Matter of Facts: Fitness

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFPodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravelet. Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic and here's your show.

[00:00:30] And welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast. Nick is back with me, back behind the mic. Andrew, on the other hand, is not here. He took a new job as a startling satellite technician, but he was a little confused. He was a little concerned about having to hold his breath for extended periods of time. So I'm kind of like, I don't know anything about maintaining satellites. It sounds kind of cool, but I'm a little concerned for him. Michael did satellite tech work for a while. I don't remember breath holding being a problem, but...

[00:00:56] Okay, but was he a satellite tech like on the ground or satellite tech like up in the air? Because that's a little bit of a different kind of satellite tech. I do believe rooftop install. Okay. It's a long way down from a roof. I think it's a lot longer way down from like, you know, geostationary satellites. Accurate. Anyway, I'm going to continue to goof on Andrew until he graces us with his presence again. Because, you know... I mean, we're going to continue to goof even after, but...

[00:01:28] Okay, let's get down to the admin work. I'm going to reorder these things just a little bit. Go for it. Because I have to thank the patrons for supporting the show, including our newest patron, Mike, who just joined within the last 48 hours. And he has already posted himself in the signal chat for all of y'all's abuse to be heaped on him. Thanks for being a good sport, Mike.

[00:01:51] And I am now completely and totally convinced that Eddie has that spiel he gives everybody that I am not at liberty to repeat on the show. That's patron chat only. I am convinced he has that like copied into a note or a Word document because it is... He whoops it out way too fast. He's way too excited when... Look back at the wording though. The wording is different every time. It's always a little bit different.

[00:02:18] I think he just types that shit up in like a minute. That's more concerning though, because yeah, it's a little bit different, but it's still close enough every single time. Oh yeah. It's a little bit concerning. Yep. That's our fun group. You know, it like that to me, that is like been one of the, one of the weirdest, but the most organic parts of like podcasting is that, you know, I find that every show attracts its own breed of psychopaths to it.

[00:02:47] And, and within the page of the group that is like the patrons of this podcast, you find this weird mismatch of like, you know, guys that are in preparedness, guys are in technology. Lots of, my, my wife says it's the nerd bunch. Yes. Accurate. Which is not a bad thing. Like I happily call myself a nerd. I think being a nerd is pretty cool actually. And like within that group, everybody is a nerd about something.

[00:03:14] Everybody has their area of expertise, but it's the cool thing about it is that, you know, there's, there's, if you have a question and none of us know the answer, you win a prize. Yeah. And one of us will, we'll figure it out very quickly because we don't like not knowing things. Turns out. Yeah. As it turns out, not knowing is, um, is worse than getting a bar with like 14 different reasonably well-informed opinions. Absolutely. Yes.

[00:03:43] Raggle being a nerd is definitely better than being a dork being a dork. Look, I I've been telling people since I was in high school, like, Hey, you better be nice to nerds. Cause they will rule the world one day. Mm hmm. And I mean, look at the tech, look at the tech explosion. Nerds pretty much do rule the world now. You know, if you're not obsessed with what you do, you're never going to be the best at it. Yeah.

[00:04:07] So on the back of thanking the patrons, I do have a request and I don't ask much of y'all, but I noticed the other day looking at it, that the audio podcast, wherever you happen to look at it, whether it's the, the, I, you know, the, uh, whether it's the iTunes directory or any of the various places that it's broadcast to, we haven't had a comment or review in like three years. And I don't want to, I said, yes, you're being detained because I know there's going to be that one knucklehead libertarian.

[00:04:37] And the bunch says, am I being detained? Yes, you are. All I'm going to ask. And I, I am not going to ask for five-star reviews unless you just really love the show, in which case you might want to check yourself into a mental health professional. But we have, I will say that he's the craziest one of a bunch. Yeah, maybe. But I would just say that like, you know, engagement drives things. It helps. So like, I like a comment, a little bit of interaction.

[00:05:05] Not only is it fun for me and Nick, cause we get to talk to y'all while we're doing, while we're goofing off doing the show. Yep. But it also helps attract other like-minded sociopaths. Absolutely. Oh, maybe we just need to try harder to, to offend a lady like back in the day and get her to just bombard everything we post for a month. Yes. I did tell Nick that story.

[00:05:28] It was, I want to say we had only been podcasting for about a year and I don't even remember what it was I said, but I really upset some, some poor little, either young millennial or Gen Z lady with something I had said, which is pretty hard to believe. Cause you know, I'd never say anything controversial, but yeah, she, she was upset enough to leave us a one-star review and then like comment bomb everything we posted. I don't know, go back for weeks.

[00:05:57] Thanks for driving the algorithm. Yeah. I mean, I'm driving the algorithm. I, I, I almost want to like dig back through eight years of social media history just to try to remember what it was exactly. I don't think it's worth the effort. Probably not. Pretty much just like, you know, pull stuff out of a hat and be like, oh yeah, this probably pissed her off real bad. Yeah. Anyway, merch, if you want to support the show and get a shirt for your trouble, those links are in the show description.

[00:06:27] It supports a small family owned business. Cypress survivalist is heading towards our first quarterly event. It will be in June. I will do homework. And next time we talk on the show, I will even have the date and the details prepare for y'all potentially because no, actually may not be next show. It might be the one after that because not this weekend, but next weekend is our next board meeting. Hmm.

[00:06:54] So one of the things I asked it worked out is what exactly we're going to do for this next event. Like, are we going to just do like a lunch and a hangout? Are we going to actually try to teach a class? Um, I know I was speaking to my sister who was our resident medical nerd on staff. And, um, she has, I know she had mentioned she was going to look at taking the, uh, the instructor course for stop the bleed. Ooh, that'd be good. So that she could actually like, you know, she could actually like teach the course.

[00:07:23] Yeah, absolutely. And. That'd be phenomenal. Well, it, it, first of all, I mean, I think it's something that the community could make use of. And second of all, I like the idea that then we could offer that as a thing. Like, you know, as part of the nonprofit, we could offer that class. Yeah. When, you know, just a little bit to cover your guys' expenses and whatnot. That'd be great. Cause then people could, people could leave having a officially been trained in something.

[00:07:53] Yeah. And I mean, it's one of those things where like, quite frankly, my, my sister's been, she's been an EMT and a paramedic since she was 18 years old. Like she is an absolute certifiable bad-ass when it comes to keeping the red stuff inside the people. And those are good to have around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to have, you don't want to have a reason for them to be useful to keep around, but they always end up being useful to keep around.

[00:08:23] Put it that way. Yeah, buddy. Well, you can never have enough first aid classes in my opinion. No, because it, my experience has been that like when, when somebody, when, when you have a need for a person with that kind of, you know, that kind of experience, you usually need more than one of them. Yeah. Because casualty events turn into mass casualty events very quickly. Yeah, man. A lot of cars hold more than two people.

[00:08:48] Well, I mean, I'm sure you've been, I'm sure you've been driving long enough to watch a one car accident turn into a 12 car accident. Uh, yeah, absolutely. Not, not 12 is most, 12 is more than I've seen, but I was involved in one that was three vehicles, five people. Which now means how many people do you need to triage all that quickly? Realistically, at least five. I mean, you can do it with one person. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:18] Yeah. But that's also like my greatest argument about like every workplace of any reasonable size to like, take this to take this to the bank. Like I have even given this spiel to like the, uh, the head of the head of my workplace and it hasn't really gone anywhere, unfortunately. But like, I've told everybody, like every workplace could stand to benefit from 10% of their staff having a stop the bleed class. Yeah.

[00:09:41] And maybe even a little bit of a basic, like first aid, stop the bleed and some basic triage knowledge, just because think about that. That, that means in a, in a workplace of 50 people, you've got five that basically from the military perspective have combat lifesaver level of training. Mm-hmm . And in a, in a, in a larger organization where you've got like 300, 400, 10% is 30 or 40 people.

[00:10:06] Like that's the ability to do massive casualty care from internal resources. Yeah. That's one thing that I don't see enough of in the manufacturing sector that I work in and we work with heavy power equipment and man, that stuff can go so wrong so fast. We've got like the lathe, like the lathe video you sent me. Yeah. That by the way, if my butt had clenched any harder, I would have had to replace my pants. Yes.

[00:10:34] Like that, that, that is one of the tamer lathe videos. Yes. The, the less tame one. Like I don't, I don't cringe easily, but the, yeah, I think I can't remember if that was like the Russian lathe video or whatever it was, but whatever happened. And, uh, yeah, the guy's polishing the shaft on a 20 foot bed lathe. Yeah. And then next thing you know, he had no bones. Mm-hmm . No, he had bones. Lots of little tiny pieces of bones.

[00:11:01] No, I'm pretty sure his bone, his entire skeleton got turned into powder. It can. Yeah. They are unforgiving. Yeah. Anyway, so the topic of today is fitness. Mm-hmm . Something that my chubby, you know, 30, 30 BMI body knows very little about. We all need to work on it. Yeah.

[00:11:21] And I mean, I don't even feel like this is something you have to sell the average person, but I feel like when you throw the word fitness out, if you've got 10 people standing there, you're going to get 11 different ideas of what fitness means. Yeah. Because you're going to get that person that thinks fitness is lifting weights, fitness is being skinny, fitness is this, fitness is that. And like, you know, for the sake of argument, I'm 42. Right. You are 34. I was going to say 35. I was going to say 36. So I was close. Yeah. Forgot I had a birthday recently.

[00:11:52] But I mean, well, happy birthday. Well, thank you. It was a few months ago. Yeah. Yeah. I don't keep track of that. That is, that is on the wife. She, she remembers when my birthday is. I regularly have to consult my driver's license. It has not mattered in many years. Yeah. I mean, what was I was told about birthdays one time at 18 year legal at 21, you could drink and at 65, you get a discounted Denny's 25, you get cheaper car insurance.

[00:12:24] Woo hoo. I mean, it made a difference to me. My insurance was expensive. But I drove crappy old cars that had a liability only then. Ooh. Yeah. No, I had, I had a not new, but a late model, reasonably newer, like four year old pickup at the time. Actually, I stand corrected 25.

[00:12:52] I think I was still driving old used cars at that point. Might have been. But I digress. Nothing wrong with it. Yeah. But it does keep your car insurance lower. Hell yeah. When you're, when you're a starving college student. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But you know, the whole thing about fitness really, to me is like, I can, I can, I've never been the person that was like, I'm going to aspire to run like a six minute mile or I want to lift a lot of weights. Like that was never my thing.

[00:13:17] Honestly, what I was always more focused on was when I was younger and I was still doing a lot of physical activity before shift into like, you know, white collar office jobs. Right. I spent a lot of time working with my hands. I spent a lot of time lifting stuff. So like my biggest priorities back then really, and truly it was mostly back and core and shoulders. Yeah.

[00:13:38] I knew that everything I did was going to involve lifting a heavy weight, usually carrying that heavy weight up a ladder or walking a hundred yards carrying that heavy weight. So like everything in the way that I worked out back then was really focused around, like my shoulders need to be beefed up. Mm hmm. Shoulders, lats, lower back, especially. Yeah. I blow my, I blow my back out three times. You gotta be really careful with that. Especially.

[00:14:05] And, and this is a big part of the reason why I wanted to bring up fitness is injury prevention and injury recovery. Yes. Because, you know, I know you've got it on, uh, further down on here, but, uh, flexibility, uh, core strength, balance, flexibility. If you don't do regular stretching, you probably should.

[00:14:33] And it doesn't have to be daily, but a couple times a week, go on YouTube, go on whatever there, there are apps for it. Um, how to stretch various muscle groups, how to stretch your whole body. Hell, yoga is a fantastic option for that. Phenomenal. Um, if you are more flexible, you are less prone to injuring yourself, either muscles, joints, or tendons.

[00:15:04] Um, core strength, you know, anybody that's ever had a abdominal surgery or like an appendectomy or a hernia repair can tell you how much you use your core. Every muscle you move is going to make your stomach hurt is going to make your core hurt. So, you know, I'm not trying to advocate for people going out and being a triathlete or anything like that.

[00:15:30] But what I, what I wanted to bring up was every day, you know, life improving fitness. So, work on your endurance, work on a little bit of basic cardio. If you do have a physically demanding job, make sure that you are doing the maintenance to your body to make, so that you're not building compounding injuries. Mm hmm.

[00:15:55] So, you know, if you work, say construction or something like that, don't go home, take a cold shower or a hot shower and then immediately just sit on the couch. You've been using your muscles all day. You need to loosen them up afterward. Otherwise, you're going to get those muscle skeletal injuries building up over time. Yeah.

[00:16:18] I mean, I'm probably in a little bit better shape than you feel just partially because of being younger than you partially because I work on it a little bit more. I don't have a kid. I'll give you that. You know, I, I'm about two 15 pounds, six foot tall. I don't know what that translates to a BMI, but it honestly, it does translate to fuck all. Yeah.

[00:16:43] Like there is, there is, and I dealt with this when I was in the army, but like, there is no rational way to equate a BMI to a height and weight like graph. It doesn't work. I don't think so. Well, I mean, put just as a side note, when I was still in the army, I got busted on because I was overweight. But then when they. I've seen pictures of you from the army. You were not overweight. Well, I was five foot.

[00:17:15] I was probably about 510 about a buck 75. Hmm. But according to the army, I was a few pounds overweight. So they ran, they taped me and I want to say I was like 18% body fat. Hmm. That's reasonable. It was perfectly reasonable. I'm probably a fair bit more than that now. Well, yeah, but even now I'm like five foot 245. Yeah. I am a big chunky guy, but I'm hardly like, you know, a critically obese fat body. But yeah, that's true.

[00:17:44] But the point remains that whenever you whenever you try to equate things like I am this height, therefore I should weigh this much. I personally just pitch that whole notion in the trash because I've known people that are, you know, three, four inches taller than me and they're shaped like a beanpole. So we're naturally going to weigh 30, 40 pounds less than I am, but despite being taller. Right.

[00:18:07] And that's why, that's why I didn't really want to, I didn't really put weight loss in any of these because you need to, you need to, I guess, adjust your expectations for, for weight or BMI based on your build.

[00:18:23] Cause even when I was, let's see, when I was in high school and I had been doing heavy weight lifting and heavy cardio for like three straight years, I got down to a BMI of like 14%, which was relatively nuts. I still weighed 210 pounds, but I had arms twice the size of what I have now.

[00:18:50] So you can't compare that. You can't compare that on a height weight chart. And for the sake of comparison, like the best shape I've been in was when I was in Iraq cause I had nothing to do, but work and work out. Exactly. You know, kind of works out that way. It does. So when I came home on leave, I was, I weighed 190 pounds and I was five foot 11. Right. So had not, had not an inch of fat on me, you could pinch. Mm hmm.

[00:19:21] But at the same time, you know, like going back to what I wrote here, like core strength, balance flexibility. I was not, I wasn't in the gym doing lots of like free weights. I was doing a lot of, I was doing, I was doing about the only thing I was really doing that was like really structured. I was doing a lot of squatting because again, lots of heavy lifting in that job, lots of picking stuff up. And I beat it into my head pretty early on.

[00:19:47] Like my lower back and my legs have got to be extremely strong so I can lift this stuff and carry for prolonged periods of time. But also because I started noticing that the stronger my back and my legs were, if I was carrying stuff on an uneven surface, I was less likely to like, you know, do that little thing where your foot slips and you catch it. And the next thing you know, you tweak the disc in your back.

[00:20:07] It's like all of my quote unquote fitness goals were always about preventing injury because my per, I mean, personally, like my body, my build, I have never had trouble putting on or maintaining muscle. I've always been just a naturally a larger frame guy. Yep. I have struggled to maintain my weight. I have, and I sometimes I think as a result of having like the strength that I do, I've been very prone to injuries.

[00:20:34] I I've blown this shoulder completely out, blown that hip out, blown my back three times. And it's always because I pick something up like, oh, I can pick that up and carry it. Cause I can't. Oh yeah, absolutely. But it's, but it's once you load your body up with all that weight, the least little thing gets off center, gets out of kilter. And the next thing you know, I'm limping the next day. Yeah. And that's one of the, that's one of the reasons why stretching is important and working on balance is important as well as like.

[00:21:04] I don't feel, have you ever looked into body weight fitness routines that focus on like control muscles over a strength and endurance building? So a lot of yoga deals with that, where you're, you're not working. You're not necessarily working just like your packs, your biceps, your triceps, your glutes.

[00:21:22] Uh, you're working all the little muscles in those muscle groups that help align your spine, align your knee, align your shoulder and help you control the strength that your larger muscle groups use. Yeah. You know, this kind of harkens back to something I saw recently where they had, they were doing like kind of contest of strength. Yeah. And they had four bodybuilders and four farmers. Yup.

[00:21:49] And the farmers were like, not these big old buff cut up guys, but they were, I mean, they just, they had farm strength. Anybody that's ever far, anybody that's ever been around farmers knows dim boys are built different. Well, it's because they're so bodybuilding targets major muscle groups and it targets for growth. It doesn't target necessarily for strength. Like if you look at the difference between say like, uh, uh, uh, me and my wife are rewatching game of Thrones.

[00:22:17] The guy that plays the mountain, uh, he's a, or is, or was a world strong man competition guy. So he was, his build is entirely different from like the show bodybuilder builds, which is entirely different from a, what I call a working strength build, which is like your brick layers, your farmers, your rod, your, uh, rod busters and stuff like that.

[00:22:45] Um, you can build muscle groups, your biceps, your chest, you can build your glutes, you can build your abs to, to, to puff up and stick out. You can absolutely make them do that without increasing your strength all that much compared to what you can do when you're focusing on strength building. But I mean, the strongest guy I ever met was probably, uh, one of my great uncles.

[00:23:15] And that dude was, he was maybe five, six and he didn't look it, but he had spent his entire life throwing hay bales and wrestling cattle. So, you know, it's just, I will say that back in the day when I was working in, uh, tire shops, put myself through college, you know, like most of the guys that are in there, bear in mind that these are guys that are, they're lifting engine and truck parts. Yeah.

[00:23:45] Pretty much for an eight hour day. Mm hmm. And none of these guys were huge. None of these guys were particularly like defined as far as muscle. Hell, we had one guy that was like about my height. He had to weigh 165 pounds. Sure. He was in his fifties, but I'm gonna tell you, he could snatch a frigging 80 pound wheel and tire set off a frig off the side of like a heavy duty truck and just walk across shop with it. Like it was nothing. Well, yeah, that's now he knows how to use his body.

[00:24:12] 18, 19 year old Phil was like, how in the hell is he lifting the same amount I am? And I'm a lot bigger than he is, but I just, I didn't understand it at the time. Yeah. Yeah. You, you can learn to use your body more efficiently when you do it all the time like that. But you know, the, the reason why we want, one of the reasons we wanted to talk about fitness today was Phil your, your improvements that you saw with your blood sugar was a big one that inspired this.

[00:24:40] Um, as well as just during an emergency, if something does happen and you have to say, move debris, move up, move a person who's injured, move yourself. Um, that's one of the more common after disaster injuries is somebody going to move something and either falling or injuring themselves while doing it. Yeah.

[00:25:05] And I mean, I will say that like in the name of full disclosure, so like I'm hypoglycemic for those that don't know, which is this funny little thing where you have a super hyperactive pancreas. And every time you eat something you're not supposed to, it says hooray insulin. And it just makes your blood sugar go to hell in a handbasket. Now, the way that some people in an unhealthy way deal with this and the way I used to deal with it was whenever you feel your blood sugar go down, you think I need sugar because that makes me feel better.

[00:25:33] But then that makes your blood sugar go up and then your pancreas says hooray insulin again. And you just, you do this over and over and over creates a roller coaster. It does. And I found that I was in a situation with my blood sugar where like I was constantly, I was always four hours away from crashing. I had, I had to eat, you know, I didn't have to eat a lot, but I had to eat very, very regular intervals throughout the day to maintain my blood sugar. And I think a lot of that was just, I wasn't eating the right things.

[00:26:01] So like what I, what I came around to that has worked for me, I wouldn't espouse it for anybody else without saying, just try it and see if it works for you. But what I centered on was a high protein, high fat diet. Mm hmm. So lots of eggs, lots of red meat, a little bit of chicken. I'm just not a huge chicken person, but like my go to lunch for a long time was just sausage and eggs or bacon and eggs. Sure. Yeah.

[00:26:29] And limited, limited carbs, no processed sugar, no complex carbs, very little to no pre-packaged food. And just get rid of all the, get rid of all your, uh, your highly refined sugars. Yeah, absolutely. Just, and now here's the thing. If I want pizza, cause it's pizza night, I'll still go out and eat pizza. But the next day I have to get back on the wagon. If I want to have like, you know, if I want to have like a whiskey and Coke or a cream soda and Coke, I can have that.

[00:26:59] I just can't have it every frigging night. Like it's, you know, like this old, this soup, this stupid old adage about everything in moderation really does work. But the thing that I heard that has always made a lot of sense to me was nutritionist said, you should regard all sugar and all complex carbohydrates as a recreational drug. Sure. Makes sense. With the understanding that if you have that thing every now and then isn't going to kill you, but if you have it all the time, it's bad. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:28] So I've, I've, I've framed a lot of like my thoughts about around dieting in this vein of, if I choose this more often than this, I'm doing okay. It doesn't mean never have this just means you can't have it all the time. You gotta, you gotta make better choices. And then when you decide, I just want pizza today, you just eat the dagging pizza and don't beat yourself up over it. Like that's the most self-destructive thing I've seen people do with dieting is that they, they get the salt in their head that my diet has to be perfect or it doesn't work.

[00:27:56] And then the first time they slip, they defeat themselves. They tell themselves, oh, it's all, it's all ruined all that effort. And I'm like, you can't live like that. Like, it's not, I don't think it's mentally healthy to go down that road. I agree. You know, you hear it all the time. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Hell no. Like I, Phil and I, neither one of us are bastions of physical perfection. Absolutely not. I think either one of us is keeping up with David Goggins.

[00:28:26] Absolutely not. Not even close. I have never, and do not anticipate myself modeling for count client underwear. Nope. Ever, ever, forever in life. But when something does come up and you are, I have to be, have to do a physical task. We're able to accomplish that task. You're able to roll under your car and get to work with a wrench. Um, the other day I was, uh, having to do a bunch of plumbing in my house. I didn't have a problem with that.

[00:28:56] I was in very awkward positions. Okay. I have a big water filters that I have to get out of my house. Can I move that on my own? It's looking like probably no, cause I can't get the other half of the water out of it. And eight pounds to the gallon plus filter media plus canister. And I did try. And you know what? I think if I did continue to try to do it by myself, I would probably injure my back. So you know what we're going to do?

[00:29:25] We're going to go get assistance and a dolly. Yes. Because, you know, part of physical fitness is, is knowing your own limits and preventing injuries that will cause you more problems in the future. I mean, there are things that happened to all of us that we can't prevent your wife's car accident. For instance, for instance, you know, there was probably nothing she could have done to prevent that.

[00:29:51] I mean, she could have slowed down a little bit, but well, I'm just saying like car, car accidents happen. Yes. Sometimes the person that gets injured is the one at fault, but I don't really know the story. So I'm, I'm assuming that she was probably attempting to drive reasonably safe. Hmm. I just don't think about that. I know the after effect of it. Yeah. Well, the after the after effect is that she had a, you know, she tore her right foot off, crushed her right leg, crushed her right arm. Right.

[00:30:20] She's, she's dealing with lifelong injuries, some, some lifelong joint damage. But at the same time, like when the two of us decided to like start taking better care of ourselves, take a better control of our diet. Her focus was losing weight because every, every pound you have to carry on an already extremely damaged knee and hip and ankle is not helping the situation. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:30:46] And she was, she was faced with the choice of get your weight down or cut your foot off. Like she was one of these was less permanent than the other. Yeah. But what her doctor had left her, left her at the point of was like, you're either going to lose 20 or 30 pounds, or you might as well make peace with having to get your foot removed and get a prosthetic because you're at that point where your ankle cannot take the strain at your weight. And you are losing mobility.

[00:31:14] And you're basically the doctor told her, like, you're reaching the point where you're not going to be able to walk very much because of your weight and not be able to walk very much is going to make your weight go up. Yeah, absolutely. Well, so once you get to a certain point, it's too late to do anything about it, except, except what's coming. So at that cascade failure at that point, at that point, Gillian and I made some serious dietary choices. We started walking four or five times a week. And that's all it takes.

[00:31:42] I'm going to tell you that little lady dropped 35, almost 40 pounds. Nice. She's walking again. She can go on hikes. I mean, not like crazy, like, like you and I talked about the other day talking about hiking. Absolutely. My family is not going to do a 10 or 15 mile hike. Gillian can't take it. Yeah, it doesn't really have the one. I wouldn't expect her to. But I'll tell you what, a two, maybe three mile hike. If the train's not too crazy, she could do that. I mean, and she enjoys it. That's that is very impressive.

[00:32:10] Given the extent of her injuries that she had had. That's extremely impressive. I mean, if anything, that is a minor miracle of modern medicine that they were able to put her back together that well. You know, I. Yeah. Well, truth of the matter is that the doctor that put her foot back on said she'd never walk on it. Hmm. So good. She's stubborn. She's stubborn. Imagine that. Any woman that can keep up with me must be a little bit stubborn. There you go.

[00:32:40] Amen. Stubbornness has its benefits. It does. We call that strong willed when we're not using the dirty word. That's fine. But, you know, I mean, that was the thing of it is that my wife was focused on getting her weight down for for her joint health. And I was really focused on being able to better control my blood sugar. Yeah. I actually, my blood sugar got out of whack a couple of, it was within the last couple of weeks. And I was thinking about it. I think that's probably the first time in over a year. Wow.

[00:33:09] I've had an episode where my blood sugar got wildly out of whack. But that's exactly what happened to me this time. Like, I woke up in the morning. I was doing some work for Disaster Coffee. I was working on, I think, I think I woke up in the morning. I had to do some work for Disaster Coffee. I was doing something for the podcast. I was just, I was working on a bunch of stuff. Yeah. And I was doing that. Got away from you. I was doing the Flight of the Bumblebee routine, running around the house. And about one o'clock in the afternoon, all of a sudden, I had this dizzy spell out of nowhere.

[00:33:39] Like, you know how you had that moment where like you feel the whole room go, woo, riding around real fast? Well, I felt that. And I was like, whoa, what's going on? Why do I feel this way? I have not drank nearly enough to be this dizzy. I didn't, I didn't feel hungry. I didn't feel like all the classic symptoms of Phil, you stupid, you moron. You forgot to eat this morning. I didn't feel any of that. I just, I felt dizzy all of a sudden. And then as soon as I felt that, I put it together really quickly.

[00:34:08] Like crap, I missed breakfast. It's one o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah. You're rolling to lunch. Yeah. So at that point, like I very quickly, I fried up some eggs. I grabbed some sausage, you know, like load my body up with all the protein I can handle. And then the nausea started and then the migraine started. At that point I was like, okay, I'm just along for the ride at a certain point. Like I know how my blood sugar works. And for anybody that deals with diabetes, this will probably sound very familiar to you.

[00:34:33] But like for me, once I hit a certain point in this escalating little, you know, little cascade effect, I am along for the ride. There is no stopping it. I'm going to get a migraine. I might throw up. I've only passed out once, but that really wasn't fun. I don't want to do that again. Yeah. Don't do that. But that's, that's catastrophically low.

[00:34:52] But I get to the point where the only thing I can do is shove my body full of protein to try to, because I know that it will take longer than like a Coke or some sugar would to get my blood sugar propped up. But I know that the protein will fix the problem. Yeah. The protein is a long-term fix. The Coke is a short-term fix with side effects. Yeah. So I loaded my body with protein. Eggs, eggs are a superfood.

[00:35:15] If you are, if you are diabetic or if you struggle with hypoglycemia and you don't like eggs, treat it like freaking medicine and start eating them. Because I'm telling you, I am convinced that adding substantial quantities of eggs in my diet has helped more than any one single thing. Well, it's good proteins, good fats. It's all, it's got most of the fats your body needs in it right there. And, you know, they used to say that eggs are really bad for your cholesterol. I don't know.

[00:35:44] Now, I've seen some other studies recently where that didn't seem to be nearly as true. What I'm going to say is this. I've done the research. I've read the studies. Let's, let me give the experts in air quotes for just one brief moment that eggs might not be the best thing in the world for you. Lots of cholesterol, lots of fat, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you know what the long-term effects have in high blood sugar are? High blood sugar? Yes.

[00:36:12] It directly leads to heart disease. It directly leads to arterial disease. It encourages. Doesn't it increase cholesterol too? But see, here's the thing. The, there are studies that show that increased cholesterol, if your blood sugar is low, don't cause any of those problems. Hmm. There's a body of evidence out there that says that cholesterol is good and cholesterol is bad. And that, that, that every, you can get 10 nutritionists, you'll get 11 different opinions.

[00:36:41] But there is no nutritionist in the right mind that is going to tell you that having high, perpetually high blood sugar is a good thing. Yeah, it makes sense. So, me being hypoglycemic, where my blood sugar goes really high and really low and really high and really low, I'm going to address that problem. And I'm going to fix that problem. And if the end result of that is that my cholesterol is a little bit too high, but my blood sugar is where it's supposed to be, if I have to make that trade, I have to make that trade.

[00:37:08] Yeah, I think, you know, at a certain point, everybody has to make those trade-off decisions for themselves. And this is one, one good reason to experiment with your diet. You know, obviously, I'm not saying experiment with your diet as in eating two Twinkies and drinking a Coke for breakfast. We all know that's a terrible idea. I mean, I know some people that have done it and they're, they were not very old when they passed away.

[00:37:38] I will say this much though, kind of in the same vein as what we're talking about. One of our patrons, Tommy, recently talked about how he, I think he said he had gone full carnivore. Yeah. And he is diabetic and it has been extremely helpful to him with his blood sugar. So like- Well, it's a more stable form of energy, the proteins and fats. You don't get the glycerin and insulin spikes. Yeah. So like I said, for Phil with his hyperactive pancreas- Glucose, not glycerin. Yeah. Glucose.

[00:38:07] It is, it is in my best interest that I do whatever I have to, to keep my blood sugar within bounds. It is going to be better for me for long-term health outcomes. It is better for me in the short term. Um, the closer I stick to, I hate to call it and get a diet because it's not a diet. Cause it's, I consider it like dietary guidelines. Sure. But the, the closer within these boundaries I stick, I feel better. My joints hurt less.

[00:38:34] I don't have, you know, the shakes, the migraines, the headaches and everything from a blood sugar crashing. My weight is naturally easier to control, which is always been a problem for me. Like right now, my wife and I are back on the, um, you know, got to fight the battle of the bulge routine because I got it to like 250, which is heavier than I'm supposed to be. Like, yeah. So, and, and we're back to walking. We're back to watching what we eat. Like, it's just, it's an, it is easier to do in the summer than the winter, even though your winters aren't really winter.

[00:39:06] But our winters are wet. Yes. That's what they make rain jackets for. I know you own them. You live, you live in what is probably nearly a swamp. Well, we, we almost do live in a swamp, but for point of order, um, if it weren't for the fact that we actually get a frost every year, we would, this would be considered a tropical climate. Yeah. So in terms of temperature and rain.

[00:39:36] So you own a rain jacket is what you're telling me. All right. I do own a rain jacket, but we do not do, we, we slack off in the winter. Okay. Happy. Hey, it happens to everybody. I also don't like to go for walks when it's minus 35. I don't want to live when it's minus 35. Nick. It's fine. Why do you do that to yours? No, it's not fine. There's nothing fine about it. It's not fine. I have insulated pants. It's fine.

[00:40:03] But you know, I, I don't, my organs aren't insulated enough for negative 35. It'll be, it'll be all right. Your glasses will freeze to the side of your head. It's no worries. They thaw right back off. I will say this much. The, the snow we had the other day or, you know, this past winter, my wife and I, she, she was enjoying it far more than I was. I was like, this sucks. We can tell bad as I, as I imagine.

[00:40:33] But my wife was like, she wanted to go walk the neighborhood. And I was like, okay, well, halfway there, I began to realize that not only was my beard accumulating snow, but it was starting to refreeze. Oh yeah. My beard was crunchy. Uh-huh. And I had, I had like little tiny icicles trying to grow off the ends of my mustache. Oh yeah. Yes. For you, this is like, oh yeah, that's how it works. That's bog standard right there.

[00:40:59] But, but we've never had, I've never seen 10 inches snow in life. So this was, this was all very concerning to me. I'm like, why is my beard crunchy and glued to my, and glued to my chest? Well, you know, sometimes, sometimes mother nature decides the water is going to become solid water and it's, that's okay, Phil. It's, it's a natural process. Yeah. It's only okay inside my freezer. Well, it is good in the freezer better than the alternative.

[00:41:27] So, you know, talking a little bit about different things you can do to improve your fitness, you know, going for walks, doing yoga, doing stretching, anything like that. But kayaking is a great one for core, for your core arms and shoulders. If you have access to those sorts of things, um, hiking is phenomenal for your core, especially if you have a light to medium weight backpack on. I would say like hiking is probably my favorite.

[00:41:55] And even if you don't have a backpack on, I really enjoy. Now you have to understand that when I say hiking, most of the time when you're hiking, you're hiking on like a path, right? I really like some of the places I've been to hike where you, you basically have a trail cut through the woods. Yep. So you're stepping on uneven terrain. You're stepping on roots and that is the best thing because I find that the very thing

[00:42:21] that I need to, I need to work on the most, which is like the little, like you said, the little stabilizer muscles, like around your knee and around your ankles, all that gets worked so much. It does. And then. You'd be sore in all kinds of new places. Well, in the earthing I've noticed is that like, probably this is an indication that my back is not in the greatest shape, but like, I start to feel like a little bit of tension in my extreme lower back on your side of my spine.

[00:42:47] And I know it is because I'm having to like constantly work my, you know, work my core back and forth to balance myself. Do you have trekking poles? No, never used them. Try them. Get a pair of cheap ones from Walmart, whatever. Don't worry about the weight of them. They will get rid of that lower back stiffness and soreness almost immediately. I've always, I've always kind of looked at it as like, it's just a chance to work a muscle that doesn't get worked near off enough.

[00:43:16] Cause I'm like, my problem, Nick, is that I work, I work in a white collar office these days. So in a nine hour day, I am looking for excuses to get up out of my desk and like walk or do something because I just hate sitting all day. But I also have days where I will literally plant my butt in a chair and accept to go to the break room for lunch or the bathroom. I am welded to that chair, punching spreadsheets for a full day.

[00:43:43] And it's, I know it is the worst thing for my hip. It's the worst thing for my back. Right. But like that is, that is the nature of my job. And there's, unfortunately there's a lot of people like we have, we have patrons that are truck drivers. Guess what you do when you're a truck driver? You're sitting. And sit there, sit there and stare at the windshield for a whole day. You know, it's like, those are the, those are the moments in time where like, those are the most difficult fitness situations in my mind. They can be.

[00:44:11] Because you have to do your job. You have to pursue your career, but your career is sedentary. It absolutely is. But I'm not talking about removing that, that amount of effort from your hike because the effort is still there. But what it does is it gives you a third point of stabilization. So you don't, you're not getting those shocks to your back and those shocks to your lower back. Okay. I see where you're going. It makes such a huge difference.

[00:44:38] I think it would actually make, you should try a standing desk. That would actually might be great. Yeah. Rachel, ask her husband where I work. And he will tell you that the chance of me getting a standing desk is. We will find honest politicians before I manage to get a standing desk. Honest politicians in Illinois. Even better. Yeah. Although I did catch myself wondering the other day, where would you be more likely to

[00:45:05] find an honest or where would you be less likely to find an honest politician? Louisiana or Illinois? Those are both pretty correct. It's pretty bad. There's been a lot of smuggling in both for a very long time. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know that Louisiana or Illinois invented crooked politics, but they certainly work hard to perfect them. They, they have been working very hard to perfect it for a very long time.

[00:45:33] But you know, I, I think that, uh, that would actually help your wife too, a lot with her, with her ankle of trying some trekking poles. That's actually worth pointing out to her because, you know, for me, I've got, I've got a knee that I injured in a dirt bike thing a long time ago when I was a teenager. And then I hurt the other ankle in a different dirt bike thing. Both of them were stupid. Good theme developing here. Yeah. Vehicles and me, we don't get along.

[00:46:00] There's a reason why I own a pickup and nothing else but, but a lawn tractor vehicles and me. We, you know, I like going too fast too much. So I keep away from the fast vehicles as much as humanly possible anymore. But it, it just, it takes those shocks out of stuff. So like, I know you guys have a lot of flatland hiking, but if you're anywhere where you're doing a little bit of stepping up, stepping down, it's an, it's additional points that

[00:46:25] you can apply pressure to that take pressure off of your joints. So you're not creating those shocks and creating that, that wear and tear on yourself. No, I mean, that makes sense to me. I'll bring, I'll bring an extra pair for you guys or two pair for when we go up to Michigan. You guys can try them out. I won't turn it down. Yeah. I'll mention it to Gillian too. I think she'll, I think she would really like it. You know, my father-in-law, he's got a knee injury as well.

[00:46:53] And he used to get back pain a lot from hiking and they really liked doing hiking. But when we went to Tennessee with them this spring, they were keeping up. And he said he had zero pain from any of it. That's interesting. Yeah. He was a set of tracking poles. They make a huge difference. Let's dig into this last bullet point. Go for it. This might be the one that surprises the audience. Mental health. Can't have a healthy body without a healthy mind.

[00:47:21] And I will be the first to admit there is some segment of the audience out there and I might have been guilty of this a time or two. And you probably are every now and then too. That says feelings. That sounds horrible. I don't have those. There are times when feelings are inconvenient. They are extremely inconvenient most of the time. But I will say wholeheartedly that, you know, like if you, I think mental health and we've talked about on the show before. We've talked about it.

[00:47:50] I frankly, we need to get Eddie on. We do have to, cause that is his wheelhouse is mental health. But like, I feel like mental health is something that gets overlooked sometimes intentionally, especially in some of the circles we run in. And it really concerns me because like, I've never been particularly susceptible to like depression, never been suicidal. I have had severe anxiety before. Sure. Like a component of post-traumatic stress disorder I had was anxiety. Yeah.

[00:48:20] And survivor guilt and a couple other things. But like, I, if I had not done the work to address my mental health back then, I am fully convinced I would not have gotten to the point I'm at today where I'm like, you know, a stable homeowner, a taxpayer, married, still married to my wife 20 years after we met. Like I've, I've seen so many, so many other people from the veteran, the first sponsor community, neglect their mental health. Sometimes out of fear of what it would mean for their career.

[00:48:50] Absolutely. Sometimes because there's just massive stigma in the world about admitting that you have a problem. And I've seen it lead to some of their death. I've seen it lead to a lot of them just falling short of what they should have been and where they should have gone. Yeah. Like people that, people that were constantly making really unhealthy lifestyle decisions because they were trying to find a way around the anxiety or a way around the depression or whatever. Self-medicating. Self-medicating.

[00:49:19] But it wound up, yeah, self-medicating. That's a huge one. Yeah. I mean, I jokingly tell people like, yeah, I have a prescription for cigars and coffee. You know, I have to have it. And I don't know. I don't know if you call it advice or medication, but like for me, I always go back to this idea that like if you're neglect, if you're, if there's something going on in your mental health, it deserves to be addressed. I think it also impacts your physical health because like there's. It absolutely does.

[00:49:47] There's a whole body of evidence out there that shows that if your mental health is, is in peril, it does cause your blood pressure to be higher. It causes a whole host of negative, of negative effects on your body. And that's before we get to things like because you're depressed, you overeat and that has its own problems or because you're anxious, you self-medicate and that has some problems. Like long-term anxiety has zero positive impact.

[00:50:16] No, long, long-term anything when it relates to mental health. And I understand that like when I say long-term mental health, like, you know, we've talked on the show before about like how my wife struggled with postpartum. We've talked about my post-traumatic stress disorder. Most people that are out there have had some kind of traumatic event in their life and they had to do a little bit of work to put themselves back together afterwards. That's normal. It is. I'm talking about when it goes on unchecked for years and years and years.

[00:50:44] And it's like, I tell people my personal signpost for when something's a problem is when it stops you from doing what you want to do. Yep. Like the moment at which my mental health started to interfere with the relationship I was building with my wife. That was the moment at which I was like, we have a problem. This needs to get fixed. And I was committed to fixing no matter what it took because the other side of the equation was if I don't fix this, this is what's going to cost me and I'm not willing to lose that. Absolutely.

[00:51:12] And Gillian made the same decision about postpartum. You know, like we limped along. We did everything we could to kind of like self-rescue. And then when that wasn't working and she realized that our relationship was starting to drift apart, she was like, if I don't fix this, I could lose my husband. Not acceptable. Yep. So that is always the thing I tell people when it comes to like caring for your mental health. Like there is no downside to it. Your mind is part of your body, man.

[00:51:42] Well, your mind drives your body. The same way that like everybody's heard the anecdote of like the woman who lifted a car off of her kids. Yep. You know, when the brain says you can do something, you can do it. Yeah. When the brain says you can't do something, you also cannot. Yeah. And when your brain says, I just want to crawl in a hole and die, guess what's going to happen?

[00:52:06] Like my experience with death has always been that, you know, there are very few circumstances where a person is clinging to life with everything they have and their body lets go. It happens. It does. It doesn't happen often. There is damage so traumatic that you can't overcome it. Yeah. But then there's situations where a person probably could have recovered, but they give up up here and that's it. They will wither and die because their brain is just not driving them anymore. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:52:36] You know, talk about anxiety. You know, you're saying you're right. It causes higher blood pressure. It causes or is caused by higher cortisol levels, which cause a few other hormonal issues. Yep. That can cause other health effects. But joint inflammation, tissue swelling.

[00:52:59] I mean, lower your immune system, then you just get sick more often, which makes you feel even worse. Not great. Not to mention, you know, a lot of the people that do try to self-medicate for anxiety try to self-medicate with things like alcohol. And yeah, I like a nice glass of whiskey as much as the next guy. Phil, I know you do too. But it is a glass of whiskey on occasion.

[00:53:29] Not a bottle every night to put yourself in bed. Exactly. If you feel like in order to function in an environment, you have to have that, that might be a sign that there's something going on, whether it's alcoholism or anxiety that you're self-medicating. Who knows? I mean. Now, here's a thought that dovetails in mental health. And I'm curious what you think, because not everybody agrees about this. Go for it.

[00:53:55] But do you believe that diet impacts mental health? Absolutely. Unquestionably, it does. Because again, so does poor physical health. Yeah. And the reason I bring that up is because like, you know, to tie this back to what we were talking about right before that, like, I know that when my blood, I know that like the better I've done eating, the better I've done taking care of my body, the better I have felt.

[00:54:23] And not only that, but like the better able, I've been able to deal with stress, the better I've been able to deal with just anxiety and all the things that life throws at me. And the times when I was, ooh, I just had that thought. So the heaviest I've been in recent times, and for anybody that's been around the show for a while, it was actually prepper camp three, four years ago now, maybe somewhere in there.

[00:54:51] But there is that notorious picture that somebody took of me from the most unflattering angle, which was directly from the side of me. And I looked like I was eight months pregnant. Yeah. I weighed 267 pounds at the time of that picture. I was incredibly unhappy.

[00:55:12] And reflecting back on that time, like admittedly, I kind of had the sword of Damocles hanging over my head back then for fear of losing my job for a variety of reasons. Sure. Stupid in my opinion. But I remember like there was a time when I was like, it's okay. You know, it is what it is. I'll land on my feet. I always do. I've got plenty of job skills. I'll find something. And then I remember this time where the anxiety really, really took hold of me hard.

[00:55:38] And I started going down the rabbit hole of it's going to come. I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose everything. And it never occurred to me until literally this moment that those two things were linked. Look, your body's meant to function within a certain range, right? So what you're telling me is 267 pounds and 5'11 was not the range. That must be out of your range, man.

[00:56:02] I mean, I know I was, was it two years ago now? I was about 260, 265. I'm a little taller than you, not that much, but still too much. I was sleeping like crap. I was feeling like crap. My allergies were worse. I was having heartburn every couple weeks or every couple days sometimes. Horrible heartburn in the middle of the night.

[00:56:32] Drop, which then means you're not sleeping. Which makes you not sleep even more, which makes you feel even worse. So you're drinking a bunch more coffee, which is probably not helping the heartburn. You know, got down to about 225. The heartburn went away entirely. I started sleeping through the night without a problem. I don't snore anymore or not as much. My dog now snores more than I do. We need to get her weight under control too.

[00:57:01] She's the neighbors like to feed my dog treats when we go for walks. We try to walk the dog for her fitness as well as ours. And sometimes we'll hit three different neighbors' houses and all three of them will feed the damn dog. They're not helping. Nicest people. But my dog is too fat. I've tried to fix this. Stop feeding her.

[00:57:30] I was going to say, since you got me thinking about it, like with snoring and the heartburn and everything, I do remember that Andrew struggled with that too for a while. Yeah. And I'm not diving him out. He's talked about on this show. Yeah. Just been a long, very long time. But since he's not here to defend himself, we can talk about him anyway. There you go. He can yell at me in the comments. Piss on him. It's for the good of the group. It is. But yeah, I do. I do remember that he even he mentioned that, like, when his weight started creeping up, the heartburn got really bad.

[00:57:58] I would love to blame his snoring on that. But I've known Andrew for a good long while and we've not slept together. That'd be weird. But we have slept in tents not far away from each other on several occasions. And he snores like a son of a bitch in chainsaw. And he's done that plus or minus 20 pounds. So I don't think the weight's the problem. Well, you know, it might not be. It might be just how his sinuses are. But for me, the additional weight definitely was.

[00:58:26] I mean, if you look at a picture of me from a few years ago, my face looks wildly different than it does now. Just because of the weight gain. And I think that was causing breathing constriction. It usually does. You know, I can't imagine it helped. You suddenly have me wondering what I look like underneath this beard. Shave it off. No. Dude, do you know how long it takes to look? Oh, a long time. It is effort.

[00:58:56] Gillian and I just cut like a couple of inches off of it because it was getting a little bit woolly. And like it takes years to get to this length. Oh, it absolutely does. And I'm just giving you credit. But yet every once in a blue moon, I look at my face and I'm like, what do you look like underneath that? I mean, I've seen like the pictures of me when I was in the army. So obviously there was a time when I was bald headed by choice and had no beard.

[00:59:21] Well, but the last time I didn't have facial hair was when I got married on my wedding day. Well, besides. You're not redoing that one. No. And if I shave, if I completely shave, my daughter has vowed to never speak to me again. Also, you'll probably get a headache from all the from from the loss of hair weight pulling your skin down. So I know I there was a girl that I was in high school with. She had really long hair. She shaved her beard off. No, she was going to don't.

[00:59:51] She was donating her hair to the one of those locks of love or something. Yeah, that must be the one. And she said it was the wildest thing. She got her hair cut hair all cut down to like five or six inches long from like down to down to her butt. And she said it was fine for about 20 minutes. And all of a sudden she had the worst migraine she had ever had.

[01:00:14] And when she talked to her hairdresser, told her that if you if you remove that much hair that quickly, it changes the pressure on your scalp and it can cause migraines and headaches. It's wild. New fear unlocked. I know, right? So shave your beard. You're going to get a headache. Maybe this just convinces me that men are not supposed to shave. Probably not. I mean, I can't grow a beard.

[01:00:41] I look like a ragged homeless person if I if I don't shave every day. So but you don't know where I I don't know where I inherited the Viking gene from, but I'm thankful for it. It's winning right there. It's glorious. But, you know, your your your brain is is another part of your body. And if you don't have the right nutrients in your body, you get muscle cramps. So if you don't have the right nutrients in your body, your brain's not going to work right.

[01:01:06] But it just it doesn't seem to me that there's any way you could argue that your diet does not impact the way you think or your mood or your hormone levels, just like anything else. I mean, you're not going to see Michael Phelps eating gummy bears and ice cream and then going and performing well in the Olympics. It's not going to happen. Yeah.

[01:01:29] And, you know, like for without getting into like zombie apocalypse talk, but like my focus, my focus on my focus on maintaining my health has always been two things. It has been in moments of extreme need. I would really like my body to do what my brain commands it to. Absolutely. So I can take care of myself, take care of my family, do what has to be done.

[01:01:52] But also because I have watched several people get into advanced age and fall apart. Yep. I it does not take much. I have seen I have seen people on the other side of 65 who are on like five and six daily medications. And I'm not talking about like they've been dying back their whole lives. They have to have insulin. But I'm talking about like they let their blood sugar get out of control for too many years.

[01:02:19] So now they're insulin dependent or they're on blood pressure medication and 10,000 other things. And I'm just like I look at all of that and I think to myself, I'm like, what is my survivability really like if I need a daily cocktail of five or six drugs? To keep alive. It's non-existent. And what is that quality of life that if I miss this, if I miss this drug for more than a couple of days, something really bad happens. I want to be in the hospital like that.

[01:02:46] That worries me from the perspective of if things suddenly go sideways. But it also makes me think to myself like I want I want the way I explained it to my wife was because we talked about what our fitness goals were. And I told Gail and I'm like, my fitness goals are I don't ever want to run a six minute mile. Sure. Not even in my priority order. I don't care if I never bench 200 pounds. Not in my priority. Don't care.

[01:03:15] But I do want to be that guy that is out in the front yard, 65 years old, ripping brakes off this truck and doing brake jobs. I want to be that guy that's 65 years old, maintaining my lawn, maintaining my property, working on stuff around the house. I want to be the guy who's out there with his wife hiking in his retirement, making the young guys huff and puff and look stupid because they can't keep up with the old fart.

[01:03:38] We ran into a couple the second time we went down to the Smoky Mountains at the top of a waterfall at the end of like a six and a half mile just out. And we had six and a half miles to go back. Like this couple was in their late 70s and they were doing the same trail and they looked just fine. I was dogging. But see, that's that is my fitness goal. That's a good goal. That's what I that's what I want. I want.

[01:04:10] Living to old age means nothing to me if I have to spend the last 10 or 20 years of my life basically bedridden, going from the bed to the couch. Yeah, because that's as far as I can go without keeling over. Like living to old age means nothing to me if I have to spend it in a hospital bed or in a in a in an old folks home because I didn't take care of myself. Quality of life is important. Quality of life is my goal. It is my goal now. It is my goal later.

[01:04:40] It is all about quality of life. It is what can I do to make this very broken, fairly abused body continue to do the things I want to do now at 42? And what can I do to make sure that in 20 or 25 or 30 years I can still do those things? Yeah. And I keep coming back around to the simple idea that it's about staying active. It is. It's about treating your body a little bit appropriately every now and then.

[01:05:08] And just focus it not so much. To me, it is all about focus on not losing anything. Yeah. Because once you get to this side of 40, free testosterone starts to go down. If you don't work at it, muscle mass starts to decrease. And those are all things that I have the ability to kind of like, you know, hold at bay or make progress on. As long as I spend kind of the same conversation we had about diet, it's not never eat pizza.

[01:05:38] It's just eat eggs more than pizza. Right. Well, if I make the decision that every now and then I want to sit on the couch and watch a show with my wife, that's fine. Yeah. But our asses better be outside walking four or five times that week if I want to be walking when I'm 65. Absolutely. And especially my wife with her ankle injury, me with multiple injuries to multiple joints. I have a decision to make of like, do we want to be ambulatory and in good health in our old age?

[01:06:08] Do we want to be able to go out and do things or do we not? And I've seen older couples who are basically spending their retirement hobbling around waiting to the end. And I'm like, I don't want that. Nope. I want to be I want to be 70 years old, embarrassing kids half my age because y'all can't keep up with the old fart who's out here kicking ass and taking names. That sounds like a great plan to me. Yeah.

[01:06:34] But like you said at the very beginning of the show, neither of us are pinnacles of physical fitness and neither of us are going to be modeling for underwear ads anytime soon. And I don't frankly care. And I don't think Nick does. Rachel might disagree. But, you know, I think the two of us both agree that we're much more focused on like practical strength, practical flexibility and balance. We're focused on maintaining our bodies the best we're able so that they do what they're supposed to do when called upon.

[01:07:03] Do what they're supposed to do. Do what we want them to do. And so you don't hurt every day. I mean, I am told I was told by a doctor that the the normal amount of pain is zero on a daily basis. I'm not sure he wasn't lying to me. But I mean. Far be for me to argue with a doctor. No, I do it all the time.

[01:07:30] I was about to say, like, I've never done that before, but I don't think he's ever met many combat veterans because or, you know, workers. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for some of us, Motrin is a food group. Change your socks, drink some water, take a Motrin. Yes. Yes. Although water is water is one we probably should have thrown in here.

[01:07:54] If you're not drinking an ounce per kilogram per day, you're not drinking enough water. Does it count if I pour my water through coffee beans? No, it does not because coffee is a diuretic. I don't believe you. Coffee is absolutely a diuretic. Coffee is absolutely a diuretic. So I drink a lot of coffee and I pee a lot. So the water's got to be coming from somewhere. Yeah. It's coming from where it should be in your body.

[01:08:24] Well, then I'm replenishing it with more coffee. Hey, man. When you get to pee out rocks, don't come bitching to me is all I'm saying. Thank you, Nick, for giving me that to look forward to. You're welcome. Okay. I guess we'll go ahead and sew this one up. Nick is going to shame me and drink water. I actually do drink water occasionally. I just like coffee much, much better. Hey, look, I like coffee a lot better, too. But I mean, just just do this.

[01:08:53] Keep keep one of these with you all day or like I do two of them or three of them, whatever. And try to drink, you know, about an ounce of water per kilogram of body weight. And that gets you kind of involved, but 2.2 pounds to the kilogram. So divide your weight in half. And that's how many ounces of water you should drink. Round about.

[01:09:15] I was going to make a joke about communist math, but, you know, communist math, cocaine bundles, whatever you got to do. So you could have said drink one drink one ounce of water per cocaine bundle of weight. Yes. Okay. See, I will measure anything in bundles of cocaine. Yes. In bundles of cocaine or like jugs of milk. Anything that doesn't involve using the metric system. That's fair.

[01:09:45] The only thing I'm willing to measure in metric is ammunition. Fair enough. Yep. The ultimate screw you to Europeans. They gave us a metric system and we use it for nothing except measuring ammunition. Fair enough. Night, everybody. All right. Matter of fact, this podcast is going to go out the door. I'm going to go tend to my mental health with probably more coffee. Just piss Nick off. That's fine. Talk to you on a week. Good night, everybody.