137. Progress Note #14: 2023 Reflections, Morpheus Heart Rate Training & Holiday Weight Gain

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Darsha, and I'm Dr. Altamash Raja, and welcome to Medicine Redefined. A podcast where we will explore the often overlooked but necessary components of health, what we consider to be the fundamentals. We will investigate topics and practices that can give you and your patients the best chance to optimize a healthy lifestyle. It's time to move the needle forward and put the health back in health care. Welcome back everyone to Medicine Redefined, it's 2024, so happy new year to you all. I know it's been a long couple of weeks, not having an episode, just pop right up in your podcast player, but no fear, we're back, we're here in 2024 and have a lot of things coming up and we're super excited to delve into it. But what better way than to start 2024 with thinking about our previous year in 2023? And so that's what we have lined up for you here to start off our conversation in this progress note. We're going to talk about the main lessons that we learned and how we can use that to build momentum going into this new year. We'll also talk about this new fancy technology that Altamash and I have bought into called the Morpheus, which is a heart rate training system, so we'll give our insight into that and you can decide whether it's maybe worth it for you to delve into. And then last but not least, we're going to talk about that holiday weight gain, which you know, the holidays are now pretty much over and hopefully you got to enjoy, you ate what you want, maybe you were on a diet, regardless, 2024 is here. And if you did put on a few pounds, that's all right. We can always work on shedding that weight in this new year. All right. Let's get to it. All right. What's going on, everyone? Progress note 14 here. It's got Altamash here. How you doing, man? I'm doing good, man. It's been a while since we've been done this, so I'm excited for this one. Yes, yes. You know, we thought about a couple of topics that we can talk about over the last two weeks, let it severed, you know, in our thoughts and yeah, definitely excited to get into this topic. Topics. You know, so let's start with our reflections of this year, 2023, also kind of turned into a new year's episode then, about maybe what we've learned about our own journeys, the things we've tried, and you know, I think we'll do another progress note in January where we can talk about, I think, trends and kind of what our goals are for 2024, but at least I think it'd be good to kind of hear our reflections and that way the listeners can also kind of join us on that journey as they think about maybe they're a progress or things that they need to change going into the new year. Yeah, yeah, like it. You want to go first? Yeah, yeah, yeah, let me thank you. So the biggest thing for me, I think, is that I realized I have been, you know, I've been steadily making progress as far as like strength and things, and as a recent, it was more of, you know, let me get more cardio involved, and I was listening, you know, to that Andy Galpin episode with Dr. Huberman, and we start to hear these experts talk about having more balanced approach to training. That was something I was definitely getting more interested in. So, you know, we'll get more to that with kind of the Morpheus training and all that. The other thing I realized is kind of, but just about data, right? I mean, there's so much data out there right now in the world with any wearable that you choose. So, you know, I had the wound, I had eight sleep. You got Apple showing you steps and other data, and I got to a point where I realized what worked and what didn't. And I wanted to focus not necessarily less on my own health, but not thinking about my own health as much if that makes sense. Like every day was like, get up and, oh, what am I going to do with the gym today? Right? I was like, my first thought all day every day is like, what's that win? And now it's been more of, okay, I know what works and doesn't work for my recovery for sleep, for nutrition, you know, all that type of stuff, that I can now just go into the gym, simplify it, get simple data that works, and stick with that. And you know, that's the biggest reflection, I think, that has really just helped me maintain and actually get my goals is, you know, simplicity is the ultimate for perfection, as DaVinci would say. Oh, I like that. I don't know if I've ever heard that one before. Just don't, man, I think, yeah, I mean, I would probably put multiple buckets in terms of things that have really, that I've changed my perspective on quite a few things. I think obviously the training and the health perspective in terms of how we approach nutrition and exercise and that kind of stuff, we spent a lot of time talking about that because those are foundations, you know, from a career perspective, we've, I think this year talked about one year and as attending and that growth and we spent some time talking about the transition light of the internal, so to speak. And you know, from a personal and family relationships standpoint, too, that I think about, as you see, I threw this thing behind me of kind of recognizing that time is the ultimate commodity for me and it's not necessarily finance is what not recognizing, very privileged to be able to say that. So blessed in that regard. But I think kind of just to piggyback off you with training, the value of neat right non-exercise activity thermogenesis, I think it's tremendous. So people are probably familiar with this, at least listeners of this show and we've talked about these studies that come out over the last couple of years, showing the daily step count, right? There's kind of this inflection point and when you get to about 8,000 steps per day and really it doesn't matter. Perhaps it's just an easy metric for us to kind of track in terms of activity, right? But the other thing that I think from the Galpin, the Uberman's user, you're talking about exercise snacks, remember those that they talked about? Really love that, right? Just a 60 minute belt of something, excuse me, 60 second belt of something, that's not much of a snack visit, of something really intense throughout the day. Whether it's like sprinting up to places, just hopefully take you 60 seconds. But you know, just quickly drop down and like, I don't know, do like 50 push ups or whatever the challenge is for you or just how, you know, 50 jumping jacks or something like that. To introduce that during the day, I think that actually, it's, the role is severely under appreciated for people. So that's something that I've been very cognizant of, particularly the last quarter of this year and I'll kind of mention to you what I noticed in terms of like the physique transformation in that regard. With the career standpoint, yeah, I stand with this. I talk to students and residents and trainees that I work with is like, it doesn't really matter how many years of training you end up doing because people ask me work with a lot of medical students that, hey, like, should I do a four year program or a three year program? Like I think of a really close friend right now and you know, she's considering emergency medicine programs and she is, you know, as you know, EM is either three year or four year, four year, the academic programs and recently I was like, listen, you should not be doing a four year program because you're ready to practice, not in the sense that you're ready to be attending tomorrow. But it doesn't matter whether you do a three year program or four year program, you're going to leave and you're going to come become attending and you're going to feel just as ill prepared. And that first year, year and a half and two years, which you're going to find out soon, that learning curve is incredibly steep. So be patient with yourself there. You're going to mess up a lot. You're going to have a lot of imposter syndrome. I'm a pretty confident person and I'm lucky that I've had an experience that, but I think as an attending, I so much imposter syndrome that a difference is of empathy for the people who don't kind of project that type of confidence, such as I do. And then from a personal standpoint, the timepiece that we talked about. But I'm actually curious to think about this because you're your fan of Sahal Blum as well, you know, Sahal Blum, I think recently had a kid, so I mean, he's probably a year, two years or somewhere in that range and he just talks about the value of spending that time. This one thing that he has on Instagram all over the place where he shares that you're your kids, a favorite person for the first 10 years of their life, right? And afterwards, like they have new favorite people, whether it's a boyfriend, girlfriend, other friends, but you no longer are the most important person in their life. And so the emphasis he's trying to make is, hey, cherish this time, don't waste it, right? Like don't do other crap that you think is important, but it's not important. But in the same respect, I think there's another point, either a podcast or maybe a series of messages that he had where he's talking about the value of hard work that he appreciated by watching his father grind and not being there for dinner sometimes and not being there for X, Y and Z. And I mean, those things are kind of an odds with each other if you think about that. Yeah, because it's fantasy world. We're like, okay, you know, when I'm working late and it's 7 p.m. and I know I got to get home, but like, you know, I got to get this paper in or I got to get these notes in or like, there's something to follow up on. And that's something that I've actually spent a lot of time thinking about, so I'm actually curious to see if that's something that you were familiar with and how you would think about that. Yeah, it's interesting. You mentioned that that concept I've seen everywhere now. So I also saw a clip on Instagram of Tim Grover, you know, who coached Kobe D. Wade, Michael Jordan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he talks about how his daughter, you know, and she was really young would say, oh, daddy, can't you stay home, please? And he was like, sorry, I got to put it on the table, you know, and 20 years later, again, she appreciated the fact of seeing him grind. And, you know, he talks about how that was instilled in her. Tim Ferris recently just had a guest on and he was talking about, there was this great quote, I need to find it. But essentially the concept was, every day we wake up as humans and we can either choose or try to choose to enjoy and, you know, enjoy the day and reap the benefits of what we sowed or go out and create value to the world, right? And there's this internal struggle that every human has is this concept of time and saying, well, you know, in a thousand years, nothing's going to matter who cares of the value that I put out. Let me enjoy it versus, you know, going out and making the world a better place and feeling like you've done something before you've passed. And so, yeah, I think it's, I think, again, I'm going to go with the Gary V. idea here of you have to do both really, really extremely hard. So that way, when you stretch the rubber band on both sides, it snaps back to the middle so that you have that balance. But yeah, I don't think there's one right way to look at it. I think it is important to kind of do both of those things and, you know, through action, through guidance, through words to the kids so that they learn both sides of that, of that spectrum. Right on, dude. Yeah, yeah, I love that balance of that, that keyword, right? There's the buzzword always hard to, hard to obtain. But I guess, good to strive for in really everywhere. And again, the thing we talked about with Kelly start it way back when balance is kind of your brief, very, very brief period in the pendulum's kind of in the middle where balance is, quote unquote. And so, yeah, I think that's, that's really realistic. Again, life is dynamic, life is fluid, and you kind of have to roll with the punches and they will regard, I plugged that in for shadowing because this kind of makes me become fan more of a Morpheus, which we'll have again talk about. Yeah, yeah. It's super excited to talk about that, we've been using it. So, maybe anything else in terms of reflections in 2023 as we're winding down that you, that you think is something really, really valuable. If I could ask you, I don't know, you're going to hate this because we're context people. If I could say, hey, Darce, give me one thing. Okay, screw it. Three things. I'll give you three things. Three things that you think are the most valuable things that you learn from this year that you would pass on to somebody. Let's just say, because, you know, we have interns who are in undergrad, right? So less than 10, or more than 10 years down from us. So, those guys are listening. I know they're listening right now. So, three things that we're talking about in terms that we'd pass down. Ooh, this is a little tough. Okay, let's say once, have self-respect, I've truly found, I think, that is the meaning of life. The purpose of life is to live life on your terms, right? Which leads me to my second one is being outlaw, right? You can follow the rules and, you know, you can be good or you can go far by breaking, like not breaking the rules, but creating your own rules. And I mean that in the workplace, I mean that in your own personal life, I mean in your relationships, like you don't have to follow a step-by-step guide of whatever people are putting out there on social media. And so create your own rules, which will help you with, you know, better clear thinking. And then third thing I'll say is sit down with yourself, it's all ties in with a self-respect, but at least 10 minutes a day, it can be through form of meditation or whatever, but just get away from all the stimulus out there. I think we're heading into a world where people are struggling with mental health because they can't sit with themselves, they can't internalize their thoughts because most human thoughts are going to be depressing because it's about survival. And when you have Instagram, when you have TikTok, when you have work, when you can constantly find something else for, you know, input into your mind, you're just not going to be able to validate your own thoughts. And so you got somebody else controlling you. Amazing. You always nail those questions, man. I like the self-respect one the way when I heard you say that, like what, you know, what's the spark that I get in my mind is kind of, with self-respect, like identify what your core priorities are, you know, or core priority is, and then fight to the nail to try to protect that guard because if you don't, then other people were going to come and just completely take that away from you and just divert you in all kinds of directions, particularly as you advance further and you gain knowledge and you have stuff to offer to people, take, take, take, take. And so you have to know what North Star is and stuff and, you know, don't let people like push you off that lane too much. Sure. I mean, every now and then of course, but I think that's something that I've been struggling with and I'm also working on actively and I'm getting it better at. Yeah. Nice. And so that's 2023 number one, I think for me, number two, I would say, don't be so short yourself. So that's another way for me to say, be open-minded, right? I think we've talked about this a lot. I think still it's pinned on my feet in terms of being kind of open-minded and different approaches to different people. I mean, so the most recent thing comes up, right? I mean, that's top of mind for everybody. You know, people get ready for the elections, people are getting ready for, I mean, you got this war going on over overseas and how you, however you end up defining it and people are so sure they know what the facts are, what the answers are. We're going to have a guest coming up that we're going to talk about, at least some of this. And so I would just say, you know, don't be so sure. You probably, like whenever you think the story started, it probably started before that. So that's the other one. And then lastly, I would say, hmm, I would say, you know, I think about something, Macshank way back on the archives. You're really going back there, man, Kelly Sarat, Macshank. Well, you know, people say good things and they stick with you or they come back to you is again, as you did in different phases in life, right? Just like books and stuff. I think quotes come back to you. Remember, Mac's talking at some point about, you know, people all are striving for a few things, right? It's power, love. I forget what else I, but I think the no matter what a person's going through, whether it's pain, you know, whether it's anguish, whether it's joy, whatever, typically love is a central thing. I'm just going to sound some, might turn some people off here. But I think so identifying the closest to you, again, we talked about Sahabuluma second ago, right? He has this really amazing graph series of like how people spend time, like, you know, over time, like, you know, how much time they spend with their kids and friends and family and work and that kind of stuff. And so with respect to love, also learn how to love yourself because the most time you spend over the end, that graph is with yourself, right? Like incredibly. You can't love yourself and you can't love the person in the mirror. That's going to be very, very difficult. So yeah, I hope we don't lose many people there. No, I think that's great. I think that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about what we're excited about, man. And before I think we get into the goals, we'll close with that. Let's talk about Morpheus. Maybe you started with this, I'm curious, like, why was this on your radar for a while? Like, when you picked it up and maybe start with like telling people what the heck Morpheus is. Yeah, except from the guy from the matrix, right? So Morpheus is a heart rate training system, heart rate, variability training system, right? So it's actually a chest strap that you wear every morning, you check your HRV and then you wear it during your workouts. And so essentially, it's teaching you how to be in your targeted heart rate zones. So in the recovery zone, right, with lower heart rate, you want to be in there for a longer time. And then there's conditioning zone, which we know, probably zone three, zone four, which you want to be in, you know, about 10 to 20 minutes. And then there's an overload, which is where you're really pushing yourself, your heart rate is going to be close to your max. And that's going to be a little bit less than even that conditioning for me. It's about, you know, six to eight minutes. And so every week, it gives you these targets to hit. And the whole purpose is to promote recovery, it's to promote training. And the cool part about it is that every day, you know, if you have a low recovery, it's going to change. So you'll get your targets will be lower. So for instance, by wake up, I've great recovery in order for me to get in that middle zone, I might need to hit a heart rate of 150. But let's say the next day I wake up, I recovery a shot, maybe like 70, 60, 70%, that 150 will go down in order to hit that zone three, zone four, maybe to 140. And so it's really individualized, which is nice. And so you don't risk over training. And it really, honestly, by using it, I feel great. So let me kind of give the backstory. You know, you're talking about it wasn't on my radar. So I first started hearing about Morpheus, just new Instagram, right? I didn't even know who Joel Jameson was, but he seems like, you know, he's a big time player in the strength and conditioning world, training a lot of MMA athletes who are world champions and things, and his programming is supposed to be fantastic. But what's funny was I, you know, I was talking about my reflections, I made tremendous strength gains, right? To the point where I'm like, I don't even know if I really need to do anything above and beyond where I am now, right? I'm pretty advanced in terms of like all my lips. And I realized I wanted to get back to cardio. The 30s, I wanted to get back to being lean. I was a really good track runner back in the day. I wanted to get back to that kind of, you know, VO2 maximum conditioning and whatnot. And I saw a thread from someone who wrote, you know, men usually suffer from cardiovascular disease compared to women. And they're the ones who should be, you know, doing more cardio than weightlifting, whereas women suffer from osteoporosis or osteopenia, and they should be the ones, you know, incorporating more weightlifting. And I was like, obviously more context needs to be there, but yeah, pretty true, right? And so I was like, maybe I do need to incorporate this a little bit more holiday sale was there for Morpheus. I saw that it's not subscription base. It's one time pay of like, you know, around $100. It was like, amazing. Let me try this out. And I knew having a heart rate monitor would be more accurate than, let's say, the whoop. And for those who've been long time listeners, you know, I've been wearing the whoop. But again, as I mentioned, I just, I didn't need that much data. I want to limit data. I'm very data driven, but so I need to target any numbers like hit. And so this was the perfect system for me. Yeah. And you posted about this too, right? In terms of gamification of the process. Right. I mean, gamification usually always makes these types of things more feasible in terms of enjoying the process, right? And, you know, if the process is going to be fun, you're likely to stick to it. And if you're stick to it, consistency is at least the outcome. So that's just me taking the fun out of everybody for you. Yeah. Big bit of background on Joel Jameson. Joel Jameson, I think we've, we've mentioned this before in the strength and conditioning or performance realm, like people have a little, a little niches, right? Right. You have Eric Cressy with the shoulder and a level of baseball, right? Dan Pope, all those guys, right? They're kind of like well-rounded performance rehab that been here. But Joel Jameson, I think 15 to 20 years last time, like his whole thing has been conditioning. And he's working with every single elite level, including Navy SEALs, UFC, and like other people you mentioned. And again, optimizing their conditioning, like also as a consultant to come in, it's like, how do we get somebody over the hump, right? Again, people at the top 0.01% already. So yeah, I mean, he came up with this and this is not, I think, his first rendition. He's come up with other products in the past before and so I've followed his work and he is somewhat unique philosophies too. But I think this is the first time that we came up and started to appreciate recovery a little bit more. I think my favorite part about this is kind of, you mentioned that it's so dynamic. So as we mentioned, I think one of the most profound lessons for somebody to learn in terms of their growth of training over time is that you have to be flexible. And you know, for people such as us who are very much type A and probably most people who listen to this and they like to be regimented, they like to be data driven, like you talked about, and they like to have a plan. And what's really difficult and makes you feel like you're losing sense of control is when you have to veer off the plan because life came and hit you in the face. And there's no better way to experience that than having a kid. And so me getting that sense of, okay, I like that. And then something letting me know that, okay, all right, this is not the day for you. This is not the week for you. Not only will the day shift, but the whole week will shift now, you know, getting used to to that aspect of it, like that psychological piece is still somewhat challenging. But I think because this game applies it, that makes it a bit easier and facilitates that psychological transition. So that's my favorite part of it, I think. I've only been using it for a week and it was pretty recommendation. I'm a huge fan of it. I don't love the fact that during the strength training zone, it doesn't necessarily give you. So that's a little bit annoying, but I do full body workouts, which end up being heavy cardio workouts anyway. I'm always in my conditioning zone during my stuff. So that works out. But if I went to more of like an upper lower split or body parts split, like I don't know if that would work out well. So that's what I'm a big fan of. I'm also like finding it interesting in terms of the feedback that I get, because I always thought that like sleep, I mean, look, I'm not going to tell people to sleep is not important. But you know, I thought that like, okay, if I'm not going to certain hours of sleep that I should automatically adjust my workouts. And with getting this data, like you're like, no, no, I can actually still push myself. Despite me feeling like subjectively, I haven't gotten the quality of sleep that I thought I did, right? And I think that's another huge benefit of that. It's like, no, no, you actually slept better than you think you did. I think we've talked about recall bias being such a problem for nutrition in people. I think that's the same thing with sleep, to be honest with you is, you know, recall bias is not very good in terms of did you sleep poorly, do you sleep, you know, that could, for me, interestingly, it's about the timing of the day, like, like I might have mentioned this to you before. But like if I get eight hours of sleep between the hours of midnight and eight, it's far less optimal than getting six hours between 10 and, you know, 10 and six. So that's not, that's bad math, sorry, 10 and four. So that's another interesting piece that I've learned, like, okay, it's actually shifting the timing of training and waking up and stuff might help me get less sleep, does that make sense? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think it's important to note that I think the Morpheus is way more subjective as far as taking your subjective data. So the quality of your sleep, how sore you are, and the hours of your sleep into your recovery score compared to, let's say, a group and maybe even aura, where it's truly just based off the day prior, the week, and, you know, how hard you work down and whatnot of your strain score. So which I didn't realize, remember, because I remember we had an episode of Get With Who It Was, and you were really talking about the readiness score and how that's a big, big factor. And so, yeah, I've definitely realized that, hey, if I feel good, like, okay, cool, I can, I can crush it, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, yeah, I'd be curious actually to compare this with my aura ring to see kind of, because again, you also noticed like the HRV numbers are always different. Because I remember you asking Luisa about this a while back, because with your whoopee, we're constantly in the fifties, yeah, 40, maybe mid-forties, I'm in the seventies now. Yeah, I'm in the seventies. And I saw you recently post about this, you're in the seventies. Yeah. So I don't think all the stuff calculates, and I'll tell you why, like my HRV with this is around kind of in the eighties and stuff. And there was a point where the aura ring would register me, I think my peak was 194. So, you know, either, I mean, it's something legendary happened with me that one night or like, but I was always in the hunger spider. So I think, yeah, they, I think that the way the report is a little bit interesting. So I think that's also something people should keep in mind, is like, it doesn't translate one to one with, with these different data, you know, data or feedback devices. I want to go back to kind of really quick about the, the, the need part that I was talking about, you know, one thing, you know, I really, Luisa, were less year or two with like all the transitions in life and being a dad and whatnot, maybe some excuses. But I learned of just like incorporating, you know, in terms of, I went, I was a went on vacation in Canada when I told you and I ended up taking like a hundred thousand steps that week and doing, making no other changes, including no significant exercise because I was like dealing with some back issues. Just that type of activity, I mean, I came back from vacation and I was like six pounds lighter, right? Like now, granted, I had a lot of way to lose and there was, you know, not all like body fat. It's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying what I've noticed is actually, you know, not to to my own hair, but in the last two months and 19 days, you know, 21 pounds from just, just honestly making subtle changes and being more cognizant of like how we're approaching training and just being pushing yourself. And obviously like it really depends on where you're baseline is if you're, you have a lot to lose. It's going to be far easier. We're not going to make this a physique bodybuilding thing, although that's going to come in the very new future for 24 for people. So stay tuned. Um, but yeah, I wanted to also like again, emphasize that the knee piece of it because people do struggle with it. You and I both treat people who are in pain and cannot push themselves in exercise and it's, it's just really, it can be simple, simple as perfection as you say that who says full tear? D'Vinci. D'Vinci. Sorry. Good. I do love old hair though. We do. We both do. Sweet man. So anything else on that front or if not, then we could kind of look ahead and see what's coming up exciting. No. Yeah. I think no. I echo everything you said. I feel like even my aesthetics and things like I feel good incorporating that cardio and of course, there's that time. And two, I mean, we talked a lot about the interference effect and you know, that gives something, the nitty gritty of things about zone two or zone five. And maybe we can save that for another day with someone who is more of an expert than we are to kind of talk about that for those, you know, advanced athletes or anyone that's listening to this podcast about really optimizing their cardio in with their strength training. But yeah, let's let's transition kind of into your goals. I know you could you just mention a lot of weight loss and stuff, but what are you doing right now as far as your training goals? I know you're preparing for something. Yeah. So I'm going to, you know, I'll kind of break this into micro macro cycles. I think for me right now, I'm kind of working on this physique, think to kind of get back to see where, where we can get to in terms of a reasonable body fat percentage, particularly with me, I do struggle with a little bit of the visceral fat and obviously, I've got that with South Asian right, we got the adipose overflow tissue adipose tissue overflow hypothesis going on. You know, but I've got pretty extensive cardiovascular history and stuff. And I think, I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but at some point, like I consider to get on a statin as well, I'll talk about that maybe a different day in terms of my experience and whatnot. And so I'm incentivizing that regard because I just, you know, bottom line for people, I didn't tolerate it well because of the some of the side effects. And so I'm like, okay, well, maybe, maybe if we don't, we get this handle and we don't need to be on some pharmacological agents. So from the personal standpoint, that's, that's awesome. I think that I would say I'm really enjoying being as strong as the lean as I've been in the last two to three years. And so we're going to continue working on that probably for another two or three months until we get to a point where I want to shift gears. And again, my friend who I was mentioning earlier went to go support the Philadelphia Marathon. Dude, I've done a, I've covered a lot of marathons before in the tent and that's a different experience when you're covering it or like you're supporting as a fan. It's wild. How like the whole city comes out of support is it's really, it's a really interesting experience like, you know, it's cheering for people that you've never met and you probably will never see again, but just like you're cheering like you, it's awesome. But anyways, like after that, I got so stoked and I was like, man, I got to do something. Now, no freaking way I'm running a marathon. But there is a charity bike event that's going to be from Philly all the way down to the shore in Jersey, which is going to be about 65 to 70 miles or so. And again, it's for like a man's a cancer society coming up in June. So I'm going to start training for that. You know, it's not a race, of course, in my mind, I need to, I need to crush it. So, so that's the main reason it's like right now for my Morpheus goals is maintaining cardio and then probably around February or so four months out, maybe March, we'll start to really push it. I'm going to invest in a bike as well road bike, which I don't know if you know they're expensive as shit. By the way, they're very expensive. So, so yeah, and that gives you something to kind of, again, look forward to to train for a specific purpose and you know, switch it up. Yeah, I like that. Nice. Where are you? Uh, no, training for life still. I'm still going to be cutting for a bit, you know, but we'll see January. I think to February, March, maybe continue on the kind of physique stuff and we'll see where I am as far as where I am strength wise. But yeah, I think, same for me, right, a lot of the cardiovascular history. So got to check in with my doctor, maybe I'll do some more tests, kind of check my omega three again and help you a little way and or not the healthy well with the ApoB and what not and kind of see where to go from there. But 30s, man, it's always like, all right, 30s are the decade for getting, getting the house in order in a way, so. And then maybe 100 or kind of on the health and fitness cake there, but you, you, you wrap up training. Yeah, you're going to be done in 24 wrap up training. So, uh, you know, I should we tell people where you're headed? Oh, yeah, they know for the stage episode, I think, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be exciting. Awesome, man. Um, well, uh, yeah, it's been a while. I feel like it's been a long, long time since we've done this one. So, hopefully people are excited to kind of learn about some of the reflections and lessons and, and, you know, we'd love to kind of hear from you guys to see what your goals are. And if anything that we've talked about here before has influenced how you've thought about something and you want to also, again, feed back for us. What's going to happen is you want to, I know you wanted to talk about holiday dieting and stuff. You know, did you want to get into that? Um, well, so this is a personal thing. And I think, um, I've heard, uh, EC Sinkowski talk about this at some point. It's interesting, um, you know, because the data clearly shows that most people, you know, I think most people will kind of say they'll get in a lot of way and then like New Year's resolution, you're like, we've been doing this since the dawn of time, right? But, uh, the data kind of shows that most people end up putting on, um, like a, you know, a couple of pounds a year after their 30s, maybe as soon as that until like, you know, they get to the, they're like, five to six decades. But majority of that weight has actually gained in the six-week period between Thanksgiving and like New Year's. Wow. Okay. And people don't end up, most people don't end up losing it, right? Because for the reasons you mentioned, 30s, 40s, it gets to be far more challenging in terms of priorities and being time poor. And so I think one strategy that I know has been successful for a lot of people, and I'm finding this to be incredibly successful, and I think about this until like, I was at a holiday party last week when a colleague came up to me, like, man, you're looking fit. Shout out to Ali if she's listening. But, uh, and she's like, what, like, you know, what are you doing? Everybody's going in the wrong direction. You're going in the opposite direction. And I, because I think, again, motivation, short-term motivation, I think most people can find that, like, yeah, let me get on this 30-day thing under stuff like that. But if you strategically use that 30-day period, understanding the willpower might be limited, motivation might be limited during the hardest period where the data suggests this, you know, and most people end up struggling, being around cookies and stuff like that. And you just get through, and you weather that storm, I think in the long term, in my mind, I think that might be a really, really good strategy, right? Like, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to quote unquote, die it or be really lock it down, you know, mid-November to mid-January, and use the weather that storm and understand that at some point it's going to be hard to continue fighting that. But if you're not exposed to the parties and all that kind of stuff, and like, I got to pop like this Friday, and, you know, that's all going on this time. So, and again, I've heard this strategy, it's not my idea, but I've heard this has worked for other people, but now I'm personally experiencing it, and I think it's a smart idea. Yeah. And also, all for an alternative, because I do like that idea, but like for those who want to go out and enjoy, like, some people just can't get out of these like holiday events, and then the willpower you're right there, it's like crap, they don't have that hard rule, right? So, Tim Ferriss, Sharon Parriss, they always talk about having hard rule. Maybe it's no alcohol on the weekends, but you can enjoy whatever Monday through Thursday and that way you're eliminating it in these parties. Adam Bourne's theme's book, you can't really screw this up. I mean, I read that about a couple of months ago, that's really changed the way I look at my own nutrition, because, you know, even, you know, I want people to understand even like with us, right, body dysmorphism thing, stressing over healthy food and making sure you're getting what you need is stressful. And his whole principle is removing the relationship between what you're eating and the chronic stress that you're building around it. And when you negate that, when you disregard that relationship and you allow yourself to eat and be, you know, have what you want, you actually tend to be more healthy with your other choices. And that was like the biggest breakthrough for me, where I was like, man, I was stressed in so much and that chronic stress in itself is not good. And I've been creating these negative, like, and loopholes or, you know, feedback systems by this chronic stress, thinking about foods that I shouldn't have and it leads me down and then I give up and I keep going. And so for those people who like want more information on that, it's very simple book, nothing groundbreaking, but the principle behind it was like, man, you really can't screw this up. You know, obviously you got to create rules and things, but don't be so hard on yourself goes back to the self-respect and love yourself. Simple as perfection, huh? Keeps going back to you. Just right. Love it, man. Yeah, another thing I think it's worth disclosing for people and something we're super excited about. So I think most people have known that we've had some amazing interns. So shout out to Harita Yapuri and Ethan Zhu who've been really helping us out and get the word out. And our team's growing. So we've doubled in size over the last month. And so Zana, Lugmani and Zara Han are also going to be helping out and we've got some exciting things down the pipeline in terms of some content creation that I think as our team, excuse me, as our team grows, that this experience is going to be valuable for you, the listener. So hopefully you guys will enjoy it and if you don't and you hate it, you'll let us know sooner or later so we can finish it, but yeah, yeah, so I'm pretty stoked about that. So 2020 looks exciting, promising, so definitely look forward to it. All right, buddy. Till next time. Yep. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Be sure to check that the show notes for a full list of resources mentioned in the show. If you enjoyed this episode and no others who would as well, share it and help us spread our mission of adding the health back to health care. Also, we would love it if you could rate this podcast on your preferred platform or even on our website at medicine redefine dot com. Last but not least, we want to thank our team for the production of this podcast. Karita Yaypori on social media, Ethan Jew on video, St. Neville of money on research and Sarah Khan on outreach. As always, our medical disclaimer, everything in this podcast is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute the practice of medicine and we are not providing medical advice. No physician, patient relationship is formed and anything discussed in this podcast does not represent the views of our employers. We recommend that you seek the guidance of your personal physician regarding any specific health related issues. 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