325: Choose Your Hard

Are you ready to redefine the concept of what's truly "hard" in life and how it impacts your health and wellness? Brace yourselves as we shatter the myth of immediate gratification, urging you to push boundaries and highlight the long-term implications of your health decisions. We promise, this riveting discussion will empower you to take control of your choices, and create a healthier you, one choice at a time.

Imagine a life where the pain of discipline is preferred over the pain of regret. We navigate through the challenges of maintaining a healthy lifestyle amidst the hustle-bustle of daily life. Exercising, eating healthy, and ensuring ample sleep - all might seem hard in the short-term, but our enlightening dive into the realm of health choices emphasizes the long-term benefits, reminding you of the far heavier burden of disease in the absence of such choices. We also expose the pitfalls of our culture's infatuation with instant gratification, instead promoting the delayed satisfaction that comes from sticking to a healthy routine.

As we conclude this transformative journey, we reflect on how the choices we make today drastically shape our future. Pondering on various real-life examples and case studies, we underline the implications of our health choices, and how they can lead to physical limitations in the future. Most importantly, we shed light on the immense power of choice, and how it can mold a healthier, happier you. So, tune in to this episode of "Choosing Your Hard" and be inspired to take control of your health and fitness journey today! This isn't about opting for an easier life; it's about choosing a life that's worth the hard.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 325, Choose your Hard. If you're looking for ways to bring more joy into your running and you want to be a physically and mentally stronger runner, you're in the right place.

Speaker 2: 0:20

This is the Real Life Runners podcast on Wear your Hotes. Kevin and Angie Brown, thanks for spending some time with us today. Now let's get running.

Speaker 1: 0:30

What's up everybody? Welcome to the podcast today. Today we're talking all about choices and choosing your hard, and we're going to get into this whole idea and this whole concept of making the choices that are going to serve you the best in your life. But before we jump into today's episode, I want to invite you to make the choice to join me in an upcoming free class that I'm going to be holding Get faster by running easier. I'm holding this live class on October 2nd and 3rd. You have two choices for live times that you can come and join me. I'm going to be teaching you all about running by effort and how to incorporate effort-based training into your running routine so that you can feel better, run faster, run longer and achieve the goals that matter to you. So head over to realliferunnerscom forward slash class to sign up for that class today.

Speaker 2: 1:22

Signing up for that does not seem like choosing hard at all. That seems like choosing to come to an awesome lesson with you. That's choosing easy.

Speaker 1: 1:29

That's an easy choice.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Easy, choice.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Easy choice, and it's a free class too. So I want to try to make this information available to all runners that want to feel better and achieve their goals. So come join me, and if you've already joined me and you want to let your running friends know, please send them over to the website as well. Excellent, all right.

Speaker 1: 1:46

So let's jump in to today's topic, which is choose your heart, because life is all about choices, and I think that sometimes we think that we don't have certain choices in certain areas of our life.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Like, if you listened to our podcast from last week, we talked about running while sick, and I know that that's probably an area that all of us feel like, well, if I'm sick, I don't really have a choice. Or if certain things happen, certain obstacles pop up in my way, I don't really have a choice in the matter. So what we want to help you understand today is that you always have a choice, and I know that sounds like very woo woo and it sounds very like Pollyanna, like, oh, always look for the positive, and that's not what we're talking about today. So today we're going to get into this a little bit deeper, because one of the things that I often see. That really makes me sad sometimes is when I see people that think that life is just happening to them and not realizing how much power they actually have over everything in their life, because that essentially turns us into victims. You know people feeling victimized or feeling not in control of their life or the situations that are happening to them in their life right now.

Speaker 2: 2:56

Yeah, I mean you talked about the last episode. We're talking about being sick and like, well, if I'm sick then I guess I can't run. Sure, you can, like you could take everything we said in the episode and been like, yeah, I mean, I like what you're putting out there, but I'm just always going to run Like that's, that's the choice that you're making, and then you're going to have whatever repercussions follow that. Maybe you're super sick, you got 104 degree fever and you know, and a chest cough, and you're like, yeah, but I'm going to run, like it's going to take you a while to get over that. But you can, in fact choose to lace them up and head out the door. Or you can be like I'm still sick from that, like sickness I had three weeks ago and I'm just going to continue to take it easy.

Speaker 2: 3:34

You could choose that route also. It's not necessarily the route that's going to get you best prepared for an upcoming race, but it is still a choice. You're always making choices. You're not victim to your circumstances. You have circumstances around you and you get to choose how to respond to those Right.

Speaker 1: 3:51

And I think that it's important for us to acknowledge that life is hard sometimes, and so we talk a lot on this podcast about how everything that we do is governed by our thoughts. I think that was a couple of episodes ago maybe 322, I might say about how actions create our results.

Speaker 2: 4:09

That's true, but that is honestly every episode. It's true.

Speaker 1: 4:12

I mean, because that's a big part of you know. What we want to do around here is help you understand how your choices affect everything in your life, especially your running, and also to empower you to make the choices that are best for you, because doesn't that seem like a great idea to have power over your own life and not be a victim to the circumstances or other people around you. And but that again does not mean that life isn't hard, like, yes, you could choose to put a positive spin on it. You can choose to, like, look at things through a different light, but sometimes life is just hard. But what I want to talk about today is how we get to choose the hard part.

Speaker 1: 4:51

I think that oftentimes we don't realize that we get to choose which part of the hard we want to lean into. And what I mean by that is it's that you have a choice always between, well, this is easy and this is hard. So I'm going to choose the hard or I'm going to choose the easy, because, let's be honest, most people are going to choose the easy, most people aren't going to choose the hard. When given a choice between easy and hard, that's not how our brains are wired.

Speaker 2: 5:14

It's just not how it works.

Speaker 1: 5:15

Some of us will right and some of us will sometimes, but overall, most humans will choose the easier route.

Speaker 2: 5:22

Yeah, most humans will choose the easier route without realizing they're even making a choice. They'll just naturally default to the easier route without realizing there's a choice in front of them, that there was a hard option.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Right, and what I want to talk about today is that sometimes making the easy choice ends up giving you hard parts later on in life that you don't anticipate, and sometimes making the hard choice now will make the rest of your life a lot easier.

Speaker 1: 5:48

And so I've got some really great stories that I'm going to share with you about this concept, and it is true that there are some things that are out of our control, but today we want to kind of look at what are the things that are in our control, and I want to look at this through two lenses.

Speaker 1: 6:06

So the first lens is it's hard to be healthy. Right, because I think there's a lot of people out there that believe it's hard to be healthy, and I'm going to we're going to dive into various aspects of health and what that means. Right, because, depending on who you are, you can be like, oh, it's not hard to be healthy, and some of you might be like, yeah, there's certain parts that are pretty hard. Right, and it doesn't mean that like, it's just hard and easy. We're not just going to slap an easy button on this or a hard button on this and just like generalize, like, yes, it is hard or it is easy to be healthy, but I want to look at it as it's hard to be healthy and it's hard not to be healthy. Okay, so those are the two lenses that we want to look at today, and then, by the end of this, I want to ask you which one do you want to choose? Because, again, you always have a choice here.

Speaker 2: 6:52

Always get the choices and they are basically complete opposites from each other. It's hard to be healthy and it's hard not to be healthy. Both of them have difficulties in the repercussions that follow. You get to choose, but then you have to deal with what follows.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Right, because that's ultimately what happens. And if you go back to that our actions create results episode, you'll see that whatever actions you carry out in your life and that includes both our action and our inaction, our lack of action that's going to result in certain outcomes or certain consequences, like hey, I don't like the word consequences because I feel like it has a negative connotation but there are also positive consequences of our actions as well.

Speaker 2: 7:33

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what neutral word consequences to me is, just it's what follows your actions. Consequences and results to me are synonyms.

Speaker 1: 7:41

Well, it's results and outcomes. I think, I think I use outcomes more, but don't you think that consequences has like a more negative connotation?

Speaker 2: 7:48

I mean in shoots and ladders. I feel both the shoots and the ladders are consequences of what happens.

Speaker 1: 7:54

Really.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Yep.

Speaker 1: 7:57

You're so funny, but you want the ladders, you don't want the slides, which is kind of funny because Slides seem a lot more fun than climbing up a ladder.

Speaker 2: 8:03

They seem a lot more fun.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Yeah, like in life, you're going to look for the slides.

Speaker 2: 8:06

I know, but very often it was the things that looked like a whole lot of fun that ended up putting you onto a slide and shooting you down at the bottom of that.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Oh, that is interesting the way that game is set up.

Speaker 2: 8:16

It's always the thing that looks like fun. That then shoots you down to the bottom.

Speaker 1: 8:20

And is easier. It's easier to just sit your butt on a slide and take the ride versus climbing up a ladder.

Speaker 2: 8:26

Yes.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Oh, fun analogy, All right, so let's first start off by looking at this idea that it's hard to be healthy, and there's a lot of people out there that believe this, and maybe you can have someone in your life that could benefit from this episode. Feel free to share this episode with them If you hear yourself kind of nodding along and agreeing to what we say. I know that I definitely have people in my life that I would like to share this episode with. But when people say that it's hard to be healthy and we're going to go into different categories of this that is very now focused. Right now. It's hard for me to make the healthy choice in this situation or in this phase of my life, and I often see people thinking that it's hard to be healthy or making excuses when it comes to exercise or nutrition or sleep, or saying that they don't have enough time for it, and those are the things that we want to kind of dive into here All right.

Speaker 2: 9:17

So from, like, an exercise perspective, there are plenty of people that will argue that exercise is hard, and there's a few reasons for that. One trying to fit it in, like trying to actually put in your exercise during the day. Exercise can be time consuming and if you're like, well, if I really need to be consistent and fit into my schedule, the only way to do that is to get up really early and do it then, and then you're adding the challenge of waking up early and that's hard If you tell your brain that that's a hard action. Heading out and running can be hard. Trying to figure out your appropriate paces could be hard. Running doesn't have to be hard. Some people push really hard every day. They think that running has to be hard, like they say it's hard to run, and then they justify it by every time they run they push to a hard level.

Speaker 1: 10:05

And then they repeat how hard it was.

Speaker 2: 10:06

Yes, that was exhausting. I don't want to do that again. Well, try easy running. I bet it's going to help out. Real nice, or sign up for Angie's class.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Yes, or they push to the hard level and then they take pride in that hard yes, right, and I think that that can be a double-edged sword. I think that there can be positives of that of like taking pride in doing hard things Like I often take pride in doing hard things and like showing myself that I can overcome things, but there can also be a negative side to that Also is that everything that I do needs to be hard in order for it to be effective. Or, you know, pushing hard, if I, if I'm not pushing hard all the time, then I'm not reaching my full potential. I'm not, or I'm leaving Things, leaving it all out there.

Speaker 1: 10:48

You know, like not leaving it all out.

Speaker 2: 10:49

There is a negative thing right, put it all out there so that you can gain all of the Rewards back from it, but that's not really how running training works. There's this whole like delayed gratification. Is this low building Laying the bricks and keep climbing higher and higher and higher? That's how you actually get the the super positive results. So from that aspect, there's a there's a hard aspect there, because you can't push hard every single time. Pushing hard every time is likely to put you into the injury cycle, and so the challenge is accepting the delayed gratification and the long-term results of Success right.

Speaker 1: 11:25

And that's really hard for people, because when they don't see an immediate payoff, then they don't want to keep going. And I think that our culture is Built around immediate gratification, and the more we get into this technological age that we're in, the more our brains are being Rewired for that immediate gratification. And so waiting for something and waiting for Pay off of the exercise, because when you're doing exercise, sometimes it doesn't feel good, right? Sometimes that exercise is Physically hard to do, and so it can be hard for some people to do that day after day after day, just hoping and Anticipating that the results will come.

Speaker 1: 12:06

I know, but anticipating fight fantastic results is so nice for you yeah so maybe that's not hard for you, mate, right, but it is for some people yeah right, and so one of the things that we want to look at here is what are you in control of here?

Speaker 1: 12:21

Because we control and we have a choice. So here are some choices that we can make in the realm of exercise. We control how often we do it, the frequency with which we exercise. You have a. You have a control over your daily activity level outside of just exercise. Do you go on a walk with your dog, do you get up and move around during the day, or are you just sitting at your desk all day long?

Speaker 2: 12:43

Yeah, I have a 45 minute window where I exercise and that is it. Those are my only movements of the entire day.

Speaker 1: 12:49

What about the rest of your day?

Speaker 2: 12:50

There's a lot of people that fall into that route.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Yep, you are in control of the effort levels during your workout. You're in control of how hard you are pushing on any given day. You're in control of the time that you're able to devote to exercise and I know that people are gonna argue with me on this one and say that there they have spouses and children and other responsibilities and work and all these other things that take their time away from them. But again, you still get to choose all of those things. If work and making money is important to you, then you're choosing work over spending more time exercising, and that's okay. That might be a choice that you want to make and that's fantastic, but you're still in control of how much time that you want to devote to exercise on a daily or weekly basis.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Yeah, I mean that that was a choice that I had to make a few years ago. You helped assist in making this choice, but when I I wanted to run an ultramarathon, you said, okay, but you don't have time to do that. And coach track this is going to be like you will not be able to healthily is that a word I feel like I'm gonna you will not be able to healthily do both of these activities at the same time. Added to the dictionary perfect, okay, at least successfully do both of them. Like I wouldn't be able to put as much time and energy into coaching track and then still feel like I was putting in appropriate level of training into prepping for a race and, to be fair, I don't think I like said you can't do this or you shouldn't do this.

Speaker 1: 14:13

I think I just asked you like do you think you will have enough time to do both? Do you think that you will have enough time and enough energy to complete each time, each area, in the way that you want to?

Speaker 2: 14:26

and that's the thing is. Yes, I had enough time to do both of them, but I had enough time to do both of them to a level that I didn't want to do either. Right, and I could have spread myself Really thin and done a bad job at both of them, but that was not the choice that I was making there right, because you value your coaching and you value the time that you're putting into coaching and the athletes that you're coaching.

Speaker 1: 14:47

So you knew that you weren't gonna be able to give them as much if you are focusing more on your individual goal of running the hundred mile race, right, and that's not fair to you or to them, right, right? So Lots of choices that we have in the exercise realm, choices that we are, things that often get in the way of nutrition, right? Here's another Idea of it's hard to be healthy. When I talk to people about nutrition, they often say, oh well, it's too expensive. It's hard to be healthy because, or it's hard to eat healthy because it's too expensive, it takes too much effort, I have to find new recipes, it doesn't taste as good, it's too time-consuming, I can't cook every single night, right? These are some of the obstacles that often get in the way of people eating healthier in the time, like in the now.

Speaker 2: 15:34

Yeah, and I mean it's. It's very. Some of them are difficult to argue against over short term of the idea of Tell me which one is difficult time-consuming, inexpensive okay it's sort of combo-ing.

Speaker 1: 15:47

Okay, because I argue that it's way more expensive to eat out every night Than it is to cook at home. Time-consuming, yes it is. It is more time-consuming to cook at home, to come up with a meal plan, to go grocery shopping Versed to just call and order something right.

Speaker 2: 16:03

But you can overcome time-consuming if. If you ignore the expensive part, because you can go with a bunch of these meal services, they will bring you the the use to bring you pretty processed, high sodium things. They'll bring you all sorts of different options. Now, yeah, so then you go into the. Well, it doesn't taste as good. Okay, you can choose certain things. Sometimes you're you're pushing one into a different category. Well, I'm I've fixed my time-consuming issue, but I don't. This is not necessarily the meal that I would have created for myself, okay, but if you're aiming for the healthy food and you don't have the time to create it for yourself you don't want to be cooking every night that that gives you an option on occasion for healthy food being delivered right to you.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Okay, ultimately, you're in charge of what you put in your mouth.

Speaker 2: 16:49

This is true right.

Speaker 1: 16:50

So, like, if you are choosing the faster, more convenient option that is less healthy and okay. That's a choice that you know, you're obviously free to make. What are the health consequences of, what are the outcomes of you eating that way? Mm-hmm, right, and this is kind of what we're talking about here, when it comes to choose your heart Right now. In the moment, it might be easier. Right now it might be more convenient. Right now it might be fit into your lifestyle, but what is that going to lead to in six months, in a year, in five years, in 10 years, in 30 years?

Speaker 2: 17:25

Yeah, and this, I think, is where you get that too expensive aspect of. Well, it's too expensive for me to choose the healthier option between whatever food items you're choosing between. If you want to go for a less processed or an organic version of something, maybe that is, in fact, a more expensive option sitting in front of you right now at the grocery store. But if you keep choosing the less expensive, more higher processed option, what are the medical bills going to be heading off in the future? Exactly? I feel like you're going to make that money back and then some.

Speaker 1: 17:59

I mean, that's the way that I like to look at it. Right, it might be more expensive now, but I'm going to be saving money on my medical bills later. That's how I like, one of the ways that I like to look at it. Let's take a look at sleep and recovery, because some people say, like some of the common obstacles that get in people's way here that makes it hard to get sleep or hard to get recovery, is that I'm too busy. Right, my schedule is too full, I'm always taking people all around, I have no time for myself.

Speaker 1: 18:26

You know all of these excuses that we like to make, but we're still in control of what time we go to bed. We're still in control of what we do before bed. Right, there are some people that stay up watching TV or reading or doing something else and they're like, yeah, but that's the only time I have to myself. Fine, all of these are fine choices, and we're not trying to sit here and tell you that you're making the bad choice. It's just acknowledge that you do have that choice. If you want to get up and run in the morning before work, that means you're going to or I shouldn't say you should, but you're probably going to want to go to bed earlier so that you're not sacrificing your sleep here. Right? You're in control of what time you go to bed, what time you wake up, what you do before bed, if you're doing you know a bedtime routine, or if you're setting your house at a certain temperature to help you sleep better. Like you're in control of all those things.

Speaker 2: 19:21

Right, and some people are like well, but there's other people's schedules that affect my schedule Bed schedule, spouse's schedule, my friends are going out, so I'm going out with them. You're choosing whether to go out with your friends or not. Okay, and well, there is some aspect of your kids and spouse's schedule and trying to match up with them, you're ultimately still in control of when you go to bed. Okay, as our kids have gotten older and they've stayed up later, it's had to change things, that I do, the order that I do things before I go to bed, so that I can try to maintain my bedtime, because they used to be able to go to bed earlier and then the two of us would have a little bit of time and then we'd get ready for bed and then we'd off, we go.

Speaker 1: 19:59

Remember we used to record the podcast after they went to bed, after we would send them to bed.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Yeah, that was nuts, and I don't feel like it was that long ago. But suddenly they're up much later, and so if I'm not ready for bed at the same time that they're getting ready for bed, it's immediately going to push my bedtime drastically later. So that was a change they had to make, and it took me a while to realize how simple that change was. But it was a change that had to happen to my schedule in order to maintain what time I go to bed. I still had made the choice. This is when I would like to go to bed, but I hadn't adjusted my lifestyle accordingly. So I just need to look at the schedule and figure out. What do I need to do so that I'm still going to bed when I want to?

Speaker 1: 20:37

Yeah, exactly. And the next area we want to look at is mindset, because this governs everything that we do, the thoughts that we think, the choices that we make. This is what governs everything that we do. And as people think, going back to it's hard to be healthy, that it has to be hard to be effective, or no pain, no gain, or push harder every day, they're always pushing, they're always striving, they always think that they need to be doing more and more and more.

Speaker 1: 21:04

And again, if this is where you find yourself often, especially in regards to your running, please come join me in my free class, realliferunnerscom forward slash class, because I'm going to be breaking down a lot of these misconceptions and ideas that are not serving you when it comes to your running, because most of us, most of our lives, should kind of be in maintenance mode, right, like there is a glory in maintenance, because I think that we have this idea that we always need to be building and getting better and striving and improving our times and improving our distances. We need to be improving all the time, and that's just not the way the human body is set up. It's not the way that human life is set up Our life, our world, our existence, is meant to be cyclical. It's set up to be in cycles and if we're constantly trying to push harder, oftentimes that leads to a lot of breakdown and it leads to a lot of forced time off or forced sleep or forced recovery, like kind of what you experienced last week.

Speaker 2: 22:07

Yes, yes, I was a little sick last week. I called that forced recovery. Okay, so you're talking about things that we have control over. With exercise, we have control over frequency and effort levels. With nutrition, you have control over what you put in your mouth. With sleep, you have control over what time you go to bed. You can make that choice. With mindset. What's the phrasing on this? I mean, I know that we have control over our thoughts, but sometimes it feels like thoughts just pop into our head and then what are we supposed to do with them?

Speaker 1: 22:34

Acknowledge them first.

Speaker 2: 22:35

Okay.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Right and make a choice if that's a thought that serves you or not.

Speaker 2: 22:39

Nice.

Speaker 1: 22:40

I think that that's what it comes down to is first even realizing that some of these things are actually thoughts, because so many things, so many of our thoughts we just accept as facts. We just accept as circumstances that are handed to us and in reality they are thoughts or they are situations that we have way more choice and way more control over than we realize.

Speaker 2: 23:03

Yeah, but no pain, no gain rhymes, so I'm pretty sure that must be an absolute fact, right.

Speaker 1: 23:07

And it's on posters all over.

Speaker 2: 23:09

I've seen it.

Speaker 1: 23:10

There's work rooms and classrooms.

Speaker 2: 23:12

There's so many gyms that have that up on a poster. It must be an absolute fact. There's no way that that's just a thought inside of my head, and yet it is. They're all just thoughts, and then you can choose whether that thought is beneficial to you or not. And that's where your choice comes in.

Speaker 1: 23:27

When we talk about thoughts, let's move right into time, this idea of that it takes too much time to be healthy, and that includes kind of everything right, it takes too much time to exercise or to prepare healthy meals or to get eight hours of sleep, All of these things. I think that time and this is something that I used to blame a lot and I am much more aware it doesn't mean I don't do it sometimes right.

Speaker 1: 23:54

And this is the thing, too, that I want you guys to understand is, just because you gain awareness of all of this, it doesn't mean that you're not ever going to fall into these traps sometimes either.

Speaker 1: 24:03

That's totally normal, and it's just that now I just become aware of it way more quickly, of when I am having thoughts that don't serve me, and then I can choose if I want to stick with that thought, and sometimes I do Like sometimes I actually want to stay in thoughts that aren't really doing me any good, because who knows why Like that's my human brain, but we always have that choice. And I think that, coming to the idea of there are things that I can do on any time schedule, there are things that you can do regardless of how quote unquote busy you are. There are little things, because I think that a lot of times we want to make these huge changes and these huge overhauls, but what's a really small thing that you can start to change, that will just start to move you in that direction, because I think there's little things that we can do on any schedules and we can have different goals for different seasons in our life. I think that's an important thing to note too.

Speaker 2: 24:59

Yeah, tiny tweaks in your schedule can have massive repercussions. Like one of the things that I've done this school year, I've started making my lunch the night before because it allowed me just this little extra window in the morning where I wasn't as stressed trying to get everything ready in the morning.

Speaker 1: 25:14

How many times have you done that?

Speaker 2: 25:16

I've been pretty consistent since the school year, yeah, which has been remarkably helpful and allowed me a little extra time in the morning, sometimes to get a little extra exercise, sometimes to get in just a little extra sleep. It depends on what it is, but it gives me extra stuff in the morning. And, yes, I was remarkably consistent up until last week when I got sick and now I've been pretty good this week.

Speaker 1: 25:36

Yeah, and I think that just starting to acknowledge that we have so many choices in our life that we don't always acknowledge that we have is a really good place to start. So let's go into the second part, which is it's hard to not be healthy, and this is more of a later focused thing. So Thinking about you know, it's hard to be healthy is, like you know, in this moment, right now, it's hard to do the things, that is, that are going to lead to a healthy life or a healthy body.

Speaker 2: 26:09

Yes, I don't have enough time, right.

Speaker 1: 26:11

But it's also hard to not be healthy, and when I think about this I think more of down the road. Sometimes it is apparent right now, right.

Speaker 1: 26:20

Because if you are someone, if we go to like straight to nutrition, right, like if you're someone that's eating fast food all the time, that can cause GI issues, right, so there can be discomfort right now, right now as well, right, maybe within the hour right, but, but overall, the way that I like to look at this is not that a lot oftentimes we don't realize the effects that our choices have over the quality of our lives, both now and in the future, and I this is something that I'm really passionate about because of my Time, my training as a physical therapist and the patients that I used to see, like there were so many patients that would come in for physical therapy treatments with chronic diseases like arthritis and diabetes and hypertension and heart disease and pain and movement limitations, like all of these problems that they just accepted as Well.

Speaker 1: 27:10

This is what normal like I will never forget. There was this one Patient that came into me. I don't remember who the patient was or any details about him, but I was just doing the initial evaluation and I was doing the patient interview and I always ask about medical history you know what? What conditions do you have? And he said, oh, you know the normal stuff. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? He's, you know the normal stuff, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and I was like that's, that's the normal stuff.

Speaker 2: 27:41

Those are not normal things to have.

Speaker 1: 27:45

But this was the mindset of like, oh yeah, that's just, that's just a disease of aging, and there's a lot of people that believe that. That you know well, as I get older, I'm just gonna start developing all these diseases. That's just part of the aging process. And oh my god, it's not and so, then, that followed with.

Speaker 2: 28:01

So, are you taking any mean any medications? Oh yeah, just the normal medications, because I'm taking, you know, this for diabetes and this for my hypertension and this for the, this slew of medications that have now also just become normalized right, especially since we see advertisements for them on our TV every single night. Oh, good lord, the amount of advertising for drugs on the TV is nuts.

Speaker 1: 28:20

It's. It's ridiculous, but you know, I want to think about this because there are so many limitations that we can end up with because of the lifestyle choices that we're making right now in our lives, and I think that when we're younger, we don't often think about those long-term health consequences. And that's really my Goal with this episode is to help you start thinking about these things. Regardless of how old you are, if you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, you still have a lot, 70s, you know. Whatever you saw, a lot of life ahead of you, and your choices now affect the limitations or the abilities that you're going to have in the future right.

Speaker 2: 29:00

So let's start with some some physical limitations. This guy goes to exercise nutrition, but it really goes to all sorts of things. A lack of exercise now Leads to a lack of physical fitness later. Physical limitations, just constant pains. Lack of mobility, lack of movement, not being able to play with your kids, not being able to play with your grandkids, not being able to like walk with other people, like to be the grandparent that can take the kids to the amusement park. We've seen these people like we live in Florida, so we've been to Disney the the people who the family has to take periodic Breaks to just hang out and sit on the bench, not because you know it's hot and they're tired, but because they physically can't keep walking any farther.

Speaker 1: 29:41

Yeah, or they have to have a wheelchair, that they have to push through the amusement parks or whatever. And you know, I always look at your parents. I think that your parents are great examples of this, of like being active their whole life. Like your parents have exercised their entire life and they're still active in their in their 70s and can they do everything. No, like your mom can't run anymore because she's got some knee issues and and whatnot, but when we go out there, we go hiking, we go kayaking, they're still like very active with our kids and I think that that adds so much to our Experience and our time with them and I think that it's such a good example both for us and for our kids. Like, how cool is it, yeah, yeah and Papa get to do these really fun things with us, and not they're not at home while we go off and do those things right.

Speaker 2: 30:28

I mean, when we went out for the trip last time like they were the ones that planned Parts of this trip that was like, yeah, we'll, we'll go to Tahoe and then we'll go on this hike up a mountain, like, okay, that seems like a great idea, is this gonna be fine? And yeah, they were fine, just hiking up part of the mountain.

Speaker 1: 30:44

And you know, at one point, you know, your mom had to turn around and go back, and that was fine because one of the kids Wanted to go back to right and it was like but then dad was able to do the one hike with us, like the whole time and like, so it was just very cool. And so are you someone that wants to be active into your 70s and 80s and 90s and beyond? If so, you have to start making choices now that are going to let you do that, and some people might be listening to this and be like yeah, yeah, I've run all the time I exercise, but if you're overdoing it now, that could also have negative consequences.

Speaker 2: 31:21

Yeah, if you're overdoing it and then not giving yourself recovery because you can push pretty hard as long as you then are also fueling your body, giving enough sleep, giving enough time that your body is recovering and adapting and you're not just perpetually trying to break the body.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Right and I think that when people often say like these had these misconceptions about how running is bad for your knees and if you run too much then you're not going to be able to walk well later, that's actually true, but it is if you push too hard all the time, and we actually know someone that this is this kind of affected. She was a very high level runner when she was in, I think, her 30s and was even able to run in the qualifying right for the Olympics. Did she run in the marathon?

Speaker 2: 32:10

Yeah, she's in the marathon Olympic trials.

Speaker 1: 32:11

Yeah, the Olympic trials. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 32:13

Way up there at the finish. She wasn't just like in it, she was in it.

Speaker 1: 32:16

Yeah and so. But like now, the way that she trained at that time and this was back in like the 70s, I think 70s and 80s they didn't know then what we know now. And I've had conversations with her and she's like man, I really wish that we knew then what we know about better ways to train, because I just push myself every day. I went out hard every day and now she's not able to run anymore. She goes out and walks and she's still active, right, and she plays tennis and she's still a very active person, but she doesn't run anymore because her body just got too broken down, right.

Speaker 2: 32:51

She's not doing too much pounding day after day after day, because everything was pushed really hard so that you can reap the rewards now, right, and it worked for her at that time. It worked over a small period of time, but it didn't work over a long period of time. She wasn't in Olympic trials after Olympic trials. After Olympic trials, she had a successful window and that's. That's what she had.

Speaker 1: 33:12

Right, and so I want us to really think about this, because some of you might be like yeah, of course, like I exercise all the time, but are you overdoing it all the time? Because if you're overdoing it all the time and if you're constantly injured and you're constantly pushing your body to that brink and like really just trying to walk that very far, run that very fine line right Between high performance and injury, that might have consequences in the future.

Speaker 2: 33:38

Okay. So those are good physical limitations that we've covered there. But there's also psychological limitations of these ways of having sort of a mindset that just keeps building and there's essentially like inertia to these mindset of putting blame on other people, not taking control of the situations around you, feeling like the situations dictate everything, that you're out of control because you have to be at the I don't know the whims of whatever life deals you.

Speaker 1: 34:07

Yeah, and I think that when people when I see people in this it's like that. It's very much a victim mentality of like blaming everyone else and feeling limited in their life because it's again, it's hard to not be healthy. And so we're thinking of like in what ways is this limiting us in like both now and in the future? And I think it's really that you know, just feeling depressed or feeling like you're not in control of your life, and a lot of that is coming from the choices that we're making.

Speaker 2: 34:34

Right. It's like now that I have made these poor choices for years. Now I'm stuck in this body that can't handle it. You're ending up in a lot of comparison to the people around you and then getting mad at them. Anybody else around you who's having like a healthier lifestyle, who's able to be a little bit more active, well, it's their fault, or I couldn't. I couldn't do what they did. I had these previous things in my back. I had these time restrictions, I had other people that were putting limits on me, and it's just this constant blame of what's happening now and things that happened in the past and blaming things instead of just accepting what is now currently in control and moving forward from there.

Speaker 1: 35:13

But it's also that idea of like thinking that this is normal too. I think that that's also a psychological limitation that a lot of that you know people do run up against is like thinking like, yeah, this again, this is just the normal aging process, like this is what it is, and making that choice of immediate gratification in like at this time and not realizing what psychological implications that might have for the future as well. And one of the patients that this brings to mind for me, like I'll never forget this guy. I was working in home healthcare and I had a new patient evaluation and I went to this guy's house.

Speaker 1: 35:50

It was status post total knee replacement Okay, so he had had a knee replacement. And when I got to his house and I was taking his history, it turns out that he had had the knee replacement like a couple of years earlier, and so I was like, okay, that's interesting, why is this the diagnosis Right? And so in talking to this guy, I basically found out that he had had a knee replacement and he was going through physical therapy and everything was going fine. And then his physical therapist made some comment to him about how he was going to have to exercise for the rest of his life, and he decided that he did not like that idea.

Speaker 2: 36:24

There's not the option he was going to choose.

Speaker 1: 36:25

That was not what he wanted to choose and obviously, like this, man had like bipolar disorder and other issue, like psychological disorders that were probably affecting his mentality at the time as well. But he decided at that time that he did not want to exercise and so he kept. So he sat in his wheelchair and he made his wife wait on him. He refused to get up, he refused to do his exercises. He decided, nope, that's not for me. He made the conscious choice that he did not want to do that and then when I saw him a couple of years later, he physically was not able to do it, like he physically could not get out of his wheelchair. And that was what I worked with him for like four months to just stand up on his own because he had gotten so weak from literally choosing not to do anything, literally choosing not to exercise and just let his wife take care of him.

Speaker 2: 37:17

Yeah, I mean, that's like the most extreme example of this. Very extreme so it was like the least healthy option possible of I'm just going to sit here and eventually everything atrophied away that he did not have the muscle strength to stand.

Speaker 1: 37:30

Yeah, and that just is like a perfect and a very extreme example of in making the choice not to do his exercises, that led him to not be able to do what he wanted to later, because he never thought at that time that he was going to be wheelchair bound Right as he. I don't know why along the because it's. I mean, it takes a while for you to not be able to stand up. You know, along that whole process he never made a different choice, but still, by the time I got to him, he really wanted to be able to stand up on his own. He really wanted to start being able to walk Like. He wanted to walk with a walker, yep, he just wanted to walk again, you know, and it was like it was so sad to me because he could have, yeah, like he brought this upon himself.

Speaker 2: 38:14

Three years prior. He made the wrong choice. He could have been definitely walking.

Speaker 1: 38:17

Not just, but it wasn't one choice, and I think that's important to note also. It's not that he made one choice. He made that choice and then he continued to make that choice every single day after. Yes.

Speaker 2: 38:29

It was not a choice three years ago. You're right. It was a choice that started three years ago and was verified and made again every day for the next many years and eventually wheelchair-bembed Exactly.

Speaker 1: 38:41

And so you know, if you think that you don't have enough time now, thinking about time limitations later, do you want to spend your 60s, 70s, 80s, your retirement, going to doctor's appointments every day? Because there are literally people that do that. There are people that have like when I used to, you know, treat patients in the clinic. They would be, you know, coming into physical therapy three days a week and then they had an orthopedic appointment and then they had a neurology appointment and then they had the endocrinologist. They literally had doctor's appointments every single day and I just thought to myself I never want a life like that, yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:16

I mean I remember listening to you when you were doing home health. You would call these patients up and try and schedule with them and you're trying to figure out well, when can I meet with you? Because you're also meeting with like these seven other people on your health team and all of those visits have to get in there so they don't have a schedule anymore. Like there were patients that had like a lunch with their friends on a Tuesday and that was really their social thing, because the rest of their week was just packed with doctor's appointments.

Speaker 1: 39:42

Yeah, Well, and you know, in home health you have to be homebound as well. So like they're really not supposed to be doing social activities, I know, of course.

Speaker 1: 39:49

But they were still the doctor's appointments don't count. Doctor's appointments don't count. Right, but their schedule was so busy. And here's the thing is a lot of times they would have maybe one doctor's appointment, so it wouldn't be all day long. But they were so weak and had so little endurance that just leaving the house to go to that doctor's appointment would then cause them to be so tired the rest of the day. They couldn't do physical therapy, Of course.

Speaker 2: 40:11

They didn't have enough energy for it. That wipes that day, so I couldn't Right.

Speaker 1: 40:14

So, even though it was really only an hour or two, a couple hours from their day, they were so wiped out just from going to the doctor's office, getting in the car, getting from the car to the doctor's office, that they didn't have the energy for physical therapy because they knew that I was going to make them exercise or I was going to make them walk, right and so, and I just decided at that time, like I never want to be that way and I want to help as many people as possible not be that way as well, by making the choices now that are going to affect them in the future, and understanding they have a choice in all of this, and by making some of these lifestyle choices now, you're going to be setting yourself up for such a better quality of life in the future, in my opinion.

Speaker 2: 40:56

Yeah, I mean, that is literally where our phrase run your life comes from is to be able to have control and take charge of your life and not be the victim of the circumstances around you. Actually run your life Like real life runners is, yes, it's a running thing, but it's also running having control and charge of the life around you and the life that you want to live.

Speaker 1: 41:17

Yeah, absolutely, and so, with that, I've got to run to a meeting now because I'm on a committee and I have to go. So I loved this conversation and I hope that you guys found this enjoyable. If you liked it, please share this podcast with somebody and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, if you haven't already, or on Spotify. We really appreciate all the reviews that you guys leave us and they help us to reach more runners and more humans, so that we can help people just run their life and live a better quality of life, both now and the future. So, as always, guys, thank you for joining us. This has been the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 325. Now get out there and run your life.