Philip Pape: 0:01

If you're over 40 and have been struggling to get fit despite trying all the diets and workouts, or maybe you haven't yet started your fitness journey and want to reclaim your health, this episode's for you. Today, I'm sitting down with fitness expert Alan Meisner to reveal the five key stages of fitness over 40 that you must go through to transform your health and physique. When you understand these stages, you create a roadmap that clarifies your purpose and your approach to health and physique. When you understand these stages, you create a roadmap that clarifies your purpose and your approach to health and longevity. The best part is that getting this right means you'll actually do less of the ineffective workouts and dieting you've been struggling with, because you'll have a clear path to focus your fitness in midlife and beyond. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:53

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we are mapping out the journey to better health and fitness after 40 with Alan Meisner, host of the 40 Plus Fitness Podcast and author of the Wellness Roadmap. Now Alan is a certified personal trainer, nutrition coach and functional aging specialist who's helped thousands navigate the ups and downs of getting fit in midlife and beyond, and he had me on his show recently and I was very excited to sit down with him again today. Today, you're going to learn about the five stages of fitness transformation after 40, from the moment you realize things need to change to finally achieving your goal and then maintaining it for life. Through Alan's experiences and, in my opinion, his masterful storytelling, you'll discover how to make that commitment and build a system that will give you lasting success, no matter where you're starting from. Alan, my man, it is good to see you again and welcome back to the show.

Allan Misner: 1:46

Thank you, Philip.

Philip Pape: 1:47

This is exciting and I should say welcome to the show, but welcome back to seeing you again, yeah, so let's just start with the moment that someone realizes things aren't quite working anymore. Maybe they've put on a little weight, maybe they're not as strong, they're feeling tired, they don't have the energy. We all have kids and family and obligations as we get older. What is that catalyst for change that you've seen in most people over 40? We're just going to start there. What is that catalyst for most people?

Allan Misner: 2:18

Well, most of us over 40 are getting to a point in our lives where we're in this kind of weird place in the middle. Our kids are getting old enough that they don't need us as much. So if you're a woman, there's that. If you're a man, it's like, okay, the kids are out and about doing their sports, I might be driving them around, and then eventually now I'm handing them the keys and they're driving themselves around. So again, it's that stage out. And then we also get to see our parents, who are kind of forecasting our future, and so if we're living the same lifestyle they live, that's our future. And they're seeing the illness, they're seeing the things going on there. So for a lot of people, that's the point where they're kind of bridging and figuring this stuff out.

Allan Misner: 3:01

Now, I was in a very weird place when I hit my mid-40s, because I was very successful in my career, but I was not successful at pretty much anything else Relationships, health, fitness, all of it. And so while I had started making the decision that I wanted to change, I went through eight years of just yo-yo. Some people talk about hitting rock bottom. I got drug across rock bottom over eight years. Okay, you got the scrapes to show for it, right, right. And so it started like I was sitting on the beach in Mexico and I had forced myself to take a vacation. I should have been celebrating. I was like I've made it to vice president of a Fortune 500 company at the age of 39. That's the dream, right? Well, so I went down to this timeshare. I literally bought the timeshare, sight unseen, pretty much. I just walked in and said sell me, because I knew if I put the money in, I would start taking that annual vacation. So I'm not going to let that money burn. And so I did.

Allan Misner: 4:01

I forced myself to take a week off, and then I forced myself to sign up to take another week off every year, okay, and so I was kind of on my way a little bit, but it was haphazard and it wasn't controlled. And so the next day I was pretty happy because they had beach volleyball on the schedule. So the week the daily schedule was put up and they had beach volleyball every day. I'm like this is gonna to be so cool, because I used to play competitively when I was younger. Well, I wasn't younger, I was in really bad shape.

Allan Misner: 4:30

So I went out to try to start playing volleyball, and this was not the two-man volleyball that I played a lot, or the four-man that I played some. This was like six on six. So this is take a step bump, take a step bump. Just one game of that had me completely wiped out. And so I'm just I'm sitting there the next morning and I'm like what in the hell happened? You know where did I go? Cause this isn't me. Uh, I'm not someone who dies on a volleyball court at 39 years old. And so I kind of made the decision to change right there. I even had someone take a picture of me with my shirt off, which was insane, and if you go to my website and you look at my About Me page, you see that photo. It's also in the book. But, yeah, I was not very proud of that picture, but I thought that'll be enough to make me change. Of course, it was an all-inclusive resort. Alcohol was already paid for, so, yeah, I commenced to drink my ass off for the whole rest of the week.

Allan Misner: 5:26

I'll start on Monday. You know, yeah, you had the idea, but not quite yet, and so I did try, I did try, I would try this, I would try that, I would look for things. You know what can I do? And there was nothing. There was nothing out there that really told me how to train myself, because everything that was out there was well, you need to do what everybody else does. You're just like everybody else. But I did the Insanity workout, just the benchmark test. I bought the DVD set because it looked cool. Shanti is awesome, it's energy. That's a P90. This was Insanity was also. Yeah, it was Beachbody.

Philip Pape: 5:56

Yeah, yeah, beachbody, this was.

Allan Misner: 5:57

Shanti, and so Shanti was just. You know, he's fit. The reason I didn't go with P90X because I had done that when I was younger was that they did require dumbbells and a pull-up bar. So I was like, okay, I can't do that traveling. So I bought these DVDs, I took the time to diligently rip them all onto my iPad and so here I am. I have all the workouts. I said, okay, I'll sit down and do the benchmark test here, so I know where I am. Okay, so I do the benchmark test and it's very, very motivating. They're dancing around, everybody looks great, they're smiling, they're having fun. I'm not having fun, but I'm doing it.

Allan Misner: 6:31

The next morning I couldn't get out of bed. It was like men had just sat there and beat me with a baseball bat all night. I'm just laying in the bed like, oh my God, it hurt to reach over and grab my phone to call into work, because there was no way I was going to be able to get it to work and do my job. So I didn't do a single one of those workouts again ever. They were still on that iPad when I handed them over to IT.

Allan Misner: 6:56

So there's that first period where you don't really even know what you need. You don't know what's going on and it's easy to tell yourself this isn't a problem. Everybody's overweight, everybody's living like this, everybody's doing this, so I'm just like everybody else, so there's not really a problem. Problem and so not to steal. We're not stealing from the stages of change. If you notice, there's five stages we're going to go through. They do align with the stages of change. I was in pre-contemplation for those eight years. I would try something, maybe, or do this or piddle, but I wasn't really in it.

Philip Pape: 7:32

What's interesting, Alan, is and people can relate to this there sounded to be multiple points that were realizations or wake-up calls that you went through, but then you may have attempted to act on it, maybe not, and even when you did, it wasn't right for you, it wasn't the thing that would work and therefore you didn't stick with it.

Philip Pape: 7:51

And so there are these fleeting realizations that probably happen often right Throughout a year, or even a month, or even a day. We're thinking about this stuff often and then it's like what do we do with it? So, even though it's pre-contemplation, you get to the point of taking action, and the action doesn't even seem to get you what you want if it's not the right action.

Allan Misner: 8:11

Right, right. So I remember this because I read this email I wrote years ago, but I was in Malaysia and when I was getting there it was Ramadan. So Ramadan is a season of fasting. They don't eat during the day, they don't even drink water. It's like for 12 hours. They don't do any of that. And so what I was doing was I said, okay, I'm going to have a good breakfast, I'll have a breakfast with some coffee and I'll have a water in there, but I won't let anybody see it, and then I'll eat a reasonable dinner.

Allan Misner: 8:44

And I did that for the first week. The second week, I'm like, okay, now I'm just going to add some walking. I'll walk for an hour. Well, malaysia is very, very humid, so those are sweaty, sweaty walks, okay. And so I did that the whole second week and I was actually losing weight. I was feeling pretty good going home. I flew home and I got home and I spent the weekend. I kept up with it.

Allan Misner: 9:06

Well, like, on Tuesday morning, I'm sitting at work and I start convulsing and I literally threw up and shat on myself at the same time and hit the ground, and they wanted to call an ambulance. I said no, no, no, let me clean up here and then I'm going to go home, clean up, rest. If I still feel bad, I'll go to the hospital. I did go to the hospital later, after I slept a few hours, but what happened was because I had drank so much water and I'd sweated so much, I was dehydrated and I'd washed out all of my sodium. So I was close to going into a coma, doing what I thought was the right thing Quit alcohol, just drink water, exercise hard. It wasn't hard, it was walking, but for me at the time it was hard. An hour of walking and sweating and boom, here I am laying down on the floor, convulsing, almost going into a coma. And so it was that thing of not knowing what I didn't know, thinking I can just do what I've always done, and it didn't work. So you know, for me the next stage started.

Allan Misner: 10:16

I happened to also be in Malaysia, which is interesting. I traveled there a lot, though at that time in my life. So my daughter and I got on a phone call and she said to me, because she was getting into CrossFit and she had just become a level one CrossFit coach. And so she says to me daddy, would you come watch me do a CrossFit competition and I'm like I just felt this pit in my stomach. I'm like I'm not supposed to be a spectator in my daughter's life. I'm supposed to be a participant, I'm supposed to be there with her doing it. Well, I did go watch her. I'm not that bad. I did go watch the competition.

Allan Misner: 10:53

But that was the moment where there was like a click in my head and I'm like, okay, this is a problem, this is hard, it's really hard, but it's not so hard that I shouldn't be able to do it. So what is different between all the hard things I did? You don't make it to the C-suite age of 39, a fortune 500 company without doing some hard things. You don't do what I did in the military without being able to do some hard things. So I was like what makes this different? And that's when the word hit my head. It was like commitment. For For all those other things that I did, I committed to do it and I became fanatical, obsessed with doing it and doing it right. So I knew that's what I needed to do here.

Allan Misner: 11:38

The problem was I was traveling so much that I couldn't hire a coach, a personal trainer, and there was no one doing this online. There were no books, there were no podcasts, there was no nothing. And so I was like, okay, well, I've got to figure this out. So I'm like I guess I have to become my own personal trainer. So I went for the certs you know NASM I got my corrective exercise, fitness, nutrition, the functional aging specialty, all these other things I started doing. And then I started figuring out what I had done wrong all those other times. And so now I had a plan, and now I was starting to train the right way, I was starting to eat the right way and I was able to start making change. But there was still just one piece missing.

Allan Misner: 12:29

And this was when I realized I tend to at that point in my life, I tend to not move unless I have something scary to do, something that's going to force me to really push. And now that I've done this and I've worked with thousands of people, I've come to realize there's five of these mindsets, and I had actually worked through a few of them on the way up. But what I am now, or what I needed was then, was I was an Atlas. Now an Atlas, uh, in my vernacular is the is the book, you know the map book that we used to have when we were younger, not the God holding the earth. But I went out and I said, okay, I need something big and scary. I went out and I said, okay, I need something big and scary, a big goal like something big. So I called up my daughter and I said, hey, how about the two of us sign up for a Tough Mudder eight months from now? I had no business signing up for a Tough.

Philip Pape: 13:22

Mudder.

Allan Misner: 13:23

The 13-mile run in very hard terrain to do anything to move through. And then they're just going to throw in 25 obstacles just to make it fun With penalties too, right? Well, they didn't have the penalties. That's the Spartan. Spartan does the penalties.

Philip Pape: 13:38

Oh, that's Spartan right With the burpee penalties yeah.

Allan Misner: 13:41

That's Joe, but no, so here's the deal. I realize, okay, I have a level one CrossFit coach daughter and I have this thing I want to do and I don't want to just do it. I don't want to go on there and her have to stay back with me or for me to say, go on without me, I'll finish. That just wasn't the personality. I was like, okay, look, I'm going to participate with her on this thing at her speed, she's not going to have to slow down for me. And that's what I did. I started training a lot harder, started pushing myself and over the course of eight months well, really, 11 months total I lost 66 pounds of fat and I gained 11 pounds of muscle, dexascan to Dexascan Awesome At the age of 46.

Philip Pape: 14:28

And that's what we're here for.

Philip Pape: 14:29

So people, are okay, now people are hearing this. Let's rewind just a little bit. You mentioned the word scary and I know in your book you said that your vision isn't necessarily the highest pinnacle you could reach or the most difficult goal you can imagine. It's the precise image of what you want. Your vision should scare you slightly, but you know that's where you belong in your heart. And so when is your vision not scary enough? Because that's what you just said it's like it's got to be scary. When is it not scary enough?

Allan Misner: 14:55

Well, yeah, I mean, some of it doesn't have to be. So one of the ways I kind of talk about it now a lot is I say, okay, what do you need and what do you want? Okay, I live on a Caribbean island and there's not really an ambulance service that you can rely on. So if my daughter, my wife, were to fall and hurt herself or to have some kind of medical emergency and she's laying on the floor and I have to get her to the hospital I suppose about two miles away I've got to be able to pick her up and get her into the car and drive her there. So I need to be physically strong to be able to lift my wife and do that.

Allan Misner: 15:39

I live on an island. I don't actually have a driver's license, so I'd be violating the law in Panama by driving her there, but it's an emergency. I'm going to break the law Sorry, panama, but gonna but I don't have a driver's license because I live on an island. From one side of the island to the other is no more than 14 miles, so I can walk anywhere on this island I want to be, and so I need to be in the physical shape to walk where I want to go. If I'm out with my wife and she says, hey, we're going to stay or we're going to go to this other place, it's like no problem, I'll walk home, I can do that from anywhere on this island. Okay, so I need that.

Allan Misner: 16:18

But what do I want? Well, I want to have an active lifestyle like kayaking. I kind of wish we had tennis courts here. We don't, but at some point we might move somewhere. I want to be able to just step in and start playing that. When I travel back to Puerto Vallarta, which I do about once a year, I play volleyball. I want to be able to play volleyball. So my vision right now, at 58 years old, is to be a very active 58-year-old. Now our daughters got married about two years ago, both of them six months apart. Congrats, okay.

Philip Pape: 16:55

So there's going to be grandkids, and good luck.

Allan Misner: 16:58

There are going to be grandkids and I can tell you the same mindset that I had with my daughter I am not going to be a spectator in their lives. So babies and kids crawl and run around on the floor. They sit on the floor and they watch television. They, when they go to the zoo, they lose their freaking minds and they're running everywhere. I want to be the grandpa that can do that. And then, when they're older, I don't know what crazy stuff they're going to be doing. But you know we didn't have Tough Mudder growing up. You know we had our stuff, but it wasn't that. And so I don't know what they're going to be doing 20 years from now. But guess what? I'm going to want to be the person doing it. So I'll be that crazy 80 year old doing this thing. Like, what are you doing? I'm like having fun with my grandkids, that's what I'm doing. So that's what I want. Now I'll tell you this other story. We might not make it through your whole five stages, but okay. So here's the next story.

Allan Misner: 17:59

My grandfather loved golf. He loved golf more than people. He was a salesman which, back in that day, you went golfing with potential buyers, to make deals. So he golfed practically every day of his life. He lived on a golf course. He loved golf. At the age of 80, he had to give up playing golf because his balance wasn't there, his strength wasn't there. He could not swing a golf club anymore. Now a lot of people say, oh well, he's 80. Okay, last few years he lived till he was 95. So the last 15 years of his life he didn't get to do the one thing he loved most. I don't want that. I don't think anyone wants that, and so if I can fix it, I won't. Now I'll flash forward 10 years. He can't make it from the chair to the bathroom in time when he realizes he has to go and so he has to call down to the care desk because he's in this. You know homes, he's all these little one bedroom houses, apartments. He can't make it down there, so they send someone up to clean him up because he can't even clean himself up.

Allan Misner: 19:04

I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. Okay, so I need to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. Okay, so I need to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105. I need to be able to open my own jars. If I want a pickle, I'm eating a pickle. If you can't open the jar and you want a pickle, you ain't eating the pickle. You get someone to help you and now you're no longer independent, you're dependent on tools and other people and you're in this decline and I don't want that. I don't and I don't need that.

Allan Misner: 19:33

So when I look at vision, is it scary? Well, my side of the vision is not scary at all. I'm wiping my butt, I'm playing with my grandkids, I'm doing any sport that I want to do my entire life, because I build the foundation and I'm going to keep building on the foundation to be able to do it. And so, as you start looking at vision, the value of vision is it helps you forecast your future and the fact that the human body, the most wonderful gift you've ever been given, is your body. It's a machine that you live in that can repair itself and get better. If you do the right things, it heals itself and it gets better. That's crazy good, isn't it? That's amazing.

Philip Pape: 20:19

It is amazing, and it is amazing, and I want everyone to experience how amazing that is, especially at this age, when they don't think it might be possible. Right, that's what we're unlocking here. If you've got one more breath.

Allan Misner: 20:30

If you've got one more breath, you could do something to improve yourself. Yeah.

Philip Pape: 20:34

So maybe to keep us on track with the phases, but naturally segue into the next one. Somebody's saying, okay, this is great, I could do something like I can get a piece of paper and write all the things I need, all the things I want. That's a great starting point, catalyst, for you know, I have some wake-up call that's driving me. Now I'm going to solidify what that really looks like, my future self. But now I have this doubt, I have this self-doubt. I'm critical of myself, I'm not sure of my capabilities. I don't even know if the body can do what you're saying, Alan. And so one of the things you talk about is self-love, and that's one way to empower us. You could take it however you want, but what is the first step toward that next step right? Either embracing the self-love or getting that power to become unstoppable. Know that you can do this before you even take that step.

Allan Misner: 21:20

Yeah Well, anything you do to improve your body is an act of self-love. And so when you define it that way and you're like, okay, I've got this guy in my head, you can bleep me if you need to bleep me. So just fair warning, I called the voice in my head the fat bastard. Okay, that's that guy. He's miserable and he's terrible, and if I screw up he's all over me.

Philip Pape: 21:43

Does he have Mike Myers' voice? Is it that fat bastard? No, no, no, not that one.

Allan Misner: 21:48

No, but he's an evil dude, this bastard, no, no, no, not that one, no, but he's, he's, he's, he's an evil. This was even before that, I think. But this is an evil dude. And so if I let him own the frame of the dialogue, I lose. And so I have to realize if I make a mistake, I have to start with forgiveness. Okay, if I forgive myself, I'm a human being. I shouldn't have done that. I did. I can't undo it, but I can learn from it. And so if I go at it and say, okay, I want to show myself self-love, I'm going to forgive myself because I'm not perfect, haven't met anybody who is. I've heard there was one, but I didn't meet him that way. So you know, you start that way and then you learn from what you've done.

Allan Misner: 22:33

Now, one of the key aspects of this where I think people get lost is they think that they don't have what they need. You know, it's like I don't have willpower, I'm not disciplined, and that's not how all this works. So motivation is not magic fairy dust that shows up and that you hope sticks around. Hope doesn't get you very far, and motivation is not received. It's earned.

Allan Misner: 23:01

And so let me explain how this works, and it's pretty simple, but there's two types of motivation. There's the intrinsic type, which is internal, and there's extrinsic, which is outward, to someone else. So the extrinsic is based on accountability, and so the easiest. And there's two layers there's a leader layer and then there's a social layer. So the easiest way to get motivated is to hire a coach. You're going to show up for that coach. You share your goals, they help you with your programs, and they're there. You show up for that coach. You share your goals, they help you with your programs, and they're there. You show up. That accountability gets you motivated. I don't want to be there at five o'clock in the morning, but I told Dave I'd be there at five o'clock in the morning.

Allan Misner: 23:40

I'm there at five o'clock in the morning. Okay, that's accountability which creates motivation. And then maybe I joined some groups so I get in a running group or I do the spin class or water aerobics class or any other kind of group that's going to help me stay accountable. They say peer pressure and people think peer pressure is a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if you have bad peers. If you surround yourself with good people, like Jim Rohn told us, we become good people. Okay, so find a group and get accountability from them. If you want to do CrossFit, as an example, I was in the five o'clock CrossFit class. We same people, we were the five o'clockers and it was the same people that show up.

Allan Misner: 24:22

They show up every day, for most days, and you just all know you're all there and you see them, hi, how are you doing? And now they expect you there. If you're not there, they might even call you hey, dude, you okay, what's going on? Okay, that's accountability at a social level. Now, that only goes so far, because you get a workout partner and the workout partner breaks his arm doing something stupid. He's not going anymore. Are you going to stop? And for a lot of people, if you only rely on accountability, you probably will.

Allan Misner: 24:52

So what we want to do is we want to focus on the intrinsic. Now, the intrinsic is really cool because that is about self-efficacy, and self-efficacy is hugely powerful. So there's two layers for this as well the leader and the social. The leader level is basically self-management, where you become the CEO of your body and you start making decisions on what you're going to do and what you're not going to do, and then what we do in business and which you know from engineers if something's not working, I've got to fix that process. So I have a failure. I want to fix it. So we put friction in to stop things that we don't want to happen and we take friction away to make the things that we do want to happen easier.

Carol: 25:37

Before I started working with Philip, I had been trying to lose weight and was really struggling with consistency, but from the very beginning, philip took the time to listen to me and understand my goals. He taught me the importance of fueling my body with the right foods to optimize my training in the gym, and I lost 20 pounds. More importantly, I gained self-confidence. What sets Philip apart is the personal connection. He supported and encouraged me every step of the way. So if you're looking for a coach who cares about your journey as much as you do, I highly recommend Philip Pape.

Allan Misner: 26:18

So we build these frictionless and frictioned areas to kind of wall us in and make it easier and easier to do the things we want to do. Here's one example for me. So I wanted to work out. Two o'clock in the afternoon was the best time to go to a gym, so I knew that. So I told my boss I'm going to work, work out from two to three. That's going to be my lunch hour. I'm going to block it out of my calendar. I'm going to do this thing. Obviously, if you need me I'll be here. But I'm going to go work out Now what I needed, and so I would forget a shirt, pair of shorts, socks.

Allan Misner: 26:54

But one day I forgot one shoe, and I don't even know how you do that. I still, to this day, cannot tell you why there was only one shoe in that bag. I do not know. But I just knew this is something I have to fix as the manager or CEO of my own health and fitness. I want to do this. I had signed up for a Tough Mudder, I had to do this. I said, okay, what do I need? I said, well, I got to do stupid checklists. That's what we do. So I made a checklist, everything that was supposed to be in the bag. I laminated it and every evening, when I was brushing my teeth, set the bag out, pull the list out one by one, from the top to the bottom. Everything is in the bag. The list went in the bag. I put the bag right by the door so I would have to either jump over or trip over to go to work in the morning.

Philip Pape: 27:40

Yeah, we would call that mistake proofing right, mistake proofing the process.

Allan Misner: 27:43

Exactly so. It was looking at the process and say how can I make this easier? Because I would use that bag, especially the one shoe day bag, to not do the workout and I'm like I can't keep doing this. And so over time, you're doing this as self-manager, making it easier, you're developing habits and you're developing values. So now, at the social level, you now begin to identify as that person, that healthier, more fit person.

Allan Misner: 28:18

The easiest example I can give you is okay, so someone says I'm going to start a walking program. So they start walking, they're walking and maybe initially 15, 20 minutes, they up it to 30, maybe 45. Then they start throwing in little jogs and then eventually they say hey, and they get a friend and they all sign up for a 5k. And now they're buying shoes. And they're buying, hey, and they get a friend and they all sign up for a 5k. And now they're buying shoes and they're buying water bottles and they consider themselves a runner. They now identify as a runner. And so at five o'clock in the morning, when the alarm goes off, what are runners? Do they run? It's an automatic. They don't even think about not running. In fact, if they got injured and can't run or the weather was too inclement and they can't run, they feel bad, they'd be frustrated, yeah Right.

Allan Misner: 29:02

So that identity of identifying as a person who's fit you've now come full circle. You have unlimited motivation and the person that does the best with this has their feet in all four of them. So you have a coach that's helping you get better at things you want to get better at. You have people around you that are right peers, so the peer pressure is positive and pushing you. You are doing the self-management, so you're making things easier and better.

Allan Misner: 29:29

I get on a plane, I'm going to fly somewhere. I go and research gems near my hotel. I go and pre-look at menus at all the different local restaurants to figure out what foods, where's the best place for me to have dinner, what does the gym at the hotel look like? And if that's not good enough, is there another gym that I can get a day pass for? So a little bit of research, and so you're doing that and then, yeah, you identify as someone. That's who I am, this is what I do, this is how I live. So you have unlimited motivation. It's not something you find, it's something you learn.

Philip Pape: 30:03

Yeah, and I love that mental model with the grid, cause I'm thinking I'm sure you have something that you know.

Allan Misner: 30:07

I absolutely do.

Philip Pape: 30:09

I'll, I'll send it to you, Okay, Is it? Is it kind of self-accountability, CEO of your own body? And the other is relatedness, which ties into the social layer but also the individual identity. There's a lot of cross-correlation here with Well it all is.

Allan Misner: 30:38

The thing is well, you know, psychology, engineering, accounting, they're all systems, and the human body is a system, you know.

Philip Pape: 30:47

Yeah, no. So speaking of that, then it's true, Systems. I heard somebody talking about how they didn't like the word habits because you're creating a system and I'm like, well, that's semantics, but you do talk about this quite a bit. I know in your book you say that it's kind of a lagging indicator right Of maybe all these accountability factors that come first. Does that mean that we put the cart before the horse when we think of habits, kind of in a vacuum, rather than the commitments that lead to what you just talked about, leading to the habits?

Allan Misner: 31:17

Right. So what we're going to do is we're going to go on a particular diet. We need to lose weight. Okay, I'm going to do this diet. Well, you're putting the strategy and the tactics ahead of the brain. Okay, you have to have the commitment first. You have to do some self-awareness first to know okay, am I someone who's going to hurt myself because I'm looking in the rear view mirror and seeing the 29-year-old me that could pretty much do anything. I could tackle a freaking car if I wanted to and not get hurt. Or the guy I am today who will definitely get hurt if I get hit by someone on a trike, if I get hit by someone on a trike. So you have to start working through the mindset stuff of understanding what am I? What do I need? So I, like I said, I have the five mindsets. You can go to 40plusfitnesscom forward slash quiz and that'll tell you your primary one. But I worked through all five of these. I was looking in the rear view mirror at who I was, rather than realizing where I'm sitting and where I needed to go.

Allan Misner: 32:16

There were points in time when I just didn't get enough traction and I wasn't doing it consistently enough to see or feel anything, and so I would just fall off. It'd be like Monday through Friday I'd do great, and then Friday night I would mess up. And then that rolled a Saturday, sunday, and I might start back on Monday, or three weeks Monday, or four months Monday, and so I needed traction, I needed to see it. So I needed gamification of okay, I need to mark something down every time I do this so that I want to run that streak. I want to see more of this. So I was a tires person and then I was a co-pilot early on, and what I mean by that is everybody else's obligations and needs went above my own. The job was first If I had to work a 16-hour day and I didn't get my workout in, that's good. I put in a 16-hour day, but I didn't get my workout in, and I'm sitting at the hotel bar eating my dinner, drinking some beers, because it just didn't feel like doing anything else, but go in, get myself sedated and go to bed, start it over and do it again tomorrow. So you have to do some self-awareness to know what you need to do, and a coach can help you do that, particularly if they're the right kind of coach. But they're going to hold you accountable, they're going to get you moving.

Allan Misner: 33:33

And then that's when you can start figuring some of this stuff out. Do you need to have a list that you pack your bag the night before? Do you need to avoid trying to do too much at one time? Do you need to see your consistency on a map? Do you need to convince yourself that three weeks is not enough time to know that something works? So you start a diet. Three weeks later it's like well, I've only lost two pounds and I actually gained about us three, but I gained one back. So this doesn't work. Quit, put the brakes on, go do something else. Like you're never going to get anywhere.

Allan Misner: 34:07

So you have to at least understand what your tendencies are. And then you meet the fat bastard, or whatever name you want to call your bad boys, and you start saying I need to show self-love, I need to be kind to myself. I need to realize when I'm using those words that I would never say to another human being, never in a million years. If a friend came to me and says, hey, even an enemy came to me and said, hey, I want you to hold me accountable, I would not use the words that my internal voice uses when I screw up, when they screw up, I mean because I would never talk to another human being that way, but he does. He does if I let him. So it's understanding all the psychology and mindset and motivation stuff and getting that all in place and then the strategies and tactics begin to make sense and add value to your life.

Allan Misner: 34:59

So there is a cart before the horse. You have to have a destination before you start driving. Okay, it doesn't have to be a clear destination because I don't have to have the GPS totally loaded, but I do know I have to get out of the parking lot before I can go somewhere else. So I could start driving out of the parking lot before I really know where I'm going. But after that I need to know am I turning right or turning left? I got to have directions before I get on the road and we don't do that. We just say, okay, well, just keep going left.

Philip Pape: 35:28

Right, yeah, so I like how all of these interplay, because what did you just say? Yeah, the direction and the plan, kind of in parallel with the accountability. That helps you gain the confidence that this thing's actually working. And it made me think of in engineering you'll have um, there's a particular guy I'm thinking of. He was an amazing electrical designer, you know could design anything and the joke was that he will design the perfect system to the wrong requirements. You know, if you give him the wrong requirement, that's what he'll design. He'll design the perfect system to the wrong requirements. If you give him the wrong requirement, that's what he'll design. He'll design it perfectly to those requirements.

Philip Pape: 36:02

So there is a sense of upfront having the. If you have a coach, for example, yes, they're going to help you with the nuts and bolts and the direction and they'll help you with all the psychology and the accountability along the way. And there's degrees of this. Right, Alan, Just listening to a podcast like yours will be a great first start, because you're a coach in their ears You're not necessarily somebody you hired, but you're the person giving that sense of wisdom and direction.

Allan Misner: 36:25

But I will say this information is only valuable if you act on it. For sure, For sure. How many technical manuals have ever been written and never read?

Philip Pape: 36:36

Yeah, there's a lot of content binging without the action to go with it. All right. So we've got the realization. Then we have, we have the wake up call. Then we kind of have facing the challenges of starting over. At this age we have the beginnings of commitment leading to the development of system and having accountability. Then we get to the point where maybe things are rolling a bit and we have some momentum, and now we have some sort of setback or life gets in the way, as if life just doesn't always exist right, as if it's supposed to be smooth sailing. But injuries, especially at this age, work stress, family obligations, interruptions to your sleep, you've got kids all of these things are inevitable. So maybe tell us a story about how do we deal with that, because that's super common.

Allan Misner: 37:20

It is, it is, and so there's two stories I like to tell. Okay, so I'll tell the base story that I use and I put this in the book. So you imagine you're driving down the highway and you're on a road trip, you know where you're going, and then you see this sign and it's the world's largest carved beaver. Next exit Got to stop. Right. Of course, I got to see this thing. So instead of going in and having a plan, you just go off the highway. And then you see the next sign Albino alligators, one mile down the road. Well, crap, we got to go see the albino alligators, right. And then you get down there and across the street, is this wonderful, you know best ice cream in all of the Northeast. So now you got to go across the street and have the best ice cream in all the Northeast. And now you've been off the highway for well over an hour and a half when all you intended to do was just see that damn Bieber.

Allan Misner: 38:15

Okay, so we're going to have detours, we're going to go off path. Now, sometimes they're important. So if my buddy called me up and said hey, alan, I'm going through a tough patch right now and can we just sit down and have a few beers and talk. Guess what I'm going to do. Even if I'm training for something, even if I want to cut weight, I'm going to go have a couple beers with my friends. Now I'm going to buy the best quality beer that bar sells. I'm not going to do crap. I'm going to get a good IPA, good beer. Okay, I know a lot of people don't agree with IPA, but I love IPA.

Philip Pape: 38:47

There are two camps. It's okay. You're allowed to have. You're allowed to like inferior beer, it's all right.

Allan Misner: 38:53

Anyway, but I'm going to go have beers with my friend, and so that's not a necessarily planned detour, but I can have a plan of how I'm going to do it. It's like, okay, I'm going to have a beer, and then I'm going to have a water, and then I'll have a beer and then I'll have a water. Okay, so that's the plan. And then tomorrow I, just when I first get up, make sure the first thing I do is drink water. Okay, not going for the coffee, because I'm up a little later and I'm going to want the coffee. Have the water first, water before coffee, so I'm good and hydrated, and then I can go to the gym and do what I got to do.

Allan Misner: 39:29

Okay, I don't have to skip that workout if I manage my hydration. Okay, I might be a little tired because I didn't get enough sleep, but I'm going to make it work. Okay, that's the plan off, plan on. So if I went in and said, okay, there's the wooden beaver, what we're going to do is go, we're going to stop, we'll get the selfie, and then we're going to go into the bathroom, I'm going to fill up with gas and we'll get right back on the highway, that would have been a successful detour.

Philip Pape: 39:48

Instead of just letting it carry you along.

Allan Misner: 39:51

Letting. Yeah, I screwed up, I'm off, I'm out, so having a plan going out and a plan coming back in. And so I was 51 and I was getting ready to do a Spartan. I'd signed up with a Spartan because I wanted my brother to do it with me. I have brothers. My youngest brother is 25 years younger than me, but this brother was like 13 years younger than me. So at the time I'm 51, he's in his late thirties, and so I'm like we're going to do, well, let's do this Spartan, and that is the one with the penalties, the penalty burpees, and so we're going to do it. And then it turned out that his daughter was having a recital that weekend, so he wasn't going to go. So I'm like, okay, I'm doing it by myself. But I was training for that.

Allan Misner: 40:34

I hired a coach. Yes, coaches should hire coaches. I wanted to get strong. So I had a strength coach and Dave was a really good strength coach. This had nothing to do with him.

Allan Misner: 40:44

I was trying to do dumbbell, overhead presses, military press seated, and I was stupid about how I got the weights up and I really didn't need to be pressing 80s, but I was, because Dave's a really good strength coach. I got really freaking strong and I tore a rotator cuff and I knew when I did I'm like, okay, that's like tore off the bone or that's not even connected anymore. I knew it and so I told him. I said, okay, dave workout's over. And he's like what happened? I said I think I just tore my, I tore my rotator cuff. He's like, oh, oh, no, man, I'm like, okay, no problem. No problem, I'll see you on Thursday. He was like what I said? Well, I won't be able to do presses, but I could probably do everything else because I was still going to do the Spartan. I'm an. That was the push. You know, I'm gonna do the spartan. You got one more arm and you got two legs. I got the other arm and I can't tear it again. Yeah, it's true, I feel you man, okay now. Uh, it still hurt a lot, but I kept training and the training itself.

Allan Misner: 41:51

We didn't do any presses. We tried a couple different things like using the sm Smith machine and changing angles and doing declines. None of it really worked. And so I went and did the Tough Mudder and then I went in and saw the surgeon and I told the surgeon I said I tore my rotator cuff. He says how do you know? I said I know. And he says well, let's take an x-ray. I took the x-ray. He says yeah, it looks like you did tear it. And then he did a couple of strength moves, you know. He put your arm up. He said push, push, pull. He said yeah, it's pretty much tore. I said yeah, pretty much tore. He said they, you know, the insurance companies want to send you to PT. I said that's not going to do any good. He said that won't do any good. He said I'm going to ask like okay, he put it in, they got me to do the MRI. It was yeah, I was shredded, it was gone. And so he's like okay, we're going to go in for surgery.

Allan Misner: 42:46

I went in for surgery on Thursday. I was out and in PT on Monday. So I walk into PT on Monday and the PT guy's like well, when did, how long ago did you have the surgery? I'm like Thursday. He's like you're already here. I'm like yeah, this is, this is my on-ramp. Okay, it's time to recover.

Allan Misner: 42:59

The detour was the surgery and now I've got to get right back on the highway. So that was my plan. I was going to do the tough. I'm just going to do the Spartan, because I was dedicated to do the Spartan and I did it and it hurt like hell and I got it done. And then I'm like, okay, now I get the surgery and I'm on ramp and every bit of homework he gave me I did. I understood why I was doing everything, everything I was supposed to. I literally was probably his best client because I could just I just walk in and say same workout as last time. He said, well, I want to add one exercise and he'd show me how to do the exercise. And boom, I just do the whole workout by myself. Okay, he put the ice cuff on to cut the, to basically bring down information after the workout. But I did all the workouts myself. I got all my but.

Allan Misner: 43:44

But the core thing was, because I had done all the training all the way up until the surgery, I never really lost much range of motion. So they lay you in there and they start measuring range of motion. He's like, he's like I know you're in your 50s, but you've got the range of motion at this point that I've never even seen in athletes. What did you do? I said I just kept training. I couldn't do any presses, but I could do pulls, and so my arm is. You know, I just grab hold of the bar for lat, pull downs and sit down and it stretched my arm and then I could pull. So my arms never didn't go through the full range of motion. I never put myself in any kind of sling to avoid the pain because I knew it was already tore. I couldn't tear it again.

Allan Misner: 44:30

So I did all these things knowing that that's my plan during this detour, and then my on-ramp is to get my PT done as quickly as I possibly could. I got through because my range of motion was back to about 100% within three weeks. He's like I don't even know if we can start strength training now, right now, because I've never put anybody strength training in just three and a half weeks. So let me talk to your surgeon. Surgeon says well, alan thinks he can do it. He can do it, do it. You know and that was the other thing If you get hurt, get the best, get the best PT, get the best surgeon. Look for someone who works with athletes. Yes, and don't just tell them I want you to fix me and make me stop hurting. Tell them you want to be back to performance of where you were before, and a good surgeon and a good PT will get you there.

Philip Pape: 45:22

Yeah, I can relate to all of that because I also had rotator cuff surgery last year and I have my deadlift. Harness was one of the fun toys early on. I'm like I got a deadlift, but it wasn't there with two arms quite yet. So let's get creative. I think the point here that you're saying is these things are always inevitable. They're probably quite yet. So let's, let's get creative. I think the point here that you're saying is things, these things are always inevitable. They're probably more inevitable as we age. And there's something you can do. There is something you can do. Don't make, don't make excuses for yourself, and it's not like a yeah, just get out there and just be reckless. It's figure out a way around it to move forward. I do like that specific advice about finding PTs, doctors, trainers, all who understand lifting and athletes. It makes a massive difference. They'll be aggressive when they need to be and they'll also understand why you do what you do, because the other guys just don't have a clue.

Allan Misner: 46:08

These are guys that did the division. One football team in town, they get it, they get it. And so when I walked in and said, no, I performance, I don't care about pain, I care about performance, they're like okay.

Philip Pape: 46:20

Yeah, so all right. So full circle back to the. I guess we're we're kind of in the last stage here.

Philip Pape: 46:25

I don't know, we'll see how the show notes tie up with all these, uh, what we're saying here but you know some is someone has gone through this process. At this point they're definitely getting results of some kind, both physical, mental and then deeper results. I'm sure that surprised them along the way they get to this point. Maybe it is a fat loss phase, maybe it's something more than that, maybe it's performance related. People always ask how do I maintain that? Now? That mentality probably comes from the quick fix weight loss of like you lose your weight, you gain it, you lose your weight. We're not doing it that way and I would argue that it's almost easier to maintain something when you've done it this way. But tell us, how do we reground ourselves? Maybe have a new goal, have a new kind of thing that pushes us to the next level?

Allan Misner: 47:07

So yeah, that was one thing about my book that I wanted to make sure I got into, because so many people think, well, yay, race is over, go back to eating fat food and then you'll end up having to do this whole thing all over again, or maybe. So what I did? I called it CARGO. Okay, so it's an acronym and the C means celebrate. You should be very proud of yourself for doing this, because so many people don't. If it's weight loss, I want you to think about one billion people on this planet are obese. I saw that stat the other day. Dr Lahnke's book and it was like that just floored me and then I realized how right it was. I mean, just even in the United States, there's over 100 million obese people. That's insane, but it's getting worse.

Allan Misner: 47:54

So you've done something that a small fraction of people like you're in rare air. You're a very special individual if you've lost a substantial amount of weight, because most people don't, and most people don't keep it off. But go ahead and celebrate Now. This is not celebrate with a jelly donut or cake or a bunch of alcohol. This is celebrate yourself. Or a bunch of alcohol. This is celebrate yourself. You've shown yourself this much self-love and you're at this point because you did something important. You did hard things and you should be very proud.

Allan Misner: 48:28

Now, after that, you need to realign yourself. So the A is about alignment, and what you're going to realize is that you feel different. You are a different person. This change that you went through was not just a physical change. It changed who you are as a human, and other people are looking at you differently. You may even have a whole different new set of friends that you didn't have before. Okay. So just recognize that you will be treated differently based on where you are, and you have to accept that. Okay, the next is to sit down and recalibrate your GPS. Where, where did you? Where do you want to go next? A lot of times, people will climb out of a hole. I was in this hole.

Allan Misner: 49:14

I was over 60 pounds overweight and I climbed out of the hole and I could have just stayed there. But there's this mountain in front of me that I can also climb. So we go from dealing with a problem or despair to aspiration. So what do you really want? You know you could lose 30, 40 pounds, but what do you really want? Well, I want to wear the jeans that I wore in college. You still have those old things. Yeah, pull them out. Pull them out and get ready. That's your new thing. I'm going to be wearing these jeans by February. Tell yourself that, set that as the standard. That's your new vision. Okay, I'll be wearing the same size jeans when I go to my class reunion next year. I'll be wearing the same size jeans I was wearing in high school. Okay, set the goal, set the aspiration. Okay.

Allan Misner: 50:04

So you recalibrate your GPS. I'm like, okay, I feel good at 205, but I'll be optimal at 185. That's where I want to go. And then go. That G-O is go, go, do it.

Allan Misner: 50:17

And this is a cycle that you'll just roll over and over and over. So, if you look at, what we emulated here is the cycle of change we went from pre-contemplation. I didn't really know, I had a problem. I was okay with it, I was accepting it To recognizing I have a problem in contemplation, to determination or preparation, which depending on which one you look at. But basically this is where you make the decision, where you really commit to doing something. Then you have action, then you have maintenance and then it's a cycle. Now, the cycle doesn't always have to go in a positive direction, but if you do this right, you just keep cycling through.

Allan Misner: 50:56

Okay, I want to get the fastest speed for over 80 in the a hundred yard dash. I want to continue to play tennis and beat the kids when I'm 80. I want to be doing whatever crazy thing my grandkids are doing when I'm 80. So you kind of get the idea that this is just these cycles of your life. As you go through, we age and we don't want to follow the curve, the way the curve is taking us. We see where that curve takes us. It's illness, it's chronic, it's horrible and we lose our independence along the way. I don't want that. So it's a loop. I don't have to do another Tough Mudder, so that's not my loop anymore. I have to carry five-gallon bottles of water all over this place.

Philip Pape: 51:49

That's what I have to do fun and I think it opens up more options. When you have all these loops, you may you may have the setbacks, like the surgery, but it just you know, you have the confidence from your past cycles of this that you can then go for something else. So, yeah, I love that recalibrating, not not only climbing out of a hole. You've done that.

Allan Misner: 52:09

Now it's just the sky's the limit, I mean no-transcript pieces of advice that I think are kind of wrong. And one is just start, and I used to think that was right, but now I know, just think Really, get your head straight first, because if you just act and you just do the thing, you won't stick to it because you haven't built, you haven't made it easy enough. So fix your plan, have a plan and execute on the plan. In that order Okay. And then the other one that people like to do is just for exercise, just do something you enjoy. And I think that's a bad one too, because if you, you know, I I enjoy laying in a bathtub, but that's about as strenuous as I would want to get if I just did something.

Philip Pape: 53:22

I'm so glad you said that, because that ties with the doing hard things. I'm so glad you said that. Nobody likes back squats when they start, but when you get good at it, you start to.

Allan Misner: 53:31

I want to. If I want to be able to wipe my own butt when I'm 105, I'm going to have to be able to do squats. I'm going to have to have the dexterity to twist and do the paperwork, and then I'm going to have to have the speed and agility to be able to get up from where I am and make it in there in time. So there are fitness aspects of everything we do in our lives. Train to be that person. Be fit for task, and if the task is making it to the bathroom and wiping your own butt, that's the task. Train for it so you can keep doing it.

Philip Pape: 54:03

Yeah, and I think a good physical analogy is when you go to the gym and do a set, you're always doing something harder than last time. It's never going to be easier, but that gives you the results. So I mean a good analogy for that. All right, I love that. So just start is should be really just think, you know, come up with a plan, fix it, go after it and then just doing something you enjoy should be. You know, choose hard things, do hard things and maybe you'll enjoy them, maybe not, it doesn't matter. Almost it's going to give you the result, but you'll enjoy the things you do enjoy.

Allan Misner: 54:30

Like you like hiking and you build stamina on an elliptical machine because it's six feet of snow outside when a season comes around, you're going to have the stamina to do the hiking you want to do. So you do hard things, so you can do wonderful things.

Philip Pape: 54:46

That's great, Alan. Where do you want listeners to find you?

Allan Misner: 54:49

Okay, well, the 40 Plus Fitness Podcast is available. Wherever you're listening to podcasts, including here where you're listening to wits and weights and I have the website 40plusfitnesscom. That's 40plusfitnesscom, and all my stuff's there. You can links to the book, links to the podcast, link to everything I do Love to hear from you. So come out there and say hi, and I hope you get fit and healthy and enjoy your life.

Philip Pape: 55:17

Awesome. I'll include those in the show notes. Everybody here go follow 40 Plus Fitness Podcast, because he gets into all the details, the nitty gritty, all the training and nutrition stuff, as well as mindset psychology we talked about here, and he's going on 600, well over 600 episodes, so you guys will love that. Thanks again, alan, for coming on. It was a lot of fun to do the back and forth with you. Appreciate your time.

Allan Misner: 55:37

Yeah, thank you, philip.