 Why's it feel so good? Hey everybody, I'm Lance Coyke and welcome to Tea Time 003. Tea Time is where Allison and I sit down after generally a long day of work and talk about something. It's a little bit easier to film. We do kind of have an agenda today. We started doing this because Allison took some blood tests and she had some alarming results. So I'm going to have her kind of outline where she was, give you the very short version of Tea Time 001. Feel free to watch that. Link up here and in the description. Feel free to watch that and then hopefully we'll get you up to speed and it's been a few months now. I don't know how many. Four? Five? Five I think? It's coming around. We did it about four months ago because it was in January. Okay. And the numbers are different and they're way better and I won't save that for long. So excited. So yeah, where were you? Okay, so yeah, we were, well, I was really nervous because I started out back in January. I had some blood work in December that was kind of my cholesterol was kind of high. My triglycerides was kind of high. I know how to really stressful year and I came to the New York and was like, I'm going to be so different. I'm going to make so many changes. I'm going to be so healthy. Watch me like be a good coach and lower all my numbers and then life happens and then you're like, oh. So we, if you watched episode two, you know that I've had some health problems. And so I was really nervous that with these health problems. I wasn't able to make all the changes that I wanted to, especially with school because school really does take up so much of my time. So I was really concerned that it wasn't going to improve at least as much as I'd hoped. And I'm so excited because I have the results. So the last blood draw was in December. We filmed in January. But as of December 1208 2021, my triglycerides were 162. As of April 2022, my triglycerides were drum roll, please. 71. So they got cut down more than in half. I literally cut my triglycerides down in half in, it's closer to like four months. But that's, I'm very excited about this. That's great. And I think these changes are really, really not that difficult to make. They definitely were harder some days than others, but overall making these changes is something that if I can do in PA school, you can do in your life. And we're going to try to walk you through some of what those changes were. I do want to highlight as well. So I had some other good changes that had happened. So just reading here, my VLDLs were not high, but they did drop from 29 to 17. Those are pretty like ubiquitously bad. Yeah. And my total cholesterol is actually the same. And we're going to talk about that just really briefly about why that's pretty important. So your total cholesterol is a combination of kind of like your LDL and your HDL. So HDL, I like to remember H is happy LDL. I remember it as it's the loser cholesterol. You don't want high LDL. So my LDL is still a little bit high. It was at 127. Now it's at like 123. So I still have some work to go. I want that ideally below 100, but it's still not a bad place to be. And the reason it's not a bad place to be is because of my HDL. So your HDL, what we were taught in school is HDL kind of complements your LDL. So if you have, and this is just kind of genetically, some people have higher HDLs. I definitely have that in my family to have high LDL cholesterol. But if your HDL is also high, it kind of helps counteract any of the negative effects from the LDL. So my HDL went up, which even after meeting with the cardiologists from all my health problems, he and I talked about this, the best way to improve your HDL isn't even with diet necessarily because people talk about healthy fats. HDL actually responds really well to exercise. So if you're someone who you have really high cholesterol in your family and you're trying to make easy changes to improve your cholesterol results, exercise is really good for that because you're going to increase your HDL, which kind of helps counteract some of the negative effects of that high LDL. So my HDL went up from 41 to 57, which is why my total cholesterol is about the same because my LDL went down a little bit, but my HDL also came up a little bit. So that's a really, really positive trend. And that's really the biggest results that we wanted to talk about. But that's really all we were checking were HDL, LDL, VLDL, and triglycerides. So super, super cool. Super excited. Yes. So Segway, I almost said Segway, please, because you said Dremel. Segway is how did you do it? Yeah. So we talked about a bunch of different ways that you want to try. And this is going to be a brief outline. If you want something more in depth, we have talked about maybe trying to compile some more definitive step-by-steps. Here's what you do on how to lower triglycerides, improve cholesterol panels, all that stuff. So stay tuned for some of that. Hopefully we get some of that stuff posted. But we want to give you a brief outline of what I did so that you can start making these changes now. There's no reason you can't start literally the second. That's basically what I did. And as you can see, four months later, triglycerides cut more than in half, like over 50% improvement. So that's super, super cool. And I'm going to keep making these changes. And these changes are not just... I improved it for this one blood test. I'm going to keep going with all the changes that I've made and just really implement it into my lifestyle. Well, yeah. This is the goal. It's all reversible, right? It's not like I work out for a week and then I don't need to work on it ever again. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of diseases that are not necessarily persistent but chronic and something like elevated triglycerides, elevated cholesterol. Even things... I just had a test on in-site class about depression. Depression is a chronic illness. It can come back if you don't do what you need to do to prevent it from returning and taking steps and actions to help yourself stay healthy. And it's the same thing with cholesterol, same thing with diabetes. You want to make sure that you're making these changes and implementing it so it's in your daily routine because it's just like taking your cholesterol medication every day or something. You have to make these changes and really live your life differently. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So as far as what you did, let's maybe start... because we talked about exercise. I think that's arguably the simplest thing to do. Yeah. Because there's no like, you don't have to break up with anyone to eat, you know, like you might have to do when you eat differently. That's, I'm exaggerating, but maybe not for some people. Exercise is usually a little bit, you know, you put it on the calendar and then you just say, it's time. I'm going to go do it. So what kind of exercise did you do? So exercise, I think, was the hardest and the part that I felt most disappointed in myself by because of all the symptoms that I have and exercise. Unfortunately for me, certain types of exercise are really big trigger or I just feel so tired at the end of the day or I'm having such bad numbness or muscle pain that I just, I don't want to work out. It makes it worse to a certain point. Yeah. So the biggest change that we have made that I could make is adding in some just really low level cardio. It doesn't have to be, I'm going to go to the gym and I'm going to sweat for two hours and I'm going to do sprints and work out really hard. All we did was we got a stationary bike and I tried to hop on that bike at least five times a week for at least 20 minutes. That's it. That's the only changes I made. Sometimes those 20 minutes weren't until after dinner until like 8.30 p.m. Sometimes I would do it just, I was up studying at like 2 a.m. in the morning. So at midnight I'd be like, well, I'm going to be up for another two hours studying. I'm going to be sitting here anyways. I'm just going to pedal really easily on this bike so I'm not just sitting and studying. So small changes, I don't necessarily recommend that but doing something to be more active. I think the biggest change is I, after meal time was really easy for me because that's when we're sitting here watching TV so I could hop on the bike, bike after a meal to help burn off some of those calories. You know, not let the food just kind of get stored into fat but actually use up some of the food that I had just eaten as energy. Sure. Yeah. That's not how it works. A little, I think so. It's a little bit like, it makes a room for what you just put in which is kind of like slowly dripping out of your stomach into your bloodstream for a few hours after your meal. Yeah. It's not that, so working out after meals is not going to help your cholesterol triglycerides necessarily. It is good for monitoring and regulating blood sugar. So if you're someone who's struggling with blood sugar, elevated blood glucose, something like that, workouts after a meal can really help with that. And so that was kind of... Dampen the rays. Yeah. And that was my thought process. With that, I have a family history of type 2 diabetes, something that my dad is still working with and he and I actually just had a conversation about, okay, after you eat that bowl of ice cream at night that you really, really want, just go for a walk maybe and that could help your morning blood glucose results. Yeah. So that was my thought process. Correct. It's not really going to help you with your cholesterol and triglycerides. But that was my thought process is, okay, well, I want to help my triglycerides. Let's also think about what else I could be getting if I'm not living a healthy lifestyle. And for me, high blood sugar is a concern moving forward. Yeah. So that was a really convenient change, just adding consistent cardio. I did try to do more lifting than I was at the end of last year. So that was a positive change. I was doing it maybe once or twice a week. Ideally, I'm doing it three or four times a week in addition to that five times a week of cardio. And then... And how long? For my lifts. Yeah. That is just depending on how I feel. So I think ideally you're doing that for like 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Sure. Ideally. As someone who has fatigue and a really busy schedule, I would pick two exercises and just do a super set. So I would do a Romanian deadlift and a floor press. And then I would do that. And the reason I was doing only two and kind of getting away with it is because I was usually doing it with a cardio, with a bike. Yeah, same day, you mean? So I would use the bike as kind of my warm-up, get my heart rate up a little bit. And I do feel better if I'm not in a full flare-up. If I do cardio, I kind of have to like get over this hurdle of getting my heart rate up and feeling like maybe I'm sweating a little bit. And then I feel a lot better. So I'd use the bike as my warm-up, get my heart rate up beyond there, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and then do a quick super set. And then I'd be done. So it's not a lot. It's pretty brief, yeah. And I even played with, at one point, when I had just so much school, and I was feeling, that was when I was feeling really sick, I couldn't tolerate more than five minutes on the bike at a time. So I only did five minutes of bike at the time. I'd go on and then stop and go do something else and then come back and bike for a little bit. Stop and do something else. Come back and bike. So I was breaking up these periods of only five to 10 minutes of exercise and coming back and forth and doing as much as I could tolerate. And it doesn't take that much time out of your day. It really doesn't. If you're sitting there and watching TV, reading a book, doing, on your computer, sending emails, we picked a bike specifically so I could do work on it. And it's been really good. And it's almost like, especially later in the day or during the afternoon or whatever. It's almost like a shot of caffeine where it gives you some energy, gets your brain flowing. At least for me, it really is like that. For you. For you. For you. I mean, you have... I'm the type of person who comes home. And there's this trauma. And I'm sure, if you have a really crazy life or you have really crazy kids or something and you're coming home and you're just exhausted. So I come home from school and Lance gets so mad at me, but sometimes I just have to nap. Like I... For two to three hours. Full REM cycle. Yes. Nap. Yeah. But it's also, it has been a little bit easier this quarter because most days, most days I'm done about three. Yeah. So the nap is over by six. Most days. Not all the days. On days where it's not, I do come home some days and I can't. Like Thursdays are a really good example because I still coach on Thursdays. So I come home from school and I don't have time to sit around. I have to coach. So I coach. And then we eat and then I work out and then I do school work until I go to bed. Yeah. And then you stay up because you can't go to bed. Yeah. So that is kind of a transition into our next... Into sleep. Sleep. What'd you do? So as someone who's chronically sleep-deprived, I did try to focus more on just small time management things but also understanding that sleep was going to be an issue or limiting factor. I think something I did not necessarily winter quarter still. So right between our first episode and this episode, I've had a break and that break is about a week long. From school you mean? Yes. And so I transitioned from winter quarter which was the hardest quarter of PA school into spring quarter which is also a really hard quarter of PA school just because of how burned out you feel. So the coursework is a little bit easier. You don't have as much basic in general science but it's all prepping you for clinicals, fast-paced while you're there and next week, for example, I have some type of examination every day of the week and it's not finals week. This is just a normal week and one of those is like, yeah, if you don't pass this test you're not ready for clinicals and you have to have all these meetings to prove that you are worthy of heading out on to clinicals and that's very stressful. So you're going to embarrass us. Yeah. So I did make some more changes I think for sleep in the new year. Definitely a lot more in spring quarter and so for that it's just trying to make sure I'm setting a limit and saying I have to get sleep tonight. I cannot pull an all nighter. What can I be doing earlier in the week to prepare for this? Being a little bit more mindful about what the next couple of weeks look like instead of trying to just scramble day to day to figure stuff out and then I've been more consistent and I think part of this is just spring time but I've been more consistent with sleep schedule. So if I wake up at the same time every day this is something Lance harps on and on about all the time and I think it's really annoying because I like to sleep but if you wake up at the same time every day it's a lot easier to do what you need to do and there's truth to that. It's a lot easier to wake up. I don't like to admit it because I like to sleep in and I'm a tired person but I think waking up consistently before 8 a.m. almost every day has helped me a lot and I think that's another positive change because I get a lot more done in the morning and then I'm able to go to sleep a little bit earlier. And I mean maybe you don't see it this way but I feel like you've maybe embraced the nap time a little bit more and it's a little more regular because there will be days where she's studying until 2 in the morning 3 in the morning and it's just like... Test at 7 a.m. Test at 7 a.m. yeah so you gotta sleep sometime and so usually it's after you do that little mini 4 hour nap take your test do whatever else you gotta do at school come home and just zonk out for the other half of your sleep cycle yeah if you have time to take a nap naps are okay some people are like no I don't wanna nap but if you have time to take a nap and you're feeling tired it's not necessarily a bad thing your body is tired for a reason and it's okay to listen to it and to let yourself sleep and I think that is also a good segue into mindfulness so I've always within the past couple of years at least I should say not always definitely not always I've really focused on mindfulness and something that was really cool and fun for me was also in the winter quarter the PA school that I go to my faculty advisor actually Dr. Hoover she's amazing she organizes a whole curriculum for PA students about mindfulness and how to think about what your body's going through and to try to take those skills as a medical provider and how to implement them into your practice not only for patients but for yourself because burnout among healthcare workers especially now yeah with COVID is so so astronomical the amount of health people who are there's a mass exodus from healthcare not when people think it's because they're forcing healthcare workers to get vaccines it's really not the case a lot of healthcare workers are fully vaccinated and just leaving because they are understaffed overworked underpaid and they're not treated well by patients and patient families a lot of the time especially with COVID issues and I can't imagine how frustrated a lot of them feel about how they've been treated even with my friends who work in healthcare some of the stories that I hear my mouth just drops because it's so unreasonable what's happening to them so I totally understand why people are unhappy and so they try to give us these skills before we go out into clinical on how to deal with this stressful lifestyle that we've all picked to try to help people even just so that we can provide the best patient care to another patient and the example that they give is if you have to walk into the room and basically give someone a death sentence because you just got some really bad test results back from them you have stage four pancreatic cancer that is something a lot of people don't do well with and so you have to offer this diagnosis and then turn around and walk right into another room you don't have time to go and sit and process that this patient that you might have been working with for 15 years is gonna die and you have to be able to process that and go into the room and have just a clear mind to help this other patient and so mindfulness is a really good way for providers to practice that so we have this whole curriculum that Dr. Hoover and the other faculty members at Midwestern have created and it's amazing and this year I am on our student government as the health and wellness chair and I was grateful and lucky enough where myself and some of the other students were allowed to kind of participate in the structure of it this year and do lunch and learns and different things to help educate our classmates on mindfulness or tools about mindfulness so I like to teach people but take a breathing just because it's really easy to implement and if you don't know what that is it's just basically a breathing style that you use that is known to activate your parasympathetic nervous system so it slows down your heart rate it slows down your breathing so in moments of high anxiety like before you go into a test I like to use it at night if I'm having one of those nights where I have a lot of anxiety and it's keeping me awake if I do 5 minutes uninterrupted of do you take a breathing I'm pretty much asleep within the next 10 minutes so it's really good to use then and using those tools and stuff and just being aware of what am I doing right now for my body am I making the best decision for my health and just being more mindful about what food am I eating did I eat today how is my body feeling how much water have I had today trying to be aware of what my body is telling me and be aware of what my stress levels are and so I think mindfulness is really important and you mentioned your food and nutrition and stuff what changed about that I do want to talk about one more thing before I talk about food okay thought of it one of the mindfulness things that I did was before our test before I started this kind of journey to lower my triglycerides I would sit there and I would cram and study and study and study and now what I've been doing before my test unless it's like first thing in the morning 7 a.m. test when I'm just driving to school I put my books away about 20 to 15 minutes before the test and I put my headphones in and I pick a song or even just like the noise canceling and I go for a walk and I just don't think about the test I look at my surroundings it's been really nice in Arizona I'm not going to be able to do this anymore because it's too hot but I was going for walks outside and just like looking at the trees and looking at the sky and just walking really casually and people probably thought I looked insane just because I'm like here's this loopy girl yesterday walking on the sidewalk like having a good time but I think that really helped just with stress and anxiety about the testing but also it was a really good way to get myself moving before I would go and sit down for an hour long test and I've been sitting while studying so it was a good way to break out my time and just have some mindfulness and pay attention to what was going on around me instead of being so focused on this material that I'm about to be tested on and I think that was good for my test taking and my overall mental wellness and physical wellness yeah food so food is probably where I made the most successful changes yeah the biggest change that I think I made was just eating better so what does that mean some of the stuff that I was doing and I don't like to talk about it very much because Lance is a little judgmental about it but that's okay a little bit it's just because he's really good at staying strict and he has this skill that I'm jealous of where it's called masochism okay where he's like that is not healthy so I'm not going to eat it and I'm like but it's a donut and he's like but it's not going to help me therefore I don't want it and I'm like but it tastes you say but it's breakfast yeah but it's delicious and I want it and I'm craving it so I want it and so I struggle with that a lot but he's really good at just kind of putting that down and being like no it's not good for me like my favorite example I if you know me I really like soda that's one thing I've really been able to give up and Lance at like 17 went to a doctor's appointment and they said yeah soda's not very good for you and he said okay and he hasn't had it ever since what what how do you do that it's like oh I didn't know that it was so bad my parents didn't tell me yeah so he just stopped and never had it again and I he like not been able to do that to be fair Dr. Harper to be fair to be fair Dr. Harper looked at me and he was like is there any way you can make that just like one can a day and I appreciate what he was trying to do but I was just like well it's bad so I'll stop yeah it's crazy insane no one does that so he just stopped but I like things that are convenient I like things that taste good and we even fight over if I'm cooking I use three times the amount of dishware that he uses to cook the opposite of convenience because it tastes better if I do it oh my god I think that's a real reason we order out so much because if she cooks I got a lot more dishes to do and if I cook it's too bland so she doesn't just like salt it's not sufficient salt and burnt kale salt, burnt kale yeah and pepper pepper? so food changes something that was really convenient for me was the only restaurant that's like across the street from Midwestern is a Del Taco which in reality is all of my favorite things because it's tacos and french fries which are like my favorite things in the world and it was just there and it was convenient and if I only have 30 minutes for lunch because I spent most of my lunch time in meetings and I didn't have time to pack lunch I would just run to Del Taco and grab food so I stopped that this quarter and most of the last quarter I think I can count on one hand in the past however many days that this year has been how many times I've been at Del Taco whereas before I was maybe going once every one to two weeks so that's a lot better and that was big, yeah and something else I was doing it there's a McDonald's that's not too far from school so I'd wake up and I'd have been up until 4 a.m. studying got two hours of sleep got to school for a test I'm starving I'm hungry I'm stressed I'm under slept I would just go to McDonald's and get like a breakfast sandwich and a hash brown and an orange juice and I'd eat that but there's so much fat and oil in that food so much yeah so high in calorie so low in nutrition she felt so bad about that that she didn't tell me yeah like embarrassed about it that's like my definition binge eating you know so that was a thing so I stopped doing that yeah big changes and things that I did to replace that so one packing out food in boxes in advance I think was pretty big you made your table for the week too which we didn't really stick with but I think not at all yet I mean you did the first one and we did it but I don't know just kind of made you it goes back to mindfulness thing but you had to think about what you were going to eat you had to think about breakfast now yeah when it's normally you just skip and then have double the dinner yeah so breakfast that was really easy for me I just bought a bushel of bananas on Sunday at our grocery trip tried to make sure there were five to six bananas on there and now I just grab a banana out the door you could do toast and peanut butter you could do overnight oats if you have time to make a smoothie that's what I'll do because I can get my fruits and vegetables in there and just thinking about I think a big change for me is for breakfast I think where did this food come from and if it didn't just come from the ground or plant or something I'm probably not eating it for breakfast so you're not eating meat you're saying not necessarily meat but just real food not something out of a package so like I'm not grabbing a granola bar even though that's not a bad option if you need something really fast and your fruit's not keeping or you don't have access to it because you live in a food desert like I don't know a packaged food is not so bad especially if you're getting a good protein bar but I'm not eating like a chewy granola bar that's what I was thinking of yeah those are just sugar yeah or something that's like deep fried like a bucket hash browns and bacon like I'm not doing that anymore so I think that's been really positive yeah making sure I'm eating breakfast was also a big one because we talked about this a little bit in our last video what I tend to do is I just don't eat breakfast because I don't have time and then I just don't eat lunch because I didn't pack it and then I come home and then I just pig out whatever I can eat I eat and then I eat these massive dinners that are so much high in calorie and dense foods and because I'm eating so much and so fast your body doesn't that's not how energy works your body is not using all that energy then it's storing it anything that you're not and it's the end of the day so I'm going to sleep like my body's not building muscle I had an exercise that day so your body's just like okay well we have all these calories now and you ate this big meal like we have to store this somewhere and so it's probably going to store it as fat well and you balance that out when you mobile when you fast for the rest of the day yeah but then you just have weird peaks and cortisol and blood sugar it does yeah and that's the biggest reason that I don't do it is because you get the hormonal peaks and dysregulated and your body just doesn't know where it is can't predict what's going on so I think I really think that helped me a lot and then just trying to eat more vegetables and that is something that is not is not hard to do I just don't enjoy a lot of vegetables so I was trying to be mindful about eating more vegetables that I do like and cooking them myself aka I'm not cooking them yeah so our oven here is a little bit different and it tends to what we did in California a lot with our oven there we would roast kale and I loved it and it was so good and here it just burns so quickly brussel sprouts, kale anything that we make kind of leafy burns it so quickly here and it's either undercooked or burned we haven't been able to figure out that middle ground the electric oven is just tough because it's so slow to heat up here yeah and so it's we just haven't really figured that out if I stir the brussel sprouts or stir the kale every five minutes while we're baking it then it's better it doesn't burn quite as much and it's cooked a little bit nicer but I don't have time to do that so yeah, study yeah so just being mindful about that and like okay I'm not going to eat it if we do it this way so maybe I'll do the brussel sprouts in a Dutch oven or something and saute it on the stove top or cooking it a little bit differently steaming more stuff so like I love beets I don't like broccoli or cauliflower as much so we haven't been doing a ton of that carrots love carrots eat them all the time so just picking foods that I know that I like more even if it is a little bit more consistent Lance is very supportive and he's like yeah, if you'll eat it get that sticky so I have a lot of like diets or restrictions but we can usually find some overlap and it's fine yeah and so just really finding foods and we had a doctor say this once you know if you're struggling with your diet try a bunch of stuff see what you like and then don't buy stuff that you don't like just because you think it's healthy buy something that you're going to eat and that you enjoy eating so that you continue to eat it instead of those people throw it away because they don't actually enjoy it and then they order a pizza like that's not the goal the goal is to eat foods that you enjoy that taste good and that help you get full because a lot of people they complain you know I'm eating healthy but I'm not feeling full okay add something that's still healthy to help you make you full it's not yeah yeah that's and that's kind of like for me I'll eat a lot but I'll eat a lot of vegetables and that'll get me to start full the other thing I wanted to say about you skipping breakfast and the and lunch is you'll just the binging for dinner makes you eat so fast that you override any signals of being full and so you end up overeating even though you skipped meals it's just so easy to do and you crave foods when you do that to your body like when you're fasting all the time and you're not just when you're hungry and your cortisol is elevated because you're not sleeping well and now you're not eating consistently your blood sugar is messed up your body is going to crave sugary fatty foods that's just natural that's part of the way our bodies work especially once you're exposed to it that's what your body is going to crave in those moments of stress it learns that they're an option and then it says these are high calories so evolution has told our bodies to seek those things out yeah don't don't do those things so those were big changes for you and they were successful those were the main points that I thought of before this so the only other thing I want to ask you about complications but before we talk about whatever else came up that made this hard for you the last piece of diet is did we order out dinner oh we did a ton a ton a ton how much do you think at least four times a week for dinner you're saying so that means you're not counting if you ordered out lunch while you were away from me is that true yes I'm trying to get an accurate number no because we probably do order dinner through for probably not five but maybe five probably about four times a week for dinner yeah during the week maybe once or twice for lunch but not always so this week I think I only ordered out for lunch once so that is something to consider for sure I think that eating out is often associated with being unhealthy because it's really it's really hard to know what is in your food when somebody else makes it it's really easy to maybe kind of know but ignore it so you might have the same meal at home and out at a restaurant but it tastes so much better at the restaurant you can't figure out why it's because they put a lot more calories in it to make it taste better they fry it in hot oil or something like that and those will that's going to transfigure your fats and it clogs stuff up that was a big one just being mindful about what do I eat when we order out french fries are my favorite food if I had to eat one food for the rest of my life it would probably be french fries I cut that back so much so cutting back the food that we were ordering was a big change like we still I got I switched from Del Taco to Chipotle at school because there's a Chipotle that's not too far and it's not necessarily like oh my god Chipotle is so healthy it's just not french fries and quite as fried as it is at Del Taco it's like grilled food not yeah and I wasn't getting potatoes and bowls and stuff that have so many calories my trick for Chipotle is one either get a salad and don't get tons of toppings or tacos because tacos you get a much smaller portion and I figured this out because tacos were the only thing I was getting from Chipotle that weren't making me tired after I ate them yeah, yeah like if you're getting tired after you're eating all your meals that's not a good sign that's your caloric intake too high probably or your body doesn't agree with those foods either yeah so making those changes and just being mindful like if we're ordering out we have a burger place around here and I love cheeseburgers too and so I didn't stop the cheeseburger necessarily but instead of getting a large side of fries or something we were getting a salad and we still got small fries and the salads not like super healthy the salad's chopped salad like hard boiled egg and like some crumbled blue cheese and yeah I think it's like a ranch dressing it's really rich that and pizza are probably like our worst things that we'll order out we don't I don't think we ordered pizza more than once a week and with maybe a couple exceptions but we were pretty good about that yeah and burgers we might have done that the same week we did a pizza thing but we didn't do it more than once so that's two meals out of the week that you know the point is we're still trying to be really good like our breakfast and our lunches are still quite good quite healthy nutritious lower calorie yeah so having you know ordering out for dinner because we're both tired doesn't you know break us necessarily a lunch but I'll pack boxes of basically just snacks I'll cut up some fruit and put in a box of fruit and then a box of vegetables like carrots on one side and maybe like a small amount of tortilla chips or something and then a box of strawberries and blueberries and raspberries and whatever fruit we have watermelon and then you know I have all these plans like every morning it doesn't happen I'm saying all the dishes so just making something really simple that doesn't sound like a full meal it's not a full lunch I felt fine after eating it and I was not hungry throughout the day so we figure out what works for you not everyone's going to have the same reaction to me but sure and you know not everyone is a psycho or finds that psycho thing that I do I'm going to eat it like I don't I'd never recommend that to people though I think it's much easier if you're the type of person who will say that it's just it's not feasible to start there you know yeah it's very difficult I've been trying for almost I don't know how long we've been together six years something like that yeah almost six years yeah it's contagious yeah it's not obesity is contagious it's just because the lifestyle yeah that's what I'm saying oh I did come back on my soda too okay yeah I did do that I limited it to caffeine helps me with headaches and migraines that I get so I really tried coke is just really easy and it's not as much caffeine as I was getting in coffee and we found out something that triggers a lot of my symptoms is caffeine so I'm super sensitive to it and so just cutting back on caffeine in general has been really big for me but yeah especially being anxiety prone and you know bladder problems when you're test taking oh my gosh like it's an hour long tests and I have to pee I peed right before but I still have to pee now yeah that's the nervous bladder yeah I mean don't want that so if you're prone to that avoid that and maybe the theme here is it's not necessarily I wanted Alison to tell her story because I think it's a good example that you can do stuff it's way easier for her I mean she's in school but she doesn't have a family and I'm very supportive with this so it's not like I need to change my lifestyle as well so this could be a much more difficult situation but you don't need to necessarily do everything that she does take the lesson about working out for example it's like you know I've got 20 minutes maybe you know for you busy work day you got home at 7 you had dinner kids went down for bed maybe 8.30 maybe maybe just bike for half an hour kind of slowly because that is what you can do today there were days my heart rate didn't get above 100 on the bike like you just it's movement you just got to do something it doesn't have to be intense creating that habit and sticking to that habit even if you don't feel really good is super important because then once you get past that your mind just breaks and there's no coming back yeah but I think we're in a unique position because we both have that coaching background so if I'm not just being stubborn like I know what to do to help myself but there are days I'm just I don't want to do it and I am lucky where I have Lance to help me and he doesn't come in and be like did you bike today but sometimes I tell him I'm feeling really I'm motivated today can you help me get motivated for this or something like I'm struggling to want to do this and he can help me there or I'm struggling to want to eat well tonight I want to eat well emotionally I don't want to I need you to keep me accountable and not let me order out tonight and he says okay or I don't want to cook how about we order out if you work out right now because you know we've run out of time yeah we've either got to spend this hour cooking or we got to spend this hour working out and so at that point it's like okay I'll work out with you because we're going to order out now yeah so he'll do a second workout or something I don't know I know we're getting this is getting pretty long and we're losing daylight but do you want to talk briefly about complications complications in your life and with school unexpected all-nighters unexpected sicknesses yeah or is that too long and should we save it no I mean we can talk about it I don't I think and I was talking about this with a professor today actually because she was asking me how I was doing because the faculty's aware that I've been having health problems because you know I've had to miss some classes and do some stuff to see doctors and whatnot and what we're working towards and some things that have been giving me a hard time with school work and you know it's hard to do a venous puncture on my classmate when I can't hold the needle so there's things that have been frustrating but she looked at me and she's like I don't know how you're doing this and I was like you just do it like I'm I'm not the only student in my program who's having health issues I know at least three of my other classmates that I'm very close with are having health issues like everyone has something and I think it goes back to that colloquial phrase you never know what someone's going through and it's true everyone has issues everyone has drama and I was just talking to a friend earlier today it's not fair to yourself to compare your situation to mine and just because you're like well your life sounds so hard I could never do what you're doing that's not true and it's not fair to yourself to say I can't do that you're going through stuff that maybe I want to be able to go through and we all just take what we're given and work through it so you know making sure that you're not comparing yourself to my story I think is really important but you know I have had a lot of issues physically I've had some feeling members who have been really sick and that's been really challenging you know just getting phone calls or text late at night right before I'm going to go to bed that says you know this person just took a turn for the worst and thinking that person's not going to make it through the night things like that you know that's affected sleep it's affected my mental health it's affected you know when you're feeling upset about something you don't want to work out you don't want to eat well you just want to sit around and watch a movie or dissociate or do something else and so What do you do? I talk to you or cry like and that's like probably topic for another video like how do you handle these mental health issues and answer number one is find a really good therapist but you got to kind of take and listen to your body so my symptoms are very physical and they affect what I can do physically so what do I need to do to mitigate the the pain that I'm getting in my arms and my legs is exercise going to help that right now? No and I'm in a position where I've had this for so long I know kind of what helps me now and so I know things like rest I know eating well really helps and I know some if the symptoms aren't really bad some level of low movement helps so I've used that to think and I tell my clients this because that's the client population I work with as well but you kind of just got to push through that boundary you got to find the internal drive to pull yourself up off the couch and say I'm going to do this today if your body is really telling you know though listen to it yeah because then you're not going to get burned out like if I push through some of the days where I'm feeling really crappy yeah you would burn out so hard I'd be out for weeks and so I have to recognize that today is a day my body is telling me to rest yeah so I'm going to rest I'm going to take care of myself I'm going to do I'm going to control the things that I can control I'm going to make sure I don't order five guys or whatever I'm not going to overload on caffeine to push through and focus on this thing I'm going to take the day to rest I'm going to do what's good to my body I'm going to drink a lot of water and I'm going to hit tomorrow running like I'm going to focus on what I need to today to recover and then I'm going to tackle tomorrow and get where I need to be I'm not going to well I still do feel guilty and I think that's something a lot of people with chronic illness feel and it doesn't matter what that chronic illness is it doesn't have to be invisible or really extreme even just depression I hear that from people all the time it's like I feel so guilty that I'm not doing these things or I'm not doing enough I should be doing more to get better and it's like no like you're physically sick right now you listen to your body and do what you need to do to take care of your body and thankfully exercise good diet are things that help you there so just think about that kind of if you're struggling with health issues whether it's pain or digestive issues or sleep issues all this stuff is going to be improved with lifestyle and that lifestyle is diet and exercise yeah get creative the other specific example for her is like if she's feeling sick and she wants to lift weights well we can compromise and just ride the bike really easily and then you're still working out like it still counts if you don't do a workout that's 60 minutes long and leaves you blind of on after like not everything has to be like that I haven't worked out like that in years and that's okay it's something that I struggle with because I liked those workouts and with weights too if I'm feeling good this is the best example I can give and Lance is like some of that's kind of normal but some of it I think is kind of messed up I can lift 40-45 pounds if I'm feeling really good for a bench press on a day where I'm feeling really tired I can barely do 20s and that is like part of my symptoms and issues like that's just a muscle strength issue and so when you look at all the neurological symptoms I'm having it makes sense but it's so frustrating and discouraging and those days I feel horrible so maybe I do some work with bands or something because it's a little bit less resistance and then I don't feel so bad about myself maybe I try to increase the reps as much as I can but there's changes like that and that is a mental health talk more so than anything and maybe we'll do another video on that but that's just dealing with chronic illness but you can still make changes if you're having these issues if you have a busy lifestyle if you have a crazy job you have crazy kids you have health issues you can make small changes that will help you improve and keep in mind I'm young and this is new for me I haven't had high triglycerides for years so me cutting it in half in a month or three or four months is I'm super excited about it it's super cool because I feel like I did an experiment on myself but you may not see results quite like that and that's okay but something we didn't talk about that I really wanted to emphasize is cutting out alcohol so we don't drink but alcohol oh don't drink it it's poison it's literal poison for your body like that's what a hangover is it's literally like your body we're covering from you poisoning yourself so that's a different story kind of but alcohol will elevate your triglycerides it's like one of the number one things if you drink alcohol even a week before your triglycerides exam your triglycerides are going to be elevated it's how the alcohol is processed through your liver and how triglycerides are packaged in your body the pathways it's so bad for you so if you're trying to lower your triglycerides or you have someone or family history of high cholesterol and high triglycerides and you're at risk for heart disease stop drinking alcohol the antioxidants that you get from your one glass a week or whatever of red wine is no get it from eating blueberries you don't need it from the red wine like stop drinking alcohol just don't do it it's going to make your blood results a lot worse and you're going to see I've had people lose weight improve sleep apnea you know cut down their triglycerides just from stopping and drinking alcohol without making any other changes so really consider that if you're someone who's struggling if you drink alcohol you're trying to get improvements on your blood panels just cut out the alcohol and see how much better it gets I guarantee you you'll have improvements it is a huge deal and it's very closely tied to some people's identities so it's tough but I would highly recommend avoiding it if you see it as a possibility yeah that's fair that's the one thing I've been able to be like oh it's not good for me I'm going to stop doing that yeah yeah and again I mean it makes it easier for her because I don't drink never have drunk so it's like it's not around all the time it's not something you constantly have to push away and it makes it tougher you know I don't have the bad food in the house I've had wine occasionally with him but it's like a dinner and I'll have a glass and that's like a year ever oh ever maybe that's probably accurate yeah I feel like I can recall them all that's funny me too three or four times anything else you want to say about alcohol? not alcohol any parting thoughts for the viewers since our screen's getting a little dark it is getting dark if you have questions reach out post a comment maybe we'll do some videos that break things down a little bit further and give you a routine to follow if you think that will be helpful and you know just listen to your body and do what works for you and see where you get yeah I did these on my own I didn't need to go to a doctor to order these blood tests I just got my first blood test from a doctor and they were like oh you should come back in for another appointment and I was like no I know what to do so I just did it and then reordered my labs myself you can do that through lab core quests most of the time they have options for you to order your own tests that's what I did came back in about three, four months is about where you want to follow up if you've made changes consistently to see if it's gotten better because that's when you'll start to see improvements with if you're checking A1C cholesterol panel, triglyceride stuff like that you'll see changes within three to four months most likely if you're trending in the right direction yeah we wish you well thanks for watching if you learned something hit the like button and subscribe to be notified when we release new videos if you really do want a deeper dive into some of this stuff I know we gave you a lot of actionable stuff this whole time but if you need it broken down more leave a comment below because otherwise I'm probably not going to prioritize it but if I know that's what you want then maybe I will if you need something else to watch how about we start with just total body flexibility I'll leave a circuit up here thanks guys