 The idea here, when we talk about managing stress, we talk about meditation stillness, is you're training yourself to learn to reframe these things that end up being like chronic stress for people in their life. If you train yourself to do that, it becomes easier and easier to be able to do that real time. You are listening to the number one fitness health entertainment podcast. This is mind pump. Now in today's episode, we covered the golden rules for health and fitness. So what we did is we narrowed everything down to the eight most important things to focus on to optimize your health and your fitness. If you don't have these things, everything else almost doesn't matter. So we talk about not overeating. We talk about eating mostly whole foods, drinking water, how to move every day, talk about lifting heavy things. That's important. Good sleep, how to manage stress, and of course how to be a good friend and have good relationships. Listen to the episode for details on how to accomplish all this and how we've done this with ourselves and also with our clients. Remember, we were trainers for over two decades. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor PRX Performance. They make some of the best workout equipment you'll find anywhere for your home. They're the inventors of the original and best fold out squat rack. This is something that takes up very little space on your wall. You fold it out from your wall, put it in front of you. Now you have a very stable commercial grade squat rack, but they have much, much more. Now because you listen to Mind Pump, you actually get a discount of 5% off all of their products. And gyms are closed right now. A lot of people are buying home equipment. PRX is full of stuff. They've got everything. Go check them out. Go to prxperformance.com forward slash Mind Pump and then use the code Mind Pump for 5% off. 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That's M-A-P-S December.com. So I think we should talk about just the most important rules of health and fitness. And we talk a lot about other topics, specific lifts, best ways to get lean and build muscle and stuff like that. But there are foundational rules that you want to focus on that will give you five golden rules. There's eight, actually. Eight golden rules. But it gives you that will cover most things. You know what I'm saying? I'll start with the first one. And this one, you know, when I first became a trainer, I focused a lot more on specifics and I didn't focus so much on the generals. And I think the general aspects of these rules are what make them so important because they're very important rules. I like we're going here too right now. We recently just had, you responded to somebody I think on Instagram or a forum or someone that was like critiquing one of the programs, right? Because it didn't have RPE in there and it didn't have percentages of weight and this and that. And you know, it's always interesting to me when we get something like that. It's always somebody I probably who hasn't listened to the show very much. And I think the guy admitted that, right? Like I think he didn't listen to the show at all really. He just happened to buy a program and was asking questions and critiquing. And, you know, when we wrote these things and we created the content that we create, we always were keeping in mind the clientele that we train, the majority. I mean, it was how often did you have an athlete or somebody that was actually breaking down their percentage of their body weight ratio to what they were lifting and doing? Very rare. Yeah, very, very rare. And in fact, we were talking about less than probably, you know, 5% of the clientele that we train. So most people, it was about creating good behaviors and good habits and changing their lifestyle more than it was about macros and micros and then breaking down like really advanced programming, right? Because you can get lost a lot of times in the nuance of all these things. And I think that even as long as we've been doing this and trying to relay information about health and fitness, it starts to feel like maybe we're not giving them enough real specific content. But really what makes the most difference are these major behavioral changes. And that's where we should always start. Well, it is. And we worked a lot with the average person, general population. Like if you look at the average person in America, right, we are suffering from an epidemic of obesity and diabetes and chronic disease. A lot of our problems now are the results of our lifestyle, a lot of our health problems. Western medicine doesn't treat chronic health issues very well. Do great with acute issues. You have an infection, you take a medication, you break a bone or you need an operation. It's phenomenal. But when we're dealing with illnesses due to obesity, right? Illnesses and due to poor eating habits or sleep or whatever, Western medicine doesn't have lots of approaches. What we're talking about are lifestyle changes. And this is the stuff that we worked with most people. And I want to talk about the most important stuff. The stuff that really handles most of the issue. For example, I'll start. The first thing is don't overeat. Now, let me explain why that's so important. Okay. So I'm sure if you're listening, especially if you're a new listener, I'm sure you've heard, you know, people say, oh, sugar is really bad for you. Or certain fats are really bad for you in the past that was saturated fat or processed foods are really bad for you. You know, don't eat this, don't eat that. These are really bad for you. But here's an interesting thing. When you are not overeating, the damage a lot of these things do is dramatically dramatically reduced. In fact, there are studies with people who eat what we would consider unhealthy food. And I'm not saying that this is the way you should go. But I'm just trying to highlight how important it is just to not overeat. They've done studies with people who will eat foods that we don't generally think are healthy, but because the amount and calories are low, their cholesterol, you know, numbers and lipid profile improves, they lose weight, insulin sensitivity improves, and markers of longevity tend to get better. So it's really, you know, overeating is the worst thing. In fact, if you chronically overeat healthy food, you can cause yourself problems. So overeating is the big one. So it's the really, really, really big one. So I think we should talk about how to help yourself or prevent yourself from overeating. Now, one of the first things that I like to talk to clients about is to kind of change your relationship with how you should feel at the end of a meal. Now, the way I was raised, you know, my parents are Italian immigrants, and we tend to eat until we can't breathe. You know, and the question that gets asked around the dinner table, especially for Sunday dinner at my mom's house is, do you have room for more? It's like, how much more can you fit in your mouth? And so I learned this kind of eating behavior where I didn't feel done until I couldn't eat anymore. Where do you think this comes from? Do you think this comes from like the Great Depression and like not having food? And like, because it was so scarce at one point for our parents' generation? Yeah, that was the big issue back then. I mean, it really was scarce. And that was always a concern was maybe someday we'll wake up and we're not going to have the amount of food, they're just living off beans or living off, you know, potatoes, whatever it was, that's sort of that's a real concern. And so I think that just generations after that, you know, that was just passed down. And because I got that to growing up was like making sure your plate was completely clean, like we didn't leave any food left over. You know, you always tried to stuff it in while you had it. And while it was plentiful, I never noticed it as much as I notice it now having a one year old, right? So because I see, and even Katrina and I, we've had this discussion, like, you know, she'll be like, we'll be sitting down and we'll be feeding Max and you know, he has portion sizes that we typically feed him and when he's eating really good, he finished all of it. But sometimes when his teeth hurt, or he's not been that active that day, he doesn't eat as much. And I'm constantly reminding her that listen, he'll eat if he's hungry. Like if he doesn't want any more food, like we don't have to force him, like we were not, he's not, the doctor's fine. He says he's fine. He's not losing weight every time we check in. He's gaining weight in a healthy manner. And he's got a great body weight right now. So, you know, if he's not hungry, he's not hungry. I bet you if he doesn't eat very much this meal, the next time we feed him, he's gonna want more food. And so it's, it is, I think it's ingrained in our culture so much that we start to teach it to the kids so early that it just becomes a habit as they become into adulthood. I mean, I mean, again, speaking for myself, I didn't feel like I was finished with the meal until I felt stuffed. Like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm done now with breakfast because I'm stuffed. I can't eat anymore. I'm done with lunch because I'm stuffed for dinner. But really, here's a better alternative. Alternative is eating until you're satisfied, not until you're stuffed. Now, this is very, very different. It's very different. In fact, if you eat until you're satisfied, you'll probably end up eating about 70% or 80% of what you normally would eat. It's a different feeling, right? I'm gonna eat and then do I feel satisfied? I think I'm okay now. But you have to change that relationship with that feeling of feeling, you know, that feeling of stuffed, that feeling of I can't eat anymore. Like if you, if that stops becoming something that you think is positive and you think I'm gonna eat until I'm just satisfied, you'll find that you stop overeating. Now, do you guys have specific strategies that you guys would do either with yourself or with your clients to get someone to this? Because that's just so you know, we say that, you know, so easily, but it's not that easy. It's not an easy thing for people to get the difference of, oh, am I satisfied right now? Am I am I full of my stuff? Yeah, that takes that takes some practice to get an understanding with that feeling. You really have to work on your relationship. Are there things that you guys would do with clients? Well, because like proteins and fats are very satiating, I tend to want to start with that food first. And that's something that I had my clients start to kind of gear their meals around, you know, trying to consume that first, and then, you know, the excess and, you know, it's just one of those natural things. Like when you're when you're satisfied, you know, you don't feel like the need to keep consuming and keep keep going in a sense. So that's one strategy that that I found was effective. Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's about becoming a little bit more aware and slowing down helps you do that. What you'll notice is when you eat until you're stuffed, you tend to eat very quickly. And so I would tell clients, like here's a great tip, I would say, don't drink anything while you're eating. And the reason why I said that was because it forces you to really chew your food, which forces you to slow down. And slowing you down gives you the opportunity doesn't guarantee it, but it does give you the opportunity to recognize that you're satisfied eating fast, you're past satisfied and get to stuffed before even realize that you're satisfied. Well, this is where and this is where we're a little bit different, right? Like, and that's why I wanted to talk a little bit more length with like strategies. I found with clients, this is where the meal prepping, weighing and measuring thing really helped. Like, and I know we've debunked, you know, eating small meals throughout the day is does not speed up your metabolism. There's it's not better. It's not going to make you burn any more fat by doing that. But what I did like was that it portioned out meals, it forced them to prepare them way and figure out like, Oh, this is what a 450 calorie meal looks like. And this is what it looks like over four or five meals in the day. This is what it feels like when I eat those 450 calories, like how my body feels afterwards. So with every client, this was why I like to start them there is to get them to at least feel that and understand like what a 450 calorie meal should feel like and what you feel like afterwards. And the thing that was common with all of them is when they would finish it, they would end up and they're done, like you finish whatever in your Tupperware. Once you're done with that Tupperware, you're done with your meal. There's your 450 calories. If any sort of hunger that they had leading into that meal was completely gone. And what they realized was that, you know, that feeling of being satisfied, it really didn't take very much food to fill that satisfied. And I think most people are so distracted when they eat that they go beyond that satisfied feeling and they over stuff. Totally. There's this saying in Okinawa, and I was couldn't remember what it was or where it came from, but I pulled it up. And the saying is Harahachi Bu, which means eat until you're 80% full. This is kind of part of their culture. Okinawa is also known for having some of the best longevity in health. And if you think about it that way, it's like, and it does require awareness, but ask yourself this while you're eating. While you're eating, have you reached, because you're probably familiar with what it feels like to be full, ask yourself, have I reached 80% of that and then stop? Yeah, it's interesting to me, like most of those studies that they do even on animals, like they find that the ones they calorie restrict versus the one that they, you know, overeat tend to live quite a substantial amount longer. Well, I just, this happened last night, right? Literally. So I'm, because I'm back kind of on my kick right now. And I still check in with myself like this, even all the years of doing this, all the foods that I've weighed and measured. And I think there, and I know there's a study cell around this, maybe you will remember. But I know there is just tracking and measuring your food, what that results in weight loss, just making people aware. So like last night, so last night I finished dinner, I still had room for calories in the day. And I was hungry. And Katrina had just bought this, I love this dark chocolate granola thing that she gets. It's so good and a little bit of almond milk in it or whatever, like that's almost like a bowl of cereal. But it's granola. So I went down and, you know, my first initial thing I would do is just pour it in a bowl and make a bowl of like cereal basically out of it. But I was like, you know what, let me measure this because I don't want to over consume. And I poured it in, you know, a measuring cup and measured two cups, two cups to 600 calories without the almond milk. That didn't even fill my little small cereal bowl up to halfway. Made you really aware of it? Yes. And that just knowing that was enough for me to not overdo that. And I was totally fine. I ate the 600 calories worth it. But I would have filled the whole bowl up or at least three quarters of it up in the past and just crushed it if I'm not really tracking or paying attention. So just by simply tracking and being aware of, oh, wow, that's 600 calories right there. I'm good. I can have that. And then after I ate it, I was satisfied and I was fine. Right. Another thing you could do is set side time to eat. So rather than sitting in front of the TV to eat or on your phone or while you're working, you actually sit down at a table and you eat your meal and you take your time. And that slowing down process does help bring awareness. Now, the second rule kind of helps with the first rule. And this is a big rule today, especially in modern societies. And that rule is to eat mostly whole foods. Now, why is that important? There's a couple of reasons why. Number one, processed foods. So when I say whole foods, I mean foods that are basically one ingredient, right? It's like steak is steak. Eggs are eggs. Milk is milk. Processed foods tend to come in boxes or wrappers. They tend to be frozen. They have long shelf lives. Whole foods, number one, tend to be more nutritious. They tend to be healthier. Not always, but they tend to be. The second reason is the most important. Processed foods are designed to make you overeat. Okay. And they do a damn good job of doing that. And I love using this example. I'll do it again. For people who've listened to the podcast for a while, I've said this at least 15 times, but it's my favorite example. But a bag of Lay's potato chips, a regular, large bag of Lay's potato chips has like five or six potatoes in that bag of chips. Now, if I boiled five or six potatoes plain and put them in front of you and said, eat them all, be very difficult. After like one or two, for most people, you'd be, you'd hit palate fatigue and you wouldn't be able to keep eating. But if I gave you that bag of chips, especially if I put you in front of the TV or a movie, most of us could eat that whole bag of potato chips. Here's the irony. That bag of potato chips has added oil on top of it. It's even more calories than the plain potatoes. And yet you eat more of it because it was designed to be hyper palatable. Heavily processed foods do this, eating mostly whole foods automatically. And I'm not just saying this. There are now several studies that show this automatically reduces people's caloric intake by like 500 calories a day. We've talked many times on this podcast that early on in our career, we made this mistake of when I'd write a diet, I'd calculate the person's weight out, their goals, and ask them what foods they do like, they don't like. And then I'd write this generic plan, follow this to a T. Towards the end of my career, it changed completely. We would look at their diet and I would ask them how they eat currently right now. And I would just look at some major vendors. It's almost always processed food, fast food that they're getting or sodas that they're drinking. And I wouldn't radically change everything. I would just slowly start to add whole foods in there and replace of those processed foods that they're eating. And it would just it would naturally get them to lose weight. And then they don't feel like they're restricting. That's what I love about like teaching people to go in the direction of whole foods is that if I if I just tell you to do that, I know what will happen from that. And there's there's a psychological part that is playing in your favor as a trainer that, oh, the client doesn't feel like you're saying no, I can't have because if you do the you have to follow this, you can't have this, you play that I can I can't have thing. And that always ends up leading to binging later on. Yeah, I mean, okay, that's and that's exactly what the studies show. They've actually done these studies where and they're crossover studies, right? So they'll take groups of people they're controlled. They're like in a lab. And then they say, and then they actually control the macros. So both sides have similar proteins, fats and carbs and the foods that they're eating. The only difference is one side is all processed food. The other side is whole natural foods. And then they say, eat as much as you want. And then they follow they watch the people for a while. And then they, you know, the researchers count the calories and the proteins and the fats and carbs. Then what they do is they switch the groups and say, okay, now you guys eating the whole natural foods, you're going to be in this room with processed foods and you who are eating processed foods are going to be in the whole natural group or room. And it's about five to 600 calories with a difference. It literally, here's the deal. When food manufacturers are making processed food, the number one priority with these manufacturers, most of the research and development goes into making this food as palatable and addictive as possible. Okay, because that's what sells food. That's what we end up buying a lot of consume it and they want you to consume it quickly. I mean, it kind of goes back a little bit to your point about eating slow. The digestive process, it benefits from fibers, it benefits from a lot of these things nature already gives us when the food is balanced. And it's already, you know, coming from real natural, you know, food choices to where your stomach is going to have to work through and get to the nutrients and digest all of it versus like a simple sugar or something you're just going to consume at a rapid pace and you're looking for the next fix. Actually, in those same studies, they found that when people ate processed foods, they ate something like 30% faster on top of it. So really it enforces this or encourages this kind of binge speed overeat. And that's just society in general. I mean, we're just drawn towards like quicker, faster options and we just need to kind of pull the reins back. Well, and I like that we that we've titled this golden rule here as as eat mostly whole foods. The reality that we live in the real world, right? I mean, we both of our all of us would be lying if we said that we don't have processed. In fact, there's processed food that probably makes its way into each of our diets every single day. We're around it that much. But the idea is that you are always pursuing. It's the same thing that we talk about with supplements, right? Like I'm pursuing to get all my nutrients from whole natural foods. The reality is I know there's times that I have to supplement that same thing goes for eating whole foods. I'm always trying to target getting whole foods. The reality is I know that there are some times that we're going to utilize process. Yeah. In fact, if you look at the obesity epidemic, it's really when processed foods became a big part of our diets. The average American consumes 70 to 80% of their food is processed food. It really should be the reverse. 70 to 80% or I like to do 90% of your food should be whole natural foods. And then, you know, 20% or 10% should be from processed foods. If you do it that way, here's what happens. You naturally eat less. Like we said in the first rule, which was don't overeat, because I'll tell you what, you can definitely track things and eat mostly processed foods and not overeat and get some health benefits. But it's a lot harder. You know, if I eat processed foods and I'm not overeating, I tend to want to eat more and it becomes a struggle every single day. I want more food. I want more food. I'm craving more food. But if I avoid processed foods, I don't necessarily feel like I'm under eating. In fact, when I eat whole natural foods, again, my calories drop quite naturally. Now, the third one, Adam, you mentioned earlier about sodas. You've talked about that being one of the processed food thing. The third rule is just drink water. This is a big one. It sounds silly, but it's a huge one. You know, I remember getting blown away by when I would have clients track their food and show me what they're eating, and then I'd always make sure to tell them, make sure you put in everything that you drink. It was hundreds of calories a day in beverages, which, you know, I'll tell you what, 500 calories worth of food requires some work to eat and some time 500 calories or drink. I mean, that's gone in five seconds out. And I don't even feel like I ate anything. It's such a big, easy thing to change out, to cut calories. Just drink water makes a huge difference. Yeah. And it's interesting. This was a game changer, just pointing that out with a lot of clients is why don't you just focus on just drinking water and not anything else that's going to give you any kind of flavor? I know a lot of times it's actually really hard and challenging for people to not just seek flavor. Everything we have available to us is always selling us on the flavor of it and the experience of it being this like flavor explosion in your mouth. And everybody always highlights that because it's definitely, I mean, it's like a reward your body's getting from a lot of these flavors. But to focus more on just being hydrated and feel like you don't have fatigue and all these benefits of being hydrated is going to make a massive dent. You guys ever get clients that tell you that water is boring? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I don't like the taste of water. I got that all the time. Yeah, if you're listening and this is you, if you don't like the taste of water, you've actually, because remember, water is essential for life. So if you don't like the taste of water. That's like saying sleep is boring. Right. Exactly. I don't like sleeping, it's boring. You've actually trained yourself to the point where you need to have like Justin was saying earlier, flavor all the time. By the way, artificially sweetened zero calorie beverages also remove those because those encourage you to overeat. Water doesn't do that. In fact, water does the opposite. If you are well hydrated, you'll find that you're actually eating less. If you drink a lot of flavored beverages, including zero calorie artificially flavored beverages, you'll find that you overeat. Well, I told you that that was one of the things that got me to kick the Diet Cokes, right? So I thought it was really interesting. It was this was, I don't know, a while back when we were talking about this. And you brought up, you know, what I'll just do is I have a regular Coke and then I just account for the calories and because you account for the calories, you drink less of it, right? Where because I knew if I allowed Diet Coke, what I would happen, what I'd notice is this like so like I haven't had one in a long time. But let's say I decided to have one today. I'd have one today, and then another two days will go by, then I'd probably have another one. And so now I've got a week where I've had two of them, then I have a week where I have three of them, then I'd have a week where I had them every day. And then before you know it, I'd have two in a day. And real quickly, I found myself craving more and more and real quickly, I found myself justifying have another one because it's zero calories, where like I switched over to drinking things like the Hanson or the Oli Pop, which have calories in it. And I'm like, okay, if I want to bubbly beverage that tastes good, I'm going to have one of these things, but I'm going to have it with the calories. By doing that, I actually limit myself better than having that natural barrier of calories. That's a good strategy. But for the most people, don't drink any of your calories. It's silly. Eating calories is way more fun. Go with the food and not the beverage and remain very hydrated. By the way, if here's something, okay, for people, and I used to use this as a strategy quite a bit for people who are really, really hated water, and you run into this quite a bit, I would have them switch to carbonated water. Carbonated water is not a bad transition. It was easier to get people, some people to drink more water, if it was, you know, San Pellegrino or Topo Chico. Well, especially if they're prone to drinking a lot of sodas. Yes, yes. It was just easier for them. And by the way, you'd be surprised. You start drinking, you know, half a gallon to a gallon of water every day and no other beverages. You'd be surprised at how your skin looks, your inflammation goes down, your digestion improves if you're sleep. Oftentimes, if you're constipated often, it's because you're not hydrated. A lot of people don't realize that. I also have found clients losing weight from this. And it took me until I competed to really piece this all together. And what I found was, so when I, I'd get a client, I'd find out they're not drinking very much water. And, you know, they, I would recommend anywhere from a half a gallon to a gallon, which would be a lot for some people. And they'd tell me, Oh my God, Adam, all day, I find myself drinking water and peeing, drinking water and peeing, drinking water. That's all I feel like I'm doing all day long. And it would result in this weight loss. It didn't really connect completely for me or all the way lying until I started competing and having to push, you know, gallons of water every day. What I found was when I, when I was in a, in a calorie deficit and hungry, keeping my mouth busy, drinking and then the amount that I'd have to go pee and get up and go walk and pee, just the extra movement from that and keeping my, my mouth busy with drinking water kept me from wanting to eat or doing anything else. As a result of that, I was able to lean out. I've found this same strategy with clients that don't drink a lot of water, just simply telling, and again, not telling them you can't have any of these other things and saying, Hey, I need you to get a half gallon or I need you to get a gallon of water every single day. And because they're so focused on that, it distracts them from you drinking all these other things. And, you know, eliminates a lot of the achiness in a lot of these like signals after the workouts, we get a lot of achy feeling. And being hydrated a lot of times eliminated that for some of my clients as well as the fatigue. Yeah. Well, one sign of not having enough water is also hunger. So sometimes you feel like I want to eat something, drink some water, wait 15 minutes, not hungry anymore. That's how I felt like competing. Like, I mean, you're always, you're, you are eating in a competitive level, you're hungry all the time. And a lot of times what would would curb that for me is just simply just pounding a glass of water. And that would make it feel good, make me feel better until I get to the next meal. Totally. Now the next one is extremely important. This one's not diet related. And that is to move every single day. Now, I know we get recommended to exercise every single day, which fine, that actually falls into this category. You know, have your schedule scheduled 35, 45 minute bout of scheduled activity and exercise. But I have a better option. Because that one tends to be more difficult to maintain for a lot of people, especially if you are busy, but sedentary, carving off 45 minutes every single day to, you know, to walk or hike or ride a bike or swim or whatever again in a treadmill, that can be a little bit difficult or challenging. Instead, here's a strategy that I found for clients. I'll tell them, walk 10 to 15 minutes after breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now let me tell you why this works so well. First off, it sounds very manageable. 10, 15 minutes at a time, quite easy. Number two, I've attached activity to something that they already do. It's not a mess. It doesn't feel like a new thing. Like carving off 45 minutes to exercise feels like a new thing. If I say walk 10 minutes or 15 minutes after breakfast, lunch and dinner, well, I already breakfast, I already lunch, I already dinner. So I'll just get up and walk around for a little bit, walk around the block a few times or whatever. Makes a huge difference and people are far more likely to stay consistent when they do something like this. But it's very important that you move every single day now much more than ever, mainly because, like I said earlier, we're just so sedentary, even though we're very busy. We wake up in the morning, we eat breakfast, get in the car, we sit in the car, drive to work. Nowadays, even with, you know, with lockdowns and stuff, people didn't even do that. They didn't walk to the car, they just get up and sit at their desk. But let's say you do, you drive in your car, but you're sitting there, you get to your office, sitting at your desk, doing that for eight hours, get back in your car, drive home, what do you do? Sit back down, eat dinner, sit back down on the couch. The average person walks grand total if they're not scheduling activity. Under 4,000 steps. Under 4, what is that, like a half a mile a day? Yeah. The body wasn't designed to do that. It's not even a full hour of activity, all day long. It's what the average person is moving right now. This is my favorite rule of all the rules because I think that it's one of the simplest to implement and be consistent with it if you make an effort to do the things that you're saying right now. That was something later on that became, in fact, it didn't become a habit until I was with Katrina. Katrina and I started to do this anytime that we would go out to eat. That was just kind of how it started. It started as a rule not at home, but as if we were to go out. If we're going to go out and go have a nice sushi dinner or go out and have a steak dinner or whatever, as soon as we got out of the restaurant, we wouldn't just go walk back to our cars. We would go walk for 30 minutes and take a walk up and down the strip or wherever we're at. I really attribute a lot of our weight management or keeping us healthy to that. The other thing that I started to notice when we started to create that as a habit was this was also one of the best and few times in our day when we were completely present with each other and non-distracted. I know this is about health and fitness and we're talking about more weight loss, weight gain type shit, but we talk how important that it is for your overall health to manage your relationships and being present. To me, that was a side effect that I wasn't anticipating for this. I was doing it originally for the calorie burn. I'm going to move because I need to move. I need to burn the calories. I ate a bunch of calories. Let's move. What I found is a cool side effect was this was really nice. Here I have this half hour, hour walk with my partner and we would not have our cell phones on us. We wouldn't have any distractions around us and we were just enjoying the day and having great conversation. That is what actually led it to being a lifelong habit of ours. It started off as a calorie burn, stay-in-shape thing and it turned into, wow, this is one of my favorite times with my partner because it's one of the few times that I don't have a television around, I don't have a computer around, I don't have a phone around and it's just her and I walking out in nature, connecting with each other and having great conversation. Yeah, two of my favorite sayings. One is movement is medicine and the other one was like movement creates momentum. Both of these things ring very true to me and it's just something why I really focused a lot of the initial bit of when I would talk to a client that was potentially going to work with me. This was one of those things that you just want to figure this out, like how much movement are you capable of doing throughout your day? How can we implement strategies to make this and I think the ritual thing is probably the most effective way to accomplish that first bit of introduction to making that a priority in your lifestyle but then we want to build on that momentum and we want to keep that going and challenge the body because muscles benefit from it, your entire system benefits from it, digestive system, muscular skeletal system, everything your body is comprised of benefits from movement. Yeah, well one thing I used to laugh at when I was an early trainer I thought that was silly is I would hear people say, oh, I park my car further in the parking lot or I took the stairs instead of the elevator, I'm like, oh, that's so silly, that's barely any activity. Here's the truth, that stuff makes a big difference over time. If you do it every single day, if every single day you take, if instead of taking the elevator up three to the third floor you take the stairs, if every single day instead of using the bathroom that's next to the office that you're working, you use a bathroom that's on another floor, if every single day you park all the way on the other side of the parking lot and you just do that every single day, tremendous long-term health benefits and forget the calorie burn because we're going to get to the next rule which really helps with that. Forget the calorie burn aspect, it's just good for your health, it's good for insulin sensitivity, it's good for movement and circulation. Regardless of the amount of calories that you burn, our bodies were meant to move most of the time. In fact, sitting all day long is worse for your health than smoking. I was going to bring up just simply starting at the fact of sitting less, just standing and whether you have the ability to get a standing desk, if that's going to be your situation, you should really look into these things because you want to really promote a healthy body because it elevates your mood, it just promotes all this benefit to you for every aspect of your life. Well, you also just have to be aware where we're moving right now with tech. Look at what we've seen in just the last two decades with things like Uber and DoorDash and I mean, we're moving less and less and less and that stinks up on it. All those things are great too, so that's not me harping on that. It's just that you have to be aware of that. You have to be aware that everything is becoming so convenient, right? Amazon, delivered to our door. I mean, here sounds stupid, but part of me in the 10 years ago, being able to get away with more food around Thanksgiving was shopping, having to go to the mall and drive and walk. I don't do any of that anymore, so you have to think about that stuff. Like you eliminate that, that's a bunch of movement that you used to do. You just deleted that. Yeah, so you have to be able to adjust either one, create movement in other places, or you have to adjust color-wise. Otherwise, the weight just piles on and that just adds up over time. Right, but again, regardless of the calorie burn, movement on its own is beneficial and really the key here is to inject it into your daily life. We're not necessarily talking about scheduled, structured workouts, but that does lead us to the next one, which is lift heavy things every once in a while. Now, here's the wonderful thing about resistance training. A resistance training covers, of course, traditional weightlifting, using machines, body weight training, resistance bands, suspension trainers. That's all resistance training. The beautiful thing about resistance training is we're going to get into its benefits, right? But one of the beautiful things about it is you don't have to do it all the time. In fact, for most people, one or two days a week of a good resistance training program will give you a lot of the incredible health benefits of resistance training. Now, you may not maximize muscle development and super sculpt your body and that kind of stuff, but in terms of the health benefits, right, in terms of the metabolism-boosting effects that resistance training offers, one or two days a week for most people can make a pretty big impact. And that's really the big benefit from a health perspective of resistance training. Besides keeping your body mobile and strong, which is resistance training does phenomenally, it actually maintains a fast metabolism. Now, why is that important? Well, we're surrounded by food and we don't move much, so we're not burning a lot of calories because we don't move much and there's a lot of calories that we eat because food is easy and it's delicious. An amazing buffer against that, a great insurance policy against that, is just to have a faster metabolism. Resistance training is the only form of exercise that reliably speeds up your metabolism. In fact, other forms of exercise may actually do the opposite and make you more of an efficient calorie burner. Not resistance training, it speeds it up. So you're literally, if you lift weights once or twice a week and you do it in a good way with good exercise programming, you could be burning 300 more calories a day doing what you normally do. You're not moving more, you're not exercising more, you're doing that resistance training workout every once in a while, but now you're just 300 calories more a day because you have a faster metabolism. Now, how have you guys implemented this into your own lifestyle? Now, I know, Sal, you rarely miss a workout. I think probably Justin, myself, and maybe even Doug are the ones that probably have moments where we're less consistent. How do you use this philosophy into your own lifestyle? Do you guys do things different today than what you did in your 20s, like when you think about strength training and lifting compared to what you did when you were 22 years old? Yeah, I'm just more conscious that I seek it out. I'm always thinking about where I can come home from work and how I can add resistance training into my lifestyle because I know the benefit of providing the strength, but also just keeping my body able and keeping my joints healthy and making sure that everything is working properly. I want to maintain that. I want to have all the abilities that I have now going forward. I just find ways during the week now, I don't put so much pressure on a long period of time of working out. I get it more in smaller windows, but I build upon that. If I've missed a few days or whatnot, I don't punish myself in one session like I used to for a longer period of time with more intensity. I'm very much more methodical about building that momentum back up with smaller workouts. That's the thing I would say I'm most different about in my late 30s than what I was in my early 20s. In my early 20s, it was kind of an all-or-nothing attitude. Also, like if the workout's not perfect. You got to make up for it. Yeah, exactly. Either I got to make up for it, or if it wasn't an hour of intense training, then you write it off completely the same thing where a lot of times I will spend the entire time in the gym just squatting or just Turkish kid up or just the overhead press. If I haven't lifted in a while and I'm just not feeling like a 50-minute or hour-long training session, the old, young version of me would just write it off because I'm not in the mood to get after it and I would think that, oh, if I don't get after it, I'm not making any progress where today I'm different. I live by this philosophy of just make sure I lift heavy things every once in a while. There's the major lifts. I want to be strong in them. And even if it just means I'm going to go bench for the day, I'm going to go do that. And I wouldn't do that in the past. And that is something that I do now today. I think older and wiser version of me than I did in my early 20s. Yeah. I mean, personally, I'm very consistent with it, but I never trained a client. I don't want to say never. I almost never trained a client more than two or three days a week of resistance training. In fact, 90% of my clients that are trained in my career, my most successful clients, they did resistance training two days a week. Okay. I had another chunk of clients that would train, resistance train once a week. These were people that were just interested in longevity and health. And they did a lot of other activity on their own, whether it was hiking or cycling or swimming. And they'd come see me once a week and we would do a traditional resistance training workout once a week. Again, the beauty of resistance training is you don't have to do it all the time to get the health benefits. Now, of course, you can get more and more advanced and build more muscle and do all that kind of stuff. But if you want the health benefits of resistance training, a couple days a week of a good structure routine will give you the metabolism boosting effects. You'll get the mobility effects, the strength effects. You'll get the insulin sensitivity effects, the testosterone boosting and men effects, the hormone balancing and women effects of resistance strength. You don't need to do a whole ton. And if you just move every day, like we said earlier, you'll get great benefits, but you still need to lift heavy stuff because lifting heavy stuff is what makes you strong. It's what gives your body a reason to have muscle and strength. Now, the next one, this one's one, Adam, you're talking about becoming wiser. This one took me a long time to figure out and that is to sleep well. I almost never prioritized good sleep. In fact, I took pride in seeing how little sleep I could get and how little sleep I can get away with. This is a big one. In fact, studies are pretty conclusive. Sleep is as important for your health as diet and activity. In fact, if your sleep is really bad, it can actually impact your health more acutely in a negative way than your diet. You can get away with a terrible diet for a month. You have really, really bad sleep for a month. You can develop some pretty bad chronic illnesses. Sleep is extremely important. I wish I remember who it was, but I do remember the first time it was said to me and I was like, oh, shit, that's powerful and I never thought of it this way. Once I'd realized the importance of sleep, the next thing was like, okay, it's important. I know I've read the studies. I get it. I don't put a lot of effort into it. I remember someone saying to me that think about the way you get up every single morning. They asked me, what's your morning routine? Oh, I do this, I brush my teeth, I shower, I read something, I eat, and then I head out the door or whatever. I have a cup of coffee, whatever. Then they asked me, well, what does your night routine look like? I'm like, I don't really have a night routine. Sometimes I go to bed this time and they're exactly. If you understand how important sleep is and you don't put any effort whatsoever in a routine to get you ready for it, how are you ever going to be successful at it? And I remember that aha moment of, oh, wow, I'd never thought of it like that. I just don't treat it like that. I just wait until I'm tired and exhausted and then I crash. And many times I'm staring at a phone or on a computer or watching TV. And that completely changed the way I look at it. Now, as soon as that sun goes down for me, my brain's already turning on like, okay, what's my last three hours going to look like and getting ready for bed? Yeah, it's still relatively new in terms of putting a lot of intention around preparing for sleep and being more mindful about leading into a higher quality sleep experience versus where I used to just be like, well, I guess I stood up too late or I had eaten something or kept me up all night or whatever randomly would happen is kind of what I felt like the result of my sleep was. And there was no structure there or any kind of intention leading into, well, I could actually manage this a lot better. I could actually put more thought into this and reap the benefits of sleep. And you feel the difference when you actually get quality sleep like nothing else. I would say I use, I don't know about you guys, sorry, Sal, I'll cut you there. I would say I use more of our partners and sponsors or more products and things to assist me here than anything else that I do. So like more consistently? Yeah, exactly. Like, I mean, you look at like the, you know, the Euler, the Felix Gray's, the Ned's Sleep. These are all partners that we have. And the sleep thing has been one of the hardest things for me to get really good at. And I would say that I've used aids to help all that to get this like routine together more than anything else I would Felix Gray, Blue Blockers, all these things. Well, I mean, we treat, you know, especially as fitness fanatics, right, we treat our workouts sacred like, okay, I gotta, you know, do my mobility before and have my pre workout or my coffee and get ready. And I know my structure workout, but then when it comes to sleep, it's like, Oh, I'll just turn the lights off and hit the pillow and then expect to have my sleep. But it doesn't, it doesn't work that way. And here's the thing, if you've been having bad sleep for long enough, you don't know the difference. Here's the crazy thing. I, when I would work with clients and I would talk to them about this and they would change it, they come to me and be like, I had no idea that I felt the way I did. I was just used to having bad sleep. It's as easy as this for a lot of people, not for some people, but for a lot of people, it's as easy as this. Make sure you give yourself eight hours. So go to bed at a time and wake up at a time to where it gives you at least eight hours. So that's number one. Number two, have a sleep routine. Adams was alluding to that earlier. One to two hours before bed, put on blue light blocking glasses, if you're going to walk around with electronics on, lights on, you're going to watch TV or whatever, that makes a big difference. Wind down, avoid stimulating stressful articles or news things. So if, you know, if you're stressed out about, you know, politics or COVID or whatever, save that for the morning. Don't do that right before bed. Or just don't look at it at all. Yeah, that's the best thing. Drink some chamomile tea, kind of turn the lights down a little bit like you're preparing yourself for sleep. Just like if you're warming up for a workout. And it's actually quite nice when you start to do this, the whole family starts to wind down. You know, we dim the lights. Next thing, my kids are going to bed a little bit better. I get better sleep. It's as easy as that. Start doing that. And you'll find that you'll get some tremendous benefits because poor sleep is very detrimental to health. I mean, I just read a recent study that showed that people who got less than seven hours of sleep a night chronically. So just a little less than ideal, had a 40% increase in heart disease risk. So it makes that big of a difference. And sleep is one of the best stress relievers that there is around. In fact, we tend to know this naturally. If we get overstressed over a long period of time, you'll find that you'll want to sleep more. Sleep is a great stress manager, which brings us to the next one, which is to manage your stress. Stress is an interesting one. You don't want to get rid of stress. I mean, exercise is a stress on the body. You want to be able to manage stress. And people ask me, like, what does that mean, manage stress? Does that mean that I make stressful situations less stressful? That's part of it. That has to do with mindset. I'll tell a story that kind of illustrates that a little bit. It was maybe a month ago, I was coming home and my garage is separate from the house. I have to walk through this little back area. And I'm walking through and I smell gas. And I'm like, what is that? What does that smell? And so I said, okay, I better call PG&E. This is the gas company here in California. Because if you smell gas, it's a good idea to call them just to double check. Well, they came, lo and behold, there was a small gas leak on the side there. So they turned off all the gas to the house. So I had no gas in the house. Okay. So the next morning, I wake up and because I have no gas, I have no hot water. So I take a freezing cold shower and I'm just pissed off, right? Because it's freezing cold. And I walk out of the shower and I'm him and Han and, you know, pissed off about it being cold. And Jessica was there, my wife. And she starts giggling and I'm like, what's so funny? And she goes, why are you so mad taking a cold shower? She goes, sometimes you do that on purpose for health reasons. And I thought, yeah, you know what the difference is? The difference is I choose to do it reframing versus I feel like I'm forced to take this cold shower. So you can do that with a lot of things in your life to make them feel less stressful is to reframe the situation. You're stuck in traffic. Oh my gosh, I'm stuck. Let me listen to that really cool podcast or that book giving me that opportunity. Let me get on the phone call and call that person. I have a call reframing stressful situations can do that. Now here's the other thing I want to comment on that is, I think it was a game changer for me is when you have stressful stuff happened, balance it out with stuff that you know, relieve stress. So it's like, I had a really stressful day. This is a good day for me to go do a walk, which I personally find to be stress relieving or watch a funny movie, which I find to personally be stress relieving. That's one of the ways that I try to balance it out. Well, this is the real power behind meditation or just, you know, practicing stillness, right? And I get this, like when I talk to somebody about this, like, how do you meditate? And it's kind of a weird question to try and answer it. One of the best ways that I have found for me is that is a moment where I'm completely still, and I am processing all the things that's happening in my life currently, and I'm practicing reframing them. I am looking at the things that, at that moment, when I go into that stillness or that meditation, I'm thinking about all the things that I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated because of this going on at work or I'm frustrated with this, and instead of being frustrated about it, I'm looking at the silver lining in all those situations and reframing it. Just like the example you gave, this is where I find meditation to be very powerful, to each their own, if you do it and you use it for other things. But for me, that's how I've learned to use it. It doesn't have to be this, I'm sitting in Indian style with my hands in a prayer situation and I have like crazy lights on or in the dark or with that. It just literally is a moment of stillness, thinking about my day, thinking about the things that, at that moment, I think are stressful or I think are so bad, and finding the silver lining or finding the opportunity for growth and all those things that can really change the way your body perceives that stress. I've gotten a lot better about writing things down and really reflecting and doing sort of an inventory on my day and things that would potentially be stressful or things that I carry with me. And I just think that, and I release these things, if I can't get it to it today, I'm going to get to it eventually and I just keep it there in front of me so it's not something that will spin me out. It's something that I'm carrying with me. I think it's just a healthy thing, however you can do this in terms of relieving yourself of your mind at night, especially when things start to spin and stress kind of lingers on and you carry that with you into the next day. You just want to make sure it's out in the open and also one thing that helped with me for that to be able to kind of notch, to counter a lot of these things on my list was to write down what I am grateful for and what things are going well and really see a lot of the times it way overpowers anything that I am really upset about and stressful about. Well, the more that you practice this, the easier it becomes to do it in real time too, right? So I've shared this before that this is like my self-awareness where it came from. It started off at nighttime laying in bed and reflecting on my day and then from years of practicing that, it became more real time. And Sal's talked about this before, right? You share your dishwashing example, right? Here's a good example. Something that as a kid, you looked at as a chore and oh my god, I had to wash dishes. You've learned to reframe that as, oh wow, it's an opportunity for me to put some music on or to be totally mindful and present and think about my day and all the things I'm grateful for. And so I think that that's the idea here when we talk about managing stress, we talk about meditation stillness, is you're training yourself to learn to reframe these things that end up being like chronic stress for people in their life. If you train yourself to do that, it becomes easier and easier to be able to do that real time. So when the stress hits you, because it's inevitable, right? Nobody's going to avoid shit. Shit happens in everybody's life, but what you do with that is everything and how you respond to it is everything. Right. And here's the, you know, one more thing. And this is just a fact that laughter is one of the best stress relievers there is around. It really is. In fact, and I remember I watched this video on it and it was hilarious, literally, because the guy said pretend laugh right now, fake laugh right now, and then you'll find yourself laugh for real. And if you listen to the podcast, try it out, start laughing like you're pretend laughing. And what you'll find is you'll actually start to laugh for real. This is a great thing to do when you're feeling really stressed out is to find something funny or to make yourself laugh. It's why they say it cuts the stress in a room or the tension in a room. It's to crack a joke or whatever. Laughter is, this is probably why it exists in the first place is something that we do as humans. It's a great stress reliever. So if you're finding yourself real stressed out, do something funny or something fun. It's a great way to kind of balance it out. Now the last one, I think is one of the most important ones. And we listed it as be a good friend. Now the reason why it says be a good friend is because really what it means is have good relationships with the people around you. But I think we, we put so much on other people in the sense of the good relationship has to do with the person that I'm having the relationship with. Oftentimes when you're a good friend, good friends find you. If you're the good person, the good friend, I mean people take advantage of you, but I mean in a genuine way, you're caring, you offer help, you, you know, you, you listen to people, you'll find that, you'll find those kinds of people in your life as well. And studies do show that the places with the greatest longevity have people in those areas have wonderful social networks have very tight social networks, whether it's church or family, they've got people around them that they're close with. What was that study that you shared that one time about people that have good relations or community or relationships was equivalent to in terms of damaging your health to smoking? I think it was 10 cigarettes a day or something crazy. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's crazy to me. That's how bad it is to have bad relationships around you. This is why they think that religious people live longer than non religious people. Scientific community believes it's because of the, the, how religious communities tend to have these kind of networks and relationships and they think that's what may be contributing to the longevity. I'm sure the religious people think it's because they're, they're favored. Community was always a big factor in all the blue zones and, you know, all those things. And it's really an important thing too with, with purpose even for your own purpose that you find every day, which, you know, really guides a lot of people's lives. And I think pouring that into other people is a big part of that. And to be able to, you know, have community, you also have to give of yourself in order to receive. So I think it's important though, if we're going to talk about friends and community, that it, I think it's also important that you evaluate your circle too, because many times we are drawn to people that feed our insecurities and the issues that we're still, we're still dealing with from childhood or whatever. And that can really just fuel the toxicity, right? And not really help you grow or move through or manage stress better. So, well, yeah, like if you're trying to avoid drinking alcohol and the friends that you have, the way you bond, the only way you bond is through alcohol, you may need to reevaluate why your friends with them in the first place. Or if you have, I mean, for me, I had friends that I was really close with since we were high school kids. And in high school, we were all into sports and really competitive. And that was what we shared in common as kids. Then we grew to be adults and were very different. But that competitiveness stayed in us. And we became that way in life, instead of being supportive of each other and lifting each other up and being happy when the other one was successful, it was always trying to put the other one down or one up the other one. And that can be a really unhealthy circle to be a part of. And a lot of times people get stuck because they're in circles like that. Yeah, it also, it just feels good, genuinely feels good, to be a good person to someone else for the sake of being a good person. So what I mean by that, because when I say like be a good friend or do good things, don't do it with the intention of receiving anything back. That's the wrong reason to do it. You don't get the same benefit. Like, if I go out of my way to do something nice to Justin, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm doing this because I want him to be nice back or I want something back from him. I'm not going to get the same value as me doing it because of the just the act itself. The act itself is what I value, the fact that I'm being good, being nice to you. And then I'm done and I expect nothing. And then if he does do something nice to me back, what a wonderful, you know, cherry on top of the of the Sunday, it's a nice extra. But I find being a good friend is how you find good friends. Being a good friend is how you also find when you have bad friends. Oftentimes. Look, Mind Pump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come find us on YouTube, Mind Pump podcast. You can also find us on social media. Find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump, Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal, Adam at Mind Pump, Adam, and Doug, the producer at Mind Pump Doug. And I'm going to be their dad for the rest of their lives. It's a long relationship. Same thing with fitness. There's going to be times when you love working out and it's great. Don't fall in love with that feeling because it's going to be very hard to stay consistent when you those normal times when working out isn't as great when it kind of sucks, when you're not as strong, when you're not feeling great.