The Exchanges

Q Yeah, Lori, Lori killed it. Another thing you talk about that changed my perspective on working out was this idea that habits versus hygiene and how you see fitness will change the entire way you do fit. Can you talk about that?

A Yeah, absolutely. I think, uh, habits are something that's associated with a decision that you make to become better at a certain skill, right? Or something that you want to do less of. Habits are kind of a reinforcement. So your habits around, let's say working out is the fact of going at a certain time or following a program or seeing a coach, like a whole different means of what all those variables do to encompass that piece of hygiene, right? Hygiene is the aspect of you will decay or die if you don't do it, right? If you don't brush your teeth, like you're going to have nasty teeth and it's going to break down. Same thing if you don't wash your body, bacteria. I view fitness as the same thing. Where it's, it's a piece of hygiene, like it has to occur, um, otherwise you're becoming sedentary, complacent, and you're decaying. You're dying.

AI assessment note: “I view fitness as the same thing. Where it's, it's a piece of hygiene”

Q Yes, you eat a lot, and yet, like, you never lose your 27 pack that you have, so like, how do you think, okay, how do you think about what to eat, what are the parameters that we have around it, and like, what is a core part of how you feed me?

A I was lucky that I grew up in a home with, with cooks, people who were in the restaurant industry for a little bit, so, and they're like a Mediterranean diet, so everything was about ingredients, Freshness. Those habits kind of continued on the rest of life because I realized kind of garbage in, left garbage out, what occurred from it. Now when I think about it, journaling and an elimination diet was kind of the basis that got me to this point where I could now make those simple binary decisions by, again, figuring out the complexities early on. So knowing raw cauliflower and kale gave me a lot of inflammation and they ruined my stomach. Understanding how your body then responds and recovers from the food you eat, Like you journal about it. You AB test it. I mean, there's a lot of different apps out there. There's wearables that enable you to do it as well. But once you figure those fine lines, you just have these categories where you definitively know that these types of proteins, these types of vegetables, these types of starches and carbs are best for me individually. And so for us, I find it easy to do the eighty-twenty, 80% farm to table, non-dilutive ingredients. Right, or, or non-processed foods, and then kind of 20% of a little bit more of whatever.

AI assessment note: “I find it easy to do the eighty-twenty, 80% farm to table”

Q pain or your hip pain, that's where you were for years. You had chronic pain that you had no solution for. You went to doctor after doctor, they wanted you to get surgeries and you ended up fixing a lot of it. Can you explain what was wrong with you? What did you do to change it? And what might other people learn from that after they've consulted with their

A Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, I had a problem probably starting towards the latter part of my military career, and then it exacerbated low back and hip pain, a lot of it, um, to the extent where I had a knee injury, and I thought it was an isolated knee injury, not realizing, like, a bad hip and a weak glute was causing a bad knee injury, right? What I had started to discover, uh, is going to physical therapists, and all of them thinking it was a core issue, it was a core issue. I found one, Um, because none of them were working. Sitting in a chair, looking at my phone, he walks up to me and he says, don't look up, don't move. And then he said, pay attention to your body right now. How are you sitting? And I was like, all the way on my right side, left shoulder jacked up, middle of my spine, move the other way. That right there is probably causing half of your pain. He's like, so now we're going to start looking at movement patterns and alignment patterns. And I didn't realize, I always thought, I mean, you saw me, I would stretch like crazy trying to get it to go away. And it was imbalances and inflammation were the two things that were the biggest problem. And what he had taught me was smash, strengthen, lengthen. So I realized I had weak, I had weak muscles, which caused a heavy imbalance, right? Your hip flex, your lower back is not caused, your back pain is not caused by your …

AI assessment note: “it was imbalances and inflammation were the two things that were the biggest problem.”

Q You say it's more for Like a little bit more pro than a Cody?

A No, that was like three years ago. And now he's tailored it to where he has some distinct offerings where it's like, if you're a top tier CrossFit competitor, you got a program, right? If you're short on time, you have a program. If you're short on equipment, you have a program. I follow his pillars program, which is like a four day a week lifting that does splits upper, lower or upper push, lower push. That one I think is very, very accessible for a very large Part of the audience. Um, beginner or pro. He has great movement cues as well. He has videos that go along with it. And, you know, form is such an important part of it, right? Never sacrifice form. And time under tension is also, in my mind, part of form. And so I learned a lot of time under tension under him from his tempo count. So your ability to stress the muscles, to put them under tension, will increase, you know, muscle definition and, and size. At least in my experience for me, right? I'm sure there's studies that say The same or different, but that's what works.

AI assessment note: “No, that was like three years ago. And now he's tailored it”

Q It kind of sucks, but apparently we're not dying of toxicity, so hey, win-win. What is on your never do I ever to-do list that's health-wise?

A Ooh, ever eat an MRE again? Farmed fish. You know, there's parasites being taken out of them, seeing what's happening there. Food that's been sitting in plastic or has comes packaged in plastic for a long time. Microwave. We do not use the microwave in our household any longer just because it's shown to denature a lot of the nutrients and make things less bioavailable, right? Overcooked things. It's a whole host. Turn the oven on for five minutes at 200 degrees. You'll get there, right? Cooking with margarine or processed heavy stuff. No seed oils. I know people will say it's not as bad for you as it can be, but at the end of the day, like, we might as well be optimizing for ourselves. Vitamins that, uh, don't meet a, like, functional nutrient requirement that you have in the body. I've seen people who just go overboard with nutrients and supplements, and at the end of the day, I think it's causing a lot of effects that aren't full rather than good. And then putting anything on top of your body that similarly is, like, chemically saturated, right? Be careful the sunscreen that you use. The moisturizer, even the soap, right?

AI assessment note: “Ooh, ever eat an MRE again? Farmed fish.”

Q Uh, and I thought I could impart some of your wisdom on others today. So let's like get right into it. I think I know the answer of this, but If you could only use one piece of equipment to get fit, what is it, why, and how should we use it?

A Uh, there's one, like, cop-out answer, and that's your imagination. Quite literally, but I mean, truthfully, right? I mean, you don't need a gym to be fit. You don't need the environment to be fit. You just need to care a little bit. But if there's an actual, like, piece of equipment I could take with me, it's a kettlebell. I mean, you don't have to be creative with the exercise, you know, basis for which a lot of people across a long, long time Have made fitness. You take them with you everywhere. They're easy to go around. What I've actually done a few times is I've researched a place. Maybe they didn't have a gym close by. Maybe I was there for three or four days. Didn't have enough time to hit a proper gym. I've Amazon primed like a 53 pound kettlebell to hotels before.

AI assessment note: “if there's an actual, like, piece of equipment I could take with me, it's a kettlebell.”