Latest / FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast / Built to Last: How to Create a Personalized, Sustainable Fitness Lifestyle with David Amerland

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Built to Last: How to Create a Personalized, Sustainable Fitness Lifestyle with David Amerland · FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast

• 1:07
  Hi and welcome back to fit me through a fitness podcast.
• 1:10
  Today's guest is someone who is redefining what fitness can and should look like for real life.
• 1:15
  I'm sure to welcome David amberland, author of the powerful new book build to last, which offers a science packed, sustainable approach to health movement and long longevity.
• 1:26
  David's background is in science and engineering, but his passion lies in making fitness accessible, realistic and meaningful. So instead of promoting extreme programs or quick fixes build to last, helps people create personalized fitness routines that fit their actual lives, not just their ideal, not just in their ideal ones. So excited to have you in my podcast, David, and if you don't mind, I tried to tell you I was writing something before, as you probably heard little introduction who you are. But welcome to my show. Thank you so much, and thank you for having me here. I'm actually really excited to see where the conversation takes us.
• 2:11
  Yeah, so what is, what is just a little bit shortly about you, who you are, and just a bit up before we dive into fitness talks as the normal things, your family and everything.
• 2:27
  Yeah, absolutely. Well, my background is, I'm a chemical engineer by training. I've been active in business as a consultant for a long time. I've offered books on search and marketing and digital marketing and social media, branding, decision making, intentionality and now fitness and they all seem to be very different, right? But essentially, what drives me, what, what's the thing that actually fascinates me is us, our operating system.
• 2:54
  Why do we operate like this in a certain context? Why do we do some things and we don't do other things? And it's not for lack of knowledge, it's not for lack of understanding. We're all very smart people. We know what we should do. We have access to information these days. So where we live in an information rich environment and yet And yet, time and again, different contexts, we do the wrong thing, and that's where I go digging.
• 3:20
  That's where I look at primary principles. That's where I look at foundational sort of sources.
• 3:28
  What is it that drives us? And when we peel back those layers, the picture that emerges is a little less complex, absolutely amazing, and it gives us the handle we need in order to understand how we operate, and then how we can become better within that operational, operational environment, yeah, isn't it? It's I feel, also, there's so much in common, like everything about if it's fitness, if it's whatever thing you want to improve in your life, it's if it's like, if it's a business, if it's a family life, whatever, like all your own health, they are even they are totally different things, same principles, I believe they are still the same, or all these different things. So tell me little bit. What inspired you have a brand new book came out, built to last, and what inspired you to write that period to last was there kind of turning point or personal experience that made you rethink traditional fitness?
• 4:36
  Yeah, it should. It should be right. It should. But I mean, there isn't and there is, and I will explain the contradiction here. I've been training physically since 13. I've been active in martial arts. I a whole black belt levels in three different martial arts. In one of them, I have a second degree black belt. I'm a certified Taekwondo instructor. I competed at the national, international stage at an elite level for 10 years of my life, between 1991 and 2000 and in that time, I was holding on a sort of high level job, and I was training between 1620 hours a week, because you have to do that so. So a lot of people used to ask me, now, what do you need to get fit? What should I do? And I never wanted to tell them, right? Because what works for me personally is not going to work for them. And if you give them something prescriptive, you're tying them down to something which will not work. The likelihood of them succeeding is very small. So I never wanted to do anything do with fitness, and also fitness, for me, is my safe space. That's where I got to clear my head, to sort of organize my thoughts.
• 5:43
  But what happened? The pandemic came along, and we got trapped in our houses, and I stopped traveling around the world consulting for companies, and I got a home gym to keep me sane.
• 5:55
  And I have a friend who also has a home gym, and once a week, we meet up and we train and and it's both a physical and a social thing. You know, if you train somebody, what happens is you. Pay less attention to the intensity because you're with somebody, so you can actually work out harder and and also, it's a social thing. We talk about things and we discuss things. So he used to come with something, it's seen in social media or some kind of article in the magazine. I'd go back with studies. I'm going to examine it saying, you know, is that a myth? It does it work? Does it not work? And we looked at muscle building and longevity, and as we get older, what we need to do in order to function at a high level. And out of those conversations over a period of two years, the seed, the background, basically, for build to last was born. So that's his birth. Yeah, nice. It's because it's, I'm always it's so interesting to hear and listen.
• 6:46
  What? What? Where that all that inspiration is coming. If there is some like a personal story or personal experience, what was actually that? It was just one moment? Is that out this? I need to write something about it, because it's, it's amazing, amazing book. So tell little bit about your background, because you are coming from science and engineering. So what did, how did that say to your approach to health, movement and behavior?
• 7:23
  Well, everything we do is modeled by mathematics. That's the engineering background. So my approach is that, essentially, if there's something which we look up and we don't understand it because of the cause and effect which don't seem to make sense, then we need to go and look for root causes. And when it comes to fitness, certainly, what we see is a paradox. We live in a world which is information rich, you know, podcasts like this one.
• 7:47
  You know, to go on YouTube, you can find 1000s of of podcasts and videos which help you get fitter. There are hundreds of 1000s of books published each year on how to get fitter. Their government programs we spend, we spend, uh, annually, globally, almost a trillion dollars a year trying to get fitter, and we fail. The World Health Organization figures show that by 2050, 25 years from now, half the world's adult population is going to be either overweight or obese. It's tragic. We know that we all go to the gym come January, and by mid March, certainly mid April, the figures are down to about 75% dropout rates. Only 25% remain. And by the end of April, beginning of May, we go down to 15% so 85% of people have dropped off. And this is consistent, right, year on year. So because we spend all that money, because we actually go to the gym in the beginning of the year. The motivation is there. Access is there? We buy the tools we need. We go to the gym membership. We got the gym memberships that we need. We access the information. We understand what it's going to do for us. So when we don't do it and we don't do it consistently, there's a deeper effect in motion, and that's where I went digging, right? So essentially, what I discovered is that the operating system we have in our head is it's very old. It's 10,000 years old. It's evolved with us, but it's there to help us survive in a different world, not the world we live in today, there are tribe tribal communities across the world, which are hunter gatherer communities, and they are cut off from civilization, so they're the closest thing we have to the Paleolithic community or society of 10,000 years ago, and anthropologists have been studying them. They embed themselves in the community for a period of between three and six months, and this is what they see. These people are very active. They get up in the morning. They have to walk long distances. They have to carry heavy things. They have to cut their way through forests. They have to dig, dig for their food, or they have to run for their food. So they're active every day. They're exercising, but they don't call it exercise like we did in 10,000 years ago. That was our life, and that's how our body and brain have developed to function now, when those people don't have to do those things, because, you know, they don't run all day and they don't dig all day, so when they don't have to do those things to do nothing absolutely. You don't see them lifting big rocks to to get ripped. They don't swing the machetes around to get better.
• 10:36
  They absolutely conserve energy, because that's how you survive in us, in a world which is not calorie rich. So we come to today ourselves. We have the same operating system. We see exercise. It's a stressor. We are wired to avoid it. We live in a world where we have up to 10,000 calories within reach of our refrigerator. It's about 1520, paces away for most of us.
• 11:05
  We. Spend most of the day looking at the screen and working at a desk. You know, we're not digging, we're not running. So we have the same mechanism that's trying to help us conserve energy. Our body doesn't know that it has easy access to energy, and we have the same disinclination to exercise because it's a stressor which we feel we shouldn't have to undertake. So when you combine all those things together, along with the complexity of everyday life and how our body manages resources, suddenly the fact that we don't exercise consistently begins to make a lot of sense and build to last is a blueprint that tries to tell you, it tries to help you discover for yourself, what is it you must do so that you actually benefit directly from the knowledge that you learn from how you operate, so that you can then put in place something that is sustaining, so it helps you and also sustainable. So you can do it every day. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, it's so interesting.
• 12:07
  It's funny that you say those things. I'm actually currently reading book about how, how things were like in past and 10,000 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or even 100 years ago. And it was, there was a I like that table where they showed like that, how much less energy guys, of course, we all think like that. You know you should be want to lose weight. I think everybody, or I would say overnight, the project of people know that it's some kind of calorie deficit, what you should be creating. And that is not anymore like it was maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was still like thinking like that, fats are making you fat, then it's super making you fat. And now, I think most of the people know that it's, it's about calories, but then and then it's about, of course, it's the mostly about eating. But if you like, you said that all these tools like I have a feeling like that, no Bucha, all this, even the technology, what is now available for everything to make it easier, it does so much damage, actually, for us, because we are consuming so much less energy. And then, you know, people are often what I hear, that they think that, you know, I have to work out. I go to three times a week to gym or do some other workouts. But actually, those workouts they for weight management. They it's like a drop in the ocean. They don't do almost anything. It's more about the daily activity.
• 13:45
  And like you said, that sitting in front of the computer, then you have, now all these kind of new tools that you don't like.
• 13:54
  There was an interesting study like and I have, I have, I have recognized it. If you go to look, look at the airports, there's a pro later, and stairs, you have option to choose. I think it was 3% of people are choosing stairs. They have done studies that or in the buildings. If you have chance to do either elevator or or roller stairs or walk those stairs, it's 3% of people. If there is a if there is a sign, something to what tells you that use stairs for your fitness, you can get that number up to 10% it's funny, like, how these small things, and this is like, I'm a person, like earlier, I would say that I was for sure that elevator group, I wouldn't take any extra step. But now I can't if I don't really have to take elevator, I always choose stairs. So I was thinking that, wow, this is a tree project. But if you, if I look at the airports when you are traveling, it's for me, like, even I don't, it's somehow that work is always looking like, how, how those, all those small habits, how they are impacting and it's, it's a crazy amount, how many less calories like you need if you don't do that kind of daily activity. It's, it's easily 500 calories per day, what you, what you, what you, what you would consume, and 500 calories, it's you gotta do really hard workout. And if you do it once, two times a week, you are exhausted after that. But the daily activity, if it's if you are like most of the people, I think it was average per person in the world is commuting one and a half hours per day to work. Then they are sitting.
• 15:52
  They are, of course, they are either going with some public transportation, driving car themselves, then you work eight, 910, hours, whatever, in front of computer, sitting. It's.
• 16:06
  It's, you have made the 3000 steps, if in a good day. And that is, and then, like you said, that access for high calorie foods, it's, it have never been easier to eat. And of course, understanding also that what is, what is the idea of food companies like that was, for me, so interesting. Like, of course, if you think it like I said, you are a business coach and think it like food companies, if you're the only goal is your goal is not okay.
• 16:39
  Maybe you want to make people also eat healthier. But ultimately, what matters, what brings profit for the company, is that how much they are, how much people are buying or consuming your your products. So of course, it's not if you have an option. There was an interesting point like adding some colors or or tastes. So and they, they are all studying those things like, what if you, if you eat some chocolate chips or or whatever, whatever you enjoy eating, they are. They have done so many studies, so many people have tried it, how to make it flavor, that way that you they are. They have built it that way that you can stop like I know that everyone knows this feeling that when once you open, open something what you really want, and it's very few people who are able to say that, Oh, I'm eating just one of those, and then I stop eating it. No, it's they are made in a way that once you open it, you start eating. You want even your brain wants even more, and then you can't stop eating. Of course, that's you know, it yourself that this is not doing good for my health, but for the company who have built it. They don't.
• 18:01
  They don't care if you it's better for them that you eat the whole package and then next day you want to buy another one instead of, if you would take just one piece every single day and you have, you would be good with the whole package for a month. So there is. It's not coincidence that those things happen Absolutely. I mean, you said so many amazing things, and thank you so much for bringing that really complicated picture and explaining it so well. It's You're right. There's so many things in that which we need to unpack a little bit, right?
• 18:33
  Okay, so you're right. I mean, this is that our brain is hardwired, instinctively, almost to respond, neuro, chemically, to three distinct stimuli. What are they? They are salt, sugar and fat. Salt, these are rare elements. I mean, if we lived 10,000 years ago, salt would we would come across very rarely, sugar probably would get from what, whatever wild honey we could reach at a time. And fat, will have to kill a big game animal which is rich in fat, or capture, you know, sort of fish which are very rich in fat. And then the only way, the only viable way we would have of preserving that for future is treat as much as possible, because that would then go immediately into our own fat reserves. We didn't have refrigerators, and that would keep us going for the foreseeable future, until we get to the same point again. That's the old us 10,000 years ago. We come to today, of course. And yes, you're right. A lot of food companies are very smart in the way they package things. Not only do they make them visually appealing, because they know they catch our eye, they catch our attention, but then they contain high amounts of sugar and fat and salt, depending on what we have, right? But you know this, I mean the sugaring process in in sliced bread, which is crazy, because we don't realize that there is but it's there, so we respond to that very positively, because the old, ancient mechanism in our head back then didn't have a break. It didn't say, Oh, I killed, you know, a buffalo. I'm only going to take a steak, right? No, no, you didn't take a steak. You ate as much as you could, because that's how you did it. And then you had to figure out, how do I keep the rest? How do I cure it? You know, whatever we have needed.
• 20:35
  So there's your group and there's your tribe. Everybody eats as much as they can, whatever's left over. You have to find some way of preserving for the future, that mechanism still exists. So you open a pack of crisps. So you open a box of chocolates, what do you want to do? You want to eat them all right? And they see, and that's what we do, unless, and this is where what you said is really smart. You know, we could decide to have one chocolate a day or to eat half a bag of crisps in the next the bag the next day.
• 21:04
  Yeah. Okay, that's our personal strategy, that's our intellectual cognition, that's our smartness getting in the way and basically putting a break.
• 21:18
  But for that to happen, it's not enough for us to think about it in an abstract way. We can't just think of an intellectual intellectually. We know it. We need to feel it. And you gave the example the stairs, which I'm going to use now to say how these changes are feelings where you know they say 3000 people use them, but if they put in a little notice saying, This is good for your fitness, an additional 7000 people use them, right? So now it more than doubles. Okay? That is the emotional factor. That's the emotional trigger. If we are emotionally connected to something, the calculus in our head, which calculates energy expenditure and what we get as a result of that changes. So if we're not emotionally connected to fitness, for instance, we look at the escalator and we look at the stairs. We are traveling from A to B. We are already a little bit stressed, because we have to keep time timelines. We have to negotiate our way through an airport, you know, have to go through bureaucracy, passport gets done, security checks, all those things stresses out. You get to the stairs and what you want to do, I'm going to take the escalator. Why? Because I'm already stressed. I'm already expanding energy. When I'm stressed, I'm using ATP, adenosine tri phosphate, that's what our cells use, right? So if we are stressed in situation, we're using the same amount, the same type of fuel that we use when we go to the gym and lift weights. So now you have a little bit less available energy in your head. Your brain tells you, okay, you're already stressed out. Here are the stairs. Here's the escalator. Go up the escalator because that's the easiest route, unless, as you said, you have in mind your personal fitness. Now the emotional connection to what you're doing has changed. The calculus changes. So some people will actually decide it doesn't matter if they're stressed or not, they're going to take the stairs, because those stairs going up help them become fitter and emotionally now they're connected to that outcome, that image they have themselves as being a little bit better in terms of their health, a little bit of their strength, a little bit of their internal balance.
• 23:16
  So now they're willing to do what normally they wouldn't, and that creates the recipe for pretty much everything. If we can make that emotional connection by thinking about why we want to get fit. What does fitness mean to us? Who are we really deep inside, and how do we imagine ourselves being? Then the calculus changes, and then we're more inclined to do the stressful thing, the energetically expensive thing, because it doesn't feel as stressful anymore, because the outcome is going to be better?
• 23:48
  Oh, that's so good examples and explanation. Why? Why those things actually happen? And is there like, I always love to love to like, because I know so many people are struggling with this that you know deep inside you want that, okay? You would need to lose weight. You would need to get fitter. You need to exercise. But then, on the other hand, it's it feels so hard or or people are like that. There is always you find excuse for yourself that. Why not now that what? What is, what is like that? Okay, now it's a busy period of work or family or whatever, and or, you know, like all, also that kind of all in or nothing thinking that, you know, if I can follow that perfect plan what you make in your head, which, by the way, doesn't exist, but I don't want to talk about it now anymore, then it's not worth of doing anything. And I, as a ex professional ISO, the player. I was one of those persons 100% back in the days, like, because i i I got like I thought it would work out. It need to be at least an hour like, bare minimum 45 minutes.
• 25:00
  It have to feel hard. I have to feel tired after and if I don't, if I had only 30 minute time, then I would say that no way it's it's not worth of it even to get started, because it's not a good workout. And now what I understood that consistency, doing those everyday things, like taking stairs, having a going for five minute walk outside, those are the things what actually matters? What makes you feel better? If it's doing some kind of strengthening exercise, if it's if you do then push ups in the morning, then body weight squats, you you are already doing amazing things for your body. And honestly, that consistency, it's it. It sounds I would never say that earlier, but now I know for the for the fact working with so many people, and from my own experiences, that that matters so much more, and it's one of the best questions, like, if somebody like, let's say that I either. My own own story. I'm curious to know your story. Why you are actually like you. I know your background. You said you had a athletic background, but for me, like it was never then after, of course, earlier, when I was younger, the goal was to become better athlete, better better in my sport. So that was the motivation to broke out. But then I struggled. 10 years after I retired from professional sports, I didn't know why I should be doing it. And then for me was my dad got really sick at age of 60, and I was watching him losing his health for the last decade of his life. He passed away at the age of 70, and it was the reason was, or what I believe, of course, you can blame that there is some you have a bad luck, or everything, things can happen. But if you I believe that you increase so much your chances, like, I just had this week's podcast with Dr turkil. He's very well that if you if you don't do anything or your health, expectation of living is 70 years old, like, and if you do kind of you are, like most of the people, you are doing something good, something not so good. Expectation. You can expect that life. Expect, expect it's you can expect to live around 80, depending like, what is the average age of people, of course, that is through medication. It's raising all the time. And if you if you are taking care of your own health, you can expect to live over 90 with and maintaining your health while doing it. And it was for me when I saw my dad getting sick place that okay, I probably don't have the best possible genes. Or this is, this could be. And it was, it was the pain seeing my dad suffering last decade of his life and passing away at I would say that so young aids at 70, that was the pain is greater than the pain of actually doing the workouts. So that was, for me, was kind of turning point. And I still have have his picture in a days when I feel like no today, my in my mind, I find 1000 excuses, why not to do workout?
• 28:43
  Why not to get started? I look at his pictures that, no, I have to at least get started. And this is kind of turning point that when you have that deeper purpose, why you are, why you are actually doing it, and then you become, or at least for me, it helped to become actually consistent and and learning to, like, keep your promises, what you make to yourself. For me, I always, I was a person who said that I need to work out now I start to work out three times a week, or whatever number I decided. And then once I knew that, oh, three times won't happen, then I quit. Totally. I didn't do anything for maybe. I said, Okay, now it's going to be week nothing, but then week turned out to be 2345, weeks, months. And sooner I then that I realized that I was almost decade without doing anything.
• 29:37
  And then I had, I had to change my own approach, to aim always for something, and promise myself that I I will at least get started if i i decided i broke out this week two times I don't, I never promised myself to finish my two workouts. I promise to get started. And that have changed. That changing mindset kind of changed everything for my own health as well. And that is, it's, it's my approach, my way of doing things. And I'm curious to know if you have, how you are, what is your motivation to do things, and how you are actually doing it for your own health. Because you, I don't know, how old are you? You you are, I'm 60. What you're 60?
• 30:23
  I would, if I would have to say, I would, you're not seeing it, but Look David, I would, I would say that he is between 40 and 50, looking very good at I would never believe that you are 60.
• 30:38
  Thank you for saying that.
• 30:38
  Though I really appreciate this, and I love what you said. Okay, and I'm going to unpack a lot of things, and I'll explain my own motivation and my trajectory, to some degree, mirrors yours in terms of how I had to work things out for myself. But I mean, you experienced the turning point where you saw your dad basically pass away early, and he gave you a strong wake up call. So you made that emotional connection to what you do, and that's what keeps you there, and that's that's the point. We discussed earlier, or we said, If you don't understand your who, who you are really, and you have to do some work for that.
• 31:10
  It's painful. And then you have to understand your why, why you're doing these things. Now, if you don't understand those things, then working out consistently is difficult, and you're going to drop it. So you have to really do the work in yourself. Say, you know, what does it mean for me? Really, really it means for me to do this thing. Why should I do it?
• 31:29
  And if you can come up with an answer that has a strong emotional connection, then that recalculation ahead goes off, and we begin to experience the stressor of exercise as something which is achievable, something we can do, and it's always there, and we discuss ways of getting rounded. And already discussed some of them in your example, which I'll return to in a minute. So so let's let's start. Let's start with the easiest thing about my own journey on this now, I started training at 13. I lived in Australia. My family were moving around from state to state. I was always a new kid at the school. Always different state, always different culture.
• 32:07
  So, you know, 13, your head is full of confusion, right? You don't know who you are. You are angry at the world. You have no friends because you're always a new kid, and that does a lot of massive sort of rage in your head. You also are changing.
• 32:22
  Your identity is changing because you're developing and how to channel into something, right? So usually, what happens?
• 32:29
  You get in trouble with the law, or you hurt yourself, or you hurt other people, you know, you do stupid things. And luckily for me, I just found a community center which did martial arts, and I tried it, and I loved it because it helped me think it structured my head. You can't change physically at all if you don't change mentally. So the change is always on the inside, and the moment the change happens on the inside, then the outside follows. But it's never the other way around, although you use your body to begin with, actually what changes first is your mind, and then everything follows. So for me, that became the safety devil. And throughout my life, I've moved countries.
• 33:07
  I've lived in, like, I've lived in four different countries, in three different continents. In my career, I've as a speaker.
• 33:13
  I've traveled to 22 countries.
• 33:18
  I've always been the kind of the outsider. And for me, that's, that's, that's the safety valve of training, which keeps my head clear. So that's why I did it.
• 33:27
  And when I stopped competing, because when you compete, you have no choice. You're competing because you want to win, right?
• 33:34
  But when I'm competing, when I was competing, I'd get up in the morning, do a five kilometer round, come back, get changed, shower change, go to work, come back from work, get changed, go to my club, Train for two, two and a half hours, come back, get something to eat, get some sleep, and repeat that next day.
• 33:50
  And I would do it throughout the year, right? So I wouldn't stop, even when I went off. So holidays, I'd be training because you don't want to lose your phone, but that's because you're competing. When I stopped competing, all the pressure was off, because when you're competing, you're not thinking about it. The external world tells you you've got to do this.
• 34:09
  You've got to be this, because your opponent is better, right?
• 34:12
  So you need to beat him. So So you started chasing that, but when you stop competing, all that pressure goes away, all those guidelines fall and suddenly you're on your own. So I was really fit. I coasted on my fitness for a while, training lightly, here and there, and then at some point, I started feeling okay. How do I want to be when I'm 50, when I'm 60? And I thought, you know, what I love about myself really is the ability to command my own body and feel free in it, and I never want to lose that, because that's tied into the sense of who I am, yeah. So the moment I realized that, I thought, okay, the training I was doing was not enough for that, and that's when I started basically being intentional on my own in my training, making myself train even when I didn't want to train. So unlike you, I had to work it out. And like you, I've been training all my life, right? I've been training for 47 years, not 47 year period. I've been training every day for different reasons, right? But the reasons changes. But you know, it's always been that. Now you would think that training is easy for me. It's not. I finished my day. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. My brain, which is smart, tells me, Hey, you have emails to do tomorrow is going to be a busy day. You have a podcast you have to do to get ready for a conference. Why don't you not train today? Train twice as hard tomorrow, which never happens, right? Yeah. So I have two two techniques to get around that, and they work. They both work. The first one is, I make a deal with myself. I tell myself, Okay, I'm gonna go and train for 10 minutes. And if, and I'm Papa, no stopwatch, and if, if, by the end of 10 minutes I haven't my mood hasn't changed. That's it. I'm calling it a day. I have 10 minutes of training. I'll take that as a win, and I'm going to go rub, a shower, go to bed. But what happens in that 10 minute window? Well, my body temperature goes up, my heart rate increases, my respiration rate goes up, oxygenation and bloodstream changes. Endorphins are going through my system. And now we know from neuroscience that if you work in your muscles for anything between eight and 10 minutes, the muscles themselves secrete a hormone which activates dopamine in the brain's reward system, which affects motivation and is inclined to keep you doing whatever it is you're doing. And the reason for that is pretty ancient as well, 10,000 years ago, if you had to do something for eight to 10 minutes, which was climb or dig or fight, you did it either because you're chasing your food or you were trying not to become food. And when you do anything for eight to 10 minutes, your body gets tired. It sends a signal to the brain. It tells it, oh, I'm tired. The brain says, Oh, you're tired. Why don't you take a break? But you can't take a break because you take a break no food, or if you take a break, you become food. So neither of those things are good, right? So then the brain has the body has this mechanism where you work out for eight to 10 minutes, it sends a signal to the brain. The brain then activates dopamine levels. Dopamine basically guides our motivation, and we are then inclined to keep on doing whatever we started off doing eight or 10 minutes ago.
• 37:35
  And by doing that, it also dampens down the signal of tiredness that the body sends to the brain, so that we don't feel as tired anymore, even though we are Yeah, so if that works with me, you know, I saved myself 10 minutes, and I'm prepared to just take 10 minutes, and I never do, you know, end up training for an hour. Now, the other technique I use is that I have made training for me as easy as possible. I have a home gym. It's fully equipped, and I don't need all the equipment.
• 38:06
  All I need is a little bit of space and maybe a couple of weights and a punch bug, okay, but, but in order for me to put a workout together, for me, when I'm tired, I have to think about it. Have to plan it energetically. It's complex.
• 38:21
  Just the thought tires me out.
• 38:21
  So I get into the gym and I'm really exhausted from the day, and have a treadmill, I have a rowing machine, I have elliptical, I can just get on any of those machines and do something for an hour while watching a movie. Not ideal, because I'm not present, so I'm not getting the full effect, but I'm still exercising. So that's what I do to keep me going every day. And I employ the strategies. And obviously, when I'm feeling great, I just did something really a little bit more complex, a little bit harder. To go back to the examples you gave earlier, we said, you know, do something for a minute. We know that if you do that, you know before you know, you can't do anything. Do 510, push ups, five squats, hit the shower. Going through your day like it takes about a minute, couple of minutes for most people, we know that the neurochemical changes in the bloodstream from that one minute of exercise are identical to the neurochemicals in the bloodstream from an hour of exercise, the body can't differentiate, which means that the hormonal profile, which impacts Our major organs is going to be the same as if we exercise for an hour. So if we take somebody who does the course of a year, in that year, they exercise only one minute a day, which is 365 minutes. So it's about five and a half hours.
• 39:41
  If we check them between the beginning of the year and the first and the end of the year, are they going to be physically different? Well, observationally, no. But if we take their biomarkers, if we look at their blood pressure, if we look at the heart rate, if we look at the VO two, if we look at cardiovascular fitness, they will have moved the marker a little bit. They will be on that one minute of exercise, actually be a little bit healthier, a little bit more stable. So it's an amazing thing to be able to do that. And I employ that if I if I have a really busy day where I simply haven't got any time, zero time to myself, I will take that one minute. I'm going to do 40 push ups, 40 squats, hit the shower. And I consider that a win. And it gives me two things. First of all, it gives me that physical connection I've done something.
• 40:29
  Second thing, it doesn't make me feel guilty, where I tell myself, Oh, you missed out, oh, you're no good, or you can't even stick to that. You're not disciplined, that negative voice in my head, right? Oh, yeah, okay. I silence it. I tell it, I did what I could. I'm taking that as a win, and tomorrow I'm going to do better. So these are the strategies I employ because I have the same problems as everybody else. I have the voice in my head that tells me you're tired, don't train, and it gives me all these really smart excuses. I have the voice in my head that tells me you're not very good in the discipline. You should just give up because you haven't got an hour. I have the sense inside me. That. Oh, this is a stressor. Are you doing this to yourself? You don't have to do it. So I have all those things in my head and where I apply science, what science shows us is by creating those structures which help me overcome them day after day. And it comes down to all the examples you gave. And, yeah, thank you for that. No, thank you. That's it for explanation that is so well said, and it makes so much sense. If you, if I really think it, then it's, it's exactly those same principles, like, what you use, I use exactly to say, maybe we have a you aim for working out 10 minutes. I aim to I have also, it's easily. I have accessible I have a built little weights for my basement where I can I have a squat rack, pins and weights. So it's, it's, I don't have that excuse that I don't have time to drive somewhere, so no, it's to get there to get changed, do one exercise. If after that, I don't have time for more, then it's to get out and do something else.
• 42:12
  But those, it's just those principles, and it's, it's such a great, great examples and but still, like we, we talked a little bit about earlier, and this already talked a little bit about all in or nothing, thinking so with many of my listeners, they are busy professionals or women over 40, trying to break out from that all or nothing, thinking. So what tips? And I know you have a lot of in your new book about it, but what? What kind of tips beside those, what we already discussed, would you have? I'll say the easiest thing to do, because life is complex, it's not going to get any easier. We all have messy lives. They all have unexpected elements to them. They make demands on us energetically, and the tires out and exhaust us. So everything we put in place has to be as easy as possible. I always say it's like water. Need to find the easiest path. So I always say, you do what you find easiest to do. If you are in a place where you can do a lot of walking, do that and make that the core part of your activities. If you are already inclined to do something more athletic, whatever that is, do that, but make it as easy as possible for you to do that. So if you take that approach in your lifestyle and say, what is it I can do? Because we tend to focus on the scarcity. We tend to focus on the things we don't have, we say, Okay, I want to get fitter. I don't have time.
• 43:47
  What does that mean? We all have time. Well, we don't have time to get dressed, get in the car, drive to the gym, get undressed, get redressed, exercise, come back to the showers, change, come back home. Okay, that's a lot of time. It's a lot of effort. You have to negotiate the traffic, you have to worry about the weather, you have to find parking space, you have to find the time at home to carve out for yourself. These are a lot of difficulties, so we tend to focus on the difficulties and the things we don't have, and we forget the things we do have.
• 44:16
  And where our own ingenuity as humans, our smartness comes in is asking ourselves, what is it I can do with what I have? I used to travel a lot for my job, I used to present to Fortune 500 executives about specific aspects of what it would be, marketing or decision making, and then it would go back to their teams, and they would fashion the internal strategy.
• 44:41
  And because of that, training consistently, as in a formal way was a problem, and what I did is a device for myself, things I could do with very little space.
• 44:52
  So, you know, if I'm a hotel room again, I can do a lot of push ups, I can do a lot of squats, I can do a lot of kicks, a lot of punches in the air. I can exhaust myself really good workout. I don't need any space.
• 45:05
  I don't even need any clothes for that, right? I'm not hotel room. So I had to devise those things for myself. And when I was going through airports, I did the smart thing, you know? I always walked. I always took the stairs. I tried to do as many steps as possible. So making what I the time, I had to spend part of the physical workout that I would get. I would lift my own suitcase. I would, I wouldn't use the wheels and try and, you know, carry it all the way. In some airports, you end up doing two, three kilometers of that, right? So it's actually quite a good workout. But these are the things which I applied for myself. These are the things we need to think about applying when we have those busy lives.
• 45:42
  Somebody says, Well, I haven't got 10 minutes myself at home because I have full house. I have a dog and a husband and kids, I totally get that. Okay.
• 45:51
  When you go shopping, where do you park? Do you park right next supermarket? Can you park a little bit further? Can you carry your shopping a little bit further in the car? When you have a meeting, where do you park? I have a friend of mine who does something which is.
• 46:03
  Like interior design for something very specific, a very specific kind of material, and he has a little meetings, and you're struggling to with his weight, and because of his his business lifestyle, he finds it difficult to be consistent in his training, because his time is not his way. And I said, Well, you know, where do you park your car? And he used to always Park almost where he had this meeting. Say, Well, why don't you park it about 510 minutes away. So you started with 10 minutes away. That means 20 minutes of walking, 10 minutes I get there, 10 minutes to get back. It's about five six minutes a day. Five six meetings a day. So suddenly he ended up doing like couple of hours of walking every day. It lost within six months, 25 pounds.
• 46:48
  This is incredible. Yeah, it's great. It's crazy.
• 46:51
  It's, it's crazy, it's, it's such just a great practical example. What this all small habits and the ways of thinking like, like you said that we, we tend to think that what we can do instead of thinking what you could be doing and and a good question, what I love always, is to think like that, if, whatever your goal is like, if you because you make these kind of decisions, 1000s every day, like that, Virta, Park, car, what do are you taking stairs? What you are going to eat? Those kind of decisions. And if you, if you start to think that what would in this situation health healthier person, if becoming healthier person is your goal or objective, what healthy person would decide in this situation?
• 47:42
  So of course, nobody's getting those 1000 Decisions Right. But like you said, if you, if you have five meetings per day, instead of parking your VIP place in front of the building where you are basically in at the at the house where the meeting is at, you park five minutes, 10 minutes away. And in this way, you have a you get a 1020, minute walk each meeting.
• 48:08
  You have five meetings per day.
• 48:12
  That's an at least an hour of walking. Obviously, you have time for doing it, but I don't think that it's it's just, if it's not five minutes or 10 minutes, it's two minutes. But everything, these all things stay add up, and it makes in long term. Like, of course, if you do it once, it doesn't make big difference, but once you start to some of these habits, this kind of, what I call, what I love to call, like, one pros and changes, that changes everything, and all of sudden, like, it's not and there's so much, so much studies like, how, if you do that minute workout a little bit more, how that already affects to your decisions when it becomes to food, and then it all all wraps up. And in the long term, amazing things can happen, like losing 25 pounds just basically thinking that, okay, it's just a five minute or 10 minute walk, but it makes, in a long, long run, huge difference. It does absolutely and I love how you brought in other decisions, like, what are we going to drink, what are we going to eat?
• 49:23
  Now, a lot of those fundamental decisions that have to do with food and drink are governed by our sense of stress. So if we are stressed, we have high cortisol levels in our bloodstream. For instance, our body's energy management system is affected. We can't access the stored fat reserves that we need. Sometimes, when we when cortisol reaches a certain specific threshold level, and then we tend to overeat, and that food then goes back straight into a fat reserve. So then we just keep on putting weight on. So by being a little bit more active, we are putting ourselves through an intentional and controlled stressor the brain doesn't have redundant circuits. It deals with physical stress the same way it deals with emotional stress, same circuits. So if we become accustomed to intentionally put ourselves through those things and deal with it, then we are creating the capability of our brain to deal with stress and also the capability of our body to better deal with stress, because our baseline readings are better. You know, our heart rate is down, our blood pressure is down, the fat quantum in our body is down, blood sugar levels in our bloodstream are a lot more normalized. So all those things which would make us feel internally anxious, and we wouldn't really realize it, because we are not as healthy.
• 50:50
  Now that we are healthier, basically allow us to deal with an external stressor. That's a real thing. You know, have a crisis at work or have a crisis at home, we deal with it better because we have margin. We're not operating at the very edge of our capability, and that.
• 51:03
  Then makes us feel more confident in everything, we begin to make better decisions, as you say, and the way we make decisions under pressure is fascinating, and if we get a chance to discuss that, but a group of you know, string of good decisions, that's the meaning of a better life. You become better because your decisions are incrementally better, even though they may be small decisions and a string of bad decisions lead you to a life not so good, where you feel constantly the stress. You're overweight, you're having slept enough, and you can't sleep enough. You can't exercise enough. Your body's getting weaker, and your mind is under constant pressure because of your stress levels. So yeah, those tiny little things, these are the things we can control, and the sense of control we gain gives us a sense of calmness in ourselves, a sense of capability. That sense of capability frees our mind to deal with real problems in a better way, and that, then again, feeds on itself. We become more confident in our ability. We think, okay, we can deal with almost anything I want to. I want to talk like that a little bit still about your book. So okay, that tell little bit about your bill to last, what it what the book is, to who it is, and just shortly by why you made it, it's it's there to help anybody who wants to get fitter and doesn't know how, because they started and stopped. They looked at the fads. They didn't work. They tried the diets, and it didn't work. So there's not nothing extreme there. You know, there's no fad diets, no extreme exercises. It's a complete package in the way that it shows you why. Sometimes the body operates like this and the mind operates this way. It gives you some tips on how to actually make your body and mind operate better so you can make them do what you want. And then also gives you a whole lot of exercises you can do. And the book has 84 field tested workouts. Some of them are designed to, you know, if you haven't got them, if only you have a minute, well, there's a minute long workout. If you only have a couple of minutes, there are some workouts, it's do there for a couple of minutes. If you have 20 minutes, there's that.
• 53:14
  And there's also, every workout is a little bit customizable to your level. So if you are fitter and you've already tried things before, you can actually do a workout and it's pretty hard and it'll push you, and if you're not fit, you can do the same workout at a different level, and you'll find it absolutely perfect to for you. But it has also a lot of mental things, you know, talks about the mindset that we carry. And again, this is, this is really fascinating.
• 53:35
  And as I went looking for this, I found some amazing studies.
• 53:38
  There was one carried out by Harvard University in 2007 and they looked at 60 different, female staff members of hotels who go around cleaning the rooms, preparing for the next guest is in three different hotels. So they had three groups of 2020, of these hotel maids to work with. And what they did is they sat them all down. And, you know, 40 of them sat them together in a group. They gave them all this presentation. They told them, okay, everything which you do as part of your work is exercise. It helps you get fitter. It helps you get and they explained to them how all the different things that did actually help them now the 20 of them, they told them, we just checking to see what you do every day, because we are curious to understand how your work life is. And that's all they told them. So they left them. Then they carried out all these, all these BMI studies on them. They looked at hip to waist ratio, they looked at muscle tone, they looked at fat content, they looked at cardiovascular fitness, all those things which we consider elements of fitness. And then 12 weeks later, they came back, and this is what they found. The groups which had been shown the exercise were actually fitter.
• 54:55
  They had improved the fitness level by 15% Wow. But the group which had been told we just changed checking to see what you're doing, they had shown no improvement, none at all. The biomarkers had not moved. So the group that had, the group that had been aware of what they're doing, now they had lower blood pressure, better heart rate, better muscle tone, better, cardiovascular fitness, lower BMI. It was staggering. And the only thing that changed is their awareness of what they did. And this is what it comes down to, if we know, and it also feeds into what you said about consistency, which I'll explain in a minute. If we know what we're doing, if we understand the importance to us, if we understand that it's fitness related, it has a purpose. It's helping us do something, even if it's something which we do every day as part of our lifestyle or a part of our work, then our brain prioritizes that sends a stronger signal to the body, and the body then begins to adapt, to make the adaptations we which are necessary, which we associate with fitness, and if we don't. Just pay attention to that. Then, because we receive so many external signals, because the body reports to the brain so much stuff on a daily basis, what we did, which could help us get fitter, can get lost. So the brain receives, it processes, it doesn't prioritize, it doesn't allocate resources. So the change is either zero or minimum. So it's fascinating. Oh, yeah, and, and so, you know, you said earlier about paying attention to what we do, like the signal how we should be consistent in what we do. Consistency delivers results. Why? Because it's a persistent signal. If we do something every day, if we exercise in some way every day, we are sending a signal to the brain that this is persistent.
• 56:59
  It needs to change, and because the brain tries to help the body conserve energy in terms of fitness, the physical adaptations, we see stronger muscles, better lung capacity, better cardiovascular system, lower heart rate, all those things. They are lowering the energetic cost, cost of the of the exercise to the body. So you know, if I come and work out with you, and I don't do weights. I'll come and work out.
• 57:27
  You have weights in your basement. You're going to lift weights. It's going to be easy for you. It's going to be hard for me. I'm going to burn more calories, but if I keep working out with you over 678, weeks, at the end of the eight weeks, I'll be stronger. We're doing the same thing. I'll be burning less calories now, but I will actually have bigger muscles. So that adaptation helps me for that movement to burn fewer calories. So it's fascinating.
• 57:49
  Oh yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's interesting, like it's, it's, what is, what, what? I have been talking so many episodes like about tracking, tracking, whatever metrics, if it's my favorite ways, it's like simplest we can track your weight, track your steps, workouts, but by far, my favorite thing is to track your consistency. Like things, what you that it's visible somehow.
• 58:21
  Because if you have, let's say that you have a sport tracker.
• 58:25
  What's something that you your goal is to whatever it's a 10,000 steps, if it's a 7000 steps, but you aim to get to or that your activity band is showing that your activity you are like for me, I saw, I see that it's, it's either I get full dates 100% and if I'm like 96 or something, I Find like 10 o'clock in the evening, I still walk inside of of the house, like couple more steps to get it 100 pros, and it's just I was like, How stupid is that? How our brain is like that you want to actually sit like, hit that goal, what you have, or what some tracker is giving you. But ultimately, it's those small things, they make such a big difference. And if you track your consistency, whatever bowls you have, like it could be eating a big salad per day, eating more protein or or exercise habits that do do your workers. And if you have it somewhere visible, like you can just print out month of the calendar and mark it like with red X in a days that you didn't and some other green, green checked Mark once you did it and once you have it visible, you are an aiming, not perfection.
• 59:42
  But I would say that if you want to reach your course, you should be around 80% consistent. So in a month, 2223 24 days somewhere there. So it gives you still freedom to not do it every single day, or you have a maybe some weekend or something that you want to also enjoy life. But once you aim for that consistency, whatever you are aiming for and not paying those too many posts. It makes such a such a big difference. David, time is flying. I can't we are talking already one hour. I think we could keep going for another hour. I have last four rapid fire I love to use in the end of the show. So more sort of questions before we wrap up this episode. So what is one myth about fitness or longevity you wish would disappear?
• 1:00:44
  I anything which has to do with socio economic conditions which we associate with better health and better longer life, I think, has nothing to do with it. And we have studies on that we know from blue zones across the world, people who live longer in those areas and have five blue zones, five distinct areas. All the studies have been carried out show that basically people there in those areas. Haven't got high income. They still have stress in their life. They have an active lifestyle. They sleep a little bit better than the rest, and have a strong social element. So if you're doing something physical, you're watching a diet, a little bit, getting enough sleep and a social then your health span.
• 1:01:20
  The amount of health you're going to have is going to be longer for longer periods of your life and your lifespan, the years that you have is also going to increase. Awesome.
• 1:01:33
  What is a favorite workout you go back to again and again? What is your favorite workout?
• 1:01:40
  For me personally, because I'm a martial arts background, I like bug work sometimes, you know, if I really want to decompress?
• 1:01:47
  I'll do a full hour and bug. It actually kills me. It makes me feel very humble, because you feel very weak by the end of it, and you realize you're just a frail human being, whatever big ideas you have about yourself, the guard the window. So it's very grounding the book, besides your own or quote that saved your philosophy.
• 1:02:10
  I've read? Yeah, I read a lot, and it's very difficult to pick out any particular book, but one book which has always remained with me, it's something which I read when I was 13 years old, and it's a fiction book. It's called dune. It's science fiction. It's by Frank Herbert, and the fundamental principle inside that is that human beings are capable of guiding their own development once they pay attention to it. And that drove it home for me at age 13, I thought, wow, I can. I can become responsible for my fitness or my health by intentionally guiding what I do so I can be the best human possible. So there you go.
• 1:02:44
  Alright, thank you. What does fitness freedom mean to you?
• 1:02:51
  It means never feeling trapped inside my body, feeling the body is my own, which means that it is free to enjoy life as around me. My senses are functioning properly, my brain is sharp, and I can do pretty much anything I want, physically. And that's to me, is a miracle, awesome. Thank you so much. That was amazing episode where people can buy your book, find you are you in social media, anything you want to share. You can find a book on Amazon. You can find it pretty much on any retailer. You can order from your local bookshop and arrive in a couple of days if they haven't got it, you can find me personally@davidhammerland.com and if you Google my name, all my socials come up. I share a lot of stuff, a lot of insights, which I get from studies. So I'm very generous with that, because I would have liked to have access to that when I was developing my knowledge. So I put a lot of stuff out there.
• 1:03:46
  Awesome.
• 1:03:46
  Thank you so much. I will add links to your what is the best social media platform where you hang out the most?
• 1:03:53
  I'm active on all of them.
• 1:03:53
  You'll find me on blue sky, LinkedIn and Instagram mostly, but I'm also active on x and I'm active on Facebook occasionally.
• 1:04:06
  Alright, I will put link at least to your Instagram account where to get your book in the show notes. So make sure to follow David his work and get his book. So thank you, David for being here. And if you for all those who haven't lived five star review and you enjoyed this episode, please leave five star.
• 1:04:28
  Five Star Review. Those are helping so much to people to find more, more people to find this podcast. And if you know someone who would enjoy this episode, feel free to share it with one of your friend or family member. Thank you very much, Virta, thank you very much for having me. You.