Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
Episode 158: All the resources you will ever need to hack your health: The Program
More information on 'The Program' here
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Yo.
Speaker 1:Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to Hacking Health Podcast. I'm your host, ben Cunning, with Dave Kennedy. What is up everybody? Welcome back. I want to just put out a public service announcement and an apology. We did not release a podcast last week. People may have noticed we fucked it royally because of travel both of us, yes, so that is, uh, that's on us, and I had planned. I was like maybe we could record one later in the week and just put it out randomly, because we did have a topic that will not be relevant when you're listening to this now. But I had no voice. Well, I had somebody else's voice. I just said the day that I do not have Pop Smoke's voice anymore. I'm back to almost my own voice, so we're good to go on that. But anyway, apologies for that. We're back with another episode. What's up, dude?
Speaker 2:episode. What's up, dude, nice beard. Hey, thanks, man, I'm trying. It's still here. Still, I haven't shaved it yet, so it's still going. I, uh, I had it trimmed up a little bit. Uh, over the weekend she took a little bit more than I. I would have liked it was actually a little bit longer, but I'm still working on it. Still working on it.
Speaker 1:Yes that's good, good, just I can't have girls.
Speaker 2:They're like fluffy of a beard as you, though I'm trying, we'll see mine is very dense at the minute.
Speaker 1:I actually saw a photo of myself earlier and I was like I quite like when it's trimmed, but I do that quite a lot. I'm like, oh, I want to be bigger than the smaller. It's the same as me. I want to be bigger, smaller, but it's very dense at the minute. I'm getting some real nice like gray bits through here. Yes, as you can see bike down here all the rays I think that's just part of it, I think part of the process.
Speaker 1:It's thanksgiving week, so um, happy thanksgiving week everybody who made me get 6 000 calories this week uh well, I mean you'll submit your check-in on the day of thanksgiving, so I guess we'll find out when they yeah, yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker 2:I'll do it wednesday night, so, um, you know, it's uh got a lot planned. Actually, one of my buddies, uh bobby, who, um, yeah, I was in the marines with, he's uh coming to town, so he's gonna have thanksgiving dinner with us, which is cool. I haven't seen him in a bit and, uh, you know, hanging out with family and friends and stuff like that, uh, this weekend I did two days of airsoft well, what's the protocol?
Speaker 1:like, you always have a big show like are you smoking a turkey? Are you catching a turkey? Are you shooting a turkey? Like Are you shooting a turkey? Yeah, catching hunting cooking smoking?
Speaker 2:No, no, we're smoking a turkey and some ham and Erin's doing all the sides, which is great, so she makes amazing stuffing. We have this whole tag team duo that goes in and does desserts and stuff like that, and family members all come over our house and just kind of enjoy and appreciate family. So how about you? Have you got the appropriate?
Speaker 1:cream. Yeah, yes, so you don't have to fuck it on the day, you already got it yes, I got it this time.
Speaker 2:I actually have it. It's there, I don't have to door dash it at the last minute. On thanksgiving the right um, yeah, got the right one.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, yeah, okay, cool, yeah. Well, it's not thanksgiving here, so I'll not be celebrating, but I do always enjoy the food photos that everybody, that everybody posts, um, so I'm looking forward to seeing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, um, I did airsoft twice this weekend and I realized that, uh, doing it twice in one weekend probably isn't the best idea because of my whole body. I said I did, I had the one mentioned today of orange theory and it was not a great day I was. Just my whole body is exhausted and I'm tired and run down and so I was like, all right, maybe twice in one weekend it's a little bit too much so and I just play like total ass on sunday, like I was, like shooting my own teammates on accident like five times in a row. I you know, I didn't have, you know, it was just not not a good day, on sunday, then I should.
Speaker 2:I should definitely just chill on the weekends after one day of Airsoft, not do chill you know what this is, where everything is.
Speaker 1:An experiment comes in. Do you know what I mean? You experimented with doing it twice in one weekend. You know not to do that in the future.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's right. It's kind of like lifting. It's like I can't only lift twice a week. I have to lift seven days a week and then yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's fair. That's fair. And just you mentioned there your full body is in pain. I have to give a shout out to clayton, who last minute got a ticket to a hyrox event. Now I don't know if you know much about what hyrox is, but it's a fucking brutality on your body. So the only reason I know is because, sarah, she has done four this year, which again respect. But essentially it's like a hybrid fitness event and it's broken up into you have to run a kilometer. I don't know if this is the correct order. So anybody who's going to give me shit please don't Run a kilometer.
Speaker 1:You have to do 1,000 meters on the ski erg. Run a kilometer. You have to do a 50-meter sled push. Run a kilometer. A 50-meter sled pull. Run a kilometer. 100 wall balls. Run a kilometer. 100 wall balls. Run a kilometer. 100 meter lunges. Run a kilometer. 100, either 80 meters or 100 meters. Burpee, broad jumps. Run a kilometer um a thousand meter row and then run a kilometer. And it's all timed and he has not trained for it at all. He literally got the ticket two days before the event and he was like, fuck, I'm gonna do it. And I was like I don't know if you know what you're gonna show him for. But cool, I have a respect that he finished it because it is absolutely fucking brutal. But he just he was mentioning me today being like I can't actually physically move, like my entire body is fucked.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. It sounds absolutely horrible and something that I'm not interested in whatsoever.
Speaker 1:I signed you up for one just in January.
Speaker 2:Oh good, great, yeah, aaron. Hey, by the way, training's been actually going really good Zero injuries. My deadlifts are back to, so I did a 500-pound deadlift for five, which was right around the max that I did when I was hitting 600. So I'm pretty close to my max again, which is great. That fifth one was a little sus, but it was definitely good and I and, uh, I'll tell you, I'm feeling strong right now and, uh, the added energy with the calories is great. So it's been going really well.
Speaker 2:It's funny, I feel like there's like five stages of denial in a surplus, you know. You like when you first started to get it, it's like the most amazing thing ever, because you have all this energy. Then you start to fill up a little bit and then you're like, oh man, I'm fat again, you know. And then you're like, oh, I don't see my abs as much again. And you're like this is too much, I need to, I need to go back on a cut. And you're like, no, no, stay the course, you're okay. And it's like. It's like you go through these like weird stages of like you just got to let let the process work, it's okay. It's okay, feeling a lot stronger and feeling a lot more fuller and closed. And so once you get through the hey, I'm not going to have as much you know a grade of abs anymore, you start to feel this like man, I feel big, like I feel really big and great, you know.
Speaker 1:So now you get into the I'm, you know, super strong and big, and then you go from there, so it well, the thing about it is like you start to feel better in your clothes, which is obviously what the majority, I hope, of people see, and they don't see with your top off and your abs, like you get sort of more I just wear.
Speaker 2:I just wear no shirt in the wintertime, so it's just got that cold, cold.
Speaker 1:But just on the note on this, uh, maybe we could work towards a one rep max testing, one rep max testing of your deadlift for our event at the end of january, and that's where you work towards. Yeah, and the table we're at in terms of 600 or beyond, that's right. All right, there you go. I've said it here nice, that's your goal, that's my goal hyrox and then one rep max testing no, no, no, not the hyrox, the one rep max test.
Speaker 1:I'm, I'm, I'm on board right today I want to start talking about. I guess the best way I can put it is two things number one, sort of like future planning for the start of next year, and, second of all, I have thought about this for everybody and I've come at you with a solution. So we are coming in the end of 2024 and obviously the start of 2025, and I would imagine people will have the usual fitness goals that they will have, um, want to get their shit together, want to feel a lot better and absolutely kill it in terms of their health and fitness. And, truthfully, I thought a bit about this before the podcast. I was like how am I going to introduce this? Like, how did it come about? And the truth of the matter is, how it came about was I had a call with a hacks group, uh, probably about four weeks ago, um, and I was asking them like what did they think would be beneficial to them? Like, before they signed up, like, what could I create? What could I make? What could I give um or build in terms of like a program or video series or whatever? And I didn't want it to just be another shitty pdf that nobody's ever going to do anything with, because I've downloaded infinite amounts of those in my time and never have looked at any of them, and it was pretty unanimous that everybody said like almost like a, an introduction to what it is that we do on the inside, like an introduction to coaching, like a shorter version of it or a light version of it or just like a crash course, essentially on what that looked like.
Speaker 1:So I've been back and forward over the past few weeks in terms of what that's going to look like, um, and I have come up with what I'm just going to call the program and the reason that I called it the program number one, because I didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of like what am I going to call this? And I went back and listened to probably maybe five or six testimonials to sort of see what everybody said. And everybody says the program. I've been with the program for eight. I've been with the program for eight months. I've been with the program for seven months. I'm like, okay, well, there we go, we're just called the program.
Speaker 1:So we will be launching the program on the 13th of January, which is going to be something new for me because and obviously, as you know, I am very much a person who likes to work with people for an extended period of time.
Speaker 1:Generally, the minimum commitment is 12 months, because I feel like that's what it actually takes to make a proper change. But I realize that there's a lot of issues around that and people don't want to commit for that length of time, so it will be an eight week program. Now I want to caveat this all by saying this is not going to be eight weeks. It's going to totally change your life. You're not going to get to the start of March and be like fuck, nailed it, completed health and fitness. I do not need to do anything ever again. But the way that I have designed it is to basically give you an understanding of the things that you need to do, give you an understanding of the tools that we have on the inside and give you sort of, I guess, a kickstart in terms of what you could do to build this out for yourself long-term.
Speaker 2:So this is this is a new program you're launching for folks that want to come aboard and it's a crash course into the basics, fundamentals and everything that you would need to be successful in your fitness journey.
Speaker 2:See, I really liked that, you know, I think um think where most people struggle with is like, hey, if I commit to six months, or if I commit to a year, or if I commit to this and this and I'm not successful, then that's kind of on me, right, whereas something like this is nice because you're like, hey, I can learn the foundation of things that I need to be doing, I can test the waters to see if I can be successful with it and then from there move on. So I think it's really important and I think you know, I wish you know I had known and I say this, I've said this before on other podcasts but I think you know I wish I would have known early on the fundamentals, the basics, the things that I needed to know about my body, to really have somebody structure that for me, so that I could be you, so that I could be in a successful state moving forward, and so that's really, really beneficial.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be cool because I think what I've tried to do is basically cram everything that we do, because I think, because we do it on the inside and because I live and breathe it day to day, I often take it for granted as to what actually goes into true long-term change. I don't ever really talk about the mobility stuff that Lorena does or the breathwork, the stuff that john does, or the sort of detail and in depth that we go into in terms of the nutrition and the sort of educational library and all the additional resources and the community and all the bits and pieces. Like because we deal with on a day-to-day basis, I don't necessarily talk too much about it. So it'll be basically an eight-week introduction to what it is like, what we do on the inside.
Speaker 2:This is what I believe it actually takes to make long-term change and how you can start to, I guess, install those behaviors, habits and tools into your life so you can be successful long term yeah, and it's crazy because, like you know, I think most people expect um, when they think of of kind of transforming or dieting or whatever you want to call it, which is the bad words we don't like using here. You know it's this, this massive commitment that is going to take up all their time and consume our time where it really it's instilling those little micro habits. You know little things that you can do over time that start to make those big changes. And I think you know you, you get, you start to see some of the newbie gains. You know things that you see immediately, but you know change in how you want to look, how you want to feel, how you want to optimize your life. It just starts with small changes of behavior and having somebody Rick really coach you through that and understand what those changes are so that you can be successful, that's really what makes a big difference.
Speaker 2:And I want to reference an article. There's an article in Medical News Today that came out yesterday that I really liked and it was talking about, just by walking, the benefits of that. And people are like, oh, walking, that's ridiculous, that's stupid. Walking is probably one of the best things that you can do cardiovascular-wise for your health period. And so I'll read some of the blurbage here, just a couple of the bullet points. But if Americans over 40 walked as much each day as most of the physically active members of the population, they could extend their lifespan by at least five years.
Speaker 2:A new data study finds the least physically active Twenty five percent of the population stood the most to gain, according to the predictive model, for for each hour of walking they do, they can extend their lifespan by about six hours. While the study may have its limitations, since it was based on existing data from certain portions so we call meta-analysis of the american population, the findings do line up with known health benefits. So I mean, like crazy to think that just by going out walking 30 minutes to an hour you know you do that consecutively you can expand your lifespan by at least five years. To me that's a pretty small change. For a hour, you know you do that consecutively you can expand your lifespan by at least five years.
Speaker 2:To me that's a pretty small change for a pretty massive, you know, increase in performance in your overall thing. And plus I mean helps with, you know, your brain development, cardiovascular risk helps you, you know, clearing your mind and meditative components of that. There's so many different pieces that go into it, but overall you know one of those things that can be really huge for you just by going out and walking. But that's one small thing, right. But instilling those habits and getting used to that, those are things that become really important.
Speaker 1:Agree, and one thing I'm going to do and this is me sort of leaning into the people that I know that I have and what I understand keeps them engaged is sort of gamify, the full thing. So there will be prizes's over ten thousand dollars worth of prizes as we go throughout and we will have a complete winner of the full challenge. Um, it's not going to be necessarily based on the biggest weight loss or whatever. It's probably going to be based on a point system. So we're going to have points for everything, like you said, even you know about steps and whatever else. Like everything will be sort of point and graded as we go through the eight weeks. So we'll give away a year's worth coaching. On the other side, we'll also give a discounted 50 discount and we'll give two people away the money that they invest in the start.
Speaker 1:I'm also going to do spot prizes as we go through. So, for example, if you're talking about steps, potentially on week three, whoever has the most steps recorded, they will get some sort of spot price. And so we're going to gamify the full thing and even like, like you said there, I know if I have a leaderboard which I will in terms of steps people will want to do more than everybody else. So even just that little bit of additional sort of incentive is to beat everybody else on the leaderboard to get everybody out walking. I think it will be beneficial.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome. I think the gamification is also a lot of fun because you're going with other people, it's you know, looking at what you can actually do and kind of outperform.
Speaker 2:I remember, you know, a while back you know a lot of the Hacking Health members I'd see somebody would have, like you know, 10,100 steps. I'm like, okay, I need to get 10,500 steps, and it's always this back and forth going to try to see if you could just do a little bit more. You know I'd make sure my strain was like you know, on whoop was like like a 20 every day.
Speaker 1:It's just because I didn't want anybody to beat me on there definitely makes a big difference for sure, and I think that I'm going to lean into that as well. Obviously that plays into the um like the, the community aspect and having sort of a group of people go through it together. So I'm looking forward to that side of it. And for anybody who all the eagle-eared listeners, I guess, over the past few weeks I have been creating notes and sending them to Dia, but I haven't done it this week because I want to sort of go through it. I've made the notes of what the sort of eight weeks are going to look like and I just want your sort of live feedback so you'll not be able to hide it. So 13th monday, the 13th of january next year week zero. Before that, we'll have a sort of onboarding and welcome call on the 6th of january and basically what that's going to be is sort of foundations and goal setting. Now, whenever I mean foundations, it's like the data that we're going to have to track. This is your check-in sheet. This is everybody within the group. This is when your weekly calls are going to be. What are your goals like? What do you want to achieve long term and how we can sort of at least set you on your your way with that. Again to your point of like what's realistic in terms of time management. You know, do you have time to do five sessions a week? Do you have time to only do two sessions a week? What do you have available for grip and stuff like that? So it's like going through that in the in the initial week to just sort of correlate that on my end so that I can basically be ready to launch and start everybody full send from january 13th. Then what we're going to do in terms of week one is do nutrition 101. So how to track your food, what your calories are, how to set your calories based on the data that you've tracked the week before, what macros are, what to prioritize and, essentially, how to not eat like an asshole is probably the best, the best way to phrase it.
Speaker 1:Week two, then, is going to be movement mastery. So everybody will have their program at this stage, and I think the the biggest thing from that is number one, um, any sort of mobility limitations. So we're going to bring lorraine in heavily on that week to sort of look at everybody's sort of form and we'll do a basic sort of mobility assessment and then any sort of like form feedback that anybody has in terms of the movements that they have and the like, any restrictions that they might have in terms of like exercise or deadlift, squat or whatever it might be. Then we're going to do a strength and endurance testing in week three to sort of get a baseline as to where you're at. That's not going to be one rep max deadlifts, because I don't necessarily know that's a good idea for a lot of people, yourself included sometimes.
Speaker 1:Um, then we're going to do week four is building mental toughness, and the reason I put this in is because I've noticed, and you maybe can attest to this there is a point where the excitement starts to wear off. So when you sign up, you're like this is going to be the fucking thing that changed my life. You've taken every single box. You just can't wait because this is this, is it. That's probably going to fall in line with like the end of january, start of february, where everybody's miserable, there's nothing to look forward to anymore, and I generally notice that with clients, that that about people in general, that's not really a fun time of year, and so we're going to pull sean on that in terms of the sort of mindset and breathwork stuff to sort of get past that and sort of remember why, reminder why you're doing it, and sort of bring everything back to the why and sort of what it is you're trying to achieve.
Speaker 1:Then we're going into week five, which will be a optimization phase, and so sort of re-looking at your habits and behaviors.
Speaker 1:I find that again, everything's so exciting at the start and you just want to tick every single box, but then you start to see what you can get away with and you know you're maybe not hitting 10 000 steps, you're needing to hit those 8 000 steps, or you're maybe not only eating 2 000 calories, you're maybe eating 2200 calories, and sort of re-bringing yourself back to okay, right, what's working, what's not working and how do we sort of realign with the goals that we initially set?
Speaker 1:Week six is going to be, uh, looking at, I guess, deeper level fitness techniques, um and I'm going to do a community-based task, so I don't know what it will be but something like collectively, we want to hit a million steps or something like that, like bring everybody together, that we are all contributing in some way.
Speaker 1:Week seven is going to be future planning and goal setting.
Speaker 1:So like, what's the plan after the eight weeks are up, like that's not the end of your fitness journey, that's basically only the start. So like looking at, okay, right, you have this, you have these tools, you have the knowledge. Now you know you've spent essentially seven, eight weeks with the rest of the group, understanding you know your movement, understanding how exercise works, understanding how nutrition works, sort of understanding where your downfalls are, you know potentially things that threw you off, and then sort of plan on what the future and what the essentially the rest of the year looks like. And then we get will be final deployment, a final boss workout, reflection celebration. We'll bring sean in for that again in terms of the breathwork, and then we'll retest the stuff that we did from week three, so to see, okay, right, in the span of I guess six weeks, what have we done in terms of strength increase, endurance increase and sort of data markers around rest and heart rate, heart rate variability and what way things have increased over the past two months.
Speaker 2:Essentially, yeah, I really like that.
Speaker 2:I think it's a good structure for the program and I think, you know, eight weeks is a good timeframe to really kind of solidify and to start some of those good habits and start to get good feedback on what's working, what's not working, and adjust accordingly Right.
Speaker 2:You know, you know, usually it takes a few weeks for you know, once you start understanding calories and things like that, for the weight to kind of look at, you know either upward or downward or what that looks like and where your calories should be, at where your movement's, at what you're doing from a total daily energy expenditure perspective. All of those within an eight-week type of program, I think makes a lot of sense For me. There's a lot you can discover in eight weeks, but also most, I think most importantly, is starting to establish those habits and I like coming out of that with a plan for the rest of the year that you can, you know, really try to execute upon and see how successful you can be with it. Right, and really try to change your habits and lifestyles so that you can get the desired results that you want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the biggest thing is like a lot of people going into this don't know what they don't know. Do you know what I mean? So after eight weeks, you have a pretty solid understanding of okay, right, you may be super keen at the start and want to train six days a week, but the reality of your life may not allow you to train six days a week, so three days a week. How do we do that? Um, you'll understand and you know what way you navigate your calories throughout the week. Do you prefer to eat more calories at the weekend and how do you sort of spread your calories across the week?
Speaker 1:Um, you know how you navigate calories around social events and banking calories and all the buzzwords and things that you said there in terms of total dinner, the total daily energy expenditure. Like, educate you a little bit more around that because, again, many of the initial calls that I have with people are that there's just too much information out there. So the goal is like I'm going to give you the information on all this stuff as I see it and as I have done it for the past eight years in terms of coaching, and so you have an understanding of what these things actually fucking mean and how they, how they impact you, you, your goals and your journey a long time.
Speaker 2:So it'll be a bit of an education process as well what do you think some of the biggest challenges are going to be for people coming into this program like, uh, what's what's? First of all, I guess, what does setup look like? And then you know what do you think some of the biggest struggles you're going to see from from most of the folks in this ailey program?
Speaker 1:um, I think well, the setup's going to look like. There basically will be similar setup to what you have in terms of the. There's two weekly calls, so they will have their own weekly call. Um, you have to decide what day that's going to be, and they will also have access to the experts call on a Thursday, so I'll host one of those. Thomas hosted one last month, so I'll probably get him to host one a month as well. Sean hosts one in terms of the breathwork stuff and then Lorena hosts one in terms of mobility. Everybody will get a check-in, everybody will get their training plan, everybody will get their nutrition guidelines outlined.
Speaker 1:The goal with this is to be a little bit more aggressive in terms of the approach, because anybody who I coach and anybody who's heard me talk before like I like to sort of build something that's sustainable. I will teach you what is sustainable, but I also want to have a tangible result, result start to finish, and so I will be a little bit more aggressive in terms of pushing more, in terms of maybe more steps, maybe more cardio, maybe more sessions, maybe less calories, just so you have a tangible result, so you get to the end of the eight weeks and you feel much better that you go okay, right, I actually I actually can do this and this, this has actually worked, and biggest struggles will be probably just actually establishing the habits, um, and doing that in such a short space of time because, yes, it is eight weeks, but there are a lot of things to cover and that's why I sort of try to break it down week by week so that I'm not coming in week one and be okay, right, I need you to manage your food, I need you to do these steps and you do a check-in, I need you to be on two calls a week and you do all these things. It's sort of the puzzle for the majority of the people. So, yes, okay, week one will be nutrition. Understand that, but that's not going to be the last time that we speak about nutrition. I'm going to focus heavily on how people can build a system around food that accommodates their life essentially. Um, I know it's different for everybody. I know some people can just prep their food and they're good to go and they just bring it to work and there's no issues.
Speaker 1:I know some people have families taking the consideration and potentially fussy eaters or some sort of dietary requirements they need to, so they need to cook two or three different meals, or sort of. How can they navigate that as a family? Some people travel a lot for work. So how do they navigate travel with work? Um, you know, where should they eat? Like, what's the sort of go-to's with that? Um, some people who just are super sedentary in their life and they have to be at their computer, um, how we do sort of mobility techniques that you can do at your desk, like how do we sort of fit this into your life? So I don't want this. You know it's not going to be a a one-size-fits-all thing. It's like okay, right, what struggles are you going to have and how do we overcome that? And how do we build it? Same as I do with you guys, like, how do we build this out around you so you can do it long term, because I don't want anybody to get lost, is that okay, but I can't actually do that.
Speaker 2:So, falling into that and making sure that it's something that they sort of see that is sustainable for them long term yeah, I was talking to um, an individual, this last weekend and he's like you know, it's crazy, because my whole life I've been, you know, let's just say, at 170, you know, and then all of a sudden, you know, I hit my 30s and all of a sudden, now, you know, I'm 230, 240. And I was like, well, what changed? He's like, well, I'm in front of a computer all day long. That's one, you know. And two, you know, if you take into consideration being in front of a computer all day versus what I was doing before, you know I'm burning less calories. I'm still eating the same, if not more, and you know, I've gotten a little bit older with with things.
Speaker 2:So, you know, it's a lot of times just minor tweaks in what you're doing and, again, everybody's goals are different. You know I'm always here. You know I'm thinking about you know I've been listening to the podcast. You know, hey, I'm thinking about you know. You know I've been listening to the hecking hell podcast.
Speaker 2:I think I'm thinking about, uh, you know, joining, but I don't want to look like you and I'm like, no, no, that's totally cool, you know. Like, I totally understand, like you know. You know, and I appreciate that, by the way, but, um, but a lot of people don't want to get you know big, they just want to. You know, lean out, they want to. You know look, you know good in a shirt and you know feel good about themselves and you just live more of a, a, a natural type of of longevity type of thing. Right, and, and that's totally, totally fine. You know there's there's different ways of doing things and making minor tweaks and and that will gauge how hard you want to go into this, right, like you don't have to lift seven days a week, you know to to recommend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't recommend yeah, no, do not recommend, no, probably doing yourself more injustice than not, uh, unless you're doing it right, uh, but you know it's. It's one of those things where you know the your, your, things that you can change in your life, most specifically around eating, have huge, huge, huge, huge impacts on your overall lifestyle. I mean, just by cutting out, let's just say, regular sodas and switching to diet, just by looking at your total calorie intake and saying, well, hey, I don't really need to eat this thing. Or maybe putting an excessive amount of cheese on something which, although I do love cheese a lot, you know might be a little bit too much, you know. So you know being a little bit more restrictive, and you know what they've seen from the data studies is that caloric restriction in general is one of the only things that we have in our toolbox to increase our lifespan. That and exercise. There's an experimental drug called rapamycin which now is looking to be less promising based off of the data studies. Now there's some new data that came out that says, hey, it's probably not as good as we think it is. So you know, really, exercise and caloric restriction are the two main tools that we have to live longer, to live healthier, to live better.
Speaker 2:That show that increases our dopamine levels in our brains, makes us produce more energy, allows us to feel better about ourselves is, by the way, one of the largest proponents of less depression, anxiety, things to that effect as well.
Speaker 2:So there's Dr Rhonda Patrick just did a whole thing on SSRIs and depression and a lot of the data studies showed if you frequently and regular exercise, a lot of folks have been able to cut out their SSRIs and things like that because of the antidepressive effects that lifting has with you all, or just being more active in general.
Speaker 2:And so I think a lot of the things that you see today in society the high caloric foods, the heavily processed foods, the types of stuff we're putting into our bodies, plus the sedentary lifestyle is really causing a lot of havoc on not just our bodies but our brains and everything else and how we feel. And so just the minor changes around eating habits switching more towards whole foods and eating more nutrient-dense type of foods, your ability to actually track sleep and get some good sleep sleep is one of the best things that we can ever possibly do for our bodies. I'll tell you, my sleep over the past four months has been the best it's ever been in my entire life, like my, my heart rate variability scores, my sleep levels, like I'm getting like a 98 percent recovery score, you know, and stuff like that's you know our leaderboard for this course, that we have health sleep leaderboard, so we can get you going on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, dude, I'd be, I'd be, be, I'd be on top, I'd be on top. Trust me, like I think I got eight hours last night. You know, I'm just like, I'm chilling, it's great, um, you know, and uh, I still don't want to wake up in the morning, but it's still, it's still great. It's like a 98% sleep score. But uh, you know, a lot of folks think that oh hey, I have a low metabolism or things like that. What they've shown is that it's not really the case. People don't really have a low or high metabolism. In fact, most people that are heavier set have a higher metabolism because they have to burn more calories, because the amount of mass that they have in doing that is the problem is how many calories that we're actually eating throughout the day.
Speaker 2:So, you know, these minor changes that we can look at and having somebody that can actually take a look at what you're doing and what you might be able to improve on Again, whether it's just going out for a walk or just getting 30 minutes out there.
Speaker 2:There was a study that showed that if you, twice a day, sprinted up a flight of stairs would reduce your mortality rate by like 65%. It was like 0.55% or 0.65%, I can't remember the exact state, but it was huge. Just by sprinting up the steps twice, you know, like a day like that, that somebody can do that. Trust me. You know like little things can make big differences in how you outlook, and having somebody actually look at that I really like this program for, especially for that eight. Hey, this is where I'm at today, here's where I think I'm at today, by the way, and you start diving down into the data and you're like okay, well, I'm really here and here's what we can course correct to actually go and fix it, and here's the plan to actually adjust this, and I think that's really smart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's other things just you mentioned about sleep and stuff. There's other things need to get more sleep and blah blah, but the reality of it is like not that many people do the things that they need to do to do that. And I have lined up a like I've got health expert as well to talk about digestion, because I think that's a big, a big problem that people face as well. And just even talking about process, this morning. By the way, just don't work it. No, does that not solve the problem?
Speaker 2:problem is it hit me when I was right in the middle of working out yeah, still not got a bathroom built in the gym.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the. But things like that, you know, because it's often overlooked, like even you talking about the, you know processed foods, like what impact does that have on your digestion and how you start to overcome things like that. And you know I'm not going to make it mandatory, but I will recommend that the start of already gets a blood work done as well and we can have someone potentially come in and look at bloods to see okay, right, you know, even from a supplements perspective, what should we start to take and base it on actual blood work. So there's plenty of other things that we can do within that. So I'm looking forward to to seeing what we can do with it it's funny.
Speaker 2:I um saw, uh. They asked eddie hall, one of the strongest men alive. I think he is the strongest man alive, uh he was definitely at some at some point, yeah yeah, yeah, he's insanely strong, just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:But they're asking, like, you know what supplements you recommend people? Just, the question is something you can tell you. I was like I roll because they're like, you know, um, supplements don't really make a huge difference, but you know the that he, he, he said are the ones that you know we preach here the most is like hey, you know, whey protein, you know, or some sort of protein supplementation so you can get enough protein throughout the day. Um, if, if, you can't get enough protein through, you know eating naturally and I supplement with whey protein. Uh, hacking your health. Whey protein, by the way, uh, shout out, but, um, you know. And then you know BCAs or EA, so branching amino acids or essential amino acids, which are the byproducts of what you're buying to digest, you know supplementing those. You know, especially like, in, like a. I usually take my BCAs and EAs, uh, in my workout mix, so I usually just put water BCAs and I put creatine. Creatine is one of those like amazing supplements.
Speaker 2:I actually just got asked a question this weekend on whether or not creatine was safe for children. You know, younger, younger, teens, I should say. And you know the recommended is, you know, 18 and over. However, it looks to be pretty safe. I mean, it looks to be extremely safe for anybody you know at least 15, you know, and even probably younger than that.
Speaker 2:To be perfectly honest with you, creatine is one of the most studied supplements and the first thing you always hear is well, I hear it impacts your kidneys, and that's such a big misnomer. It does not impact your kidneys. What happens is your creatine levels go up, obviously because you're taking creatine, and creatine is used as a measurement of how well your kidney is filtering creatine and then bun levels, or how well your kidney is actually functioning and filtering. The problem is, if you take creatine, it's going to impact your creatine levels, which then skews the blood work results to make it look like, hey, maybe I'm having kidney issues.
Speaker 2:The National Kidney Disease Association has come out and said creatine has no impact to kidney health. There's thousands of data studies that have looked at this. What creatine does is it helps not only the recovery of your muscles and growth of muscles, so you actually increase muscle mass by taking creatine. It's one of the safest things for for increasing more muscle mass and recovery, because it shoots water into your muscles and so you might notice a little bit of bloating of the muscles and things like that, which is actually a good thing, by the way, like it's not the, the skin water weight, you know if I'm talking about. You know, like the, the kind of like full look that you get water into the muscle.
Speaker 1:So even I remember a couple of times, yeah, but I remember a couple of times people asking you know coming up to shoot prep, whenever you're trying to be as lean as possible and trying to get rid of as much water, do you get rid of creatine? But it doesn't. It doesn't hold it in between the skin or in the fat cells, it holds it in the muscles. You actually want more of that, so you do look for that. It's good you should do. I don't know if it's a bit much for people, but I think we should do a full episode on creatine, because even just the like hypoxia walks and what it actually is, because it you know a lot of people. We talk about it. So I think we should do that, and at some point in the future when they think it's just for for muscles too.
Speaker 2:It's also. You know, your brain is one of your largest muscles that you have. It also helps with muscle um sorry, brain development. So from a kid's perspective, it's amazing for brain development and brain health. There's so many different benefits from that, but you gotta be consistent with it. But anyways, the supplement side is interesting because it's just the basic stuff that makes a big difference.
Speaker 2:And I always get asked about things like hey, I don't wanna ever touch steroids, but what do you think about SARMs and things like that? And I've seen a lot of the research on SARMs. It was supposed to be like the most promising new thing because it would hit, you know, selectively, the muscles that you want without the byproducts of steroids, but it turns out it's not. You know, like most of the data studies show that SARMs aren't, you know, as effective. Nor, and then they probably already you know they probably carry the same level of risk as those other things. So you know it's like you know you gotta be careful on the stuff you take and what you look at. But most importantly, like you need to have a foundation, you need to do the basics, you need to do all of the right things first and then look at possibly supplementing.
Speaker 2:You know, down the road, when you have a good you know level of things, but I'll say you know like a solid foundation is hitting your protein goals. So whey protein or plant-based protein whatever you can do to get the protein in is one of those foundational things I'd highly recommend. And, if you wanted to get crazy with that, some EAs and BCAs and creatine. That's about all you really need. I'd also say omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D those types of things could be really beneficial. But again, you're probably getting a lot of that. You probably have enough of that already, you know. But again, you're probably getting a lot of that. You're probably have you know enough of that already. Um, maybe not vitamin D, but you know. Everything else is just, you know, looking at your blood work, looking at what you're doing, making sure you have good habits and then from there, kind of building on that.
Speaker 1:For sure. So that will be what we're going to look at in the first eight to 10 weeks of the new year, which I'm looking forward to so it will be.
Speaker 1:I'll put the link live today, um, which will be live for tomorrow when I release this podcast. I'm going to do a black friday offer on that as well. It will be live until, I guess, midnight, on whatever date. Next monday is, um, it'll be a hundred dollars off for anybody who joins within this week and we can get going on that, which I'm looking forward to. But I'll keep everybody posted over the next couple of podcast episodes as well. So what's actually going going on and sort of as I build out the program a little bit more, sort of keep everybody in the loop as to what they can get involved in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm excited about the new launch man. It's a, it's great. I think it's a an awesome thing for folks to really kind of test the waters and see you know what where they're. They need to be doing better and this is, I think, good for both people that are just starting, but also folks that may be in a certain wall or have hit a plateau that need a little bit of a push to the next level. So it's not just always the basics, it's also folks that maybe have gotten to where they possibly can and they need a little bit of help moving different areas. So I'm really excited about where this is going.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, and even towards the end of the year it can become a bit of a shit show with everything going on. So maybe just a bit of a reset at the start of the year. So hopefully it'll tick all the boxes. As I said, I'll keep everybody posted, but I guess thanks for listening. Um, I hope everybody has a fucking awesome Thanksgiving. Um.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it If you cranberry sauce that comes from the can that's the only cranberry sauce that you're allowed to have like homemade cranberry sauce is garbage if there's stuff that comes out that doesn't have like the ripples in it that it's like a little jelly thing. You gotta see the you gotta see the ripples in the can. That's when you know it's good cranberry sauce.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the best, that's the only kind of cranberry sauce that is is acceptable at the dinner table. Anything else gets thrown away in a pile of junk and burned in flames. So just an FYI.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. See you next week.