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202: Diet, Exercise, and Health

Automotive Diagnostic Podcast Jul 30, 2023 54 min

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About this episode

Sean Tipping dives into the critical but often overlooked link between health and automotive diagnostics, emphasizing how diet, exercise, and sleep impact technicians' performance. He breaks down common weight loss struggles, highlighting the body's adaptation to calorie restriction and cardio workouts, and advocates for strength training as a more sustainable approach. Sean also offers practical diet tips like cutting processed foods, prioritizing protein, and avoiding calorie-laden drinks. This episode blends personal experience with science to help listeners improve their health for better energy, mobility, and longevity in a physically demanding career.

Topics: health and automotive work diet basics exercise strategies strength training benefits body adaptation to diet and exercise processed foods impact protein importance avoiding liquid calories weight loss challenges sleep and recovery

Today on the show I want to share my perspective on diet, exercise, and overall health. We need to be healthy in order to perform at a high level within our career, but reaching our goals in today's world with sedentary lifestyles and calorie dense processed food can be frustratingly difficult. I'm going to share some simple effective ways to reach and maintain a healthy body & lifestyle.
Please note that while I have experience in this area, I am not a certified nutritionist or doctor. If you plan to make significant changes to your diet or exercise regime, it's best to consult a professional.

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Welcome to the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

We're going to explore ways to sharpen our diagnostic skills, find learning resources and hear from experts in the automotive field.

We have got Auto Rescue Tools and Isaac Rodel as a sponsor for this podcast.

Hey guys, if you're looking for programming laptops, you want the laptop set up, ready to go for programming control modules on vehicles.

You need key cutting equipment.

You need diagnostic tools.

Isaac is your guy, has all that stuff available for purchase and the support that he offers along with the purchase has been outstanding.

I bought some stuff from him in the past.

I got my dolphin key cutting tool from him several years back and again the support has been phenomenal.

Help me out along the way with anything additional I needed to make it work for me.

Again, that's autorescuetoolscom.

The link will be in the show notes.

This episode is brought to you by L1 Automotive Training and Keith Perkins.

If you're looking for education on module programming, j2534, eprom work, key and immobilizer, electrical diagnostics or drivability diagnostics, keith has a website, lontrainingcom, that's got over 60 hours of training videos on all those subjects and more.

When I first started out doing mobile, I utilized Keith's videos on module programming and J2534 in order to get my head wrapped around what I would need for the tooling, the computers, the software setups, what kind of obstacles I would be up against when I'm out there programming modules on cars, and it was a huge benefit to me, and I continue to use the training videos that he has on his website, so I strongly

recommend checking out L1Trainingcom.

Hey, what's going on?

Automotive World?

Welcome to another episode of the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

My name is Sean Tipping and I'll be your host once again for this week's episode.

Thank you so much for joining me this week on the show.

I'm going to share something with you that's off the beaten path a little bit.

So just this fair warning this doesn't directly have a lot to do with the auto repair world, but I think indirectly it definitely does.

I've been having some discussions with a few people recently and I thought this would be a good time to share my perspective and some knowledge on this subject for everybody, because I think it's very worthwhile information for just about anybody to have.

We're going to talk about health, nutrition and diet today.

Now why am I talking about this on the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast?

Right, it doesn't really fit the bill based on the name of my show, but I think it is a relevant topic for anybody, regardless of what you do for a career, but including ours, because automobile repair and diagnostic technicians our health, our physical body and our brain definitely matters for our job, and keeping our

body and our brain healthy is critical to being able to do our job at a top level, right?

Of course, there's a lot more that goes into it, and that's pretty much every other episode that I have is explaining the other things that go into it.

But at a very basic level, you have to be healthy in order to do this stuff at a top level or to do this stuff at all.

You have to be healthy in order to compete.

You've heard that before, I'm sure, and it's definitely true, right.

If these things are off, it's going to make doing any job, including ours, very difficult.

So that's why I'm talking about it and, like I said, I've been having some discussions with some other people recently, so I'm going to share my perspective on health and diet and what you can do to either maintain or achieve the level that you're looking for.

So, before we get into this, I do have some disclaimers to put out there.

All right, I am not a certified nutritionist, I am not a physical therapist, I am not a doctor.

You know those things about me, but just in case you don't, I am none of those things.

All right.

So please take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

If you are going to make any major changes to your diet or your exercise plan, please consult a professional like a nutritionist, a physical therapist, a doctor, before you make any major changes.

Okay, this episode is for entertainment purposes only.

We're going to go with that Now.

That being said, I do have a lot of knowledge in this area, for a couple of reasons.

Number one I'm just kind of a nerd about health and fitness.

I really do enjoy working out, exercising and being as healthy as I can be, and so much so that I actually went out and I got certified to instruct at the kettlebell gym that I attend.

So a couple nights a week I go in and I coach classes for the gym members.

There it's a group workout style format and I help people, you know, guide them along through the workout, but then also help out with form, technique and then just general overall advice.

So I do live in this world.

I do have some experience and perspective on it, not only helping other people, but myself too.

I put in a lot of work over the years to be healthy and made a lot of mistakes along the way, so I do have some knowledge in this area, and that's why I'm sharing this with you.

The last thing I want to say before I get into this a lot of this information I didn't come up with myself.

I've learned this from other people along the way.

You know, there is a ton, a ton, a ton of information out there if you're willing to find it, and I can help people out with resources, and that's where I've gotten a lot of this information.

And again, I know people that I see on a regular basis in these communities that have shared a lot of their knowledge as well.

So I just want to put that out there as well, as I'm not claiming that I came up with all of this stuff.

This is stuff that I've learned along the way, but I think is really beneficial for everybody to know All right.

So where do we start with this?

I think the first thing to get out there is to understand you know what your goal is.

Right.

Before anybody can give any advice on being healthy in any way, you have to understand what your personal goal is, and that's going to change the direction that you take and exactly how you do it, and that's true of a lot of things to write.

If you ask any expert a question on any subject matter, a lot of the times the answer you will get from a true expert is well, it depends, and in health and fitness, that is very much true, because there is such a wide variety of people, body types, age, gender, all kinds of different things that are going to affect what you should or what you need to do in order to achieve your goal

, and your goal might be different.

You could have two people that are very similar, but they have very different goals.

Of course, that's going to change.

You know what you would need to do in order to reach your goal, alright.

So, that being said, I'm going to To make some general statements that are true for most people, but it's possible that that is not true for you.

So ask yourself, as you're I'm going through this do these things pertain to me?

And if they don't, then there's probably other resources or options for you, but I think that this is generally going to apply to most people, so let's go through what people are shooting for as far as health and fitness goals, and the first one is exactly that they want to be healthy.

Right, you want to have a healthy body that functions the way that it should, plain and simple.

Right, you want to have enough energy To get through the day, to do your tasks, to function and get everything done in the day that you need to, with a little bit energy left over to maybe have some fun at the end of the day, to You're not walking in the door at the end of the day and crashing.

You want to have enough energy, and that requires being healthy, but also so that you're not sick or injured.

Right, that's going to prevent you from doing what you want.

You want to be on the healthy side of the things, versus six and second injured.

That's obvious.

That Probably goes for just about everybody, but that's a goal, right, and some people are not there.

Some people are fighting against low energy, injuries, sickness, things that prevent them from accomplishing the things that they want to, or just from being at 100% in their daily lives right, but that's a goal that we want to shoot for.

Another one is just the mobility and functionality to do the things that we need to do, and as auto technicians, that can be very true for our job, especially as we age.

Right, this job is much easier physically when we're younger If especially for doing the heavy line work and we're lifting tires and swinging hammers working above our heads all that stuff.

Our bodies need to be able to function properly in order to do that, but also just for everyday tasks.

To write, we want to be able to do things around the yard and house and have our bodies function again without limitations and without injuries.

We need the mobility to reach down and pick something up, to reach above our heads, to use our bodies in the way that they were intended.

Right, that's a goal for people.

Again depends on where you're at and what age, but that is something that a lot of people don't have, but they would like to either get back to or achieve at some point or another.

And the last one here, which is one of the most common, is maintaining or achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight, or I can say body fat percentage, because weight there's a lot to that and I'll talk a little bit about that, but body fat percentage is something that I think is a better way to look at.

Maintaining a healthy body fat percentage is something that a lot of people Want to accomplish and that a lot of these things all tie in together.

Right, if you have a healthy body fat percentage, you're generally going to be healthier, you're going to have more energy, you're going to be more mobile and functional in your everyday life.

So, if those are some things that you would like to achieve or maintain, this is the sort of stuff that I'm going to be talking about.

There are some ways to achieve that, and so there's some ways to achieve those things.

There's lots and lots of stuff out there.

There's endless amounts of material and there's some kind of wild and crazy stuff that's out there.

There's lots of supplements, there's lots of crazy diet plans, there's surgeries, there's stuff that's really off of the wall.

But there's really, and always has been, three big factors that if you can hit these things, if you can really go after these three things, you're going to move the needle and the rest of the stuff is either unnecessary or just something supplemental that you can mess around with.

But the three big things are diet, exercise and sleep.

Right, that's it, and it's always been the case.

That has never changed.

These are three big things that humans want to do correctly if they want to hit the goals that are mentioned.

Right, and I don't see that changing anytime in the near future either.

Now I'm not going to talk too much about sleep today.

Get enough of it.

It's really important.

I'm sure you can tell, but I can tell.

If I don't get enough sleep, I'm not as sharp, I don't have as much energy, my mood is not the same.

Right, I need to get enough sleep, and they say to at least get seven hours of sleep a night.

Now there are people that can get by on less, and your age is a big factor there too, because I used to be able to get by on five or six hours and not have an issue.

I can't do that anymore.

As I'm getting older, I'm not able to get by on as little sleep.

But even when I was younger, I could have been better.

I could have had more performance had I gotten more sleep, and that's true for anybody.

So I'm still a big offender of it, and so I don't have a whole lot more to say on it.

But do your best to get enough sleep.

It is a really important thing that's going to make a bigger difference in your life than a whole lot of other stuff will is getting enough sleep.

So that's kind of all I'll say about sleep there's if you want to do some more research, there's a ton of stuff out there but get sleep, it's important.

Now the other two that I'm going to spend some more time talking about is diet and exercise.

Okay, and while big surprise that those are important into the goals that I mentioned, but here's the deal.

There are a lot of different ways that we can attack these two things and, again, you've seen a million different diet plans and fads over the years.

You've seen a million different exercise varieties and plans over the years, and there's definitely more than one way to skin a cat.

There's lots of different ways that you can attack these two things in order to achieve your goals, but what I would like to share with you is some simple and yet effective ways that we can improve our diet and exercise, that we can implement these into our lives with a Lower amount of effort.

Right, and I'm not going to say that there's no effort or no discipline here.

There definitely is.

You have to be able to apply some discipline to make this happen, but there are ways that we can put in Less amounts of effort and get the same result had we put in more effort.

Right, there are more effective ways to do this, in my opinion, than others, and those other ways, I think, have been really common over the years, and I think they're the reason that a lot of people fail or fall short when they're attempting to improve their diet or exercise.

So that's what I want to share with you here today.

So, like I mentioned before, a healthy weight or a healthy body fat percentage.

So it's a percentage of fat on your body, and there's different ways that you can measure this and there's different Numbers depending if you're male or female.

As far as what's good, you can research those yourself, right?

I don't want to give you real specific numbers here again, because I am not a doctor, but the fact of the matter is is that a lot of people, the biggest goal or the biggest thing they'd like to change is their weight, body fat percentage.

Right, they'd like to reduce that and they know that if they do, they'll be in a healthier spot.

But that's a problem in today's world and the two biggest factors, in my opinion, why this is so common why obesity is a serious, serious issue, at least in the USA and others listeners outside of the USA and I'm sure in other parts of the world that this is an issue too, but here in the US this is a big problem for two main reasons.

Number one sedentary lifestyles have become increasingly common, and COVID did not help this in any way.

Right, you can get everything delivered to your house and you can work from home and you never have to get up or go anywhere or do anything if you don't want to.

Right, our bodies are built.

They're literally built to move and to do things, and when we're not doing that, when we have a sedentary lifestyle, a job where we sit or drive a lot, this is this is a major problem and it's a big contributor to obesity.

The other main factor, again, in my opinion, is the amount of processed food that is Easily and inexpensively available to people.

Right, and what I mean by that is calorie dense food that is cheap and easily accessible to people, and I will dive into what I mean by processed food.

But the over consumption of calories combined with a sedentary lifestyle, has led to a major problem with obesity, which has also led to a major issue with Diabetes and heart disease and a whole host of other health issues.

Right, and again, that's what we're talking about is avoiding those types of things, and people know this.

This is not a big surprise.

People try to lose weight all of the time.

Right, it's a?

It's a massive industry, the weight loss industry.

Whether you look at the exercise or the diet side of it, it's huge and there's endless ways that you can Attempt to do this, or different plans or different drugs that you can take.

Right, this Osempic thing is a big deal now and they have other ones, but there's there's always been stuff.

There's always been a million different ways, and Companies know that people want to lose weight.

Now here is probably what has been one of the most Common or typical approaches to weight loss that I've personally attempted, that I've seen a lot of other people attempt, and if you just ask someone, hey, how would you lose weight if you were going to try to do it?

This is probably fairly close to the answer that you would get from from most adult people.

Number one I'm gonna restrict my calories.

Right, I'm going to eat less.

And number two, I'm going to exercise.

But here's how most of the people will say they're gonna exercise if they're gonna try to lose weight, they're gonna go do some sort of long, potentially strenuous cardiovascular workout.

So this would be like running, biking, maybe your rollerblading, maybe even swimming, but running and biking probably the most common of the two.

Right, and you see a lot of people do that.

They'll restrict calories and they'll go running, whether it be on a treadmill or outside or whatever it is.

That's their method to losing weight and it does work.

Right, it is 100% effective.

If you cut back your calories to the correct amount, you just don't eat as as much and you're going out, you're running or biking or rollerblading every single night.

You're going to lose weight.

100%, it is effective and I that's why a lot of people do it.

But that is a very, very typical approach.

Even when you go into a gym, right, you see people sit on the exercise bike or the elliptical or the treadmill and that's what they do and they go in.

There is Long, strenuous, potentially, and maybe not even strenuous, maybe just a mild level of cardiovascular workout, but they're gonna do that and go for the gym for 45 minutes to an hour.

You're gonna do that and then your strict calories and that's the weight loss plan and, again, does work.

You will lose weight.

And I do want to say don't get me wrong here If you love biking, if you love running like you really honestly love doing it, please do, because it is 100% better than not doing anything.

And if whatever you're doing for exercise you enjoy it, you are more likely to continue doing it.

But for a lot of people that I know they don't love running right, running, especially, I think fits, that bill is like.

There are some people that do and I did for quite a while.

I ran marathons when I was in my 20s but Not everybody loves it and it definitely can get boring after a while.

But if that's your thing, if any of these things you're saying, please don't stop doing that.

And if it's what works for you, then do it.

But what happens to most people that do this is, even though it provides weight loss, you have to maintain doing this, the same level of exercise and a level of calorie restriction.

Right, and that's gonna depend.

Okay, I've lost the weight that I want.

I wanna stay at this weight.

I can now maintenance my calories a little different.

I'm not in a deficit, but I'm still restricting calories.

You do.

You still have to restrict calories prior to what you were doing before you had changed your diet and exercise plan, and you have to continue that level of exercise and I'll explain why that is.

But you have to keep going out and doing those long cardiovascular workouts like running or biking.

Again, if you love doing that and you wanna do it every day, go for it.

But that's tough for people for a number of reasons and, like I mentioned, some people just don't like doing it.

But it's also very time consuming if you're gonna go out for an hour of doing this every day and you don't have to do that much.

But that's what it ends up being for a lot of people.

If they wanna get the level of exercise and they wanna hit the weight that they're going for, they gotta get out there maybe five, six days a week for an hour at a time in order to hit their goals, and that gets old after a while.

Again, if you don't love it, you're more likely to stop doing it at some point.

But it's also life gets in the way, right?

You get really really busy I know I do and finding the time for exercise can be really difficult all on its own, especially if you're doing a large amount, consistently, right.

And the problem with this style of exercise is you have to maintain that, because once you fall off the wagon doing this style of exercise and diet, you're gonna gain the weight back and in a lot of cases, more than when you started.

If you really fall off the wagon for a while I mean, that's what everybody says If I fell off the wagon, gain the weight back and then some, Right, it's really easy and I'll explain the details on why but it is really easy, if this is your style of weight loss, to go back to the weight you were at.

And then some and most of the people experience this right.

If you talk to anybody who's been on a weight loss plan and they've done something like this, they'll probably have a story of yeah, you know, I lost 20, 30 pounds and then you know, two years later I gained it all back.

Right, I just got tired of doing this life, got in the way, whatever it might be, and you're right back to where you started.

And that's the story for most people.

It's the you know, the yo-yo diet thing.

You see it so so commonly with people.

I know personally a lot of people that have experienced the same thing, and the main reason is and this is I wanna get into some details here your body, in this case, adapts, and that's a key point here is your body's ability to adapt.

Your body adapts to the lower calorie input and the style of exercise that you're giving it and once you stop doing the things that you were doing, your body is adapted to that lifestyle, to that exercise, to that diet, and that's the reason why you're gonna gain all of this back.

But let's get into that adaptation thing.

This is a really important thing to understand about your body, if you don't already.

But the human body has an amazing ability to adapt to whatever stimulus you give it, and there's a bunch of different examples of this, even outside of the topic that we're discussing.

But for exercise and for diet, your body has an incredible ability to adapt to whatever stimulus you give it and it's gonna adapt differently depending on what stimulus you give it.

So let's take what I just talked about and explain that.

As far as the adaptation, we are sending a signal to our body saying, hey, we're gonna go do long, strenuous cardiovascular workouts, we're gonna go biking or running for an hour every night, or five nights a week, and we're gonna restrict calories at the same point.

So your body, your metabolism, which is an amazingly complex thing I don't pretend to understand all of the underlying mechanisms, but this is how it works.

Your body is going to respond by being very efficient with the calories that you are now giving it.

Right, it's gonna burn fat off of your body.

Right, this is an effective weight loss mechanism because you need calories to be alive and if you're in a deficit, it's gonna take body fat and it's gonna use that to fuel your body and that's how you lose weight on this, right.

But it's also going to pair down muscle on your body.

Right, it's actually going to remove muscle from your body because muscle is expensive tissue.

It takes calories for it to be on your body and you're in a calorie restriction.

Right, you might be in a deficit when you're trying to lose weight.

That's the goal most people.

When they're doing this, they're eating less calories than they're burning in a day, and so your body's gonna burn fat, but you're in a deficit.

So the calories that your body is receiving, it is now going to be very efficient with how those are used and you can actually survive.

You can get by on far less calories once your body has adapted to that, and it's an amazing thing that your body can do that.

They can actually become more or less efficient with calories, and how are they are used, but it's adapting to the stimulus that you're giving it and that's great.

That's awesome, until you go off of this exercise slash diet plan.

And now your body is adapted to eating less calories.

Being efficient with calories right.

It's in four cylinder mode, right.

And all of a sudden you fall off the wagon, for whatever reason it might be.

You're bored with this, you're busy, whatever.

Maybe you get injured that's another thing.

And now your body's in four cylinder mode.

It's extremely efficient with calories, and now you start dumping in calories like it was a V8 truck, right.

This is now where the weight loss, or the weight gain, seems to come on faster than that it came off Like.

All of a sudden, it's all back and then some, because your metabolism, your base metabolic rate, has changed to a point where it's used to seeing less calories.

And now you go back to how you're eating before and it packs on weight like crazy, right.

This stuff's great as long as you keep it up, but it is so easy to stop doing it and to fall off the wagon.

And that's usually what happens to people, right?

They have big goals at the beginning of the year you know New Year's resolutions, right?

We see that a lot.

January 1st I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna hit the gym and lose all this weight.

Maybe they do, but a couple months into it, maybe six months into it Again all the reasons I mentioned they stop doing this and then the weight comes back on like crazy.

But the key that I mentioned there the adaptation and the change to your base metabolic rate right, the calories that you just burn being alive.

Okay, and this is a really important part to understand, because so much of the time we look at the calories burned in a workout, in a specific workout, you know, we're looking at our Apple Watch or whatever it is.

I burn 300 calories in this workout while you're working out, and you do, and that's important the calories burned in the workout.

But if you want to be more successful with this, I want you to stop thinking about the calories burned in the workout and start thinking about the adaptation for your body that you're achieving from the type of workout that you're doing and I just explained.

You know, if you're running and biking, what's gonna happen You're gonna reduce muscle on your body and body fat, you're gonna lower your base metabolic rates, you're gonna become more efficient with calories.

That's the adaptation, that's the signal you're sending to your body when you're at a deficit, and long cardiovascular style workouts.

So now I wanna suggest a different type of exercise or workout, and that's strength training or resistance training, basically, lifting heavy stuff.

That's the goal.

That's the style that we can utilize to actually put in more effort and get more sustainable results, in my opinion.

Right, this may not work 100% for everybody, but I've seen it and I've experienced it be successful in myself and other people.

Now, if you start picking up heavy stuff right, we start doing strength training, resistance training, lifting weights in one shape or another.

There's a lot of variety that we can do this in too.

When we start doing that, we send a different signal to our body.

Okay, and I'll talk about the diet portion of it as well but just doing the resistance training, you're gonna send a different signal to your body, as opposed to cardiovascular workouts, right, the first one is okay, I'm not getting much calories and I'm asked to do long workouts with energy output.

I have to be real efficient with calories.

We can't have any extra tissue on the body.

Let's reduce the muscle right.

Look at a marathon runner versus a body builder.

They have very different bodies and those are the extremes.

I understand that, but that's the response to your body.

That's the adaptations that I'm talking about.

Right With strength training, right, and we're and also understand, like, if you go running, you're Unless you're really serious about it, you're not gonna look like a Kenyan marathon runner.

And if you just start lifting weights, you're not gonna look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Okay, even if you tried, you, you may not get to either end of those extremes, but it's a helpful visual so you can understand the basics of what I'm trying to get across here.

When you start strength training, the signal now that you send to your body, to your metabolism, is okay, this guy's gonna pick up heavy stuff on a regular basis.

There is now an adapt, adaptive process that your body takes on for that and it's adding muscle to your body.

And here's the thing about muscle right, and again, I'm not talking about looking like Arnold, that's, that's not it, and that's that's something that's really difficult to obtain, unless you have the genetics, incredible work ethic, you're just dedicating your life to it and Some performance enhancing drugs in a lot of cases, too right.

But the fact the matter is is you will put on some muscle if your strength training and Muscle muscle is expensive.

Tissue, chlorically speaking, meaning that just being alive right, just being a human, that's being alive.

You're burning X amount of calories Just sitting there, doing doing whatever you're doing throughout the day, and the more muscle that you have on your body, it is going to require more calories just being burned so that you're alive To maintain that muscle on your body.

And if you're sending the signal to your body like, hey, I'm gonna pick up heavy stuff again, you're gonna increase muscle mass.

You'll actually increase bone density too, and so your base metabolic rate is actually going to increase versus decrease.

And Again, this is kind of the key point here.

Is it you don't want to think about your workout?

Is I burned X amount of calories during my workout?

You did, and that's fantastic.

But what you really want to focus on is what, what signal, what adaptation am I sending to my body for my workout, and how is that going to change my metabolic rate?

How many calories am I gonna burn?

Just being alive and Strength training and adding muscle to your body is gonna change it so that your body is burning more calories, just being alive.

Okay, that's, that's the goal, which means for us, as people who have a lot of stuff to do and can't always be in the gym, it means you can actually eat more and Maintain a healthy body weight.

Again, slash body fat percentage.

That's where Muscle is going to weigh more than fat on your body, right, and so weight or the BMI scale isn't always the best way to look at things, because that can be a little skewed, especially depending on your body type.

A lot of guys that are, you know, bigger guys are gonna end up having a lot of muscle on their body, and so weight and BMI they can show you as, oh, you're in the obese scale.

When you look at body fat percentage, you're like, okay, this person's actually pretty lean, pretty healthy.

I should have a lot of muscle on their body, but we can eat more calories and maintain a healthy weight.

That is a good thing, right?

What I'm getting at here with all of this is that right there alone Makes this an easier thing to do over the the long run.

Just that simple thing is I don't have to be as Restrictive we'll talk specifics on diet here but I don't have to be as restrictive on my diet for the rest of my life to maintain the weight that I'm after.

Right, yeah, we do have to be conscious about what we eat and it is easy to overeat, but you don't have to be as dialed in and again, I can, I can talk from experience on this.

Again, I used to run marathons and I knew like when I stopped running on a regular basis and my weight would go up just eating normally what I do.

And you know, if you stop weight training, things are going to change as well.

But again, the advantage is your body's adapted to a higher calorie input to maintain what's on your body, so you're in a much better spot here and it makes it much easier to maintain over the long run.

That's kind of where I'm going with this.

The other thing is this requires less of a time commitment In order to maintain it over time.

Now again, you can go crazy with this and you can hit the gym every day and actually you'll see better results if you give yourself proper recovery time.

But Realistically, all you need is 45 minutes three times a week of Dedicated, focused and intense strength training in order to see the results and maintain the results.

And that's the big one.

Right, a lot of us can drop 20 pounds.

How many people can maintain it over the long run?

Right, but 45 minutes a week, you can do that.

And if you're like man I I don't have the freaking time for that.

Really ask yourself if you do, if you can find the time for that.

And In today's world, if you take a look at several different things that are really common for a lot of people, you'll find 45 minutes, again, three times a week is actually pretty easy to find, right.

Start to track your time for a week, track everything you do For 24 hours a day, for seven days, that's it, and then go through and say, okay, where would I be able to fit in?

You know, 45 minutes three times a week?

Right, look at your phone and go into the settings.

It will actually break down the time that you spend on each app.

If you have Facebook, instagram, tiktok, twitter, any social media those the big time socks and if you've never looked at the amount of time that you spend on them, take a look, it's kind of scary.

I Did that and I took it besides messenger.

I took all of the social media off my phone because I was embarrassed by the amount of time that I spent on them every day and that alone for some people could be the time that they need in order to Exercise, but also things like Netflix and whatever Insert, whatever streaming service that you use.

And I'm not saying don't ever relax or enjoy yourself, but there is time in a lot of people's schedules that they're Unaware of because it's just being sucked up by these digital Whatever it is that.

Youtube is another big one, big time suck for people.

So you can find the time if you really focus your effort.

But that's it 45 minutes three times a week of dedicated strength training, and I can say that with confidence Because that's our prescription.

At the gym that I Co-chat right, there's classes every day, but we tell people three times a week, 45 minute classes and people do see results from that amount of strength training.

Now, it's pretty focused and sometimes intense workouts, but you're done, you know you're in and out in an hour and You're done.

You go on, do the rest of your day and that's all it takes to achieve and maintain so some of the goals that we were talking about.

And it doesn't mean that you couldn't put in the same time with cardio.

You could.

Are you gonna see the same results with the same amount of time?

I don't think so.

Personally, I feel like you'd have to put in more more time With running or biking than you would with strength training to get the same results, in my personal opinion.

So, again, it's gonna allow us to eat more calories and put in less effort.

This is a good thing, right?

What's the least amount of effort with the most amount of results?

That's what we're shooting for here.

Now there's a ton of different variations on strength training.

I'm not gonna go into the details.

Again, I like kettlebells, but there's a ton of different stuff out there.

There's a lot of education.

If you want some resources, I can shoot you some links.

I can definitely help out with the kettlebell stuff.

Like I said, I'm certified in that.

But there's a lot of different ways and you can make this as complex or as simple as you want.

I mean, you could do squats, dead lifts and some variation of presses and you'd be good.

That's it.

But here's the deal.

This not only is gonna help with the goals that we talked about as far as weight, but also with mobility and functionality of your body.

Right, this is going to protect your spine and your joints and your tendons.

Muscle is gonna support all of that and for what we're doing working on cars daily life that's gonna help us out with that stuff.

Preventing injury is a big one.

Now, you do have to be careful and be knowledgeable about the workouts, because you can injure yourself doing that, but if you're doing it properly, it is going to help prevent injury in your normal life.

I did have a podcast episode about this a while back.

I can reference that in the show notes if you wanna check that one out.

So that's it.

Strength training is gonna put us in V8 mode.

Right, our body is V8.

We are inefficient with calories.

We have expensive tissue on our body and we're able to eat more calories just being alive.

Long cardio vascular style workouts.

We're gonna be in four cylinder mode.

We have to eat less to maintain the weight that we're after.

Like I said, if you love doing biking, running, please do it.

It's better than nothing.

But if you're looking for the simplest way to maintain a healthy weight, this is my opinion on that.

So let's talk about the other side of stuff.

Quick is the diet.

Again, endless amounts of stuff out there as far as education and details and you can really really get dialed into this and there's a million different plans and ways that you can do this.

But what you eat is definitely important and it's a big part.

You can exercise your brains out, but if you're not following up with some nutrition, you won't get the results that you want, plain and simple.

So there are two pieces to this puzzle.

And I did say you could eat more if you're strength training, but you still have to pay attention to what you're eating.

But I'm gonna give you some real simple ways to make this happen.

And even if you didn't exercise, I think making the changes I'm gonna suggest here will help you lose weight.

Or you're like I don't really like working out you can just do the diet side of things and you will drop weight.

I think there's tremendous advantages to strength training, but you could apply these diet things I'm gonna mention here and it will long and will make some difference.

And there's again, there's so much information.

You can do a series of like cuts and bulks, and there's diet plans out there like keto and there's so much stuff out there.

Go research it, figure out which one works best for you.

But anyways, here's the big three.

If you do these things, they'll move.

The needle Is number one cut out as much processed food as possible, and I'll talk a little bit about that.

Number two prioritize protein in your diet.

Most diets that you see not all of them, but most diets are gonna be high protein and some variation of low carbohydrate, but they're gonna be high protein diets.

Prioritize protein and don't drink your calories.

Okay, big three if you do those simple three things, you don't have to track anything.

You don't have to look at macro nutrients except the protein.

There's no numbers involved.

You can let your body be the limiter and when you're full, and it's very, very simple.

If you do those things, process foods, prioritize protein and don't drink your calories.

I'll quickly touch on the three of those things so we can kind of wrap this one up.

I don't want it to go too long.

But processed foods I mentioned that earlier.

What is this?

One of the easier ways to tell is if it comes in a box, a package or a wrapper.

There's a good chance that it's a processed food Not always right.

You can get vegetables and things like that, and even meat, in a box or a wrapper, but take a look.

If it's in a box or a wrapper or a package, it very well could be a processed food.

And you can look at the ingredients.

If it is on the box or wrapper and if there's more than two or three ingredients, it's very likely a processed food, meaning that it didn't come from a plant or an animal directly.

That's another really easy way to tell.

Is this food processed or not?

Well, did it come from an animal or did it come from a plant directly?

If not, okay, question whether it's been processed or not, and I'll explain a little bit more about what I mean by this processed food.

But this is the reason why obesity is such a problem, in my opinion again is the amount of processed food that's available and the low cost that is available to people.

Processed food is what's called hyper palatable, which means it is going to be really easy to consume large amounts of calories.

Right, if you ever opened up a box of cheez-its or Doritos, how easy it is.

You just all these are so good Cheez-its for whatever reason.

I could just eat handful after handful and after handful of them.

These foods are designed by companies with millions of dollars that go into engineering teams To make these as palatable as possible to you, so that you eat more, so that you buy more.

Right, that's how those companies make profits.

Is you buying another box of cheez-its?

And so those foods are designed for you to eat as much as possible, or to over eat as far as calories are concerned, and that hyper palatability is by passing your body's normal limiters when it comes to being full in reference to the calories that you're ingesting.

Okay, here's an example that I heard from someone that blew my mind a few years back and I never forgot this.

Okay, think about a big bag of Lay's potato chips.

Right, they're really good.

I love potato chips.

They're delicious.

Right, I could sit down with a big bag, or a full-size bag, lay's potato chips.

Sit down on the couch in front of the TV watch hockey game.

I could crush that whole bag, no problem If I was hungry, not an issue, I'd eat the whole thing to myself.

Okay, and I think a lot of people could probably do the same.

All right, I got a big appetite.

Some people don't, but I could easily do that, and I think most people could have.

They really just sat there and TV doesn't help.

You're not really thinking about the food that you're eating.

And maybe you got some dip for the chip, something to drink along with it.

Man, that's going down easy, right, not a big deal.

If you look at how many potatoes are in and Google this, check fact, check me there are five whole potatoes in a large bag of Lay's potato chips.

Okay, try to sit down, get five baked potatoes, full-sized potatoes, put them.

Put them on a couple plates I need to be able to fit them on one and try to eat five baked potatoes with nothing on them, just plain.

I mean, it's not gonna be very good but it's gonna be very difficult to do, right?

I don't know, I haven't tried it, but I don't know how many potatoes I get through.

I just feel like I'm done, I'm good.

Okay, two potatoes with nothing on them, I'm all set, I don't need any more, right?

But in a bag of potato chips, they've used fat and salt, processed the food to make them very easy to consume and this is the case of most processed foods Is we're using sugars, fats, salts to process the foods, to make them hyper palatable to make them easy To over consume what you normally would.

A whole food, right, something that comes directly from a plant or an animal.

Your body's Normal limiter to potatoes is gonna kick in before you over eat the calories Versus a bag of potato chips, right, and that's the simplest way to think about it.

And that's true for so many other foods, especially if you look at the caloric value, right.

Look at the calories in a Snickers bar.

You know, I don't know 300 calories or so Versus the same amount of calories in broccoli or carrots, right.

The volume of food is completely different if you look at it that way.

Or even just chicken breast, right?

If you were to eat 300 calories of chicken breast versus 300 calories of a Snickers bar, it's gonna be a very different volume of food and you know more, more difficult to eat more calories of just chicken breast, right?

But that's.

The simple change that you can make here is take out as much processed food as you can, eat as much whole foods as you can, and you don't even have to think about it.

Your body is gonna naturally limit the amount of calories that you intake.

That's it, and you don't even have to be that restrictive on what you're eating or not eating.

Just take out the processed food as much as possible.

You'll get full when you're when your body hits that limit.

The other thing is, too, is some of these foods are so Palatable that it will make whole foods seem bland.

Right, if you're used to real sugary Drinks or foods and try eating an apple or a banana, you're like, well, that's pretty bland, but if you give it some time, you get away from that food all of a sudden.

An apple or bananas Look, this is a pretty good, you know sweet food and your your palate actually changes based off of what you normally give it.

All, right.

The second one was prioritize protein.

Okay, and there's a number of reasons why this is important and, again, you see, most diet plans are gonna be high in protein.

Number one Essential amino acids.

You need proteins and fats to be alive, right, you can live without carbohydrates.

You can't live without proteins and fats.

You need them for your body, okay, so it's important that you get some.

Number two it's essential for muscle growth, right, we talked about putting muscle on our body.

Putting muscle on our body.

You need proteins in order to do that.

Okay, and just for reference, proteins is things like eggs, meats.

There are some plant-based options, there's shakes, whey protein that you can get, but Animal sources are gonna be the most nutrient dense.

So those are the ones that are definitely recommended.

And if if you're not familiar, I guess I kind of skipped over it.

The three big match Macro nutrients are carbs, fats and proteins.

So we divide things most foods up into those three categories and you can do some research to figure out what's what.

But again, if it's meat, eggs, it's gonna be protein.

There's again protein that you can get from plants and supplements like Protein powders that you can make shakes out of.

But be careful there, because you can end up adding a lot of sugars and stuff Into your diet there as well.

Protein is also more satiating than any other macro nutrient.

The fats with the carbohydrates, meaning you get full faster.

Eating protein actually takes your body more calories to digest protein than the other macro nutrients as well.

Right, so it's gonna support muscle growth, it's gonna fill us up faster and it's gonna give us the nutrients that we need for our body.

They do recommend, you know, especially if you're strength training, to get a point eight to one gram of protein per Pound of body fat.

Okay.

So if you're 200 pound person, that would be 160 to 200 grams of protein a day.

Add that up.

That is not necessarily an easy thing to do, especially if you're not used to it.

Right, you might try this.

You're like I can't eat that much, so it does take some effort and that's where the shakes can come in handy.

If you're just like I, can't eat that much meat and eggs.

But If you do this number one again, you're gonna get fuller faster, but you're also gonna support the muscle growth that you need, right?

If you're going to the gym, you're doing the strength training but you're not giving your body the fuel, well, it's not going to be able to put on the muscle that and get the adaptation that we're shooting for All right.

Last one is don't drink your calories.

Okay, things like sugary drinks, energy drinks, juices, coffee loaded with, you know, sugar and cream and stuff like that, beer and don't get me wrong, I love beer but those sort of things are Basically worthless as far as calories go.

They're not providing much, if any, nutrients to your body, but your body is still going to, you know, pack those on as fat if it's excess calories.

So avoid drinking calorie dense sports drinks.

I mean, I guess the Gatorade's good if you're gonna go out and play soccer or hockey or something like that, but if you're just drinking Gatorade because you like it, it's a lot of wasted calories.

It really isn't doing anything for you and a lot of people can make that one change Take that out of their diet and they'll see themselves lose weight immediately as well.

So that's a real simple one.

So that's what I got for you, and I know that was a little long-winded, but there's a lot to it.

I think that's all important.

Again, look into some strength training 45 minutes three times a week.

Try to cut out as many processed foods from your diet as you can.

Make sure you're getting enough protein.

Don't drink your calories, get enough sleep, and you're gonna see some huge differences in your health and your body weight if you haven't done these things already.

So, like I said, I'm not a doctor or physical therapist or a nutritionist, so take what I say with a grain of salt and consult a professional before you make any big changes to any of those things that I mentioned.

But if you need any more advice or information, reach out to me.

I'd be happy to help.

I hope you found that helpful if you listen this long.

Thank you appreciate it.

I'm trying to put out some information that is helpful to everybody.

Even when we're fixing cars, we still have to consider things like this.

So With that all the way, let's get out there, start fixing the world, one car at a time.