Cycling Over Sixty
Cycle Lean with Neil
In this episode, host Tom Butler reveals a ride strategy he does not recommend. However, the positive outcome has him looking to repeat the ride and pursue some expert advice on using it over the long-term. Then, Tom welcomes Neil Damerell, a specialist in exercise nutrition who helps cyclists achieve weight loss goals. Neil, the force behind the Cycle Lean Community on Facebook, joins Tom for a dive into cycling for healthy weight management. They discuss how Neil got into a focus on health and why he works with people over 40. Tune in for tips and inspiration to leverage cycling for a healthier, happier you, both physically and mentally.
Links
Cycle Lean Face Book Group: facebook.com/groups/cycleleanfreecommunity
Neil’s Website: neildamerell.com/
Thanks for Joining Me! Follow and comment on Cycling Over Sixty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cyclingoversixty/
Consider becoming a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty
Please send comments, questions and especially content suggestions to me at tom.butler@teleiomedia.com
Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com
In this episode, host Tom Butler reveals a ride strategy he does not recommend. However, the positive outcome has him looking to repeat the ride and pursue some expert advice on using it over the long-term. Then, Tom welcomes Neil Damerell, a specialist in exercise nutrition who helps cyclists achieve weight loss goals. Neil, the force behind the Cycle Lean Community on Facebook, joins Tom for a dive into cycling for healthy weight management. They discuss how Neil got into a focus on health and why he works with people over 40. Tune in for tips and inspiration to leverage cycling for a healthier, happier you, both physically and mentally.
Links
Cycle Lean Face Book Group: facebook.com/groups/cycleleanfreecommunity
Neil’s Website: neildamerell.com/
Thanks for Joining Me! Follow and comment on Cycling Over Sixty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cyclingoversixty/
Consider becoming a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty
Please send comments, questions and especially content suggestions to me at tom.butler@teleiomedia.com
Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com
This is the Cycling Over 60 podcast, season two, episode 39, Cycle Lean with Neil, and I'm your host, Tom Butler. I want to welcome everyone to this week's edition of my journey to bike my way to staying fit later on in life and the conversations I am having with people that inspire and inform my efforts. I want to talk about something that I did this last week, but I don't want any of you to do it. I am intrigued by the prospect of riding while I am fasting, so this week I rode 48 miles having nothing in the tank. What I mean is that I ate breakfast and then, five hours later, I rode for four hours without a meal. I did have a protein snack about three and a half hours in, but I don't think I actually needed it. I was riding slow and keeping my heart rate at a place that is very low for me. Normally, I would look to maintain about 150 beats per minute for a ride, but for this fasting ride I was spinning at under 120 beats per minute. One reason why I felt safe riding this way was that I took a couple of protein bars with me, and I knew I was able to stop and get more energy if I needed it. I was frequently checking my continuous glucose monitor to make sure I wasn't going too low with my blood glucose level. Again, I recommend that you don't do this.
Tom Butler:There is a lot that I don't know about riding this way that I want to research, but for me there was an interesting result. First off, my blood glucose never dropped below 115 milligrams per deciliter and it fluctuated between 125 and 115, mostly staying about 120. So my blood glucose was actually high the whole time. If it would have slipped down below 100, I would have taken in some calories. My explanation for this is that I was exercising at such a low intensity that my body had no problems converting the fat that I needed for energy. One of the reasons that I don't recommend this to anyone is that I can't find anything that says that going four hours without taking in some glucose won't cause the breakdown of protein for energy. I have spent a significant amount of time trying to find a definitive answer to this, and I just can't. However, the body will prioritize burning fat over burning protein for energy, so I think there is reason to believe that I was using fat the whole time. Here is why I will do this again.
Tom Butler:I have been having problems with blood glucose spikes in the afternoon. That right totally eliminated an afternoon spike. That is completely predictable. My muscles were burning up the blood sugar so that it didn't spike. However, it also had a huge impact the next day. In fact, the next day was the best blood sugar levels that I have seen since I started wearing the monitor at the beginning of April. The app I use with my continuous glucose monitor gives me a daily score. I have been getting scores in the mid-20s, which isn't good. The day of the ride I got a score of 72, and the next day a score of 90. That is two days with a huge improvement Because of what I saw with my blood glucose levels and that I never once felt I was low on energy.
Tom Butler:I will do the same kind of fasting right next week and the week after. Then I will take my data to someone who can look at it and advise me whether or not this is a safe weekly strategy. It is possible that I'm doing something that is counterproductive in the long run, like breaking down muscle. One problem I will have, I think, is finding someone who is knowledgeable about what is really happening with a lot of biological processes during a fasting ride like this. I think I need an endocrinologist who is knowledgeable about intermittent fasting and especially the availability of visceral fat utilization for energy. Wish me luck in finding the right expert to really assess the risks of continuing to do this kind of ride.
Tom Butler:It's rare that I see someone who specifically focuses on cycling as a way to lose weight, so when I saw Neil Damarel's posts, I wanted to get to know more about what he is doing. Neil runs the Cycle Lean community on Facebook, which provides a community for people who want to lose weight while cycling and also don't want to spend hours on a bike. He accepted my invitation to come on the podcast. Here is our discussion. Well, this is a fun time for me, a little bit different of a deal. I'm welcoming Neil Damerol to the podcast. Thank you, Neil, for joining me.
Neil Damerell:Yeah, pleasure, Tom. Thank you very much for having me on the show for joining me.
Tom Butler:Yeah, pleasure, tom. Thank you very much for having me on the show. So, as you can probably make out, neil is not from my area of the world, and so this is kind of fun because I'm reaching across. I think you're in London, is that right?
Neil Damerell:Yeah, that's right, tom. Yeah, so it's six o'clock our time, so in the evening there's a nice balance between your time and my time. You know, it's not always that convenient when you're trying to chat to people across the other side of the planet, isn't it so?
Tom Butler:that's right, and thanks to the technology of zoom, we're able to have this conversation, and that's really cool. You're my first international guest to have on the podcast, so that's kind of fun too. And, neil, I got interested in you because of your YouTube videos and some of the stuff that you have on Instagram, and you talk about weight loss and cycling and I you know that is something a while ago, as listeners of the podcast know that I latched on to cycling as a way for me to get my health back, and a lot of my health conditions were about being obese, and so that is a major focus that I have. So I really appreciate you coming on and us having a conversation about those things and some other things as well. And, to start out, can you talk about memories that you have of biking as a kid?
Neil Damerell:Yeah, so definitely growing up I was more of a football player, definitely in the UK, inland soccer obviously in america, but is a very grown up is probably what most young kids do, I suppose, in terms of football, especially back in the 80s 90s when I grew up I was born in 82, so growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, football was very much a working class sport. Most people wanted to play sport. So I know cycling has grown in popularity a lot since then. But I think if I was going to go into cycling that might be quite a being very different to what majority of my friends were doing, especially my dad who you know I started playing football when I was five. My dad enjoyed playing football. You know we're mad man United fans, so not doing too well at the moment but we've. You know I've grown up with that predominantly in my childhood.
Neil Damerell:But in terms of getting into cycling and cycling was for in that age was more about just adventure, just being out on the bike.
Neil Damerell:I did a lot of BMX, bmx in a little bit. I did a few BMX events, a local BMX track and then had like a mountain bike and just really kind of it was just exploring the area I was living in. I remember at the time exploring the area. Now I look back on it and that area is quite small, but as a kid you think you've traveled millions of miles and you've gone so far out of your way, where, actually, when I look back on it now, it's probably maybe only five miles away from home, for example. So it was more of a case of just getting on my bike, having some adventures. I used to cycle to school as well on the odd occasion and stuff like that. So cycling for me growing up was just the option for you know, transportation but adventure as well, and that's what I've always probably enjoyed about cycling just the ability to get a, you know, explore where you live on your own steam without having to, you know, get in a car or having someone sort of take you there as well, really.
Tom Butler:So yeah, so your relationship grew with cycling as you became an adult. Can you go into that a bit?
Neil Damerell:yeah. So you know, from playing football and predominantly that being my main sport growing up up, until I became an adult really around sort of 17 18 when I had to sort of find my way into the working world and I left school at 16 and became a hairdresser. So so majority of my time weekends wasn't playing football, played Sunday football and I did hairdressing for about eight years before I went travelling around the world. So I travelled around Southeast Asia for six months, went to Australia and it was kind of a period of transition for me because I fell out of love with hairdressing a bit. It was a very creative platform and I've always been very creative. It was good with hands-on and came back after a year traveling, realized I wasn't too fit and healthy after being away for a while, had a bit of a health scare while I was away. So it really sort of put front of mind the importance of looking after my well-being and really focusing on my health and I wanted to go back in to study nutrition and exercise and find ways that I could support myself but also help others, because while I was away traveling I learned a lot about nutrition. I did like a detox retreat in Thailand. I spent a month there doing meditation and yoga and really sort of understanding myself a lot better than I did before I left, and that really gave me the inspiration to sort of want to explore that more.
Neil Damerell:Go to uni, you know, did a master's degree eventually in sport and exercise, nutrition and my undergrad was focusing on like holistic health and well-being as well and longevity. And then when I came back from traveling I wanted to get. I was really unfit. I did a, I went back playing football and I did pre-season training session and I had to leave the session because I was so unfit and I'd never done that before because I was always really prouding myself on being really fit. Or my dad used to take me for runs and he would, he would cycle on the bike while I'd run around and I'll do that when I was like 11 or 12, just like a couple of miles and stuff. And it kind of shocked me how unfit I was and my dad said why don't you start running, you know to and from work, or maybe sign up for a half marathon over the pre-season just to give you something to get your fitness up? So I started running more, did a half marathon, I did one half marathon before I went away traveling and then the half marathon I did when I came back after doing a bit of training. I knocked off about 15 minutes of my time. So I ran really well and it really inspired me and I got really motivated by it and I wanted to do more. So I did to do more.
Neil Damerell:So I did a few more half marathons that summer, went back into playing football but really didn't really enjoy the football as much as I maybe did have did in the past and felt I was getting so much more out of the running because it was all down to me. Where you're playing a team sport, you have to rely on other players giving their 100% as well, and a lot of the time because it we weren't going to be professional anymore. It's kind of just lower league level, sort of semi-pro level where I was playing. So I felt the motivation wasn't always there from every player, but for me I wanted to always give 100%. So knowing that I could achieve that in running and that was the only way I could, you know nothing could get in the way of my own determination and motivation because it was only up to me. So basically I ended up going into running that season after that season and just focusing and completely on running.
Neil Damerell:And then it wasn't until my brother did his first Ironman triathlon a few years later that I went and supported him. It really inspired me to think I want to do triathlon. I want to do the running and cycling and swimming. So that's what led me to buying a bike and then sort of getting into the world of Ironman half Iron Ironman triathlon, olympic distance triathlon and then eventually more now into cycling. But that's what really became my passion with.
Neil Damerell:Cycling was from running into triathlon and I really enjoyed the disciplines because it wasn't just running all the time, which sometimes can get a bit monotonous and increased risk of injury as well, and just having the variety of cycling and swimming just really provided a really nice sort of variety in my training. And then that continued and I went on and did sort of john goats, the land's end and a few other cycling adventures and at the time when I was doing ironman and my brother was doing ironman, this was sort of back in 2006, 2007, so it was still quite a new sport for most people. It hasn't, probably hasn't got. It didn't have the popularity that has now, where there's so many iron man branded events across the world where at the time it was all relatively new. So no one, really none of my friends, were really active in terms of cycling and now they've got into cycling sort of years later, but I was probably one of the earlier doctors of you know coming home and I've just been out on the bike for four hours or I've just done a half ironman and I think I was mental where now it's.
Neil Damerell:You know, it's quite normal for most people to go and do that kind of thing. So so yes, that's what really sort of my transition really into cycling as an adult really and always enjoyed it, obviously when I was younger, and the adventures that I had on it. But that really sort of came back to me when I started getting on the bike a bit more and just being able to go out on my bike. And I grew up in plymouth in devon I don't know if you're familiar with plymouth in the southwest of england no, so in the, the southwest of England.
Neil Damerell:It's very close to, or sort of right next to, dartmoor, so it's a massive national park. You're right by the coast, you have Dartmoor right on your doorstep so you just have a real good playground to go out and cycle away from the city. It's quite a small city of maybe 250, people, so not compared to london, but still, you know, quite a small city so you could get out quite easily. It's quite hilly as well around devon and cornwall, so it's good training for hill climbing and just a really good way of just getting out the city.
Neil Damerell:And just you know, I was out on the bike most weekends, most most days, as much as I could, training, and just go out for hours on my own and just cycle and and that was before garmin or anything like that just you know, just a stop watch and just going out and just being out on the bike and maybe I was a speedometer to see how many miles you've done. And I think what I really love about it was just the simplicity of it and the freedom that you had from it and that's all really kind of I mean, that's really stuck with me. Now in terms of cycling, I think what I get the most joy out of it is the really simplicity and how you can explore, travel a big distance, have some adventures and it's all on your own steam, really, which is good, and you're in nature, and that's why I love being in nature as often as possible.
Tom Butler:So yeah, when you say that it does sound like there is a beautiful place to ride, that you were getting out, you were doing the miles you're getting, you're burning some calories, um, using your body, but then also it sounds like a beautiful place and I wonder if you could talk a bit about that. Do you find being out in nature calms you down? Do you find that there's some health benefits to you just from being outside in a beautiful scenery?
Neil Damerell:Massively, especially growing up in a city like Plymouth where you do have the coast and you know really good countryside on your doorstep.
Neil Damerell:I think when I was younger I probably didn't appreciate it as much as you probably do at the time, or you should do at the time and I was.
Neil Damerell:As I've got older and live in London for nearly 10 years now, I still get out to the countryside, quite close to Kent and the Surrey Hills so we can get out to the countryside from London. It takes maybe about from where I've moved, more central now so probably takes me a bit longer to get out. But just, I think me going out in the countryside and doing a regular ride most weekends has actually made me manage my health and mental well-being as a londoner now probably a lot easier than maybe most people I've. You know I've spoken to a lot of people and they feel like they never leave the city, they feel quite compressed on them where, because I've always got out in the countryside, I've spent four or five hours, you know, around the country, lanes, beautiful countryside, bit of fresh air, so away from the, the smog maybe of london, and it just really revitalizes you. And I know there's a lot of science now, with sort of called forest bathing which helps to increase your immunity, improve your immune system, because obviously there's science behind it.
Neil Damerell:Maybe more people are more conscious of it, but I think the the more you connect with nature in generally, on a daily basis or as often as possible. That's where up, where we're truly at home, I think, as as humans I think we do live in quite a manufactured world now, in cities, and you know how we kind of go about our daily lives. So the more you can kind of maybe disconnect from that, I think mentally for your mental well-being and physically for your well-being, it's always going to be a benefit. I think you'll handle the challenges of sort of more modern life a little bit easier by doing so. Yeah, you.
Tom Butler:You talked about going to Thailand Sounds like that you were really looking at a holistic aspect of being healthy. Is that fair to say?
Neil Damerell:yeah, so when I, when I was in thailand, um, we spent six months traveling around southeast asia, and then there was a period where I end up accidentally overdosing on like marijuana while I was there. So I wasn't a person who was doing drugs, but it was just one of those things that you tried while we're over there and it was a I get called a happy shake at the time, so you just had a smoothie, but we digested it. It was too strong for all of us. We were all violently sick. End up going to the toilet in the middle of night and then falling over and banging my head on sort of a tiled bathroom floor and, lucky enough, my friends woke up as I was heading to the toilet, but I swallowed my tongue in the process and my friend had to remove my tongue because I was going blue and suffocating. So, end up in hospital for a night and, yeah, it was quite a traumatic experience.
Neil Damerell:I was, you know, 22 at the time. So it was. It was really sort of a big wake-up call of not to really just, I suppose, take advantage of your body and think you're invincible, which you kind of feel like you are at that age, I suppose and and then sort of that led me that was in laos, and then we spent a few more months and we had a period of time where my friend, his partner, came over to see him for a couple weeks. So me and my three friends, we all went our separate ways for um a couple weeks and that was my opportunity to go to this detox retreat in kosamuri, and I've I heard about it before I went traveling, so it's something I was always sort of keen to explore and did 10 days detox, uh, sort of basically fasting for 10 days, a bit of chronic irrigation and meditation, yoga, you know, speaking to different people, reading about nutrition.
Neil Damerell:And then my friends met up again after a couple of weeks and I said to them I'm going to stay for another two weeks. I stayed for a whole month instead of two weeks and just really enjoyed being in the environment, doing yoga, eating really nice food like vegan food and just kind of of immerse myself in that kind of environment and sort of sort of. I suppose it was a start of like the healing process for me to be a better person, be healthier and see how I could then pass it on to other people and sort of work on my mental well-being as well as physical well-being, so it was just a really nice sort of environment where everything sort of comes together to make things easier for you, and then that kind of inspired me to sort of continue that once I once I got home back to uk. So yeah.
Tom Butler:So do you see that as a divergence from when you were a kid or was there always in your family kind of this focus on healthy eating and nutrition and meditation? Did you kind of go in that with the, with a foundation from your family, or was that kind of a departure from how you were raised?
Neil Damerell:yeah, it's very different really. I think growing up my mom cooked a bit, but it was never really like cooking good meals, I suppose. Now, now I look back on it, I think I was very. We had a really nice upbringing. You know great family. I got a younger sister as well, so we always had food. But probably I would come home a lot of the time and my mum would have like a sticky bun ready for me from the bakery, so I'd have that before dinner. And then I was a really active kid playing football all the time, so I never really had an issue with weight.
Neil Damerell:But I probably wasn't the healthiest in terms of food I was putting in my body. And especially when I was in my early adult years as a hairdresser, I would socialize a lot. I'd probably drink three or four nights a week, going out, partying, and in the UK we're quite known for binge drinking, so that was sort of the culture back in the 90s as well. So that was obviously a part of my upbringing as well. You know a great way of building social connection with people and creating friendships and stuff. But I don't drink anymore. I've been sober for four years and I know my relationship with alcohol is a lot healthier.
Neil Damerell:And I know how I used alcohol essentially when I was younger, more as a motivation or kind of a masking agent to give me confidence to speak to women or just. I was quite shy as a kid growing up, so naturally helped me probably overcome that shyness a bit, and being a hairdresser also kind of allowed me to be more outgoing and connect with more people. But alcohol was certainly, you know, a drug to overcome those insecurities more than actually, oh, I'm just drinking socially because it's I enjoy a drink, it's I'm doing it because it's going to help me with this and this and this. It wasn't necessarily the healthiest way of, um, you know, using the substance for some, for example, yeah.
Tom Butler:So so then you go and you study nutrition and wellness, well-being and I'm sure that just added to kind of your growth process and then you go on and get a master's degree. I think it's easy to tell that you're a competitive person With a master's degree in sports nutrition if there's a compelling element there of helping other people compete at their best absolutely.
Neil Damerell:I've always been someone growing up that has been very hard on oneself. So one of the earliest memories is my mom told me that I used to draw and sketch a lot and that was a passion of mine is being artistic, and anytime I made a mistake, instead of rubbing it out, I would throw it away and start again because I wanted it perfect. So and growing up playing football, if we lost as a team I would probably blame myself for the loss, as opposed to being a collective loss. So that would wear heavily on me unless, like you know, if I played well, I'd maybe focus on the one or two mistakes maybe I made in the game as opposed to the other 90 percent that I did well. So I've always been something that's been sort of overly critical, but that's kind of eased a little bit as I've become more conscious of that and more aware of it and more, you know, kinder to myself as I've grown up. But certainly the the driving force of understanding my health individually was a driving force to then pass on to other people and really feel like I make a difference, because being a hairdresser and going into the customer service industry, my job was always to make people feel better. So and that's what I got the biggest reward from so someone coming in for a haircut and they they're feeling really good with a smile on their face that was my biggest you know buzz for the day. You know it wasn't necessarily a financial award, it was more of I just want people to feel happy and I've always had a passion of if I really enjoy my job and I make people feel happy, then I'm happy myself in my job. I've never been a. There's multiple ways, obviously, of going into different careers, but maybe some people's motivation might be different, but my mind's always been I want to be happy in my job. I want to feel good in what I do every day. My job. I want to feel good in what I do every day.
Neil Damerell:So when I didn't enjoy hedgers as much, it was a time to change into something that I was again passionate about, and I found my way in nutrition, helping people and being sport. Being active and being into sport myself was just a natural progression of. I really enjoy this. I want to do this as a passion help people and seeing people you know clients of mine in the past and clients now achieve results, and that's the my biggest reward that I get every week when I speak to my clients that they enjoy, you know, getting the results based on the support helping them with. I think that's, you know, always been my calling really is just to try and make a difference in whatever way possible, even if that's maybe just someone just thanking me for a post to put out on social media that they've got some value from that. I think that's what I've always really sort of been.
Neil Damerell:My biggest driver is just helping as much as I can. Helping people as much as I can, whether that was, you know, enjoying a nice haircut or just just feeling better in themselves. And I know how much I suppose I've got from improving my health and how that's changed my life, not just in a physical way but in a mental way and relationships and just my whole lifestyle change has been huge because of the sort of habits I've adopted and worked on and, I think, because I've seen the benefits. I know the benefits are there for people and it's just trying to help them uncover it. You know everybody has that potential and it's just a case of helping them peel away a few layers to realize that for themselves and seeing them realize that potential and then being motivated to then live a more fulfilled life, but also then they get to pass it on to other people as well. So for me it's that educational process, that people then can have the tools and the skills to then inspire other people. You know that then goes on and on, doesn't it so?
Tom Butler:yeah, there's a lot of information out there about nutrition, about, you know, sports nutrition, instagram and youtube. Do you think people are pretty well educated or do you find that you're introducing a lot of new principles to people when you're meeting with them?
Neil Damerell:I think generally there's just too much confusion in the media now. So there's so many people vying for people's attention that they're going to the extremes in order to pay attention, maybe to sell their product or to get more eyeballs on their product or whatever they're trying to promote. But I think the print, the basic principles of nutrition, hasn't really changed that much. There's a lot of new science out there in terms of sports performance and that's changed quite a lot from the time when I've sort of started in in endurance sports. So that's changed a lot. So the science and that has progressed and moved on quite considerably.
Neil Damerell:But the overall principles of just living a healthy life, maintaining a healthy weight, I think are very, very basic and quite simple.
Neil Damerell:Obviously that's easy for me to say.
Neil Damerell:A lot of people might feel that's confusing, but I think if we could just strip it back and make it as simple as possible those other layers that you add on top just bonuses and if you can really sort of build a good, strong foundation of your nutritional habits that are simple, sort of really based it, you know, based on sort of old principles that we had years and years ago. You know, during the war we were probably one of the healthiest that we were, because we were just eating sensibly, eating food that was available to us. We wasn't, we didn't really have much processed food available to us, so we we weren't eating food that was out of season. We're just eating within season. So I think the more you can kind of keep it as close to nature as possible and keep it close to your environment obviously minimize packaged food, processed food to nature as possible and keep it close to your environment. Obviously minimize packaged food, processed food as much as possible then you're going to be on to a winner in the long way.
Neil Damerell:There's multiple ways of maybe enhancing that with different foods and different supplements, but there are always going to be little bonuses that you probably add on top that. You need to sort of work on your foundations and make sure you get the basics right first and keep those basics consistent, just like exercise. Just keep doing the things that you know are good for you, but just keep doing them regularly and then you'll definitely see the see the benefits in the long run.
Tom Butler:So talk about being focused on people who are over 40 years old. Now I'm I feel very confident that there's somebody that was 25 came to you and said, hey, can you give me some advice? Can you work with me? You wouldn't say no, you know you're out of my age group. I'm not going to have anything to do with you, but what has caused you to focus on that age group?
Neil Damerell:Predominantly, mainly for myself. I'm 41 now and I think, from that that age especially, what changed for me is that there's a mental shift in terms of how maybe you look at your health at that age compared to 25. So you know, I've got clients or people that are in my free group that are under 40 and you know, that's, that's fine. They're going to be 40 eventually, aren't they so? But I think if they can learn some principles of longevity at a younger age, that's going to give them a bigger head of start comparison to if they were just starting at 40. And I think, you know, when I was in my early 20s and maybe this is maybe, um, a sweeping statement, but maybe from what I see on social media people's agenda in terms of what they're aiming for in their 20s is maybe more performance based, maybe more how they look in in that sense as well, might be more physical based in terms of I want to pack on a lot of muscle in order to look a certain way. I know, when I was younger I was quite conscious of my body and wanted to build more muscle in order to feel like that was going to attract more women. But that's just me being insecure. It wasn't, doesn't? There's no fact, is it? That's not going to happen. And I, and also I think at that age as well, you can get away with a little bit more in terms of pushing your body to the limit.
Neil Damerell:So in my 20 twenties you know, before I was 30, I did an Ironman, a few marathons, trying to go to Land's End. I did some quite big challenges where I could do those now but I know there's a high risk of injury if I push my body to do that. And also, as life changes, when I was in my 20s I didn't have any responsibilities. I was at university, had the free time to be able to do those extra hours of training where now I live with my partner, obviously got a full-time job. So you're trying to sort of manage your health around other challenges that you didn't have when you were younger. So I think, as I've got older and that's why I wanted to work with more people my age and above because it's trying to navigate those challenges in a healthy way that's going to extend your life, still get the most out of your passion that is, cycling, and also benefit your health in the long way. So because the principles that you would use when you're younger are definitely going to change when you're older, because you might be able to train 10-15 hours a week when you're 25, but can you do that when you're 45?
Neil Damerell:I think it's very different. So, but you can still get real big benefits from the exercise and still perform at your best, and that's and what you are capable of doing above 40. You just have to really prioritize a few different factors like rest, recovery, prioritize your sessions a bit more, look at your time management a bit differently to maximize the gains that you do have from the time you have available. You're supposed to think I just need to go riding all the time, where, when you're younger, you probably think I've got all these hours in a day. I can just go riding and spend hours on my bike. Where you have to be a little bit more considerate about the hours that you do spend and are they going to be a benefit to you? Or, if they're not a benefit to you, what things can you do differently? Because it's really about sort of maximizing those that that time spent.
Tom Butler:They do have to benefit you in the best way possible 41 was 20 years ago for me and I look at that and one of the things that is interesting to me about a focus on 40 years old and older is that I think there was a point somewhere around 40. It might have been 38, but somewhere around 40, there was a point that if I would have made changes at that time then I would have not had to work so hard as I'm working now in order to reverse some of the metabolic conditions that I've developed. So I see, you know, 40s as being a time where I was out of that mindset that oh, this is easy for me to. You know, I've gained five pounds and it's easy for me to take it off. 40, it started becoming a little harder to take weight off and you know, I started, you know, thinking about okay, I'm feeling a little bit older in my forties, whereas younger than that I, you know I didn't.
Tom Butler:I wasn't really feeling that old. I had stopped cycling somewhere in my thirts and I would still jump on my bike and go to the library with my daughter or go to a coffee shop, you know, but but really putting in some, some long rides, that that stopped again. If I would have stayed with things, if I would have made specific changes in my 40s, then again, a lot of the challenges that I have right now I just don't think would be there you make a very good point.
Neil Damerell:I think that's one of my passions of working with people from 40 and above as well, because I think it's a real transition for most people at that age that are I'm now middle age, so psychologically sometimes there's a factor of like I can't do what I used to do 20 years ago, and also the commitments that you might have. I've got a lot of friends that you know. I've got family, so you've got a lot of commitments. That takes up a lot more your time. So for most people, family and everyone else comes first and your health comes last, unfortunately sometimes. But for me it's a real passion of how you can still prioritize what's important in life but also prioritize yourself, which is the number one. For me, health is the number one thing in your life. You should prioritize that, firstly because that will benefit everyone else around you and benefit you, and I think it's kind of helping men and women above 40 to look at how they can still have a really healthy and you know life that's full of adventure and energy after 40 and not feel that 40 is like the slippery slope down to 80 where we're just going to be struggling when we're older. I feel you can still have a trajectory going forward that's going to maintain independence as you get older, still be able to cycle when you're 18, 19, still have adventures, still be independent, still have a sort of zest for life and adventure. Because you've adapted those habits early on and made that sort of a non-negotiable within your lifestyle that then allows you to sort of really just maximize your life. Because for your lifestyle, that then allows you to sort of really just maximize your life. Because for me, as I get older, my passion for myself and others is I want to be living my life and to the day I die I don't want to be just existing.
Neil Damerell:And there's a lot of research now that it's called a disability life lost years.
Neil Damerell:This is, in the UK at any rate, saying that on average people lose about five to 10 years of disability life lost years, which is they die at 80, but from 70 to 80, they might have a few health conditions that have meant they're immobile or they're in a home or they need some care in some way. So it's trying to mitigate that and make sure that you don't need care. You can look after yourself and still enjoy your life and go and do things and you might be a little bit slow on the bike, but you can still certainly get out and enjoy it. You know, I think that's the key thing is for me is establishing those good habits. So life is going to be easier as you get older, as opposed to being maybe more challenging if you don't do it and there's so many things that I want to take off on things that you're saying we could be here for four hours I think okay, I don't think you signed up for that, so I'm happy to do a part two if we want to.
Neil Damerell:I enjoy having a chat.
Tom Butler:It's good nice, we might end up doing that. Do you see cycling as particularly a good activity for weight loss?
Neil Damerell:it's interesting because I talk a lot about that on my socials and the content I put out, because obviously exercise or cycling is a cardiovascular exercise and a lot of people feel they need to do some form of cardio in order to lose weight. But I think if you just think of cycling as a way to lose weight, I think you're missing the principle of basic nutrition and managing your calorie intake. It's not going to be the secret sauce that's going to help you lose weight. You could go for a run, you could go for a swim. It's still some form of cardiovascular exercise where you're going to be burning calories.
Neil Damerell:I think if you enjoy cycling and it's a passion and you want to do it because you love the adventures that you can get from it and you enjoy being outside and you enjoy the challenges it can take, use cycling for that aspect. First, don't rely on it as a weight loss thing, because the way I frame it is that I love sitting on the turbo trainer for a couple hours, but I would hate to sit on a rowing machine for two hours. I hate the rowing machine, so I could do 10 minutes and that's about enough and I'm off. So so they both achieve the same principles and burning calories. But I enjoy the cycling more than the other, so I'm going to do the cycling more often than the rowing machine. But if someone said you've got you can only go on the rowing machine, then I'll probably probably give up quite, quite quickly and not continue with it.
Neil Damerell:So I think if you really love cycling, then use it because you love cycling, and then obviously you're going to help burn calories, improve your cardiovascular health from the cardiovascular exercise you're going to get. But it's down to how you feel on and off the bike that's going to really make the biggest amount of difference. Obviously, if your job is quite sedentary, adding in any form of extra physical activity is going to be a benefit as well. So I think we need to move more and if that's being out on the bike, whether that's commuting to and from work or going for a weekend ride with your cycling club, you know they're all going to increase the amount of activity you do on a weekly basis, which is always going to be a bonus. So I think if you look at it like that, that's probably going to be a healthy way than just thinking about trying to, you know, cycle to burn loads of calories and hopefully that will help you lose weight. Yeah, I think that's the best way.
Tom Butler:I think that's well put for me. To me, I guess the biggest part of it is it's a compliance thing. Like you said, you know there's so many things that I could be doing, even walking. I mean, walking is easy to do, but I just find that if I go for a walk, I go a certain distance. If I go for the same amount of time on a bike, you know I'm just way past that distance and I'm just seeing more. For me, it is the thing that helps me go from being sedentary to having some calories burned in my day.
Neil Damerell:Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Neil Damerell:There is an innate sort of childlike element to being on a bike as well which I always find kind of never really goes away, like I remember when you start learning to ride and the thrill of being able to ride a bike.
Neil Damerell:When I was younger we had a little driveway and my dad would put a little ramp on it and I would, you know, bomb down it and then jump off the ramp and think I was going to hit the garage roof and my mom was like you're only like one foot off the ground, but but I just, you know, it's just, I just love it, you know so.
Neil Damerell:So I think when I get out on the bike, and especially when I get on my, my nice summer bike, which is, you know, carbon wheels and carbon frame, and you're just whizzing down on smooth tarmac, and it's like you know, you're like this feels like you feel like a kid, don't you like? Oh, this is amazing, you get a little buzz, and so I think the joy of that aspect just kind of brings that childlike sort of joy out in you as well, which I think you don't really get from anything else. I don't think you get that from running or you know walking, but I think from cycling. I think that's why cycling is so enjoyable for so many people, because it has that sort of childlike you know sort of nostalgia to it, I suppose, and that sort of memory that comes back um of how you learned to ride a bike when you, when you're younger and stuff.
Tom Butler:So do you think that there are things that people need to know before jumping on a bike as part of a weight management program?
Neil Damerell:if they're not, if there's someone that hasn't been cycling very much- yeah, I suppose if they've cycled from a young age and had a period where they've not cycled, hopefully they've learned to ride a bike and that's the key principle they can still ride a bike. I think just look at how you can maybe incorporate cycling into your lifestyle in the most easiest way possible. If a lot of people, especially in London, have started to pick up cycling as a form of commuting uh, especially a lot since covid. The infrastructure has increased, so there's a lot more cycle lanes that make it safer for everybody to commute, so more availability of higher bikes as well for people. So I think that if you can sort of start using cycling as a form of activity to commute and then, as you start getting into exploring and want to do longer rides, then you've already got sort of maybe a good base of fitness based on your commuting, as opposed to just jumping into like a cycling club. If you've ever cycled, I think that can feel quite intimidating if you've never really had much experience and you're trying to build your fitness and I think if you could just start going out on little rides, get comfortable on the bike, get comfortable with you, know your surroundings, looking out for traffic and all those kind of things. I think that's a really good way of just starting out on the bike before you jump in with a big group of people. Where you've got to, you know watch the wheel and be conscious of other things as well, and obviously your fitness level will increase. So also, you've got to you know watch the wheel and be conscious of other things as well, and obviously your fitness level will increase. So also you've got to factor that into it, because if you go out with a group and you've not really done much exercise, that could put you off quite easily because you've. You might not be able to catch up and you feel sort of disheartened that your fitness level is not as good as other people around you. So it could be an easy way of sort of not carrying on. A lot of people go to the gym and see so many other people really fit, they feel intimidated to go back again. So I think if you can spend a lot of time just on your own, you know that will help build a lot more confidence.
Neil Damerell:I had a friend who was quite new to cycling and she just started cycling in order to commute. I helped her sort of get used to the clip-on pedals and stuff like that. And then eventually that she got more confident by commuting and then used to go out on the bike on longer rides with me and then she did a you know sportif as well um off the back of that. So but that all stemmed from just getting on the bike and using it to commute, save a bit of money on transport, but also this is a nice way of getting to and from work, especially in the summer months. It's a nice way of unwinding after a hard day as well.
Neil Damerell:So I think that's probably the best way, the best route in, I would say, as opposed to just jumping into a club just to build confidence, build some fitness and, you know, gradually increase. You know where you want to go from there. You might find that's all you want to do, but then you might have, you know, might get a bug for it if I want to explore other options that might be available to me as well.
Tom Butler:So yeah, you've used the term sportive.
Neil Damerell:You've used the term sportive a couple times. I don't know what that means. Okay, so sportive in the uk is like 100 mile, 50 mile sort of a sportive is kind of a race but not a race. So, okay, it's a. It's a charity event or a cycling event that you can do, but it's not a race. So I can go and I'm doing a sportive at the end of may, ride london 100. That is not a race but a lot of people will try and race it and get a good time, but there's there's no prizes for first or second or last. It's just a challenge that people can sign up for and have a go and, you know, see how quickly they can do it for their own personal goals.
Tom Butler:Yeah, that's gotcha, gotcha, yeah now I imagine that everybody needs to have a program that's somewhat tailored to them as an individual, but I'm wondering if there are some overall principles, kind of some basic principles that you give people to get started with with losing weight yeah, we do have.
Neil Damerell:Um, you know, obviously everybody will be an individual based on what goals they have, what their starting point is, what they're aiming for, how you know quickly I won't say quickly, it's not a case of trying to lose weight quickly is about how they might have a goal in mind in terms of where they would like to get to by a certain time, um, if they've got any things coming up. But I think the principles for everyone really when it comes to nutrition would be make sure one you're really well hydrated every day probably still a lot of people don't drink enough water on a daily basis, so and also add in some electrolytes within that as well to help hydrate your body more efficiently. I think definitely start your day. I start my day with a liter of water before you even get out of bed. So I think if you can set yourself up well, then the more hydrated you are, eating healthier will be easier. You're probably going to snack less if you're more hydrated. And then you know, make sure you're having good amounts of fruits and vegetables, plenty of fiber. Most people in the uk especially don't hit 30 grams of fiber a day, which is a recommended daily allowance. Probably get like 10 15 grams, but that's really important, for to keep you full for longer helps lower your risk of bowel cancer really important. So plenty of fruits and vegetables, fresh fruits and vegetables, a minimum five a day, 10 a day is what's optimum that we should be aiming for. And then good cuts of lean protein fish already fish as well so you've got good omega-3, 6s. And just minimize your saturated fat in your diet, which is generally from your processed foods, your meat, cheese and chocolate, sweets, all those kinds of things dairy. So I think they're not bad for you. It's just making sure that the majority of your fats come from your mono and poly saturated fats, which would be your nuts, avocados, oily fish, those kind of things, and then base that around some other good lean cuts of meat. You know, chicken, a steak from time to time. It's not going to do you any harm. I think it's just a case of look at how much you're having it in comparison to the other foods you consume and I think if you can have those basics well, then it will make you know dieting a bit easier or just losing weight easier.
Neil Damerell:I always advise all my clients to make sure like half your plate is vegetables at every meal. So you're increasing the amount of nutrient dense calories that you've got, rather than calorie dense calories. So it's called like volume eating, where you're just building a lot more. You know you're having a lot more on your plate for less calories, so you know it could be 500 calories of vegetables. But 500 calories could be one chocolate bar. So like the difference in terms of you can still be hungry after the chocolate bar and capacity to eat in a big bowl of vegetables, won't you? So it's kind of focusing on making sure you're having those principles at play and then just making sure you're in a calorie deficit.
Neil Damerell:You do have to be in a calorie deficit off the bike I'm not talking about on the bike, because that's very different but just make sure your calories are in a healthy relationship to what you do on a day-to-day basis. Because even though we cycle a lot, we might go on the bike for an hour a day or go for a long ride at the weekends for two or three hours. The majority of our day, for most people like myself and yourself, are probably sedentary. We sat down most of the day anyway, so that one hour in the day is only one hour 24 and we spent eight hours of the day asleep. So that's eight hours lying down and being sedentary again.
Neil Damerell:So the calorie requirements for our day on a day-to-day basis, even if we're training for an hour maybe isn't as high as you might think it is. So I think if you can be conscious of that, if you're certainly looking to lose weight and then focus on how you feel well while riding which is completely different topic, but in terms of just weight loss, those principles are the key ones really to help your weight come down. And also sleep as well is a big factor. If you're sleeping well, all those principles will be easier to adhere to, because if you're not sleeping well, your appetite hormone ghrelin is going to increase, so you're going to be hungry more often, which is going to make it harder for you to kind of control the calories that you consume on a day-to-day basis. So if you can prioritize your sleep, managing your calorie intake and your food choices, it will be a lot easier to adhere to in the future.
Tom Butler:You talk about good sleep. I think that's an element of good recovery as well. Right, I know that you focus on recovery. Can you talk a bit about that? How important is recovery and how do you kind of know when you need to recover, things like that?
Neil Damerell:I think that's one of the biggest factors I think I spend a lot of time talking to with clients of 40 and above, because obviously our recovery is more compromised as we get older. We can't recover as quickly as we could have done when we were 20 25. So I think making sure you prioritize a lot of that within your training on a weekly basis is really important. That could be a recovery bike session. So on a monday, for example, I always do a really easy spin. So I I did a hard ride on Saturday. I'm probably still feeling a bit fatigued from that today, but today was a zone two. But Monday was a recovery, so low heart rate and just spinning my legs, you know. So I wasn't even really working up a sweat. It was just a way of just keeping my body used to being on the bike, flushing the toxins out, you know, removing a bit of lactic acid buildup. And you know that if a recovery ride for a lot of people don't always they say they do a recovery ride but they're still out of breath maybe, or they're not, as it's not as easy as, uh, it should be. You know a lot of people think a recovery ride maybe is a low zone too, which it can be depending on how you're training. But I think for some people, recovery ride because they don't feel like they're working out, they don't enjoy it and I need to get a sweat on to feel like I've done something. But actually it has a principle within the grander scheme of your training platform in terms of where you want to go. You have to give your body that chance to replenish and those muscles to grow and get stronger, and they can only get stronger by good sleep, resting and giving your body the right nutrients to do so.
Neil Damerell:Because if you're just training all the time hoping to get stronger and not giving your body the recovery time, that's just going to lead to a decline in your fitness. You might plateau, likely to burn out over train and not reach the goals you're aiming for because you're just you're trying to reach. You know you're trying to be too aggressive in terms of how you're going to get there and you know you recovery as well can be in the form of active recovery. So going for a walk that's how I spend my sundays is going for a nice walk for a few hours. So keeping the body moving, but just keeping the intensity nice and low, keeping the heart rate down. So it's just looking at your heart rate variability and managing that and making sure that if your recovery, your heart rate needs to be in a recovery zone, you can't expect your heart rate to be high and get good recovery from it.
Neil Damerell:So, um and and sleep is a real key factor in that. If you know, professional athletes sleep 10 hours a night more sometimes, because they know how important it is to you know prime their body for the next day's training. If you're not sleeping well, your training is going to get harder in order to be able to continue on a consistent basis. So, yeah, I think if you can prioritize those factors, it will make it a lot easier to uh, you know, see the improvements you aim for in your program and a lot of my clients.
Neil Damerell:I have to tell them to cycle less because they're doing too much and they're feeling tired all the time. And if you're feeling tired all the time and you're looking to lose weight, which most of my clients are, that's also going to be a challenge, because the more tired you are from exercise, your appetite hormone goes up again, so you're going to be increasing your calories where you want to be decreasing your calories to lose weight, so it's also going to make your goal of losing weight harder if you're not recovering and overtraining and doing too much. Yeah, so it plays a massive role in terms of performance, but also your weight loss goals and just overall well-being as well in terms of, I think, your longevity in the sport, in terms of do you want to keep doing this for 20, 20, 20 to 30 years, or is it just a short window where you're training for event and then you're gonna you know not cycle anymore? So, yeah, the.
Tom Butler:The difference between going out and just spinning, going very low intensity, the difference between doing that for an hour and sitting on the couch and doing nothing for an hour, has got to be huge. When you get out there and you feel like I'm not doing any work, I'm just kind of going at a really slow pace, I'm getting passed on the trail by everybody on their bikes, you know it's like it doesn't feel like you're doing anything but but again that that difference of just spinning, of just you know going along, that that's got to be huge compared to just sitting and doing nothing yeah, I think you know, from a psychological point of view as well, it's really important because I think if I go off my own example, for example so on the weekend I'm doing Ride London, which is a 100-mile sportive at the end of May so I wanted to get a few more miles in my legs.
Neil Damerell:So I did an 85-mile ride at the weekend and that was on my own as well. I didn't have anybody who came out of me, everybody decided to stay in because it was a bit chilly. So but I was quite tired off the back of that. So monday I could have easily stayed at home and I do all my training in the morning, so I could have easily stayed in bed and not bothered going to the gym. But the recovery sessions for me have been a real key factor in terms like building momentum again for the next week's worth of training, because if I hadn't done that my recovery wouldn't be as efficient the next day.
Neil Damerell:And I think, just spinning your legs, psychologically you know your heart rate's going up a little bit, so you just feel a bit more energized from the exercise itself. You feel better because you've actually done something you've, your heart rate is going up a little bit. So you just feel a bit more energized from the exercise itself. You feel better because you've actually done something, you've got your body moving, your legs feel a little bit looser because you've actually done some recovery and you've got the blood flow going through the muscles again to help repair the muscles and make things a bit easier in terms of that process. So if you just do nothing, you can feel quite stiff and sluggish and when you do go back on the bike and you want to ride quite strong, you're probably going to struggle to be able to sort of get to that sort of pace that you want to be at as quickly as you would have been able to if you've done the recovery ride.
Neil Damerell:I think it's, and recovery rides on a turbo trainer is what I I do, and it's a lot easier to do it on a turbo trainer because I can just sit and watch YouTube video for an hour and just chill out and relax. It's a nice way of just using my time efficiently. Rather than sitting on the couch watching TV, I can just sit on the bike and watch TV. So I'm doing the same thing, but just aiding my body in a good way, as opposed to just putting my feet up, yeah.
Tom Butler:I imagine I'm not the only one that has ever mentioned this issue, but I have a real problem with snacking. Now. A lot of times I'll get busted on my way to snacking by my wife who, who is in the kitchen, you know it reminds me, do you? Do you really need what you're eating right now? But how do you advise people when it comes to snacking?
Neil Damerell:there's. I mean, snacking is innate part of our culture these days with the food system and you know we're encouraged to snack based on the food that's being produced, that we have available and advertised to us. So I think, generally I don't think you should feel guilty for snacking, and certainly it is a big part of my day, on a daily basis as well. But I think, as to how you view it and how your relationship with food is, and I think there's multiple ways of managing snacking and because actually that's probably where most people's extra calories come from in their day, you know you could easily add 500 calories to your daily calorie consumption just off snacking alone. So if you're looking to lose weight which on general is gonna be 500 calorie deficit per day, to lose one or two pounds per week, it's an easy way of saving those calories by not snacking and just having three main meals. So if you're looking to manage your weight better, then certainly having less snacks or none at all is a good way of doing it, and one of the key ones we've talked about before is hydration. A lot of time people snack because they're not drinking enough. We a lot of time mistake hunger for first and you know we're grabbing, gravitating towards food to hydrate, because we do get hydration from food as well, like fruits and vegetables and stuff. So so we're kind of searching for like a pick me up in that way. So one make sure you stay hydrated. If you feel like a snack attack coming on, then just have a glass of water or drink some more water until that suppresses. And if you that should give you a bit more time to kind of think about I do, I don't really need a snack now. I feel okay because I've had a bit of water. So it might just delay your choice and that choice that might lead into lunchtime. So you might remove one snack. I would say another option as well, like snacking. You could obviously look at snacking on healthier options. Try and have some fruit available that's available to you, maybe some hummus with some some vegetables, those kind of things. So and you can also look for different options that can help. And also you can also look at play around with your meals. I found myself I I'm a big breakfast eater and I enjoy a big bowl of porridge in the morning and a big lunch. I don't really have a big dinner, so but I found the bigger my meals are, the less I need to snack, because I'm focusing on just getting all my calories in on my three main meals, really. So, again, that's a good way of of making sure that you have less options or less desire to snack.
Neil Damerell:And then one of the biggest changes that's probably helped me and I think a lot of people don't really look at as much is just your relationship with food and like the psychological element of why you snack in. I think a lot of people don't stop to think about that and think more about just out of. I want to snack because I'm tired, but I think it's good to question you know why are you tired? You might not have slept well the night before, or so then I'm tired. I'm snacking because I'm tired. Okay, I need better sleep. So I think all those kind of things will help you to improve certain other areas in your life that can help minimize snacking as well.
Neil Damerell:And one of the biggest factors for me, I think, with snacking is mainly because I'm bored, or maybe it's just out of habit. I think a lot of those factors are habits, are things that you can change as well. A lot of time it's like am I bored or am I stressed? Sometimes? If I'm stressed, then I might gravitate to a chocolate bar and stuff like that, so you know. So, understanding that relationship with food I think is really important. And if it's, you know, because of stress, then how are you managing that? What kind of things are you doing to manage that? What are you stressed about? Have you kind of looked at the root cause of that? And if you know you're tired, obviously you're asleep. Is it out of habit? Is it just something that you do? How can you change those habits in in a positive way? And you know, a lot of people snack in the office because everyone snacks and people bring a snack. So again, it's a culture thing that you have to try and change, which is a lot more challenging because you certainly have less control of that. So there's, there's a lot of ways that you can improve snacking and I think it will be based on the individual and working with the individual to help them understand that. But if you can sort of work and spend some time on yourself to understand, it should make it a little bit easier.
Neil Damerell:And I think the last point I would make is I used to probably snack a lot because I was maybe anxious or stressed. And since I've worked on that and I don't feel as anxious or stressed, I don't need food to make me feel better. So, because I feel better in myself and happier in myself than maybe I would have done, say, 10 years ago, I can go and have a chocolate as a snack after lunch, but it's a couple cubes, and that's it. Where 10 years ago I can go and have a chocolate as a snack after lunch, but it's a couple cubes, and that's it where 10 years ago I'd eat the whole bar and feel sick. And then, you know, feel guilty and you know be, have bad thoughts about myself and think I've failed myself, and then not eat chocolate for about a month and then do the same thing again.
Neil Damerell:So so, you know, I think, just by learning about my own happiness internally and working on that with you know, meditation, meeting my partner and open conversations with you know people, and that's helped me a lot more in terms of I don't need to eat all of this to fulfill a hole that's maybe, uh, was lacking before, because I've kind of, you know, fulfilled that hole with you know, working on myself and look at other ways to manage that, you know, with other elements that's going on within my environment and my life at the time, I think. I think that's a big factor for a lot of people as well, which you work on. That is, I think, probably the biggest game changer for me anyway that's happened in my life is more self work makes me reach for snacks left often and other factors in life. You know, like it'd be. It's a way of distracting ourself from maybe the uncomfortable things that we might have to deal with on a daily basis.
Tom Butler:So, yeah, yeah, I do think it's really interesting that there are some real psychological things going on when it comes to snacking and, like you're saying, now you have a YouTube channel and I wonder if you could talk about your YouTube channel and kind of what impact you would like to have by putting up the content that you put up.
Neil Damerell:Yes, my YouTube channel is just's just under neil damrel msc. I probably need to change that to make it more cycling focused. Maybe to join a few more viewers and subscribers maybe, but yes, the main thing is just putting out education, educational content around cycling with you know, the people that I work with obviously helping men and women over 40 lose weight, gain strength, without feeling they have to spend hours riding their bike, so making it efficient around their work and home lives, and what I'm trying to do with the channel is having it as a platform that people can get educated. They've got good resources. They can learn from my experience.
Neil Damerell:I share my own experience quite a lot on the channel as well, so then people can understand that I've also been a beginner as well and learned the hard way and, you know, helped to improve my performance quite significantly by adopting the principles that I now help others do and also trying to maybe in the future, look at doing more adventure videos.
Neil Damerell:I've played around with a few adventure videos where I've been out cycling and filming myself on the bike and doing some sportive. I did the Dragon Ride, which was a 203 kilometer bike ride in Wales with like 10,000 feet of climbing and stuff like that. So, yeah, trying to maybe have a few more adventures on the channel where I'm sharing my own experience and how I'm getting on and the ups and downs of those sportives that can be quite challenging at times as well. So, yeah, it's trying to make it more fun and engaging, an opportunity for people to come and learn as well, and, you know, not being too serious, but at the same time I feel that people get value from it, whether that's in an educational sense or an entertainment sense. I think that's the main goal for me.
Tom Butler:So in addition to the youtube channel. If someone wanted to reach out to you and and have you do some coaching with them, you have a website just head to neil damerowcom, so wwwneildamerowcom, and you'll have all my social media links on there.
Neil Damerell:I'm under neil damerow on instagram and on linkedin, and also um facebook as well. Got our own community, uh, the cycle lean community uh, which is free to join on facebook as well, where we provide, you know, support um educational seminars on a maybe monthly basis. If people got questions, I tend to do a live video answering their question to support them as well, which also helps support other people in the community as well, so people can join that for free um which then again they can also learn about my services. And you know how I support my clients within that community as well. And obviously you can reach out to me and ask me any questions if they've got anything, and always happy to lend some support if anyone's got any questions um as well. So feel free to ask any questions, no matter what.
Neil Damerell:I always anybody that follows me on instagram I'm always saying hi. If you've got any questions, feel free to ask, I'm happy to help. So, yeah, I'm always looking to try and get to know my audience and engage with them as much as I can as well, and try and build a nice community to help as many people as possible, so yeah, Well, I would recommend people to go to the YouTube channel.
Tom Butler:I'll put links in the show notes so people can go there. You know, check out a lot of content and you're doing a good job of producing content. I don't produce videos, you know, because it's harder, so good on you for doing that.
Tom Butler:Well. Well, neil, thank you so much for coming on. Uh, I didn't get to all the questions I want to ask, so I'm gonna have to have you back. Just really fun talking to you, hearing your perspective, hearing kind of your life story. And again, there's other questions about your personal journey that I I want to ask. We'll have to get into that some other time, but but thanks for taking the time to do this.
Neil Damerell:Tom, it's been a real pleasure to meet you and have a good conversation with you today. I've loved every minute of it. So it's nice to be on the other side as opposed to. I've done a few podcasts myself, so it's nice to you know, just to have a chat and get to know someone and have the questions directed at me instead of thinking of questions. So, yeah, it's been a nice, uh nice change and definitely anytime you want me back on for part two, happy to come on. As you know, I could probably speak for hours on these topics, so it's a passion of mine. So I tend to feel that I can, you know, always provide a lot of value and you know I can I enjoy talking about it. So I'm sure you could easily feel another hour and a half of us having a good chat about it. So anytime you want me on, feel free to let me know and I'm happy to oblige. So fantastic.
Tom Butler:Well, take care now. Thanks, tom. There were a couple of things that Neil talked about that really resonated with me. First was that the biggest advantage about using a bike to help me lose fat is that I'll stay with it, because I truly love to ride. I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast that I did four hours of riding. There are very few activities that I would do that long. I do believe there are other factors that make the bike a great tool for maintaining a healthy weight, but I have to agree with Neil that compliance is the biggest one.
Tom Butler:The second thing is when Neil openly discussed the psychological aspects that can lead to snacking. I'm beginning to learn a lot about the emotional drivers behind a lot of my food choices. I can believe that a lot of complex psychological dynamics contributed to my current health challenges. My ability to better myself from an emotional and psychological perspective will certainly play a pivotal role in my ability to continue to get healthy and prevent slipping back into habits that contributed to my current metabolic dysfunction. Next week is the start of National Bike Month. I hope that you find some fun and unique ways to celebrate cycling throughout May. Maybe some new and challenging adventures are waiting next month for you and remember age is just a gear change.