[00:56:55.780] – Allan
All over. And that's the whole point. Is the structures there, blueprints there, if you're using quality materials and doing things right, so you're feeding your body the right foods, you're building your body the right way, then you have the capacity to last a lot longer. And for the quality of that lasting to be there. So if this wall had fallen and part of Lula's would have fallen, whole thing wouldn't because a large percentage of it is concrete. But we would have this caved inside the house, and it's kind of the same thing.

[00:57:30.060] – Allan
It's like if you're not taking care of yourself and you have a stroke or a heart attack, you have to have bypass surgery or stents put in all of those things, they're basically making it harder. They're slowing you down or if you fall and break a hip, it's that concept of the healthier you are before you go into something, the better off you're going to be. And so that's where the concept of centers. And the reason I want to bring it, because his mother is now 111.

[00:58:00.490] – Rachel
Oh, my gosh.

[00:58:04.600] – Allan
I'm gonna listen to her.

[00:58:05.010] – Rachel
Oh, yeah.

[00:58:06.640] – Allan
And Chuck has a fitness book coming out. And as soon as his fitness book is out, I'm going to have him back on to talk about that because, yes, I'm absolutely going to listen to people who are living that, you know, we had on Barbara and Margaret a couple of weeks ago who are going into their 70s. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to listen to them because they're there where I'm going to be. There's an opportunity for us to look into the future and see things we can change now.

[00:58:37.270] – Allan
So we're not dealing with that in the future because we're not going to have a time machine and be able to come back and fix ourselves now. They're not going to come back and sit, say to our 40 year old selves or 50 year old self, please exercise more. Please don't eat that crap.

[00:58:54.460] – Rachel
Yeah, I'm sure as I sit here as a 50 year old, I look back in my youthful days and I think, well, maybe I should not have celebrated with McDonald's after a half marathon because I did, but I don't anymore. But you know what Chuck mentioned or his whole theory about customizing, I think, is so brilliant, because we want the right diet. We want the right exercise regimen. But it's not one thing. There's so many options of diets to follow or different type of exercise modalities to follow.

[00:59:32.600] – Rachel
And you can't just assume that you can put A and B and get to C. You just need to customize it to see whatever suits you.

[00:59:42.600] – Allan
Yeah, we're all different. Chuck is really good. And we talked about this on the episode of Moderation, where he will set a goal for himself to cut back on one of his more harm than good foods and say, instead of eating pizza four days per week, I'm going to only eat it three times a week, and that's 25% decrease in the amount of pizza that he's ordering and eating. He can do that. Me, I would be thinking about that pizza the whole time. I don't do Moderation well.

[01:00:20.950] – Allan
And knowing myself that way, it's like, if I tell myself I can't have pizza, then I'm going to be like, okay, right now, I mean, I live close enough to a pizza place, but my thing was pizza, and that was the thing I want to get rid of. And I lived across the street from my favorite pizza restaurant, and I knew that I could order it. And I love it. It's called Chow here on the island. So if you're ever coming to Bocas Del Toro, make sure you go to Chow.

[01:00:44.160] – Allan
Yes, it's the best pizza on the island and wonderful owners too. But that said, they're open, I think, four days a week. And so they're open Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Those are open days right now. And so I said, I'm going to have their pizza every single day and that I can. I'm going to order a pizza every single day. And then I say, okay, well, I'm eating pizza four days a week. I'm like, I'm going to skip one of those days. And so I just decided I'm gonna skip Thursday.

[01:01:13.770] – Allan
I'm going to be thinking about that pizza all day on Thursday. And then what's going to end up happening is I'm probably going to order two pizzas on Friday. That's just my mindset. I was like, oh, I love this pizza. And I'll have some for breakfast, and I'll have some for lunch. Whereas I normally wouldn't have done that. I would have ordered my one pizza, I would have eaten about half of it. And then, yes, for breakfast the next day, I would have eaten the rest of it.

[01:01:35.720] – Allan
But that was just my approach, if I were eating pizza every day. And so it's good that Chow is a good probably about good, let's say 3 miles from 3 and a half, 4 miles from here. So not some place I walk to every day to have pizza. But I only say because everybody is different and the foods that your body is going to naturally love is a little different. But what we do know and you know, is that there are those more harm than good foods.

[01:02:09.050] – Allan
They're the processed meats. They're the fast food. They're the sugar, the french fries. And so find your poison. Find the things that you're eating that you know are not serving you, and then just do a little less of them. And I'm pretty sure when we get to his fitness book, I'm assuming it's going to be a very similar message of just try to do a little more.

[01:02:33.080] – Rachel
I love it.

[01:02:33.860] – Allan
If you're not doing anything now, just try to walk for 15 minutes in the evenings.

[01:02:41.580] – Rachel
I love that idea, because, like you said, if you just take it, well, like he said, slow and steady wins the race. If you just try a few things, like change an unhealthy breakfast. If you have cereal, which you know is laden with sugar and junk, change cereal to maybe oatmeal or to maybe eggs, just take one meal and change it. Or take one afternoon snack and change it to a fruit or a vegetable snack that you wouldn't normally eat. If you just do little things, all accumulates to big results.

[01:03:14.070] – Allan
When I'm talking to a client about we're talking about their food, and there's a food that kind of fits that same category of more harm than good, I usually talk to them in terms of three things, because there's three things you can do. If there's a food which you know is doing you harm, okay, you can eliminate it. So I'm not a moderation person. So for me, that's the clear path for me is just eliminate it, Okay. For a lot of people, that's not something they can do.

[01:03:43.520] – Allan
So we want to reduce it. So that's Chuck method. Where Chuck saying, okay, if you want French fries, and you usually eat them five days per week. Can you cut one of them out? And at least that's a 20% reduction over what you are doing. And you can do that then that's great. So that's reduction. And then the third way is replacement. Okay. And so a lot of folks that will get into keto will use cauliflower as a way to avoid eating potatoes. So they'll make mashed cauliflower.

[01:04:19.090] – Allan
They'll also use cauliflower for the crust of pizza. So they're doing away with a lot of the carbs that would come in their pizza. So using cauliflower, they've effectively reduced or replaced what they were doing before. So it's a replacement. So the three ways are eliminate, reduce or replace.

[01:04:40.140] – Rachel
I love it. Great tips.

[01:04:42.730] – Allan
And a lot of people do that with soda. So they drink regular soda, coke, soft drink, whatever you want to call it.

[01:04:48.760] – Rachel
We call it pop.

[01:04:50.340] – Allan
I think I got all of them. I'll just call them soft drinks for the sake of clarity. Let's say you're used to drinking a soft drink. Maybe it's even just one per day. You have your one soft drink per day and you look at it and it's 39 grams of sugar like, wow, you know, actually, that's a lot. A little twelve ounce can. And you say I'll just replace that with a diet soft drink. That is better, but it's not optimal.

[01:05:22.010] – Allan
And you know that, you know, this is a more harm than good food. His second stage of the customized process is then after you've accomplished that, you've shifted from the regular soft drink to the diet soft drink. The next stage for him would be to look at that again and say, can I make another foray into this? Can I cut back on those? So maybe that's a volume thing rather than just an exchange thing. But finding the way that you can reduce your exposure to something that's doing you harm, it's going to be good.

[01:05:58.720] – Rachel
I love that. He said eat to live and not live to eat. And if you can think of the foods that you choose in terms of how they benefit your overall health and fitness, it sometimes a little easier to get rid of some things. I know that for me, bread doesn't serve me. It doesn't give me any energy. It doesn't give me any building blocks of protein. It's just to me, it's a useless item for me in my diet. So it's easy for me to slip that off.

[01:06:31.080] – Rachel
But I also focus instead I focused on protein because I need that for all of the weight lifting and running that I do, I need to make sure my muscles are healthy and are rebuilding when I push them too much. So it's just different attitude towards what you choose.

[01:06:47.820] – Allan
Well, again, I'll just go back to the concept of there is a genetic blueprint for you, and then you're making decisions about how that blueprint is used. And so the food that you're putting in your mouth are building blocks and they're going to determine how healthy your muscles are, how healthy your bones are, how healthy your ligaments and tendons are, how healthy your brain is. And so if you're not putting the right building materials in there, you are building your body out of fluff.

[01:07:22.900] – Rachel
True, true.

[01:07:24.600] – Allan
And too much of that means that you're going to be building weakness into your frame. Now, you might lift weights and you might run. You might be this tremendous athlete. But if you're still eating Taco Bell and other crap and rebuilding your body with those and every cell in your body dies and is replaced by something else, another cell of the same meat and model. But it's made with what was available at the time. Now you can recycle some of the amino acids and things from that.

[01:07:57.600] – Allan
Some fats from the cells. But in a general sense, we have to keep eating those building materials to replace those cells. And if you're not getting adequate protein, you're not getting adequate nutrition. Calcium, magnesium, all of it. That healthy fats. If you're not getting those things, then now you're building the cell membranes, the cells themselves out of bad stuff. And that's like Lula's wall that was built on the dirt, wood on dirt and it rotted through. And as soon as we took away just some of the support, we could see the damage.

[01:08:35.580] – Allan
And so just any little thing happening to your health and fitness, you're going to be impacted a lot worse than if you had done less harm.

[01:08:45.270] – Rachel
Just one last thing I want to point out real quick is that where you get those nutrients, like the calcium and magnesium and proteins and stuff can totally vary from person to person. And you don't need to be a vegan or vegetarian or paleo or keto or any other named diet. And like Chuck had mentioned, he can't digest cruciferous vegetables or he does not like walnuts. They don't agree with him.

[01:09:11.520] – Allan
or Blueberries.

[01:09:13.283] – Rachel
or Blueberries.

[01:09:14.030] – Allan
Blueberries.

[01:09:15.040] – Rachel
Truth be told, my mom is actually allergic to blueberries. So no matter how much of a super food it is, she can't eat them. But that's exactly my point is that if you choose not to eat meat, fine. Then find those important building blocks in the vegetables and nuts that you choose to eat instead. Or if your body can't digest kale and cruciferous vegetables, then maybe a more meat based diet is appropriate for you. But there's such a diet war out there, and that's what I want to get across is that, like Chuck said, you have to customize it to what your body needs and don't get hung up on one diet or another.

[01:09:55.420] – Rachel
Just choose the right foods that your body needs.

[01:09:58.740] – Allan
Absolutely. Alright. Well, Rachel, with that, I guess we'll go ahead and call it a show and I'll talk to you next week.

[01:10:05.450] – Rachel
Alright, take care, Allan.

[01:10:07.030] – Allan
You too.

[01:10:07.750] – Rachel
Thanks.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner
– Deb Scarlett	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
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Thank you!

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SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness podcast is sponsored by Naked Nutrition, what does getting naked mean for supplements? It means no unnecessary additives. It means premium sourced ingredients without fillers. So you don't need to compromise on your diet or your goals. That's what Naked Nutrition offers.

Back in 2014, a former college athlete didn't understand why protein powders and other supplements had so many unnatural ingredients. If they're supposed to be health supplements, why can't you understand the ingredient list? Naked nutrition was started with five single-ingredient supplements, including the best selling Naked Whey, which has only one ingredient whey protein from grass-fed California cows and the bestselling Naked Pea, a vegan protein made from one ingredient raw yellow peas grown in the U.S. and Canada.

The company has grown to offer over 40 products, but the vision of sourcing the best ingredients using a few of them is possible and being transparent so you know exactly what's going into your body is the same today as when the company was founded.

Whether you're working towards losing weight, having more energy or improving your endurance to become a better runner, what you put in your body directly impacts how you feel and the results you get. Naked Nutrition is committed to shortening the steps between their farms and you. Get naked. Visit naked nutrition. Today, it's nutrition with nothing to hide. Use the discount code 40plus and get 10% off your first order. nakednutrition.com.

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
– Deb Scarlett	– John Somsky	– Melissa Ball
– Debbie Ralston	– Judy Murphy	– Tim Alexander
– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner

Thank you!

Another episode you may enjoy

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SPONSOR

This episode of the 40+ Fitness podcast is sponsored by Naked Nutrition, what does getting naked mean for supplements? It means no unnecessary additives. It means premium sourced ingredients without fillers. So you don't need to compromise on your diet or your goals. That's what Naked Nutrition offers.

Back in 2014, a former college athlete didn't understand why protein powders and other supplements had so many unnatural ingredients. If they're supposed to be health supplements, why can't you understand the ingredient list? Naked nutrition was started with five single-ingredient supplements, including the best selling Naked Whey, which has only one ingredient whey protein from grass-fed California cows and the bestselling Naked Pea, a vegan protein made from one ingredient raw yellow peas grown in the U.S. and Canada.

The company has grown to offer over 40 products, but the vision of sourcing the best ingredients using a few of them is possible and being transparent so you know exactly what's going into your body is the same today as when the company was founded.

Whether you're working towards losing weight, having more energy or improving your endurance to become a better runner, what you put in your body directly impacts how you feel and the results you get. Naked Nutrition is committed to shortening the steps between their farms and you. Get naked. Visit naked nutrition. Today, it's nutrition with nothing to hide. Use the discount code 40plus and get 10% off your first order. nakednutrition.com.

Let's Say Hello

Rachel Discussion

Interview

Text

Post Show/Recap

Post show with Rachel.

Patreons

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

– Anne Lynch	– John Dachauer	– Margaret Bakalian
– Deb Scarlett	– John Somsky	– Melissa Ball
– Debbie Ralston	– Judy Murphy	– Tim Alexander
– Eric More	– Leigh Tanner

Thank you!

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