%20(1).jpg)
Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Pizza as a Vegetable and Other Health Controversies Exposed
Join us as fitness maven Jim Lard takes us on an inspiring journey through his transformation from a robust kid to a dynamic health expert, revealing the pitfalls of today's educational system in nurturing children's physical fitness. Our discourse uncovers the layers of control masked as curriculum, challenging the paradigm that real education – and exercise – is about freedom, not confinement. Jim brings to light his own pivot from a potential career in education to personal training, where his collaboration with a medical doctor mirrors his commitment to holistic lifestyle coaching.
The conversation gets spicy as we dissect the bizarre reality of pizza being classified as a vegetable, thanks to the Pelican Group's legal victory. This episode is a no-holds-barred critique of the food and health controversies that have shaped our dietary landscape. We question the dominance of industry lobbyists, historical dietary guidelines, and the sugar-coated truths that have misled generations. It's an eye-opening exploration into the deeply-rooted misinformation and the powerful corporate influences that steer our eating habits and health beliefs.
We cap off this thought-provoking session with the contrasts of past and present lifestyles, pondering the rarity of obesity in the '70s and the profound impact that a simple morning walk can have on our well-being. By sharing Dr. Stillman's essential habits for wellness and the psychological benefits of a positive mindset, we encourage a return to the basics of health. This talk is not just a podcast episode; it's a clarion call to embrace the unique strengths each of us holds and to step outside – literally – for a breath of fresh air that promises physical and mental rejuvenation.
Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your. All of you are enjoying our video episodes over on Rumble. If you're not already following us, shoot on over there. Health and Fitness Redefined you can find us. We got like 30 episodes up there already. Go check us out. But if you are listening on any of the other platforms Spotify, Apple Podcasts please, guys, share this show. It's the only way that we will be able to grow. We don't have any sponsors anymore. We decided to keep the show completely free, just for you, guys. So go ahead, hit the like button, share with a friend and let's keep this rolling. Without further ado, let's welcome to the show today's guest, Jim Lard. Jim, it's a pleasure to have you today.
Speaker 1:Thanks.
Speaker 2:Good morning. How are you doing? Hopefully we won't have too many internet issues. I'm in rural Nicaragua, so hopefully this will all work out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Jim's in Nicaragua, which is all the way on the other side of the world, and we are struggling. We're just here on Long Island to have Wi-Fi, so we're going to have a really fun show. Bear with us guys. It'll be worth it for the static. You might get in and out, but we'll clean it up as best as possible.
Speaker 2:post-show If you're out here. We might have to do it over at some point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's perfectly okay. So, Jim, just before we get into it, just tell us a little bit about how you got started in the health and fitness world.
Speaker 2:Well, honestly, I got started really, really young. I was always kind of a stocky kid. I was 130 pounds. In the third grade I actually got sent to fat camp in Canada and I showed up there and they're like you're all muscle. I was just like humongous legs, humongous glutes and they're like why are you here? So I ended up I was always made fun of.
Speaker 2:So I got into strength training and weightlifting and then I got into sports and it was all about improving my performance. And then when I went to and it was all about improving my performance. And then when I went to college, I took elementary school and elementary ed because I really like teaching. And once I kind of got into the education system and I seen how it was designed, I didn't really like it. I didn't like what they're doing to children. And so I had a job for a little while, ended up getting fired from that, essentially for taking kids outside and having them play and and allow them to be kids. And then I decided, well, I can still teach, I can just teach weightlifting and strength training and and then I had some health issues that kind of really brought me around to the lifestyle part of things. So over the last 20 years I've been integrating, you know, strength training, performance training, with health lifestyle, and now I work with a medical doctor with help him with his lifestyle coaching.
Speaker 1:Let's start with similarities that kind of pushed out right through. You said you started off going to become a teacher to help kids, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I, when I I was working bouncing around different gyms before I started my own personal training company, decided I should go into teaching and I went the physical education route and it was two and a half years and 160 000 in debt from those two and a half years at Ostra to get a PE degree. But I started shadowing teachers and two things stood out. One every PE teacher I shadowed said don't do this or like this is not what it used to be. It's now just the parents dictating us what we can do and the administration has no idea what we can do. And administration has no idea what's going on. Don't get into it.
Speaker 1:And the second thing I noticed is pe no longer be was pe. They got rid of the standardized testing for physical activity and now everything was written tests. So the kids were coming in and not only going every other day for activities, but half of those were written tests. And then they're wondering why kids are struggling keeping the weight off and and struggling in school because they're not burning the energy over mp that they used. Like that we were used to.
Speaker 2:Pretty sad and they're spending their entire day indoors. I mean you, you know, when I was growing up, which wasn't that long ago, I mean you were outside from the minute the sun came up to the minute the sun came down. You had multiple recess sessions a day. Everybody played for hours. They played on their lunch break, they played at recess. Kids today are just, I think, maximum security. Prisoners get more time outside than children do today.
Speaker 1:You're probably right. Well, why do you think that is? Why do you think the push is keeping kids indoors and the push to not keep them active? What's the reasoning behind it?
Speaker 2:Oh boy, oh boy. Honestly, I think it's indoctrination, I think it's control. I think I remember listening to I was in line at a store in Kentucky and listening to one of the heads of the department of education was talking about how they're going to start teaching preschoolers how to read and they're like. I bumped her on the shoulder. I was like you're already at the bottom of the reading performance in the United States. You want to get worse? She's like no, this is going to accelerate it. So I think the road to hell is paved by good intentions.
Speaker 2:The problem is that children don't learn through route learning. They learn through play and mimicry, right, so the whole system is designed to teach these little kids like an adult and put them in front in a desk and make them sit and make them learn, memorize things, and there's no teaching of thought or skill acquisition, or so I there might be, there might be a bunch of people in the room like saying you know how do we control, control a population? We just make people useful idiots to. You know, basically, do what we want them to do. I think that might be part of it, but I, I, I don't know. Like we know, children learn through play and movement. We know that's how their brains develop, but we've decided to treat them all like little adults and it's, uh, a lot of it. I have has to do with money and academics, I think, the powers that be. I know the whole education system was designed on having people show up, you know, punch the clock and do what they're told, but that's the whole. The whole system was designed on that. So it's, it's wild, it's totally wild. You know, you get into play based movement, like a lot of the European countries have. You know play best. Or you get into like Montessori, or you get into the Waldorf school, which were all the billionaires send their kids. They all go to Waldorf school, where they don't use phones, they don't use tablets, they learn cursive, they they play outside. You can't get into a Waldorf school in California because all the tech billionaires and millionaires have their kids there. They're all homeschooling their kids. They don't send their kids to school, they don't give them tablets. So this is a topic that could take hours and days to unpack, but modern life as well.
Speaker 2:I moved to Nicaragua. I moved to Florida so I could spend the majority of my day outside. I do all my podcasts outside. I do all my work outside. Natural sunlight is so powerful and so good for your health. The average person just spends 98. One of the reasons I got out of having a gym that was indoors is because I have all these people that are spending their entire day inside and then I'm bringing them to a gym that's inside.
Speaker 2:You know, I want to encourage people to get outside more, get fresh air, get into nature. There's actually a lot of research that shows. You know, children that spend more time in nature as a child have less depression and less anxiety as an adult. And so you think about the average kid today. Probably most kids today are never, ever, outside. They're always on a screen, they're being handed that phone at, you know, two years old, to, to, to, to babysit them, right. So I think that's a big part of the reason we're having all these issues. Whether there's a bunch of people in a room planning all this stuff out or not, or whether it just kind of happened that way, I don't know, but the system is definitely broken and we need to get back to um, back to nature, back to our biology well, there's two things to break down from that which I could definitely point out right away.
Speaker 1:The first one getting outside. So getting outside is super important. Why does it help with depression? Because vitamin d, the d3 exposure, has been shown to be directly linked to depression. So lack of vitamin D3, which the best form of it comes from sunlight, and not getting at least 20 minutes of that a day, is linked to depression. That's why it's seasonal affect disorder, such a thing. And people always say why do I get depressed in the winter when this because you can't, you don't get outside and the sunlight is the sun's so far away in the Northeast in the winter. It's tough.
Speaker 1:And the second part of that, which I think is the more interesting side of it and I want you to digest this so when I'm in Hofstra I'm listening to one of my professors talk and she's going through a study that was done on PE, and the study was very simple. They took kids in high school that were struggling in a certain academia so if they were struggling in math or science, whatever the case may be and they put PE right before that class. They had a control group where they did it, the group that had PE before the class they were struggling with improved their scores by 35%. Now she's teaching us this and we're learning the importance. And she said the caveat is if you had made PE every day instead of every other day, you had even another 10% improvement in scores.
Speaker 1:And the crazy part is I'm shadowing the same time I'm learning this, so I'm hearing from my professor who's saying PE is super important. It needs to be done before the class is struggling with it to really help kids. And then I'm going to the schools and then they're telling me they're cutting PE. They're making it, so this is sitting down. Now they're not getting outside, they're not moving around. So where the hell is the disconnect?
Speaker 2:they did the same studies on fluorescent lights and behavior in children. They showed that you know, children that learn under full spectrum light, versus fluorescent or LEDs, do way, way better emotionally, educationally wise, they feel better, they have less behavioral issues. You combine that with activity. I mean we know that movement is how children develop their brain, but then we do the complete opposite. Your guess is as good as mine. It's like peeing on somebody's leg and telling them it's raining, right, and I don't know if it's gaslighting at this point.
Speaker 2:But I used to take my kids when I taught school. Every half an hour we'd go outside and play for 10 minutes and we'd come back in. I didn't, you know. I taught them how to think. We had discussion. I taught them how to work as a team. The school loved me, the parents loved me, the kids loved me.
Speaker 2:I got all the problem kids and did very well with them, but the state did not. The state was like you have to follow the curriculum very well with them, but the state did not. The state was like you have to follow the curriculum, you have to follow protocol, even though I was getting better results with children than everyone else and I was, I was having. The kids that were problem kids were doing great because I was giving kids what they need. I didn't. I had to end.
Speaker 2:I ended up having to leave there because, you know, it just didn't go with their, their agenda, the powers that be right. It's the same thing. We know that children need to play multiple sports, but then we've got all these year-round travel soccer programs and year-round baseball programs and even though we know, we know for a fact that those destroy kids health, um, it's about money and a lot of times, the education system, it's about unions and money. And you know, it's much easier to put a kid in front of a screen and give them Ritalin than it is to actually let them go outside and play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean a lot kind of what you talked about comes from money. So I mean just a quick example and, regardless of how anyone feels politically, this is what happened when Obama was in office. Michelle Obama was trying to make a point to help kids and she realized that the food that was served in cafeterias was super likeritionalized. It was horrible, and she went after the school cafeteria lunches to try to fix them and make them healthier. Well, somewhere along the line for those that remember the administration she stopped doing it and all of a sudden shifted to kids play 60 very members, the big push of getting kids outdoors and playing 60 minutes a day and she stopped going after the food. Now, what was the reason she stopped going after the food? Well, if you didn't look into it you wouldn't know.
Speaker 1:There was a huge lawsuit at the time and this sounds ridiculous, but this is true. They were going after the school cafeteria lunches, the parents and they were saying the kids aren't getting served enough vegetables. The group that serves 86% of schools is called the pelican group, that's who supplies all the food. The pelican group stated we are serving the vegetables. Look, we serve pizza and the parents are going. What the fuck. Pizza is not a vegetable, they go. Yes, it is, there's tomato in there. Therefore there's enough vegetable. And the Pelican group won in court, stating that they do serve enough vegetables because pizza is considered a vegetable. Now I don't know about you and I, jim, but I'm not going to sit here and classify pizza as a vegetable. But the amount of money that group was given because they supply all the lunches to schools, won in court and Michelle Obama had to abandon changing the food and keep it and now all of a sudden pushed kids just getting outside. And it's all about physical activity.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you need a well-rounded approach. Kids getting just getting outside and it's all about physical activity. Well, yeah, you, it's, it's a well, you need a well-rounded approach. And and and it's just like, uh, it's just common, it's common sense, it's it's just like. The best way to get diabetes is to follow the american diabetes association recommendations. You know, follow their dietary advice and their lifestyle advice and and you're gonna, you're gonna get diabetes.
Speaker 2:You know, uh, particularly when you get a lot of sun exposure, that buys you a lot of forgiveness, but, uh, we've been told the sun is evil. Pretty much, if you want to be healthy today, just do the opposite of everything you've been told. You know, we've been told, don't get in the sun. The sun, actually sun exposure in every disease, including melanoma, improves outcomes in every single disease. If you get more sun exposure, you get the longer your chances of living.
Speaker 2:Avoiding the sun is the equivalent of smoking cigarettes, right? So what do they tell people? Well, they're talking about blocking the sun. Now, we need to block the sun for global warming. I mean, we're going down some great rabbit holes here, but I mean everything they're telling us eat. You know you need to eat less meat. You know you need to eat more things that are made in a lab, Like we need to make factory. We need lab grown meat. We need you know they're telling kids that that that cereal is healthier than steak.
Speaker 2:You know it's just. We live in a clown world. It's just absolutely ridiculous and you really have to like kind of step back and watch it as a movie so that you don't get sucked into it. Because the amount of propaganda on social media and amount of you know we just got done with probably the biggest brainwashing campaign in the history of the world and a lot of people came to that. But it's a constant propaganda, just constantly being brainwashed over and over again about giving you the wrong information. And if you tell a lie enough times, people start to believe it. Information, and if you tell a lie, enough times people start to believe it. So you know.
Speaker 1:I'm going to stop you there. I just want to lay a fact right now, because I think this is the most important thing, because people are going to listen to you and go oh my God, this guy's crazy. I'm taking this off, but you're not, and I'm going to explain exactly why right now. And if you don't believe me, go put it into google and you'll see actual proof. Back in the 1970s they were trying to figure out why.
Speaker 1:Why are people getting fat? Like what's going on in society? The government usda stepped in and go we're going to figure this out, let's run some tests. So they had a giant amount of money, come in and they say okay, we had the funding, let's go figure out what's making people fat. They came back and concluded that it was the fats and food that were making us fat. So those that remember the 80s and the 90s everything was pushed to be fat free, fat free, this fat free, that no fats in your diet, blah, blah, blah. And they actually stated sugar does not cause obesity. Now people now understand that is totally. Go look at the 80s and 90s if you were to love them or don't know. Go look, it's a thing.
Speaker 2:They have the snack. Well, fat-free cookies and everything was fat free, you know. And of course you know, when you replace fat with sugar you end up eating more, because at least if you eat full fat ice cream or full fat dairy, you get full and your appetite turns off. But all of a sudden, if you're drinking skim milk, you want to drink more skim milk, you know, and more skim milk milk. You want to drink more skim milk and more skim milk. There's not the fat there to slow it down. So I mean a lot of the overreactions of society.
Speaker 1:I just want to finish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, go ahead.
Speaker 1:That the reason behind all of it is because, when I said a big, large amount of money came in, who do you think gave the big, large amount of money?
Speaker 2:Do you know? Oh, I'm sure it has something to do with the food lobby oh, huge food lobby.
Speaker 1:You know what was the biggest distributors of sugar in the us? That still is. Do you know who it is? No, go for it. The Coca-Cola Company. Oh, of course. So think before you go and follow blindly what someone's going to put out. The Coca-Cola Company sponsored a study to show that sugar doesn't cause obesity, that it's the fats in our food. I just wanted to finish that point because people will sit here and say that it's not true. But you can go look it up.
Speaker 2:It's everywhere. Look at Prohibition. Why did they ban alcohol in the United States?
Speaker 2:They didn't want people growing their own gasoline in their backyard. They paid off the super religious Baptist people millions of dollars, billions of dollars, to lobby the government to make alcohol illegal, just long enough so that people would stop making it and so that they could release gasoline, because you used to be able to make corn alcohol in your backyard and run your car on it. So money drives a lot of things, you know, unfortunately, and we live in a world where we've been disconnected from nature. You know, social media kind of is like a hypnotizing brainwashing entity, and so getting in touch with nature, getting back into you know when's the last time you went and sat quietly in nature and sat silently without your phone? You know that's. That's something we deal with a lot with. You know, I work with a guy named Dr Leland Stillman and we get. We have a coaching side of the practice, we have a medical side of the practice, but most of the people that end up with, like, chronic fatigue or thyroid issues or whatever, you know they're just flying around like a chicken with their head cut off. You know, I, I, I compare modern life to getting in your car in your driveway, turning it on and ribbing the shit out of it all day and never driving anywhere.
Speaker 2:So you're on this emotional rollercoaster of social media, of just constant chronic stress. You know, robert Sapolsky, zebras, why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. We've replaced manual labor and physical labor with emotional, psychological stress, which manual labor, I think, has a lot of therapeutic values for the human organism, whereas emotional, psychological stress is just as hard on the body but it doesn't have that therapeutic effect, right? So you're sitting in traffic and you're screaming and you're yelling, right? Your body doesn't know the difference between you running in your head and running for real. So you have that chronic stress from morning till night, with constant notifications on your phone, with watching this video, watching that video, the constant dopamine hit the free dopamine and you just end up exhausted and depressed and then you're just really easy to control, manipulate.
Speaker 2:So the whole system is rigged to basically turn you into a complacent, compliant consumer. And the way you get away, you know, don't get basically pulled into that is to be observing, to observe these things and to use the technology and don't let the technology use you. And then to get outside in nature, make time for silence, have a good exercise program where you you know you're eating real food, you're getting outside, you're taking care of yourself, you have good social connection. You have, you know, plenty of friends that are like-minded, so you don't think you're going insane. Um, you know, a lot of people struggled uh with their mental emotional health during, during, uh, the beer bug, because they uh they felt isolated and alone, because they were like, am I the only one that thinks this is nuts? You know? So having a good social group is very important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to do more and manual labor. People make fun of me, but you kind of will totally agree. One of my favorite activities is guard work. I love it. It is you want to talk about. Just put my phone away, get outside. I'm digging moving land. I feel physically exhausted but phenomenal.
Speaker 2:It's good for the soul, it's so good for the soul and we've outsourced all of that. Let's you know. Let's go back, even in the 1970s. Let's look at pictures from Woodstock or pictures from the 1970s. How many obese people were there? Yeah, zero.
Speaker 1:You don't see pictures of obese people in the 1970s.
Speaker 2:How many gyms were there in the 1970s? Very few how many women worked out in the 60s and 70s.
Speaker 1:None.
Speaker 2:It was very. Marilyn Monroe was one of the first women to actually start strength training. So women didn't work out. Men. The only men that really worked out were like your bodybuilder type people.
Speaker 2:Yet people were very fit, very healthy. They spent a ton of time outside. They mowed their own grass. Half of them did their own maintenance on their house. They've changed the oil on their car, you know. They did stuff constantly.
Speaker 2:A lot of people were had physical manual labor jobs. A lot of people lived in a rural community, and then what happened was is, over time, they moved into the big cities. More people became office workers working on the computer. They hired somebody to mow their grass, you know they. They were told the sun is evil. They didn't go to the beach anymore, you know, and it just kind of spiraled out of control.
Speaker 2:Now we have a gym on every corner in the United States and we have more obese people than anywhere else in the world, and so it's, the more gyms we get, the fatter people get. So it's, uh, it's absolutely insane. So a lot of the things that we need to be healthy as humans were naturally built into our lives in the 50s, 60s, 70s. You know, eating, eating simple food, eating real food, getting outside, being in nature, having time to relax. You don't have 7 000 tv channels and you don't have this little computer in your hand that you're always constantly scrolling through. You're sitting down with your family. You're eating dinner, you're present. You're out on the porch at the end of the night relaxing and decompressing and calming down. Now, most people never, ever, slow down. Their brain is running from the minute they get up to the minute they go to bed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a huge component of strength training being at a gym, but also on the flip side of it you do need to be more active. So I was just in Florida for a convention.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And just a quick little like side story my wife and I, when we go away anything a mile or under, we're walking. It doesn't matter where we are. If we're on vacation and we have the time to kill, we're going for a walk. So we were doing about 20,000 steps a day. And then I simply pulled up my phone, because it's tracking the steps and the amount of calories you're burning, and I showed her. I'm like look, 20,000 steps, steps is roughly a thousand calories a day we're burning. So if we didn't, for those that don't know, in perfect world, 3500 calories burned is a pound of fat. So every three and a half days we're losing a pound of fat compared to somebody who's not walking at all. But if we just take the average and the average person walks about 3,000 to 5,000 steps a day we're doing 15,000 more, meaning we're burning 500 to 750 calories in extra than they are. So we're losing at least a pound a week, if not more compared to the average person.
Speaker 1:And all we changed was moving and walking. We didn't run, we didn't jog and this is all we did. And look how much more we can eat and not worry about gaining weight. Look at how much better we feel Look at how much time we got out, how much time we got outdoors and spent with each other, like we're not scrolling through our phones, going for a walk, we're bonding, we're talking, we're holding hands, we're laughing. Like that's so much to just that one little thing.
Speaker 2:Not to mention, you're getting sunlight, which helps with your neurotransmitters, your mental health. It helps with your melatonin production, for when you go to sleep at night. It helps with vitamin D production, not to mention nitric oxide. You produce nitric oxide when you get sun exposure, which helps with blood pressure relaxation, sexual function, all that good stuff that leads to a much more positive relationship. So you're getting all these other side effects. Not to mention, you know there's a lot of research that shows that sunlight affects the gut microbiome. It helps regulate blood sugar.
Speaker 2:I've done experiments where I've eaten, you know, like pancakes outside in the sun in my underwear, versus indoors under fake lights, and the blood sugar measurements that I got from taking you know eating, you know pancakes indoors were significantly higher than my blood sugar when I was outside. So if you look at like Europe and places like that, where they're constantly like here, you don't eat indoors Like all the meals that you eat are outside. Essentially, everyone has an outdoor kitchen. You go to Europe, people are eating outdoors. When I was in Kentucky, it'd be a beautiful day 75, 80 degrees and everybody would be inside or they'd be waiting for a table inside when there was five or 10 picnic tables outdoors and it was gorgeous, but nobody wanted to eat outside. Everyone wanted to be inside.
Speaker 2:So that's a you know, not just the exercise component of it, but just your physiology being in an environment. That it's that. It's uh, that your body needs and craves is a big part of it as well. I mean just pictures of nature have been shown to lower stress. So what is actually getting out of nature going to do? Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're a huge fan of going for hikes, just walking around neighborhoods. Yeah, one of the best things to do that kind of regulate, like your circadian rhythm, which is what you talked about sleeping. Yeah, before you wake up, my wife and I go for a walk to go get coffee on vacation?
Speaker 1:Simple go out, let's go get a cup of coffee. It's an activity to go do something instead of aimlessly walking. We're getting used to the sun rising, feeling we're awake by the time we even get the coffee. We're awake Now. It's just that extra boost for the walk-on. But it's just simple. It's just something to do, and I've listened to a lot of different podcasts from entrepreneurs and CEOs and I'll tell you the most successful CEOs, even if you want to go down that rabbit hole, do the same exact thing. They start their day by going for a morning walk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's huge. Walking is a massive, massive thing. I mean, I think it was Hippocrates said, I can't remember the exact quote, but it's like walking is like medicine, you know. And so it's getting outside in general. And we have Dr Stillman andI have the five fundamental habits, which is walk outside three times a day we stole that from Stan Efferding at preferably after meals. Eat a protein at every meal, preferably a fistful of protein for most people. Drink high quality water, preferably spring water. Get the lights off at night, you know, so you can sleep better and then have good social connection. That's our five fundamental habits that we really encourage everyone that's either working with us in our coaching practice or on the medical side of things. You know people that are coming to us with really complex issues. You know autoimmune diseases, things like that. When they focus on their health and their wellness instead of their disease, they seem to do much, much better and their wellness instead of their disease.
Speaker 1:They seem to do much, much better. Yeah, even the mind shift change right. So we were talking about our morning walks are always so interesting, but one of the things I always bring up on the show. But I think it's just so important because it pretty much solidifies the 300 episodes we've done. At this point. Your mood directly reflects the vibration of your blood cells. So the happier you are, the quicker they vibrate. The sadder you are, the slower they vibrate and everything in your system starts to slow down. So anything you can do to improve your mood is going to ultimately improve your health function. So if you're thinking about being healthy, you're going to vibrate quicker and you're going to feel better and do better. If you're thinking about the disease and being sick, you're going to succumb to the sickness quicker, be more depressed, and it's really the difference between a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop, and if you understand that principle, everything in your life will be better.
Speaker 2:Yes, I agree. Well, and then you get into the part of things with people is they don't have a good relationship with themselves. I really struggled with that for a long period of time. I had a lot of hate, a lot of resentment. I didn't really like who I was. I had to really overcome that. Forgive some people, forgive myself, you. Really, a lot of people are punishing themselves because they don't value themselves. Right, they treat themselves like a stolen car or a redheaded stepchild, so to speak. They don't value themselves and so they end up drinking or they end up eating too much, or they end up abusing themselves in bad relationships or very high risky behavior, just because they don't like themselves and they're torturing and punishing themselves. So, getting people to really become self-aware and have a good relationship with themselves and who they are as a person and I think the fitness industry contributes a lot to that because, you know, some people are McLarens, some people are 4Runners, some people are Corollas.
Speaker 2:Not everyone can be a Ferrari, not everyone can be a Lamborghini, nor would I, you know. Nor does everyone want to be that. You know, mclarens, lamborghinis are a lot more expensive. They require a lot more maintenance, you know. So every vehicle has its advantages and disadvantages. You just need to be the best version of you instead of comparing yourself to everyone else. Because you know a corolla compared to mclaren. You know the corolla is very inexpensive to operate. It's going to run forever. You probably, if you change the oil, you're never going to have to take it to mechanic. Um, very inexpensive to operate the. The McLaren's great, but do you have $1,000 to spend on? You know, each tire. You know twice a year. Do you have the ability to replace the brakes? Not to mention it gets about 12 miles to the gallon, you know. So McLarens are great, but they have a price and a cost, a trade-off that comes with that, and the Corolla is never going to be a McLaren. But you can become a better version of the Corolla, right? So a lot of people don't really want to look at the kind of car that they are and they try and force.
Speaker 2:Like me, I'm never going to play in the NBA. I'm 5'10", I weigh 255 pounds. I've got short arms. I've got short legs. I'm really good at lifting heavy things. I'm never going to be able to play in the NBA unless I buy the NBA and then I like fill it with, like power lifters, and then have full contact basketball, but, like, there's certain sports that my body's just never, no matter how much I practice, I'm never going to be really good at.
Speaker 2:But you know, I have to focus on the things that I'm good at and the things that I excel at, and focus on those things as opposed to being, you know, like well, I would love to be, you know, I would. I'm never going to be a great ultra marathon runner, but I'm a really good explosive athlete. I'm really good at things like tennis. I'm really good at things like racket sports. You know, focusing on the things that I'm good at instead of looking at what I can't do. I think a lot of people, you know they'll look at a lot of women in particular like, oh, I want to look like her. Well, your limbs are not that long, your shape, you're not built like that. Why don't you focus on just being the best version of yourself as opposed to trying to be somebody else?
Speaker 1:I got to thank you for literally explaining our entire company motto. You're welcome. That's exactly why our company is called Redefine Fitness and exactly why I chose the name. Literally, I'm trying to pick a name for the company. I'm explaining that to my family around a kitchen table and I'm like I need a term that defines that and everyone's like well, you're like. You're like redefining the fitness industry. That's it. So thank you for giving our pitch. I greatly appreciate you. I'll pay you later for it.
Speaker 2:No no problem.
Speaker 1:But, Jim, I'm going to ask you the final two questions I ask everybody. The first one is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences. Vote and you take a message.
Speaker 2:Well, probably most people are going to think we're crazy, but most of the people that listen to you probably are going to be like, oh, thank goodness for saying it again, I'm not. I'm not the only one. That's nuts, right. So there's a lot of people out there that are like see a lot of these things but are afraid to speak up and say something because, you know, because of people getting canceled and all that sort of thing. But I would say, you know, I would hope people, my biggest thing that people would get out of this is just being self-aware and being observer and just getting more in connect, get in connection with nature more and just step back and watch things instead of being drawn in. I think if you can do that, you're going to come out ahead most of the time.
Speaker 1:Love it. And the second question how can people find you and get a hold of you to learn more?
Speaker 2:Stillmanwellnesscom. That's my business partner, Dr Stillman and myself we actually do a free weekly webinar. We cover all sorts of different topics. You know, like, like yesterday we did a whole thing on exercise and what that really truly means for you, the individual, um, depending on what your goals are. So every week on thursday at 10 am eastern, we do a uh a webinar. That's free. If you're on our email list, you can do that.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, I'm on instagram. It's actually jim laird g-y-m-l-a-i-r Cause I my gym in Lexington. I named it Jim Laird, G Y M kind of a play on words. My name is Jim, so I named my gym Jim. Yeah, it's just weird. So Jim Laird at uh at Instagram. That's probably the best way to find me.
Speaker 2:I'm on YouTube and all those other places, but I've been on. I haven't. I focused more on training people in person than building an online presence. So I have a decent social media presence, but I really focused more on training people in person, which is great because I actually know how to coach people, Whereas a lot of people in today's fitness I've never actually really coached people before and are trying to coach people without having coached people before, because you know they're doing work virtually, which is fine, but you know, there's something to be said for people that have worked for decades actually working with people in person. So I think it's much easier to go from working from people in person to working virtually than it is from starting out virtually and then trying to you know, work, reverse engineer it. I don't think that works quite as well.
Speaker 1:Love it. And then, jim, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, guys, for listening to this week's episode of health and fitness redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button, share it with a friend and remember fitness is medicine. Until next time, thank you, outro Music.
