150: Uncovering the Secrets to a Happy, Healthy Life: A Conversation | Jason and Colleen Wachob

on today's episode of the Real Fudalgy Podcast. Anger increased the chance of a virology by 34%. So if you take a step back and look at that, I don't think this is the New York Times as an anomaly here. I think this is symbolic of media. If someone read an article and that article caused that person to be angry, it was more likely to be read and shared. And that's that. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of The Real Fudalgy Podcast. I'm your host Courtney Swan. And today's guests are Jason and Colleen Wacob, who are the founders of Mind Body Green. Mind Body Green is a website that has been around for, I believe around 10 years now. And their sole purpose is guiding people towards lives of greater meaning, connections, fulfillment, and purpose supported by a vibrant community. They for the longest time have been such an amazing resource for me for all things health and wellness. And really just better men of my health. If you guys are unaware of the website, please definitely check it out. It is a great resource. But it's actually not why they're here today. They came on to talk about their new book, The Joy of Wellbeing, which is a practical guide to a happy, healthy, and long life. And what a great book this is. We talk about their own personal health journeys that brought them to founding Mind Body Green and also to writing this book. And we talk a little bit about your why and really fighting to figure out what your why is and staying connected to it as a way of really helping you to stay on this healthy journey, this path of really taking care of yourself. I think this is an important part of the health journey is really staying connected to your why. And then we talk about the eight different practices that they write about in the book that help you achieve 80% of your maximum health. And I'm not going to share any of those with you right now because I really want you to listen to the episode. This was a great episode. I really enjoyed recording this with them. Jason and Colleen are just amazing people. I've known them for probably about five or six years now. And I just love connecting with them. And I think you guys are really going to enjoy this episode. There's a lot of really great, great sound advice that's really accessible and super applicable for everyone. So I hope you guys love the episode. Definitely check out the book. Again, it's called The Joy of Wellbeing. And I hope you guys love the episode. As always, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast. It means so much to me and it's really helpful to the show. And I just want to take a moment to say I really appreciate you listening. It really means a lot to me. Thanks so much guys, sending you so much love. There's nothing more comforting than a warming cup of hot chocolate before bed. I know coming from me that may sound a little counterintuitive because you're probably thinking how is hot chocolate healthy for you. But I've got a little hack for you and it's called Organifies Gold Chocolate. First and foremost, the most important thing here. It has one gram of total sugar in it. So you get the satisfaction of having a comforting cozy little sweet treat after dinner without all the loaded sugar. And it's like with this one, you get a two for a two for one because you also have the added bonus of things like turmeric, lemon balm, turkey tail. There's also magnesium and there's racie in there. So whenever I drink this at night before bed, it gets me really sleepy and ready to wind down and it really improved my sleep. There's also a blend in there that helps with digestion. There's acacia, cinnamon, ginger, black pepper, and turmeric. So if you have this after dinner, it's also going to help with your digestion and it's going to get you ready for bed. My favorite thing about organifi products outside of them being all organic, they're also glyphosate residue free. If you have listened to this podcast long enough or paid attention to my Instagram, you know that glyphosate is a huge, huge concern for all of us in this country. Glyphosate is a known carcinogen that is being sprayed. It's an herbicide. It's being sprayed on all of our crops that are not organic and it's also being leaked into organic products as well, organic foods. So this glyphosate residue free stamp is so incredibly important and it's one of my favorite things about organifi outside of their actual products, which I love. If you want to try this hot cocoa from organifi or any of their other products that I mentioned today, make sure that you go to organifi.com slash real-foodology and you are going to save 20% in your order. Again, that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash real-foodology. Did you guys know that over 70% of sodium in the US diet is consumed from packaged and processed foods. When you adopt a whole foods diet, you are eliminating or hopefully eliminating these processed foods and therefore sodium from your diet. Now, the solution is not to reintroduce processed foods in your diet, but by not replacing that sodium, you can actually negatively impact your health and performance. If you guys listened to my episode, The Salt Fix with Dr. James Deneck, we learned that sodium is actually a really imperative mineral for the body. Sodium helps maintain fluid balance. It's an electrolyte, so it helps keep stress hydrated. It also aids in nerve impulses. It regulates blood flow and blood pressure. It's incredibly important and if you're eating a whole real-food diet, chances are you're probably not getting enough sodium. Also, this is probably going to be a shock to hear, but if you aren't just drinking water without adding minerals back into your water, you're not actually hydrating. My personal favorite way to stay hydrated throughout the day is through drinking element every day. That's L-M-N-T. It's a delicious tasting electrolyte drink mix that has everything you need and nothing you don't, so that means lots of salt, there's no sugar in there. It's formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and is perfectly suited for people following keto, low carb, and paleo diets. It has a science-backed electrolyte ratio, a thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium. I drink one of these every single morning. They have a ton of amazing, super delicious flavors. I know a lot of us listening are avoiding natural flavors, so they also have an unflavored one, which is my personal favorite. I love to put it with lemon, but if you want the flavored ones, they have a great variety of different flavors, and they have given me an awesome offer to share with you guys. You guys can claim a free element sample pack when you make a purchase through the link. The link is drink element that's L-M-N-T.com slash real-foodology. In the element sample pack, you're going to get one packet of every flavor so that you can try all of them and see which one is your favorite. I hope you guys enjoyed as much as I do. Again, it's drink element dot com slash real-foodology. That's drink L-M-N-T dot com slash real-foodology. Jason and Colleen, I'm so excited to have you guys on the podcast today. Thank you so much for coming on. We are thrilled to be here, so I'm so glad we get this time to catch up on all things. Yes, thank you so much. Yeah, me too. Thank you. Before we started recording, we were talking about, I really want to start, I want to dive into this talking about the importance of finding your why, and I shared it with you guys. I see this all the time on Instagram where I get these comments and I get these DMs from people and they're like, why are you trying to live till 100? Why are you so focused on living for such a long time? We're here for a short time, you know, have a good time while you're here. I want to talk about the importance of finding your why, and also that it's so much more than just about living a long time. It's a good question, and for me, it's a bit of both because men and my family have a terrible truck record with longevity. I'm 48. We have two little girls. My father died of heart disease at 47. My two grandfather's also died. They didn't make it to 50. One died of heart disease at 49, and the other cancer at 44. And so with two little girls, like, I want to, one, I want to be around. I want the years. However, that's not enough. You know, and I think I look at it as the 1.0, the 2.0, and the 3.0. The 1.0 is lifespan. Like, okay, let's get you to 100. Then the 2.0 is health-spat. You know, if you're at age 100, you want to be mobile. You want to be active. You want to be able to do the things you want to do. Maybe that's being a grandparent and being able to like pick up a, you know, 30 pounder without, you know, something breaking. You want to be mobile. That's really important. And then the 3.0 for me is the choice, what we like, joy span. So like, life span, health span, joy span. Because what's the point of, you know, living to 100 being healthy, fit, and active for as long as possible, if you're not having fun, if you don't have meaningful connection, if you're not having joy in your life. And so to me was, it was time for this conversation to really get to the why. Like, what's really important? And we open the book with this question of how do you know when it's time to change your life? And my personal story and my why at the time was one of those breakdown moments that ended up being the breakthrough moment when I had a pulmonary embolism when I was in my early 30s. So, doing all the things you think of of a quintessential New York life, demanding job, went out to eat a lot, did a lot of intense exercise. And then one morning when I was leaving Tara Stiles's strong yoga class, which was a Saturday morning ritual, I called Jason after class and was like, I'm having trouble walking. Can you meet me in the city? I'm a bit out of breath. We decided to head home because it was hard to walk. And then I ended up collapsing on the subway steps home. And then I did what so many people do as soon as I got out of the station. I, I gaslit all my symptoms and was like, I'm totally fine. I'm dehydrated. That was just weird. I didn't want to go to the ER. That felt like a really big deal on a beautiful Saturday in New York. And so I didn't listen to my body. And I napped the rest of the weekend. And come Monday morning, Jason was like, you are not going to work unless you head to the hospital on the way. So the doctor. So I went to the doctor and within a couple of minutes, he's like, you're having a pulmonary embolism. And at that point in time, I didn't know what it was. He gave me a little sign that said, I'm having a pulmonary embolism so that when I got to the ER, I could articulate what was happening. And in case I didn't make it there, someone would know what the issue was. And when I got there, I had showers of cloths in my lungs. That was how my wellness journey started in terms of having this breakdown moment where I didn't listen to the whispers in my body that something was a little bit off. And I had to get to this breakdown point to start making changes, which started this wonderful game of Marco Polo of trying everything from Western practitioners to healers and things completely outside my comfort zone to try to get a better understanding of what a well-lived life meant to me. Fast forward. And when a 32-year-old has a pulmonary embolism, there's battery of tests that are done. And I learned that I don't have any pre-disposition through genetic factors to clotting. My clot was likely caused by being on the birth control pill, which I had been on for about 10 years. And I asked, I was going to ask, wow, God, that's so scary. It is. And I'm not as current on these statistics as I was at the time, but I believe they say the clotting risks around one in 10,000. And when I wrote an article on my buddy Green, that one viral, it felt like it happened to a lot more than one in 10,000 women, as so many people had stories of a sister, a cousin, an aunt, who had also had a pulmonary embolism. And a lot of times with very tragic consequences. And I remember when I went on birth control in college, I was at the Student Health Center, and I filled out a multiple choice test about how to not get pregnant, essentially. But they really diminished the conversation on risks. And I think because I wasn't a smoker, because I wasn't severely overweight, I didn't think it was something that could happen to me. And obviously, this experience has shaped so many of my viewpoints. I'm not completely against pharmaceuticals, but I'm a lot more thoughtful about the ones that I do put into my body and better understanding the risks. But that was the start of my well-being journey. And fast forward now, we have two kids who are four and six. And what's very top of mind for me is this mental health crisis that affects all humans, boys and girls, but especially teen girls, they're having a particularly rough time. So that is how my why has evolved. And I think as we go through the seasons of life, our why has evolved. But what's become clear, you know, of having two kids is we only have 4,000 weeks on earth. And I want to be able to enjoy these life experience with them and create incredible memories, you know, that are that are full of a lot of joy along the way. You know, I tell people this often, what keeps me going and, you know, fighting for my health and eating healthy and going out of my way to do all these different things like, you know, prioritizing my sleep and exercise and everything is being so connected with my why. And for me, I want to be for as long as I'm on this planet, I want to have fun and I want to have the freedom to do what I want to do and I want to have energy. And when you have energy to do what you want to do, you're not feeling achy and inflamed and sick all the time. That's freedom because you have freedom to do whatever you want to do. You know, if you have kids, you have the energy to go out and play with them or do whatever, you know, you want to do with them, you have more energy and more cognitive function to show up for your work. So you're better at your job. I mean, the list goes on and on. And so for me, when I see those comments, I'm like, you guys are completely missing the point. Like, of course, I want to be here a long time because, you know, I hope to have kids and grandkids and I want to see all them live out their lives as long as possible. But also, like, I don't want to feel like shit every day, you know? Like, that's really a big one. And so finding that why and being really super connected with it is what will keep you motivated on this healthy path to stay, you know, to stay on that path. All nuance is just completely lost on social media, right? Yeah, it's crazy. So, okay, so in your book, you guys talk about, there's eight practices that help you achieve 80% of your maximum health. Can we go over those? Sure. So, you know, we really wanted to, like, if you take a step back, you know, what's the major objection to health and health and wellbeing are our world? There are a few. One, I don't have the time. Two, I don't have the financial resources. And then three, you know, I can't, I'm not going to be successful. And we totally get it. And we're in this business, you know, I'm talking, talking to somebody who's wearing a weapon or a ring and we sleep in and ate mattress and the whole thing. And we totally get it. And we thought that what's so great about how the science and longevity has evolved is it's led us to so many practices and modalities and dare say protocols, which are low cost or no cost effective. And anyone, anyone can do. And that's, we're like, you know what? There's something to talk about here because we get the objections. And if we were to like prioritize like, okay, time, money, resources, let's start with breath. We're breathing all of the time. So breath is the first chapter. And we're breathing no matter what. If you're not breathing for a couple of minutes, odds are you're probably not going to be with us. And half the population is breathing wrong through through their mouths when you should be breathing through your, your nose nasal breathing. And we breathe between 17,000 and 30,000 times a day. And there's a downstream effect effects. Our response to anxiety affects how we sleep. It affects our immune system. You know, we filter out the bad stuff when we breathe through our nose. So there's an element of protection there. And it just seems in terms of like ROI and something we can implement immediately like breath was number one. So we started there. And you think about too how many people are anxious? You know, a lot of people are doing these really shallow mouth breaths. And that's directly connected to your anxiety. I mean, if you're feeling anxious and you just take a moment to just take a really big breath through your nostrils and do that a couple times, it is wild how much it calms you down. I mean, you've had on the reason that I'm so drawn to nostril breathing, as someone who runs a little anxious and has for the past 43 years on this planet, is that it activates that rest and digest system. And, you know, of course, throughout the years, I've tried literally every meditation and breathwork mortality. But in current state, I need something that I can activate right now. It's not something I can carve out at the beginning of time. And the end of the day, I need it for those stressful situations and meetings for those stressful moments. And in the mid event on the way to school. And that's what I love about nostril breathing is that it delivers in real time. And you see the effects immediately. You were going on. So we were talking about breath, Jason. I think the next one is sleep. And again, we were, you know, we prioritize in terms of impact and problems. And this is a big one more than a third of Americans don't get enough sleep. Yeah, if you go a few days without going to the gym, even without eating your vegetables or getting enough protein, you're going to be okay. But if you go a couple of nights without sleep, you could end up in the hospital. It happened to me in my early 20s when, you know, some anxiety around a work presentation just kind of spiraled out of control. And I didn't sleep for three nights, went to the hospital. They gave me a Xanax. And that was where my sleep etiquette conversation kind of started and ended. So I've been, you know, really immersed in, you know, figuring out my own sleep. And of course, the great irony in that is, you know, one of the first things sleep experts were telling you is not to stress out about having a good night's sleep, which when you're in it, you're like, that's like the most frustrating thing you've ever told me. But, you know, there's 50 to 70 million of us who do have some sort of sleep disorder. And, you know, the most common one is insomnia. And, you know, kind of an overarching theme of this book is that we think we need to spend more time talking about these time tested, you know, kind of advice that's backed by science. So we can all agree on things like, you know, having your bedroom be at a cooler temperature, being mindful of your caffeine curfew. So that means the time at which you stop consuming caffeine for someone like Jason, he can go a lot later than I can. I have to move up that caffeine curfew. Super early in the morning, otherwise it will have a profound impact on my sleep. We have to be mindful of whether, you know, what is our sleep anxiety? If reading emails before work stresses you out, it probably makes sense to move your phone into another room. And even having an alarm clock has been shown in studies to exacerbate people's sleep anxiety. So I think we have to really understand kind of where we fall on this pendulum. But at the same time, we don't want it to overrule our lives. So there are parts of our life where we quote unquote break all the rules. We love watching television in bed. It brings us a lot of joy. It enables us to kind of remove ourselves from the wellness world and step into these worlds of curiosity, get our brains going. You know, I don't think we knew much about Formula One and tell Netflix took over and it was that just brought us a lot of joy. You know, an alcohol is one of the most heated, I feel like topics in our world these days with so many people on both sides of it. And of course, if you don't drink, you probably shouldn't start. I'm someone who can have alcohol, but I've also realized it can have a profound impact on my sleep, which means if I'm going to drink, it's probably going to be a margarita lunch and not right before bedtime with dinner. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I love so much about you guys's approach. You guys have always been this way. And what I've loved about what you guys have done mind body green and everything is that you, you're really good at presenting the facts and showing people like, okay, you know, these are the things that we should be worried about our health and pick and choose what really works best for you. Like, this is what the science has, but also like, maybe this will work better for you because we are at the end of the day bio individual. And so you guys, and I are very aligned in that sense that like, you know, you've got to find that balance of pursuing your healthiest best self, but part of that means doing the things that you love and that bring you joy. So like, yeah, the science says that we probably shouldn't be watching TV before bed because the blue light and, you know, all this stuff and yada yada like, okay, we know that and like, maybe we don't do it every single night, but also like watching TV before bed brings you joy. For me, honestly, I love a glass of wine sometimes, you know, and I'm just like, obviously, I'm not going to be drinking every night and I do it pretty rarely, but like, I just sometimes just a glass of wine just brings me so much joy. And so you have to find that balance of the things that you really love and that bring you joy, but also making sure that it doesn't become detrimental, you know, long term overall for your health. Absolutely. And as a process of being able to tune into your body to actually understand what it means, I think if 15 years ago someone said, listen to your body, I would have been like, what? You know, it's telling me to have another margarita. But as you go on this journey, like, really, you do have to be the CEO of your own health and well-being. You have this amazing orchestra of voices, of experts, of people who are, you know, offering suggestions of what has worked for them. But as you said, like, we're all bio individual, we're all grown-ups. Let's figure out what our body needs, not just to live, but to really thrive and have joy along this incredible life journey. Because we do think, look, restriction is always, or elimination sometimes is part of someone's healing process. That makes a lot of sense. But we also think it's crossed over to become the entire process for some people. That's not a process that becomes a lifestyle, which really isn't a lifestyle. And I think it creates a lot of misery. I think it creates expectations that are never met and ultimately creates failure. And I understand why outsiders looking in, look at health and wellness and say these people are crazy. I can't do this. Yeah. And our goal with this book and why we didn't call it the joy of wellness is wellness has become a bit militant and a bit restrictive. And we want to move it to a conversation of well-being. That's a bit more mindful and a bit full of more abundance. I love that so much. And I think a lot of people will resonate. And like Jason, you were saying that people might think that we're crazy. But if they actually understood that we're more seeking balance and it's not about, I mean, there are people in the wellness community that are just addicted to healing all the time. And that's where I'm like, okay, at some point, you got to just, you know, like, you got to get to a point where you find a little bit of balance because it's also super unhealthy to be in those insanely restrictive states. And like you said, Jason, to your point, yeah, there are times where like if you're really dealing with something serious, that's when you have the really serious interventions. But otherwise, we can't just be constantly healing our entire life. You know, like we also need to enjoy it and find a balance in it. And I think that's where the algorithms just don't marry up always with intentions because once, when people have built a brand and beat a built a following, we know that there's this interesting dynamic that now exists in wellness and well-being of tribalism, where there's a fervor side that shows that the same religious fervor that people have in, you know, religion now as we become less religious as a society gets displayed in their health and well-being, in their CrossFit, in their fervor over Pilates. And so it can be really hard when people are like, wait, I've evolved. This is now working for me. So, you know, Jason always says the only thing to be rigid about is being flexible. I love that so much. I love that. Okay, so what's the next one after sleep? So, food. This one could be an entire book, volumes of books. I don't think we have enough time. At the highest level, you know, the one statistic I'll call out is around eating ultra-process food. It was a study that's come out of France. A lot of people referenced where they essentially came to the conclusion that a 10% increase in consumption of ultra-processed food led to a 14% increased risk of mortality. And okay, 10% equals 14% in terms of increased risk. And how are we doing in the US? Well, two-thirds of our calories are ultra-processed food. And we believe in eating whole foods. And we do have some, some, you know, ground rules, you know, probably avoid seed oils, probably avoid eating too much sugar and so on. But to your earlier point, we do believe in bio-individuality. And, you know, who we reference in the book are two of our friends. Mark Sisson is here in Miami. He's 69 and looks amazing and feels amazing. And he eats pretty close to being carnivore. And then our other friend, Rich Roll, who's 56 and lives in Malibu, and he's 100% plant-based and looks amazing and feels amazing. These people couldn't be different in terms of their diet. They both work out a ton, probably too much, but they both work out a ton. And they avoid processed foods. And who's to say that one guy's doing a right and the other's doing it wrong? And so with all that said, you know, we do have some, you know, in the book, we definitely encourage people to eat whole foods and we have like some checklist to go there. And I think the bigger problem is in media, in that extreme's play. And you're not going to hear a lot of people talk about balance to some degree because it's not really going to get air time. There's this amazing study that they did at Wharton out of the University of Pennsylvania where they analyzed the most emailed list in New York Times to see there were any patterns. And they classified these articles by emotion. And the top three emotions were anger awe and anxiety. And number one was anger. Anger increased the chance of virality by 34%. So if you take a step back and look at that, I don't think this is the New York Times is an anomaly here. I think this is symbolic of media. If someone read an article and that article caused that person to be angry, it was more likely to be read and shared. And I think that's the world we live in. And so having a very like balance or I would say pragmatic, scientifically driven point of view on social media just really isn't going to get a lot of attention whereas having an extreme point of view where each 100% of this and eliminate 100% of that, that's probably going to get more attention. And that's that. I was just going to say this makes me really sad actually because I will tell you that, yeah, I mean, I see it almost every day on my Instagram. The videos where I piss off a lot of people, they go viral because everyone's fighting in the comments section. But then the ones that I'm just like, hey, this is a really healthy balanced approach to your diet. It gets like no views. I mean, I'm being dramatic. It gets views. But like comparatively, I'm like, okay, guys, but this is the this is the way to be healthy. And then everyone's fighting over here and it's going viral and you know, it's getting shared and everything. Yeah, it just makes me really sad because you're right. Like it's we're we're trying to help like I genuinely want to help people and we're trying to help people find balance. But when you have that messaging, it doesn't really get out to the public. It's the super divisive stuff that really gets to people. But the way I see it is like, okay, at least I'm drawing people in, you know, with that. And by the way, I'm not doing it on purpose to create divisiveness. It's just that sometimes I'll say something that piss people off and then they go crazy over it. But when that we understand we do it all the time. Exactly. And I don't think you're a part of the problem at all or something. Oh, totally. I'm more for the listeners. But you know, and exactly, but like some of your posts is like, I went for a hike with my dog and I stopped and got a salad and had a glass of wine. It's like, there's nothing like that. That's why are you drinking wine? Yeah, I know like it. And ultimately, you know, I think now we're all understanding the effect of social media on people's health and wellbeing. And our hope as eternal optimists is that by the time our children who are four and six come of age where they might even consider a social media that will all understand is, you know, similar to giving your child a drug. And that we need to give them the tools before they walk into a room with lots of angry people who are spewing hatred at each other. You would never do it to your child and we have to kind of treat it the same way and give people the tools of how to interact, engage, and most importantly, disengage and sit it out. Do you suffer from IBS or other digestive issues? 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Well, in this, this actually comes back to another point that you guys were saying that I wanted to reiterate is that when it comes to your diet, it's so important to not let it become your identity, because this is where I see a lot of the anger coming from, is that people associate their identity to a certain way that they're eating, and then if I come out and say, hey, this is probably not really good for you, people get so upset with me because they've identified this as something that is personal to them. I think it's so important that all of us take this approach of like, we need to remember that we're doing the best we can with the knowledge we have at the time, and then when we learn differently, we do better. I can speak to this. I was vegetarian for five years, and it was amazing for me until it wasn't, and then I was really sick, but for a couple years of that, I refused to switch over and start eating meat because I had literally made being vegetarian a part of my identity, and I really grappled with switching over until finally my body was like screaming for me, and thankfully I finally listened to it, but this is a perfect example of like, you have different nutritional needs depending on different stages you are in life too. So something that may work for you at a certain point may not work for you forever. So true. I mean, I've seen it. I think it's especially true. It's, you know, as a woman goes through the seasons of life, we had this wake up call when we are pregnant with our second, where you can't see this, but you know us, so you know that I'm six feet from Jason six feet seven, and our doctor was like, your daughter's measuring 15 to 20%, which just doesn't make a lot of sense. We need to up the protein, and I think a lot of times, you know, what your body tells you your pregnant is a lot of the cues for probably how you should be nurturing and caring for yourself, and the time you're not pregnant, you know, one of my gripes is with myself is always like, how can I treat myself with the same love, care, and tenderness, getting that massage every, you know, week when you're doing the prenatals that you do in life when it's actually a little bit more harder, because then you're managing the two little people I around. Oh, that's so cute. Well, so I love that you guys are so tall. What were you saying, Jason? Well, this is kind of a segue way where movement and food intersect and like changes we've had, and this is a big one for us personally, in the context of, you know, Colleen mentioned yoga earlier, yoga was a huge part of our lives. Yoga, they mean from back surgery and was the inspiration behind founding my buddy Green, and you know, with yoga, lean vegetarian, to vegan for a while, stop going to the gym, it was yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga. And then, you know, in my 40s, I started to notice I was losing some muscle mass, and you know, came across this study, which is, you know, very top of mind right now for a lot of people, and it's a study around falling, where if you're over the age of 65, there's a one and four chance you'll fall. If you fall once, your twice is likely to fall again. If you fall and break your hip, there's a 30 to 40% chance you will die within a year. And it's not necessarily because of the broken hip, it's all the things that could go wrong, whether it's complications from surgery, whether it's infection, whether it's depression from being on the couch, and this is one, unfortunately anecdotally, we've seen this with people we know. And so that's a big one, because if you think of, okay, how do I protect against this? Well, you know, it's muscle mass and bone density, because like sarcopenia is very real. In your 40s, you start to lose, I think, 1% a year. And so think about like, okay, we're excited. We were in the 80s, where we're, you know, almost we're 20% left to get to 100. But if we lose that muscle mass, like we're extraordinarily vulnerable and frail, if you're losing 1% a year of bone density. So how do you protect against that? It's resistance training. It's strength training. It's very real. So when you want to be mobile, so let's say you're about to fall, you want the mobility to not fall. And the mobility to balance or the strength to the, maybe grab something so you don't fall. Or the armor in terms of muscles. So if you do fall, you break your fall. And this is, this is one that really hit home too. It's like you want the strength. You mentioned like, I mentioned that I want to be able to pick up like a 30 pounder when I'm old. You need like strength to do that. You need to physically do that. And so we pivoted from yoga and vegetarian to, we're going to the gym a lot now. I've been really focused on gaining lean muscle mass because it's harder as you age. I've had to, I've gained seven pounds of lean muscle mass, skeletal muscle mass in the past five months. And it's been hard. Hell of a lot easier when I was younger. And to do so, one, you have to lift, you have to lift things. And you can do it with bodyweight. And in the book, we list some of the things we do. And you can do it. We don't go a lot. You can do it 15 to 20 minutes a day. But you need to eat protein. And this is an emotional topic. And quite frankly, the RDA, if I was speaking grams, not kilograms because I can't do the math, of 0.36 grams per pound to bodyweight is really to survive for people sitting on a couch. If you really want to thrive, you probably need double the triple of the amount. And that's going to be a lot of protein for people. And if you're vegetarian or vegan, I'm not saying it's impossible, what it's going to be really hard. And more specifically, you have to consume enough protein with enough loosing to support muscle protein synthesis. In other words, if you don't get the the loosing level of two and a half grams, while you're at least two and a half grams, while you're consuming that protein, it doesn't count. It's like I'm consuming protein, but it doesn't count muscle. And I think I want, you know, if you're going to have the protein, you want to, you want to maintain the muscle, build the muscle. Where does that come into play with plant-based versus animal-based? It's you have to consume so much more. It's very difficult. If you look at essentially animal-based foods, if you look at chicken, if you look at beef, if you look at fish, compared to soy, I think, is at the top of the list of plant-based foods, you have to consume so much more. And from a calorie perspective, it is a lot. Again, not unsurmountable, but it is very difficult. And for us, that's been a big change where we are, this is like the one area where maybe it doesn't bring us the most joy where I went from intermittent fasting 18 to 20 hours a day to now I'm really doing 13 hours and I need three meals and I got to make sure I'm having protein and collins the same way. Yeah. This is a really important part of the conversation I think because there's so much conversation around plant-based right now. And again, like, you know, going back to bio-individuality, if your plant-based and your thriving and your blood work looks great and you have energy, that's amazing. It's working for you, you know. But where I have a problem is that there is this mainstream push right now for everyone to go plant-based. And it's just not feasible for everyone, especially when we look at like an amino acid profile perspective. And so I just, I wanted to really like, yeah, flag that for people because we need to be really careful about the proteins that we're consuming too and make sure that we're actually getting the protein that will help us build lead muscle and it's way harder to do a plant-based. It just is. It is. And again, this is where I encourage everyone to do some basic lab testing. You know, get a lipid profile. Do it once or twice a year or something. I'm going back again for my bio-annual and what I found when I started this, my cardiovascular markers have all got better. So I don't know, maybe it's the sunshine. Miami, maybe it's the fact that I'm lifting, but my APOB went from 91 to 75, but I've been eating a lot more meat. So go figure. And I think what's exciting for, you know, me as a mother of two young girls is, like, culturally, we are now teaching girls how to lift weights. They're seeing these role models. When I grew up, I did not have role models of strong women in the same way that girls do now. The most popular class on, on class past last year was a women's weight lifting class. So there is a broader shift happening where, you know, you can't just protein your way, you know, to the muscle you gotta, you gotta, you know, lift, you gotta lift. And I think it can be, or I'll just speak for myself as someone who didn't grow up with these skill sets. It's intimidating to kind of take the first couple of steps and, you know, I've eased into it with like a kettlebell routine doing resistance training. And, you know, I'm still early on in this journey, but it's an important piece of the puzzle. And it's really important for people to hear this because, you know, I think I'm about like 10 years behind you guys. And I'm really starting to think about this now because what you guys are just saying to your point is that if you don't keep up with this, it only becomes harder and harder to do. So the earlier you start, the way easier it's going to be for you going into your older age. Totally. Yeah. Make the deposits now. Specifically with this one, once you start hitting your 40s and the back half your 40s and the other side of 50 with putting on the muscle mass, it is significantly more difficult. Yeah. So it's important. It's that age old saying if you don't use it, you lose it. You have to start now. Totally. And I think we all, we all feel, you know, cardio is so overrated in the in the movement conversation. So it's creating lifting heavy weights is underrated. Yeah. 100%. Oh, awesome. Okay. So what's the the next one after movement? It's movement. So stressed. So this was one, we had a little bit of fun with. And so look, cold therapy, cold plunges. It's a form of hermetic stressor. There are so many benefits with regards to cellular resilience and longevity. And they're all the rage. Just scroll on Instagram. Everyone's cold plunging. We don't like it. And we just, I get it. I don't like it either. And not because of the bed, like the benefit to real, but like we don't like the cold. We moved to Miami. And this was an example, like it met the criteria low cost here. Like, like you could do this. You could hack it with a cold shower. It's terrible, but you can hack it. And people usually take showers. So like it fits our criteria. We didn't write about sauna because sauna has tremendous benefits, specifically the cardiovascular health, but like look, they're expensive. Unless you have a real expensive. So it didn't fit the criteria, but cold did, but it did not bring us joy. And our view is if it doesn't bring you joy, you know what, you're probably don't have to do it. You know, we set these expectations where we have to do everything. And I think we have this issue where I think people try to work for wellness and make wellness work for you. And you set these unrealistic expectations. And that's the reason why National Quitters Day at the gym was January 13th this year because people go in. They go all excited on it an hour a day or two hours a day. And then life happens. And that's it. And they, they, you know, just that they quit. Yeah. And I think with everything in life, it's about understanding what is going to yield you the best ROI with the time you have. And if you're at a life stage where maybe you don't have a ton of stress, like just building even that mental resilience in a cold plunge could be interesting to you. You know, as a mom of two and an entrepreneur, I am not looking to incorporate more stress into my life. So this practice coupled with the fact that I have a renobs does not work for me or serve me right now, but I acknowledge that it works for so many people. Yeah, if you love it, do it. But if you don't, sit it out. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, this is my approach to when it comes to, well, honestly, when it comes to almost everything in life, I pretty much will try everything once. And you know, I'm like, okay, like the science is there, whatever. And I'll give it a couple goes. If I really feel like it's good for me and healthy for me, but there are some things where I'm just like, I'm sorry, I'm not doing that. You know, and I, this is my approach to exercise to movement too to like bring you back to movement for one second. But the best exercise is the one that you're going to do consistently. Because otherwise, you're going to be drag and ask and you're not going to do it. 100%. I use that line quite frequently. And it's the reason if you ever see me running call the police because I hate running if I'm running. That's hilarious. I love that. Well, and we know too, like stress, you know, from another perspective, can actually have very, like, I mean, deadly consequences if we don't manage it. And we're living such stressed, overwhelming lives with, you know, we're always connected now and people always can't we have the emails and the texts and, you know, you can always be reached basically. And then on top of that, like, you know, just feels like life is moving at light speed right now. And I think it's incredibly important that we do everything that we can to really bring down our stress, you know, and work on these modalities, get enough sleep, not drink as much maybe, because that also adds anxiety and stress. And we all know the anxiety the next day, you know. Yeah. And how do we train ourselves to, you know, better weather these inevitable ups and downs of stress that are going to come in these seasons of life? Because stress doesn't go away. It just changes. What are some of your favorite practices as far as reducing your stress? I'm a huge walker that this is a movement for me, but it's also a stress reducer. If I don't get my 10,000 steps today, I'm a grumpy dinosaur. I need to walk. I'm very conscious of how I breathe. I will always try to breathe through my nose. Sometimes if I'm really stressed, I'll try to sit out and do a little breath work practice or I'll try to do either a mindfulness meditation or TM for a little bit and then going to the gym always helps me. So I try to be active. Yeah, I think movement is key for anyone who is depressed, anxious, stressed, you know, just making sure that that is part of the routine. For me, personally, nature has such a transformative impact on my stress levels. And I think it's one just because you are connecting with this something bigger and the transcendent power of nature. But also now that we live here in Miami, I'm able to put my feet in the water. I am disconnected from my phone and we just need to acknowledge that we're all at varying levels of addiction with our phones and you know, being able to decompress fully and be present with the water has such a healing therapeutic effect for me. It's not for everyone, but you know, that's what I found is really soothing to me. I love that. I think this is a good segue going into. We talked about this before. We recorded, but I think this is a really important part of your conversation in your book is connection and purpose. And I think these also can be really big stress relievers, especially when you think about from a connection standpoint of really making sure that, yeah, that you cultivate at least a couple really important, deep loving connections with humans. Yeah, this is a big one. And if you look at the macro of where we start today in the mental health epidemic and the loneliness epidemic, this is one. I think we need to spend more time on as a culture. In 2019, there was a study out of stigma that reported that only half of Americans had meaningful daily RRL social Americans. 2019, imagine what that looks like today in 2023. And you look at before 2020, that's crazy. Wow. And one out of seven men don't have a single friend. One out of 10 women don't have a single friend. And then you say, okay, well, what are the health implications of this? Well, there's been some great research this out of us for Dr. Julia Julien Holt-Lunsted out of BYU and equated being lonely with smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So loneliness just as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Twice is bad as having six drinks a day. That's 42 drinks a week. Look, we believe in joy having a drink, but that's probably a little bit old. That's a little too much joy. Three times is worse as being physically and active and four times as worse as being obese. And so this is something I think in our world, look, nutrition and exercise are paramount. You got to get your diet right, you got to you got to move, you have to lift, but you need real world connection. This this really hit home for me. One of my all-time favorite studies is the Rosetta study. Rosetta was a small town in Merrill, Pennsylvania in the 1950s. In the 50s, this is when heart disease arrives in America except for Rosetta. Heart disease for that under the age of 55 was half that of the nation. Men under, excuse me, 65, half that of the nation under 55, zero, no heart disease. They take a look like what's going on at Rosetta? You know, they gluten free or are they doing any D shots? Do they have an air one there yet? No, since 1950s, they're not doing any of this. These people were drinking. They were smoking. They were having meatballs and pasta and all the things we know we shouldn't do. However, the social connections were incredibly strong. Multi-generational living was paramount. The drinking, it was in the context and the meatballs and the pasta and all the one with it was in the context of parades and celebrations and partying and neighbors breaking bread with each other in the 1960s when the community started to break apart. Heart disease caught up with the national average. About saying we should do all these things, but I think it really hits home on this notion of the health benefits of strong social connections. I think we did a lot of damage over the past couple of years and it's really time to bring that in focus and it's something that I want our community, the health and wellness community to talk more about. Where are the connection influencers? Yes, I love that so much. Well, they talk about this with the blue zones too and they equate a lot of their longevity and overall just better health to their connections with their community and the walking too, but they showed that they were all eating dinner every night in community and it's all about like spending more time with your loved ones. I think that this really gets pushed to the wayside because we're so focused on the food and the cold plunge and the exercise and the sleep and all this stuff that we forget, something as simple as connecting with a really close friend or your spouse or your partner, whoever it is, is so incredibly important and also it's joyful. It's amazing. You don't have to ask me twice to do that. We're in this paradox that we're so digitally connected with notifications, with so many different platforms that it's literally exhausting. Then at the end of the day, you're like, well, I don't want to go actually interact with people. We have to be really thoughtful and intentional about the life that we cultivate to make sure that, yes, being digital, being socially connected is part of our world, but we have to carve out intentionally the time for IRL interaction. It's a place where I wasn't good at it for 13 years in New York. I don't think I put enough of an intentionality behind it. There was a fascinating, whilst regional article recently about how now women are treating IRL interactions because we've reached this point where we realize it's so critical for health and joy that now they're treating it like a business KPI. How many meetings IRL am I getting in a week? How many friends am I getting to see? We know that IRL interactions have a different impact on the brain, different oxytocin profile, then when you reach out to someone who have overtaxed and say, how are you? Men are terrible here. Women are far superior in every sense, so I'll start there, of course, but like specifically in this area, we are the worst. I referenced the one and seven men don't have a single friend. Women do better here, one and ten. 30 years ago, majority of men, 55% had six close friends. Now it's about a quarter of men and six close friends. Look, I get why. Men lose touch easier. Men tend to take on their partners, their spouses, friends, and they lose touch. We're not as good as communication. I think case in point, I shared this on my Instagram recently. I had my 30th high school reunion, and I would have loved to have gone, but it was our daughter's fourth birthday. Of course, I'm going to stay for my daughter's fourth birthday. It happens, you make choices, and I think men are less inclined to share that maybe they're struggling, to reach back out, and the beauty of technology will say this. If I had to go back 30 years ago, I'd have to pick up the phone. Hello, and then there's the software science. Who is this? Now it's a text. It's a DM. Hey, so-and-so. I've been thinking of you. It's been too long. I thought of you for this reason. I'd love to catch up. I think most people will be surprised by the response. It's going to be positive. It's something I encourage everything to do. If you look at those statistics, chances are someone you know and you haven't seen in a while is probably struggling. Yeah. Yeah, maybe for people listening right now that may be struggling with that and having a hard time finding connection, what would be some of your advice as far as cultivating a community that they really feel loved and supported in? A couple of thoughts here. We're a remote first company. I worked 20 years in the office, but if I didn't have a community right now outside of work, I think I'd be really struggling. So I think you have to acknowledge, okay, am I getting that community from people who are, you know, at a like-minded job with maybe similar values and passions that I am or am I not able to tap into that? And then you have to ask yourself, okay, if I'm looking for my quote-unquote people, my tribe, what is it that brings me joy? What do I enjoy doing? How am I serving others? Chances are whatever it is that, you know, in life is bringing you that spark, is making you feel alive, is making you feel more connected to your authentic self, is going to bring you a lot of joy. And I think we have to kind of like decouple the work from the purpose because I think it puts way too much stress on finding a purpose or a tribe through your work. If you happen to find it through their fantastic, but there's so many other avenues to cultivate that community outside of what you do. I think finding a group of like-minded people like being healthy, whether that's, you know, to your catch-up on a hike, let's see their catch-up at the gym. Volunteering is a huge one and there are multiple benefits if you start to look at purpose and have a higher calling. There's connection there, there's immense feeling of gratitude, so that's one I think like every where anyone ever lives, there's always a shortage of volunteers, so that's a great place to start. Yeah, I think that's great. And starting to really connect with the things that you really love in doing that, so like if you really love to play tennis, like find maybe a league where people are playing tennis or I know pickle balls are really big one right now and go like find somewhere in your neighborhood that people are playing pickle ball. Like just start finding those common interests and then I feel like, yeah, you'll you'll create amazing connections there. The sports you mentioned are like lifelong sports. It's not something you grow out of the friends you make. Exactly. You get the sheep in the seasons of life. Yeah, yeah. And then the last one we were talking about was connection or sorry, a purpose, this is what I meant to say. So finding your purpose and really being connected with that I think is incredibly important. And also I want to give a little caveat. I am one of those people that I really did not connect with my purpose until at least for my age group or my peers felt like way later than most people. I went through my entire four years of my undergrad of college being like, I literally have no idea what I want to do. Like at one point I finally just had to like pick a major which is like, okay, I guess this will work. It wasn't until I graduated college that I really started get connected with my purpose. So I also want to encourage people that if you haven't found that yet, like don't give up hope, you'll figure it out. Mike, you're still way early. I'm 48. My buddy has been around since 14 years. 14 years. So like we're talking at 34. I'll also put the big asterisk of your purpose changes throughout the seasons of life and the decades of life. And you're going to evolve and your purpose is going to evolve. I think when I grew up, you're kind of taught and led to believe that there's one true purpose in life that you are on a quest to figure out and go do the journaling and go do the work to kind of figure it out. And it's not an activity that works so linearly where you're like, I'm going to I want to figure it out thus I will. It is that journey of Marco Polito figure out what it is that really gets you alive. And you know, Arthur Brooks has this wonderful concept of a personal mission statement. So if you are struggling to kind of figure it out, there's some simple prompts that we go over in the joy of well-being, which is everything from, you know, why do you get out of bed in the morning? Is it about achieving or is it about finding joy and helping others? What parts of your life are devoted to caring for other people? What are your special gifts that you have and how can you contribute that to doing good in the world? And there were points in my life when I was at various stages and probably disconnected a bit from what I thought was a authentic life I should be doing where if you were to ask me what brings me joy, I don't know if I'd say anything besides getting margaritas with friends. And so it's one of those questions that can actually touch at something a lot deeper than just a simple kind of question may seem. That's a great point. So in the essence of time, before we go, is there anything else that we haven't covered that you think is really important for people to hear? I think, you know, spirituality, which is a cousin of purpose and it's in our last chapter, which is titled something bigger. It's definitely, I didn't realize how much of a hot button issue it is, but you know, in, look, we've got a mental health epidemic and someone we've had in our show has become a dear friend, also a Miami resident, Dr. Lisa Miller. So when you start on your show, she's amazing. She is like the authority on the science of spirituality and she does a program at Columbia University and what she found with children was just mind blowing in that when mother and child and it could be a parent, but this idea of a connection between a parent or caregiver of a child were both high in spirituality and she's a very broad definition of spirituality for some it could be, you know, religious church service, it could be transcended awareness, it could be walking in the woods, it could be volunteering, picking up trash like this capacity for, for awareness and this belief, there's something bigger than than oneself. When parent and child were high in spirituality, the child was 80% protected against suppression, five times less likely, five times less likely to experience suppression. If you think about depression amongst kids, particularly six, almost 60% of girls are unhappy, like I think that happy is a very kind. Yeah, this is something that I think we should all be talking about as a protective force against mental health. And when we talk about our wise, you know, now as a mom of a six-year-old and a four-year-old, you know, for me, it's not about achievement and where they go to school, it's how do we, you know, create well-adjusted humans that have resilience to whether these inevitable ups and downs that are going to happen in their own lives? Yeah, I think this is a really important part of the conversation that's not being had enough. I'm starting to see some people talk about this, but like you said, it's such a hot button topic that no one wants to talk about it. You know, I have a girlfriend who for the longest time was scared to even say the word God online, so she was just saying, you know, universe or source or whatever it was until finally one day, she was like, you know what? God just connects with me. And if that triggers you, I'm so sorry, but try to take it and apply to your own life. And I really liked this approach because again, like what we were talking about the bio-individuality with your diet. Also, there is a bit of a bio-individuality with the spirituality as well. Like, find what works for you, you know? Because at the end of the day, like I think the studies that are connected to spirituality and people, you know, it's kind of connected to having this like higher purpose, but also like just if you are just connected with something outside of yourself, it gives you hope in a way that that you can't find anywhere else. So like this is not about like God and Jesus or Christianity or Judaism or any of that, it's really about so much bigger just being connected with the fact that there is something else going on that we may not ever really fully understand or know, maybe, you know, hopefully when we die, but just being connected to that hope of that there is something bigger and greater happening outside of us and then naming it whatever feels best for you, universe, source, God, whatever it is. And Dr. Miller is such a generous definition of spirituality, which could be religion, it could be the universe, it could be whatever gives you that you're meeting prayer, walk in the woods, volunteering, connections and nature. And, you know, we just have to know through these dark moments of the soul that everything's going to be okay, even if we don't know how. Yeah. I just think, look, life is full of twists and turns and can often be really difficult. And I think to get through it in this alone, so to speak, without this belief that there's something bigger, I don't know how I would have gotten through some of the losses I've had in my life without a belief in something bigger for myself. Yeah. Same. I really connect with that too. I don't think I would be able to live without at least just this hope and this feeling that there is a bigger, greater, better purpose, you know. Yeah. That's so beautiful. Okay. So before we go, I want to ask you guys what I ask all my guests, what are your main health non-negotiable? So these are things that you do either daily or weekly that are just non-negotiable for you, for you and your own personal health. Sleep, hydration, resistance training, walking. Yes, those are big ones for me too. Yes, I have more than I think. How much time you got? I've got walking, gotta get my 10,000 steps. Obviously, sleep, hydration. I've become supplements. This is a big part of my life too. Same. And you know, I just love my devices. Me too. My aura, my work. Yeah. I have an aura ring too. I love it. Yeah. Awesome. Well guys, thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed this conversation. This was great. And please tell people where they can find the joy of well-being, your new book. So thank you. The joy of well-being can be found at Amazon and all book retailers. And you can go to thejoyofwellbeing.com. Amazing. And where can they find you guys if you want to be reached? At Jason Wacob, W-A-C-H-O-B, and at Colleen Wacob. And then, you know, my buddy Greene, and we have my buddy Greene podcast and products and everything. Got everything in my buddy Greene. Yes. Oh, thank you so much. It was such a joy to have you guys on today. Thank you so much. So great to connect. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Real Fidology podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review on your podcast app to let me know. This is a resonant media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.