Can You Lose Weight Eating ANYTHING, How To Get Back Into the Gym, and Getting Your Kids To Eat "Healthy" - Q&A
Today, you've got Q's, we've got A's! What do you do if you don't like resistance training? How do you get back into the gym after a long break? Can you lose weight if you're eating junk food? And how can you get kids to eat healthy without putting certain foods off limits? Join us for this spooky Q&A.
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Today, we answer your questions.
What do I do if I don’t enjoy resistance training but I know it’s important for my health?
How do I know if I’m exercising too much?
How can I create healthy boundaries around less nutritious foods for my children without making the treats “off limits” and thus “must haves?”
So long as I am in a calorie deficit, does it matter what I eat for weight loss?
Why is it so hard to get back into a fitness routine when you fall off the routine?
If you want to submit questions to us in the future, you can send an email to foodweneedtotalk@gmail.com or DM us on Instagram.
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Juna Happy Halloween and welcome to a very, very special and spooky episode.
Eddie Juna, You didn't wear a costume?
Juna Eddie, They can't even see me. I did wear a costume.
Eddie Oh, yes. I mean, Juna what a great costume!
Juna Thank you, Eddie. I love your costume, too. You look just like a lifestyle medicine doctor. So realistic.
Eddie So what are we talking about today?
Juna Since it's Halloween, we wanted to give our listeners a very, very special treat. So we're bringing back one of your favorite formats, the Q and A episode. Today we're answering a bunch of your questions, including how do you know if you're exercising too much? Why is it so hard to get back into the gym after you've gone off? And can you lose weight eating literally anything? I'm Juna Gjata.
Eddie And I'm Dr. Eddie Phillips, associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
Juna And you're listening to Food, We Need to Talk. The only podcast that actually negates all the candy you've eaten at Halloween just by listening. So first things first. We're starting a new tradition of reading your reviews on the podcast. This week's review comes from B Rook Lynn, which I thought meant Brooklyn, but Eddie has really helpfully pointed out is actually Brooklyn. So maybe you just live in Brooklyn. I don't know.
Eddie And that's where I'm from originally.
Juna That's not why you picked it is actually a really good review.
Eddie And it's called Love It. I am constantly listening and love the show. It breaks down health in an easy, understandable way and gives truths. Love the science based, balanced advice. Thank you, Brooklyn.
Juna Thank you, Brooklyn. So these reviews really, really help us out on Apple Podcasts. And if you leave a review, you have a pretty good chance of being shouted out on the show. So feel free. Let us know what you think. We love hearing it. Now let's start with the questions. Our first question comes to us from someone named Michael Perlman. Maggie, will you do the honors?
Brooklyn I really liked your recent episode about the difference between cardio and resistance training. One thing really stuck with me, and that was the idea that for some people, traditional cardio going for a run. It's just not fun for a lot of people. The solution was that you need to find cardio that is fun to you. What if, though, resistance training really isn't fun for me? I'm a former cross-country runner and I really like team sports, which all points towards little ways to get cardio into my average week. But the idea of going to a gym and picking things up and then putting them down really doesn't appeal to me. What are alternatives to traditional resistance training that might make it more fun to build a sustainable, long term habit?
Eddie I love this question.
Juna Eddie loves this question. It's just right up his alley.
Eddie It sounds so appealing.
Juna Picking things out, putting an eye on people that don't lift. This is always how they describe lifting them like guys. But running is picking up your foot and putting it down over and over for like, I don't know. I don't know.
Eddie And according to the laws of physics, if the object is moved and by the end it's in the same place, then no work has been done, right?
Juna Yeah, exactly.
Eddie So. So, first off, one way to answer this, Michael, is to start off with the part about, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, what you're doing, whether you're actually lifting or not. And then we'll talk about how to squeeze it in and maybe we'll then talk about a reason to get stronger. So first off, your body, your muscles are agnostic, which means that they really do not know what kind of resistance training you're doing. Are you in a gym lifting things up and putting them down?
Juna No one knows.
Eddie Or are you using resistance bands which you've just stowed in your luggage, in your hotel.
Juna Room.
Eddie Doing that? Are you doing yoga and holding a position? Are you doing bodyweight exercises? So Juna might be standing here doing squats in the middle of the middle of the show just to keep her or her quads moving. Or as my wife and I love to do, are you going to a bootcamp either online or in person, where you're doing lots of exercises with other people and it's a little bit competitive and there's good music and other people are doing it, so it becomes more sort of doable.
Juna Right. Okay. My 2 cents in this whole situation is not that I'm personally offended by this question, but I'm personally a I'm just going to say I'm not offended. I guess what I would say is, have you actually tried it and really found out you don't like it? Or is it just more that the idea of it doesn't appeal to you? Because the idea of lifting weights did not appeal to me in the slightest. Let me tell you, when I first started doing it, like I've never had a natural affinity towards it. I've never been like, Oh, that's something that I would really want to try. I tried it because I saw a video of a girl doing and I was like, Oh, she looks really good. I want to look like her. That's why I originally started it. And then I just got really, really addicted to getting stronger and like being able to do more. So then I started to really like it. So my first question is, have you actually tried it for like, you know, not just a day, like a few weeks where you can actually see some progress. I was working out with a quasi family friend for a few months of summer and he was definitely like not into it when we first started, but we would go four or five times a week and by the end he loved it. He never missed a session. So change is possible. That's my first thing that I want to say. And my second thing is that having a goal of something you want to do by, you know, getting stronger is going to be so much more motivating than just like, well, this is good for my health, it's good for my bones, because honestly, who cares? Like, I'm not going to be as good for my bones because it's just not that appealing to me in the short term. But when it's like, Oh my God, I really wanna be able to do a pull up. It would be so cool if I could do a pull up at the gym. If people at the gym saw me doing a pull up, they would think I was the coolest person ever. So, like you are. You are. Thank you, Eddie. Thank you. Thoughts like that, they make me so much more motivated. So it's always been more performance oriented goals that make me consistent in the gym. Than just this is good for me. I feel like that doesn't make me want to do it. And the same thing with running like I don't like running, but when I was focusing on getting faster and I started focusing on my sprints, I was like, Oh, it's like a competition. Like, I have to get faster. I have to do. Better than last week when it was just like, Oh, I have to run. I'm just like, Oh my God, don't make me do this again.
Eddie So let me pick up on the running piece. And also, Michael describes himself as a runner for me to do the marathon, which I'm still celebrating. Yes. It would not have been possible without going to the gym and doing the resistance training. So I had to get my core strong enough. I had to get my legs strong enough. I had to stay in good enough shape so that I could then do what I really wanted to do. Right, which was the running. So, you know, I think it's perfect to think about like, yeah, it may not be that motivating to initially go to the gym, but if it serves a purpose and it gets you towards a goal that you have, then that's going to be much more motivating, right?
Juna Like I don't like doing explosive movements in the gym, so things like box jumps or power cleans or stuff like that. I just don't like that stuff. I'm much more into like powerlifting type of training. But the reason I started actually doing it consistently is because I really want to be able to do a backflip, and for a backflip you need a really high jump. So when I knew like I had to work on having a higher jump, all of a sudden I'm doing that stuff in every single workout because it's helping me towards this other thing that I really want to be good at. Or like when snowboarding season is coming up, I'm working on my ankle mobility in the gym, which is so, so boring. Like you don't understand how boring ankle mobility is, but I really want to be a good snowboarder. So like, I'm adding it to all my workouts and I'm like standing on one leg to make sure my balance is good because I really want to be snowboarding. So finding things either within the gym or even outside the gym that your resistance training is helping you for, I think would be really motivating. And then the last thing I want to say was just exploring different styles of resistance training. I think when people don't really lift, they kind of just, yeah, as one thing like lifting weights. But there's so many different kind of microcosms within lifting weights. So some people are more into powerlifting, which is very, very low rep and basically lifting as heavy as you can. It sounds like that might not be the type of, you know, lifting you're into, right? Some people are more into bodybuilding, which doesn't mean becoming a huge like bodybuilder going on stage and being tan. It means looking at your body more esthetically and be like, okay, like what kind of exercises do I want to do to bring up certain muscle groups? Some people are into weightlifting, which is more like what they do in the Olympics. So cleans and snatches. Some people are more into athletic training, so something more like CrossFit where you're doing some cardio, some lifting and kind of going in between the two. So there's different styles and I honestly think there is something for everybody and you just have to find something that you like and that excites you.
Eddie So the seasons are already changing. We're celebrating Halloween and I'm looking forward to cross-country skiing this this winter, specifically the ski style. So I need to get back to doing the single leg exercise so that I can then get up the hill. Otherwise, it's awful. Skating up a hill is really challenging unless you're strong enough. And I'll just add one other thing that's sort of on the horizon for me, but other people are already deeply into this, and that's the whole virtual reality exercise you could put on the goggles, you could go into a boxing match, you can go into lifting weights or doing sort of exercises or even aerobic type exercises with weights or with bands on and just be in a sort of an a different world. And, you know, maybe that's what it'll take to get you towards a little bit more resistance training. And we'd love to hear from you as you try out these things.
Juna Yes. Send us an email and let us know if you actually try anything and you liked anything. Also, if for some people, going to the gym is just really intimidating, like if that's part of why you don't want to go because there's all these other people around. First of all, there's so many good at home workout programs, so that's always an option. Is doing resistance training at home. Personally, I found that a lot more motivating when I was in public because I felt like I had to like be on point because there's people watching. But when I first went to the gym, I would pull all my stuff that I was doing things with in like a corner, and I would just hang out in the corner and I would like put headphones on and a hat on and ignore everybody else. So if you find videos on YouTube, that's what I did. I found videos on YouTube, and then I would kind of like set up in a corner and I would do stuff that I felt comfortable with there because nobody would bother me. And, you know, I would sometimes move over into a new area and be like, okay, today, like I'm going to try going to the squat rack. And it was so scary and so embarrassing, but every single person in that gym has been new to that gym. Nobody was born going to the gym, right? So I don't really think that everybody's there judging other people, but it feels like that when you're new, as long as you can stick it out for a few months, I guarantee you you'll feel so comfortable two or three months in. And if you really don't want to do that, you can always stay at home and do videos and do squats and push ups and get a pull up bar for your door and stuff like that. Our next question comes from Eman Tonga on Instagram.
Eman Tonga How do I know if I'm exercising too much? Prepping for outrunning zombies.
Juna Thank you for the Halloween reference. I said bonus points on Instagram. If you had a Halloween related question and this might have been the only Halloween related question. So thank you Eman Tonga.
Eddie So Eman Tonga, when you talk about over exercising, let's break it down into a few different ways of looking at it. One is you may know if you're psychologically stressed by the exercise you're doing. Another one that we'll talk about is if you're physiologically stressed, like in other words, you're getting depleted. And then we'll talk about some of the good news that's been published recently about doing more exercise than is usually recommended and how there's really not a negative to it that you're not going to actually shorten your life by doing too much exercise. So, Juna, maybe I'll ask this of you because you go to the gym with some great regularity, like how do you know when you're doing a little bit too much, both physically and psychologically?
Juna So I feel like overtraining is actually a pretty obvious thing to see in retrospect, but can be kind of hard to identify in the moment. I know I definitely venture into this territory multiple times a year, usually when I'm getting really into what I'm doing, but basically the way I will notice it in the way it's most apparent, I think, is that you stop progressing in whatever activity you're doing. So if you're getting weaker, like work out to work out, if you're getting slower run to run, if you're getting more injuries, if things are starting to hurt more, whenever I'm exercising too much, things will start to hurt and it'll be little things here and there. And then they'll just get worse and worse. And I, like, keep ignoring them. And then you'll also notice symptoms in the rest of your life, outside your work out. So for me, it's always sleep disturbances. I just like don't sleep enough. Even though I am training more and more and more, I'm sleeping less and less and less, even though I'm not waking up to an alarm like I'll just only sleep 6 hours no matter what I do, and I'll just feel exhausted the rest of the day and feel very tired. And those are usually the pretty consistent signs. Every time I've been overtraining, I have all of those symptoms. So whenever I start to notice a few of those creeping in, I'm like, okay, maybe I need to take more rest days. Maybe I need to exercise less.
Eddie So one of the groups that is famously studied in overtraining is swimmers. So if you look at a college swimmer, they may have 18, 20 hours or more scheduled per week, both dry land, meaning going to the gym and lifting heavy things and putting them down. And then also just endless time in the pool. And it's actually sort of interesting to follow them and realize that when they get to a point of overtraining, not only will there be injuries, you know, like your muscles give out at some point when the stress goes to the joint, then you end up with a sore shoulder that you have trouble doing your 10,000 yards with. Then you know that you're so you're overtraining when you're getting to the point where you're working out so much that it's actually hard to keep your own weight up. Oh, imagine that being a problem. Yeah, that's an issue. And then what's also comes out is the psychological stress that for much of what we talk about is go for a walk, you'll feel better. Yeah, but imagine getting to the point where just getting in the pool or returning for the additional additional exercise just becomes a stress. You're doing split workouts, meaning in the morning and then going back in the evening. Yeah. And it's just getting to the point where you people just say like, I hate it. I'm feeling depressed, you know? And as Juna just said, I'm not sleeping. I'm stressed by the exercise rather than relieving my stress, that would be a clear sign of overtraining.
Juna Yeah. I mean, I did a month at Harvard helping with the athletics teams and the rigorous workout schedules were like, astonishing. It was like they have lifts in the morning and practice in the evening and sometimes they have conditioning on top of that. I don't know how student athletes do it or just like athletes in general. It's honestly, it's crazy. But I think for the regular person that does not have to exercise for their job, we need to remember that recovery is just as important as exercise. If you are exercising over your capacity and you're not letting your body recover, you're not even getting the benefits from that exercise like you're not letting your muscles actually grow and get better from what you did in that exercise. So it's really, really hard to come to terms with that when you're excited about the gym, or maybe if you use the gym as a stress coping mechanism. Like I know whenever I'm going through a tough time in my life, I just like bury myself in the gym. Like I'll go for two or 3 hours and not notice it because it's like the only place I know where I feel comfortable and like, I don't know, I don't have to worry about anything there, but I have to recognize it's not helping me to only be there for 3 hours a day and never give my body a break.
Eddie And I think that just from personal experience and I'm going back to my recent experience, training for the marathon, that there were days when I just started to feel a little bit depleted. Yeah. And I had to respect that rest is part of the whole routine. And we were only running three days a week, which is about the minimum you can do. And there were rest days put into the training program. But to me, a rest day meant, oh, this. This is the day when I'll ride my bike and swim. Yeah. And there were some days when I just thought. I'm just feeling a little depleted. So you kind of add some mindfulness here and just say, like, maybe today I just feel like I need a rest day. Honor that and maybe overcome the overtraining. And I just want to go back to the article that I mentioned and we'll link to this in our show notes at foodweneedtotalk.com. There was a recent article came out just over the summer in circulation that looked at very large populations and tried to answer the question, you know, could you do too much exercise? Or actually, if you do more exercise than is generally recommended, which is 150 minutes to 300 minutes per week of moderate intensity exercise like a brisk walk plus resistance training twice per week. The formal recommendations are you can get a dose of that 150 minutes, two doses, 300 minutes. Well, it turns out that if you go to three or four doses now you're up to 600 minutes, your longevity continues to improve. So that's really good news. And for many people that are driven by the idea of I'm going to live longer by exercising, well, you should exercise a bit more. But even more interestingly to me is that they looked at people that were doing maybe ten doses so well, 1500 minutes of exercise. And think about it that you're.
Juna Who was doing that?
Eddie Well. There are people that they incorporate walking into their lives and it becomes a thing and it becomes a social thing. And now you're out there walking 2 hours a day, 3 hours a day if you want to train for a marathon ultramarathon, or you're going to be out there for many, many hours, many, many multiples. And it turns out that the benefits of living longer no longer accrue. You don't keep on living longer and longer.
Juna Living to like 150. They're just like the.
Eddie More you exercise. But on the other hand, it also doesn't shorten your life. So it's good. It's good to know that you can exercise more. It's going to continue to give you benefits as long as you don't overtrain.
Juna Amazing. Our next question comes from Mrs. April Wallace.
April Wallace I did so do six years ago. And now my five year old who's never had them is super curious. How can I create a boundary around this and other sugary treats that doesn't elevate it to a must have simply because mom would prefer him not to.
Eddie Think this is a parenting question isn't it?
Juna This is Eddie's jam.
Eddie So I'm going to sort of look at this one at the extremes first. So one extreme is that you just have in your house any old stuff, you know.
Juna Just everything.
Eddie Everything from multiple sodas and ultra processed foods. And there's no distinction to your five year old that one may be better for them than another. And when I say better, let's consider like what a lot of programs are doing now in the cafeteria. There's green, yellow and red foods. All right. So when we talk about fresh fruits and vegetables, you know, high fiber, lots of micronutrients, that's going to be in the green category. And the soda, the sugar sweetened beverage is going to end up in the red category. It's not a never have.
Juna Right.
Eddie It's just sometimes. Sometimes. So that's one extreme. And I'm not really advocating that. And then the other one is not only do we not have sugar sweetened beverages at home, but when we go out, we avert our eyes and.
Juna You are not allowed to have anything.
Eddie And that just becomes, as Mrs. April Wallace pointed out, like this must have just makes it a forbidden fruit. And, you know, if we're going to do our historical note for today, historical sidenote, we're going to go right back to the Bible. And the first thing that's eating there, if I remember my genesis properly, is the apple. And the reason why it's eaten is because it's forbidden. It's forbidden. And to this day, as I look at the computer, there's an apple.
Juna With a bite out of it.
Eddie And that was the magic and the knowledge.
Juna Of mind blown of.
Eddie Steve Jobs to know that everyone wants the forbidden fruit. And if you go to the Apple store, you can buy it now.
Juna For $2,000.
Eddie So let's find the in-between in terms of your five year old thinks that your God right now that's not going to last forever. And even and even if your five year old thinks your God, he or she is looking to probably challenge that and that curiosity is going to turn into. I went over to my friend's house on his first play date and I had this stuff and I was just like, Wow, maybe we'll talk about him or her starting to understand how the soda makes them feel. Maybe really buzzed and happy at first, but are they crashing later? You know, how do they feel when they eat other foods? And I don't think it's too early to start pointing out that we eat healthy food. We're enjoying it, you know, how does this make you feel? Juna, what went on in your house?
Juna Oh, okay. Yeah, I want to tell the story. So when I was little, I loved soda. When I was like six or seven. I, like, really liked Coca Cola. And then my mom when I was like seven was just like, we're not having this in the house anymore because it's not good for you guys. So we never had it in the house. And obviously I was like really mad at first, right? But then it basically became that whenever we went to restaurants, I was allowed to order coke, which wasn't that often. Maybe it was like once a month or something, and I would get so excited every time I went to restaurants, but then I would say, I don't know when it really happened. Maybe around like ten, 11, 12, I just stopped liking it because I was honestly just not having it that often as an adult. I haven't had a soda since my pre-teens. I do not like soda. I think it's really gross and I think that's because my mom just honestly didn't keep it in the house. So it wasn't a never food, but it was definitely a sometimes food and that sometimes was just not that often. And something else I think I've heard people talk about with their kids is explaining to them exactly what is going on when they're having soda. So I think sometimes we treat kids like they don't really understand, you know, health repercussions and stuff like that. But if you find videos on YouTube of like people putting like a penny into coke and how it takes the rust off because that's how acidic it is. And that's kind of what it's doing to your teeth and like to your esophagus. And you explain to them what happens when we have a lot of sugar, like our brain really likes it, but then it has all these downstream effects in our blood and in our, you know, liver, all these things. I think actually you can make it kid friendly and they can understand it. They're not going to want to have it all the time either. So you can explain to them like, yeah, it tastes really good and we can have it on special occasions. But if we want our body to be strong in the long run, it might not be the best thing to be having all the time. And maybe if they're into sports or something like My cousin loves soccer and if I was like, If you're having coke all the time, I don't think you going to be as good of a soccer player. He'd be like, Oh, I'm not having coke, you know what I mean? So I think talking to them in a way that they can understand the health repercussions is actually giving them the choice to make for themselves. And I think a lot of the time they will make the choice of not having you all the time if they know it's actually not good for them.
Eddie And just one more thing to add is that whatever direction you're trying to go and obviously you gave up the soda six years ago, be consistent in your behavior. Don't be the parent who's screaming at their kid to wear their bicycle helmet when the parents not wearing their own. So I think that you need to, you know, have some consistency and be making the food choices that will become the norm overall. And if they have the soda, let them enjoy it. Yeah. And not to have this again, you know, back to the forbidden food.
Juna Right. And now we're going to take a quick break. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
Eddie And we're back. The next question comes from Hannah Reilly.
Hannah Reilly So long as you are in a calorie deficit, does it matter what you eat for weight loss?
Juna Thank you, Hannah. What a great question. So strictly when it comes to weight loss, if you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight.
Eddie So we had the dude from Kansas or something, right.
Juna Mark Haub, how you can google this? Haub is his last name from kansas state university and he lost 27lbs and I think he was eating like it was mostly Twinkies, but he was supplementing with like Doritos and like supplements or, you know, when he would get tired of the Twinkie taste. And then I think he was having some sort of like zero calorie like vitamin thing just so he wouldn't die. You know, in those few months. But he lost 27lbs eating like Doritos and Twinkies or something. So it is possible to lose weight eating anything as long as the calories are in check. But that being said, it can come with a lot of long term complications. So when I was eating 1200 calories a day, half of it was coming from protein bars and protein powder. And there's zero nutrition besides protein in protein bars and protein powder. And I was so deficient in so many vitamins and minerals, and I could tell because I was freezing all the time and like my hair was falling out. It was just it was horrible. Right. Whenever you are choosing to eat less, you have to be even more careful with being very, very sure to get your micronutrients right, because there's just less calories, which is less opportunity to get those nutrients. And so having more of those calories, be ultra processed foods, which are usually pretty micronutrient poor, is just a long term strategy that's, you know, not the best for your body. And then you also risk being hungrier because if you're having a lot of ultra processed food, a lot of it is very low fiber and fiber keeps you fuller. A lot of it is very high sugar and high fat. And when sugar is always spiking your blood sugar, it basically just doesn't keep you full for a long time. So you're going to probably be hungrier and you're probably not giving your body all the things that it needs and there's going to be less diversity in your diet. So I think long term, it's not a good idea to be eating like all junk food. But if you're asking this question, like, if I want to lose weight, can I still incorporate, I don't know, a Pop-Tart? I really like Pop-Tarts. Can I incorporate a Pop-Tart into what I'm eating if I still want to lose weight as long as it fits into my calories, yes, that will not change the amount of weight you lose. I don't think that means that your entire food selection should be Pop-Tarts and Oreos and whatever.
Eddie There's an interesting thing when you talk about like, you know, yes, you can have the treat. Yeah. And maybe that's the one thing you need. I've got a colleague from the lifestyle medicine world that when he talks to his patients who are determined to go on some sort of calorie restriction and they're writing out the plan, he starts with a really interesting question. So I'll ask this of you. You know, what's the non-negotiable? You know what? What are you going to eat no matter what I say?
Juna Yeah. Like, for me, it's always chocolate. Like dark chocolate. I will always incorporate somehow.
Eddie Bingo. So he writes that down first, right? And you're we think it's healthy to have a square of dark chocolate. How big is this square?
Juna I will not be answering that question. Next question.
Eddie It's the square is.
Juna Don't ask my roommate.
Eddie Is a shape, not a size. Yeah. So so he starts he starts with what's nonnegotiable. And for, you know, for Hannah asking the question, if you want to have a little bit of ice cream, even as part of your diet.
Juna Girl, Go for it.
Eddie And enjoy it. and put it in there. But for the rest of it, you know, if I were cutting back on calories, I'd be even more double down on improving the quality of the food as you cut down on the quantity. Not all protein is equal. Not all carbs are equal. Right? So when we had Christopher Gardner on, I think he made a very nice point that actually as you eat better quality, so for instance, higher fiber foods and better proteins that you're enjoying, maybe that you're even savoring that it can help support reducing the quantity.
Juna Right, because better quality foods often take up more space in your stomach, like they're usually foods with more water and more fiber, so they make you feel fuller. So a lot of the time, focusing on improving your food quality also reduces the calories you're eating because it's way easier to overeat ultra processed food than it is to overeat very healthy food.
Eddie Sort of getting back to the question, we really try to break things down to the fundamental physics and even the biochemistry and the sugar molecules. And you guys are listening and learning, hopefully. But add a little nuance here. Yeah. And don't just like suck on a lollipop all day. Yeah. You got you're getting, you know, 1200 calories and that's what you're going to lose weight on.
Juna Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great point. So everything in moderation, but neither extreme is probably going to be the best for anyone. Our next question and our last question, I believe. Comes from Christine Ayala.
Christine Ayala Why is it so hard to get back into a fitness routine when you fall off the routine?
Juna Girl, this is such a great girl. When you know the answer. Text me because I want to know the answer I'm just kidding.
Eddie So you know, what do you think?
Juna There's so many. There's so many things, guys, okay? If you've spent time, hours, sweat, dedicating yourself to the gym and then for some reason, some unforeseen reason, you have to take time off and then you go back and all your hard work is ruined. It's just so discouraging to feel like you're going backwards. And I feel like this happens all the time with fitness because it's just impossible to have a continuous upward trajectory. That would be the ideal world. That's just impossible because otherwise, I mean by age 50 or 60, we should all be like Arnold Schwarzenegger, strong. Like we're not. Right. Right. So it's always going to be up and down, up and down, up and down. But I think when you're really excited about the progress you're making, it can just be so discouraging to ever see any of that progress undone. And I know, especially for me, like if I'm not feeling good about myself, like I dread going back, I'm like, Oh, I know I'm going to be so much weaker. I'm going to be so much more out of shape. I'm going to be so much slower. I know it can be really, really hard mentally, but I think something that really changed my mindset around this was actually a girl on Instagram, I think it was, who got a wrist injury. And you know, if you have a wrist injury, it almost makes everything in the gym impossible because you're holding stuff all the time. Right. So she couldn't train for six weeks and somebody asked her like, Oh, yeah, it's going to be really hard not to train for six weeks, blah, blah, blah. And she was like, Oh no. Like, I don't mind. I mean, I'm going to be training for my whole life like these six weeks. They make zero difference in the long run, right? And I was just like, mind blown. If when I get injured, I get so upset. It is my worst nightmare because I can't go to the gym. And then when I thought of it that way, I was like, Wow, she's right. I'm going to be going to the gym for the rest of my life. Having a few weeks off or taking a few steps back or getting a little bit weaker is not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, like you're taking thousands of steps forward in your life. So taking one step back is not really a reason to be super upset. And on top of that, getting super upset probably makes you even less likely to go back, right? Like it stops you from going back because you're upset about the progress you've lost. So I think getting back into it as soon as possible is always going to be your best bet. And it's okay to, you know, go on vacation and not work out for a while. And it's okay to take time off when you're injured. The worst thing you can do when you're injured is go back prematurely and make it even worse, which I've done all the time. It's okay to be busy with work because the reality is there are other things in your life that matter besides your physique and the gym and your running time. And I think I forget that a lot because a lot of time, those are my big goals. And then I have to remember that there's other things to life than just working out. And arguably, they're much more important than working out. So it's okay sometimes if my work takes over, I have to take some time off the gym.
Eddie I love the way you're sort of reframing the question, which is maybe the question or is thinking, Oh, this is a failing that I've not gone to the gym and why is it so hard to get restarted? And I love the way you're putting it that, well, this is just a natural rest.
Juna There you go.
Eddie Well, maybe you intuited along the way that you were getting a little burnt out or bored with what you're doing. I love the idea of and this goes to earlier questions about how do you keep on moving and keep it fresh. A seasonality to exercise is I love the change of seasons and I love the change of sports. And I think that it's great that you can ski during the winter, of course, but it's so precious and it's such a short term that well, no, but but so you sort of like grab the time and then when the snow melts, I'm not going to be skiing until the following December, January. And when I go back to skiing, it's really hard because I'm sort of out of shape for that sport shape, out of ski shape. And then similarly jumping the lake comes June. It's really tough at first because I'm out of swimming shape, you know, for being outside. So so just sort of enjoy the seasonality or the ebbs and flows and like Juna is talking about if you end up taking a break and you go back, you know, understand that you're not going to be in the shape you were before. Now, speaking sort of as a doctor, I was I do to my patients, when you do go back to whatever you were doing before, just cut the numbers in half, whatever, whatever you remember doing. So like, Juna, give me your routine for four presses. How many what do you do?
Juna Presses. Yeah, okay. I can bench press again. I did 155. For seven.
Eddie Okay.
Juna My internship? Yeah.
Eddie Can you translate what that means?
Juna I benched 155 lbs for seven reps.
Eddie Okay. And how many sets of that can you do?
Juna Oh, that was a max set. Let's say I do. 135 for 6 pretty regularly for four sets for so.
Eddie So if you took several weeks off for whatever reason. Yeah, I would tell you go back at half the weight, half the number of reps, half the speed, half the number of sets, just so that you can sort of gently get back into it because you do not want to like rush back in more in the fact that you're not as good as you were four weeks ago or four months ago and just get injured as Juna was talking about. There's another whole thing that this question made me think of, which is we often talk about sort of our ancestral or the genetics of who we are as humans and our ancestors. And it makes me think that our physiology is almost like in conflict. So our bodies are just designed to move. We're designed to lift, to walk, to be outside, to be with other people. And when you don't do that, there are predictable diseases and noncommunicable diseases, which is fancy talk for diabetes and heart disease and stroke that are largely avoidable if you stay active. So that's one thing that pushes us. But then if you remember the episode where we were talking about what goes on in Tanzania and seeing these hunter gatherer tribe and you realize that, yeah, you need to go and do your pursuit hunting and you might be out there for hours upon hours of not a couple of days trying to catch the wildebeest. But when you get back.
Juna You're just chillin.
Eddie They just there.
Juna They're just sitting.
Eddie There. They are like the questioner, like they just trying to do as little exercise, as little activity as possible. So I think we're hardwired for that as well. I don't know how much this helps too.
Juna It's like the most not helpful answer ever.
Eddie But it makes it fun. It makes me think that I need to just sort of embrace the part that we are designed to move. And even if I take a break, I'm going to embrace that and then get back to what it is. And then just another sort of general thought as we start wrapping this up, if the exercise, if the physical activity were engineered into your life, if you lived in a fifth story walk up.
Juna Like, Eddie's son.
Eddie You just your up and down the stairs, up and down the stairs. And when you forget something, you've got another ten flights.
Juna So you'll never forget the thing again in your life.
Eddie If it's engineered in, if you figured out you know, how to walk to work or how to walk to whatever your activities are, then the less chance that you're going to sort of be falling off the wagon have to worry about getting back in.
Juna Yeah. Also, I was going to say I've also been trying to enjoy more the process of getting better at things because I think it's really discouraging when you feel like you're going backwards. But at the same time, when you're starting from a lower point, you get to see your self progress again, which arguably is like the most exciting part is getting to see yourself get better. So like you can look at it as, Wow, I've gotten worse than I used to be. Or you can look at it as like, Oh my God, cool. I get to see myself build back up to where I was and I'll try to pay more attention this time and enjoy it more because it's such a fun thing to see yourself get better. So maybe looking at it that way instead of looking at it as a step back when you go back will also be helpful. And we had one more question from Suntan 26, which was who was the lucky winner of the survey. If you don't know what we're talking about, we have our survey foodweneedtotalk.com Slash survey and someone is winning a $75 gift card suntan. Asked about the first survey, so actually it was somebody named Palona Barber. I have already sent her her gift card. So if you would like to be entered for a chance to win a $75 Amazon gift card, please go to foodweneedtotalk.com slash survey. Let us know what you think about the podcast. It takes 5 minutes and that is going to be the end of today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. We will put all links on our website foodweneedtotalk.com. You can find us on Instagram at food. We need to talk. You can find me on Instagram @theofficialjuna and Juna Gjatah on YouTube and Tik Tok. You can find Eddie.
Eddie Trying to make my way up my son's steps so I can visit him in his apartment.
Juna Oh, yes. Oh, maybe that's why he chose that apartment. He has to keep you in shape for your marathon. Food, We Need To Talk is produced by PRX.
Eddie Our producers are Morgan Flannery and Rebecca Seidel.
Juna Tommy Bazarian is our mix engineer with production assistance from Isabel Kirby McGowan.
Eddie Special thanks to our engineer Maggie Matter, who also has a voice to our listeners.
Juna Thank you, Maggie.
Eddie Jocelyn Gonzales is executive producer for PRX Productions.
Juna Food We Need to Talk was co-created by Carrie Goldberg, George Hicks, Eddie Phillips and me.
Eddie For any personal health questions, please consult your personal health provider to find out more. Go to foodweneedtotalk.com.
Both: Thanks for listening.
