Ep 53: Practice Making Small Changes for Big Results with Dr Wholeness

Dr Matt, father of 6 and Naturopathic Dr known as Dr Wholeness.  Helps those who struggle with their health and works with them to change one habit at a time.

-Tell me a bit about yourself 
-Start with small changes, just one thing at a time, little by little changing things for the better
-Recommendations with your clients
-Cut the Sugar Habit
-Time Restricted Eating
-What 3 habits are you making sure your clients are practicing
-How do we incorporate children into our healthy habits
-What do you say to the Mom who has no time to workout
-Iron Supplementation

Website: Drwholeness.com

12 easy & delicious family-friendly recipes: 

Blood Vitality use code: courtney15 for 15% off anything in the store

Transcript

Unknown: 0:11

Welcome to raising healthy humans, where you as a busy mom can come each week to find information on health and wellness for your family. Enjoy experts discussing tips to help raise children through each phase of life. Gather current information on nutrition and wellness and listen to Courtney, a personal trainer, health coach, movement specialist and founder of form fit a community where she helps busy moms move more. Here she provides you with movement and posture tips while sharing information you need to help raise healthy humans. Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Matt. He is a father of six and a naturopathic doctor known on the web as Dr. wholeness. He is a father who has worked with countless patients who have struggled with their health. And it is his goal to help change lives by changing one habit at a time. Dr. Matt, thank you for joining us today on raising healthy humans. Yeah, thanks for having me, Courtney. I'm pumped. Okay, so I want you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Yeah, so I have a basically a family practice in Washington State and family medicine. And it's very broad range stuff, and a lot of kind of more complicated illnesses that we deal with, and then just, you know, chronic disease stuff. And my wife is also a practicing physician with me. And I have six little kiddos, five, five girls, and I just had our first little boy, and he just turned, Axl just turned one years old about two weeks ago. So my wife is not practicing as of right now. Because, um, she she homeschools our kids, okay, and, I mean, I tried to help, but there's nothing like my wife is she is the master at it, on the homeschooling front. So that's what her kind of full time gig is right now. But yeah, we're Yes, you know, full practice. And then, as a collective, we basically kind of create a slogan called accumulate health, where we essentially try to inspire, motivate, encourage, fellow humans, patients, and then clients online and stuff to get out of the all or nothing mindset and get in the mindset of just day after day, week, after week, month, after month, year after year, you know, accumulating health, you know, there's a lot of things I would say, like, you will want to accumulate, there's a lot that we don't want to accumulate, but health is one of the things that there's nothing wrong with accumulating it, the more you accumulate, the better you're gonna kill yourself. But the more available you gonna be for your family. And we're available, you're going to be for everybody, your workspace all that, the healthier you are. So we're trying to basically cut cut that dialogue that's been going on forever, where, you know, you got to fix it right now, you got to be you know, 21 days, 20 days, 24 days, you know, this smoothie pack this, you know, this thing, because it hasn't worked. We know, you know, somebody loses 20 pounds in 20 days, there's like a nine 9.9% chance that six months later have gained that 20 pounds back and be worse off than they were before they gained 20 pounds. So yeah, we're just really trying to, you know, push this, you know, understanding there's like all this psychology behind it. There's all this literature behind it. And then there's our my personal patient experience, right. And I'm sure your experience too, with clients. That it's that steady, steady gains, those consistent gains, those little tweaks that you can make in your life. Even my own personal story is if you'd like to hear it. You know, basically I was 16 years old, and I was just like, standard American kid drinking Mountain Dew just playing I mean, played sports and stuff, and candy, crushing it everywhere. And my mom bought me a book. I read the book, it was like well, it's it's crazy, because I want to play college basketball. And I was like, Wow, this you can there's like different ways of eating like what I mean is not like the best thing for me when I drink Mountain Dew isn't the best thing for me. And it literally just that one little thing, which seems you know, in light of the, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds 1000s The days I've been alive since like when no itsy bitsy you know all of my four hours to read the book. But it literally changed the entire trajectory of my life and I'm sitting here as a doctor now you know, seeing patients because of that, that single thing. And so I I want to and then basically after that I you know I read more books and more books and I end up going Medical School and all that kind of stuff. But it's you know didn't like I didn't end up with a full medical practice and a long waitlist one day that incident just also happen out of nowhere, right? It was literally it sci fi let's see, you know you started the one single patient one single patient, you get that one patient better and they tell another one and then you get another patient better they tell for more people. And the next thing you know, just like you know helping your clients Corine is if you can get that one person better, if you help that one person by not by some, like it's like inoculation. That's kind of like what we get right in America a lot of times just started with the inoculated Doom inoculated with health and then once all the special, you know, Juju and, and you know, motivator is gone. It's like it just doesn't last. And so for myself, I wanted to help that lasted. And I've seen myself go from literally a Mountain Dew Can eating candy a Holic just deep dish pizzas, and like everything can imagine that it's terrible to put in a human body, I was putting my body up to 16. And then all of a sudden, you know, just, I would tell you, I'm going to stop eating, you know, candy, I'm gonna stop eating soda pop, I'm gonna start eating. You know, maybe meat instead of that deep dish pizza, how many eggs in the morning is said of cereal? I'm going to stop drinking chocolate milk, and I'm just going to drink regular milk. You know, just these little itsy bitsy changes, right? Or even like, I was 21 when I had my first coffee was actually a frappuccino from Starbucks in Dallas, Texas. Crazy. But thankfully, I waited too long to have some like that. But so you take something like that is like, oh my goodness, this is so delicious. This is this is man. But, you know, I knew I didn't want to be I want to learn what what's in this is this is terrible for you kind of thing. But to get that sugar intensity off my body, you know, I started I was like, Okay, I'm going to have like, you know, a latte with say vanilla scored in it or something, then you get down where it's like, I'm just going to unlock it with honey in it. And then you can get really like, Okay, I'm just going to put half that amount in. And actually, no, you know, a lot of people a lot of even my patients is crazy, but they can like drink a cup of bitter black coffee, which I'm not saying anybody needs to do that at all or you know, to go that but it's just that you know, that the body is is actually pretty cool. With us taking little itsy bitsy, you know, tweaks and not even recognizing that it's happening. Right. And I think that you may have that same experience with with clients is that it seems so meaningless in the moment. So simple. So like, why even do it? But you know, I have this one patient and he you know, he lost like 70 pounds like man you got to start working on now. We've been doing the food thing you got your your weights off. You can he hated working out, he just like she's like, that's not my thing. I don't work out. And personally, that's my thing. I love fitness. That is my favorite thing to do is let's we're gonna play. Let's go work out that sounds like play right there. And so we started him about. He's on 13. Now, so yeah, like 13 weeks ago, on one pushup a day. All you got to do is do one pushup per day. So which it seems literally completely meaningless, right? Especially if you're have any fitness at all, like one pushup that what, who even cares, right? That's right, doing one pushup will have no impact on your life whatsoever a year from now. But if he does one pushup every day, and then on the seventh day, basically once a week, he's gonna increase it by one pushup. So right now he's up to 13 Push ups in a row per day. And you know, it's pretty amazing at 11 Push ups, he was in for an appointment, and he showed me himself doing 11 pushups in a row. And he could barely do a single push when he started out. But you know, and that's like, he's getting confidence. He's feeling good about himself, right? And people are asking him, you know, like, so what are you gonna do 50 pushups in a row, you know, at the end of the year. He's like, he's, she doesn't know. Right now. All he cares about is the moment Right, right. Know where he's at right now. And yeah, so that was a long winded way of saying what would I do or what we're about, but that's kind of what I'm about. Okay, perfect. No, and I want to go back a little bit because you mentioned that your mom handed you a book, right? Yep. Okay, so had is your mom. Like is she is just an awesome mom. Okay. I was gonna say, is she looking at health or anything? Yeah, she was thinking yeah, exactly. So she was thinking she knew I wanted to play college basketball, you know, like, I was every I was going to every camp do and everything. But I was like, you know, five, product five, eight and about 135 pounds at that point. Now I'm six three and like 195 So I was a very different human being back then. Okay, and she was just thinking, Okay, well, what can I do to help them out? Maybe this there's something I could do just kind of help them out. And you know, she didn't have any kind of she was a homemaker. I mean, the best mom ever I'm so grateful for that. You know, she wasn't like in the health sphere or any kind of special it would literally was. She'd seen the doctor on TV and she's got all this Dr. Don Colbert, who's actually a practicing physician in Florida there. And she was she just thought, Man, I'm going to look like a, something I should get, I should get for my son who's going to the gym a lot. And like, I start, I'd kind of started lifting weights and stuff then too. Okay, she just thought it would help me remember what book it was? Like? Yeah, it's called, it's called walking in Divine health, no longer in print, actually. Okay. And I would even say, you know, like, what's funny, too, is like that book right now. This doctor would agree with me that even wrote this book that, like, that is not information that I would tell a patient, right? It's, it's not even, you know, there's a lot of stuff about soybeans being really good for us and using getting soy stuff instead of like, dairy stuff, a lot of stuff that I'm which I'm not saying there's there can be benefits to soybeans, in certain cases, for sure. But, um, that a lot of what was in that book isn't like, you know, not something that I personally would promote a ton of other than, I mean, talking about water and eating vegetables and fruit. Of course, those are all good things. But, um, yeah, it's, uh, that's the thing to know, the book was so stinking Simple, right? You know, just, I feel like, a lot of times, we feel like, we need to have everything figured out, you know, read some big Encyclopedia of health, and then, you know, get all these little, our meals have to be perfect. And they have to be the right ratios and macronutrients and the right ratios of fruits and vegetables to meet to know our starches and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, man, no, I don't think we got to do that. There's, you know, the Pete, most people who are enjoying just life, and are really vital, and invigorated and feel good. You know, they're not, they aren't counting every last little thing. You know, and know, like, having an engineering degree to, you know, figure out their food plans and their exercise plans and all that. Not that they're, I mean, I do work some professional athletes and stuff and there are, you know, it does get more more, more crazy, you could say are more sophisticated. But, uh, you know, we got to start off simple in most of us, you know, it's like a sort of go to McDonald's was let's make dinner at home. Even if it's, you know, similar, like, we would have gotten McDonald's, if you made it home, it's gonna be twice as you know, healthy for you to kind of thing, right. Yeah, cuz you're going to be using the better oils and right under me, and yeah, everything. Sure. Um, okay, so you mentioned that you'd like to take it very small. And I love how you mentioned, like you started with the frappuccino. And then maybe you just have a little bit of syrup in there, or one pump instead of the three that they put in that type of thing. And just slowly back, backing down with how you're changing your habits. Yeah, so that's, that's great. Go ahead. Well, yeah, I was just gonna say the another thing is, so like chocolate chip cookies. I mean, I would probably if there's any dessert I was gonna eat other than maybe a chocolate ice cream chocolate chip cookie just is just right, you know, a well made chocolate chip cookie. But, you know, like standard Betty Crocker recipe for a chocolate chip cookie, which, of course, I had no idea because I never made chocolate chip cookies is like my mom, I have four sisters, they maybe we're making it or but then my wife. And there's like four cups of sugar or, you know, two cups of white sugar in these chocolate in a batch. And no human being needs, needs that. And what we realized is now my wife, you know, she makes some chocolate chip cookies, maybe there's like, an entire batch and be like, a quarter of a cup like, you know, unrefined coconut sugar, or, say, a honey or maple syrup or something like that, you know, it's such a miniscule amount compared what's a rescue would would ask for, and yet it tastes delicious. But it didn't start out that way I would have if I was eating Skittles, sure, you know, eating that. Now, you know, this quarter cup chocolate cookie would not have tasted very sweet. But when you just you know, slowly but surely drop that down. It's like wherever you're at. If you if you're eating. See the two cups of sugar and chocolate cookies and you turn it into a cup and three quarters. And you're winning. Yeah, you're ahead you're ahead of where you would then mean like that's give yourself a high five. And this is exciting times. And you can you know can slowly be dropping down. Well in I don't think people realize that you can, like you said you can do this slowly. And it does definitely. It doesn't really make a difference. My mom hasn't banana bread that she uses makes a lot. And she'll think it's the same kind of thing. It's like four cups of sugar like ridiculous. I cut it down to half. Okay, maybe it wasn't the same. It didn't have quite the cannibalization that hers had but it was still just as good and it still had a ton of sugar in it. So you can still work, where you slowly get down to what? You know, the more I don't want to say recommended, but yeah, like a healthier version of reasonable, yes. And then going from processed white sugar to more like you mentioned coconut sugar and that type of thing to slowly change out. And in the beginning that would probably be difficult for some people. But as you start to your taste buds change, and you are able to sorry, there's lots going on, you are able to get used to that. Oh, yeah, I mean, the body is all about adaptation. Yeah, it's totally happy. It only knows what we only give it, whatever inputs we give to it. That's what it knows. And so, yeah, I mean, we it is wild. I mean, it's just, seriously, it's mind boggling to me, most of my patients, like a lot of people friendly stuff was because they didn't know me when I was a teenager would have would think, Oh, it's just so easy for you to like, you know, eat a salad and meat and see potatoes. And that's like you like that or, you know, salmon and grilled asparagus sounds awesome. And, and think that oh, that's just Matt. That's just this is how I how I am. That's how I'm, that's my tastebuds, I could never, you know, find enjoyment in that, like, I find enjoyment in my, you know, my pepperoni pizza and french fries or whatever. But it is crazy. Like little by little. I mean, I would never eat was like guacamole or tomatoes or I mean, even like broccoli or kale or anything. I would literally never eat those things growing up. I mean, like fruit, I might grapes, bananas, oranges, sure all those. But now I mean, I That sounds awesome. Like, you know, we had this, like Taco Tuesday, on Tuesday nights. And we have just like all these, like, fermented cabbages and stuff that different people bring over. And like, this stuff is so delicious. And that was, you know, that was not part of my being whatsoever. But it didn't happen overnight, either. You know, it's like 20 years later, we're talking about 24 years later. So it's a, the that's why something you know, people don't, don't feel like it has to all happen right now. Right? Because you put all that pressure on yourself, like you're gonna run out of willpower and, and then you're gonna be ticked off yourself, you're gonna lose confidence that you can, you know, do what you want to do. Or that you do what you say you're going to do for yourself. And, yeah, I mean, it's just going to put you in a bigger and bigger hole. So that's where, yeah, just being okay, with growing every single day, and seeing that, wow, I am growing, my holster directory is getting, you know, where I wanted to go. It's, it's growing as well. And it's just shocking, you know, where we can where we can end up, right? Well, in, like you had mentioned with the different foods on the plate earlier in regards to like, people are overthinking this so much. And I think a lot of times we take information that we've learned where these people are working with professional athletes and things like that, we do not all need to make sure that we're doing all of these things that maybe they're doing, right, and, you know, this counting macros and all of this different stuff it not saying that that's wrong, but it definitely takes the enjoyment out of a lot of this. So to be able to not have to think about it that way and just focus on, you know, can I get more vegetables onto my plate? Yeah, it would be just a great way to start. Do you have, do you have recommendations of, you know, this is where I start with my patients? Or do you look at it independently with each individual? I mean, there definitely is a lot of independence, you know, depending on so many people have different sensitivities and stuff. Like for myself, I couldn't tell you that I'm there's some food I'm sensitive to, you know, most foods I eat even if it was junk, I wouldn't have like some kind of net stomach pain or reaction. I mean, I would feel awesome for sure. Like, I don't eat no cake at birthdays, usually because I just don't feel good afterwards. Even if it's, you know, in my family, they make all you know, from scratch stuff. And still just for whatever reason. I just really never felt that great, but it's um, so yeah, I mean, it definitely is pretty individualized. But I would say for most people these days one because most people have sugar addictions to some degree or like, I would say chip, corn chip addictions, something that that crunchy, salty, vegetable, oily, sugary Malay you know, one of those in there is you know, I'm often you know, pushing them towards Okay, Where can we one, drop those out? Because we don't want to eat vegetable oils, you know, it's just, that's, that's just essentially torturing your body. So where can we switch out, say, if you're having cereal for breakfast, you're instantly spiking, no matter how many organic, non GMO gluten free, you know, special stickers that has on there and precious colorings, it's still going to spike, your blood sugar's gonna spike your insulin level, and you're not gonna feel as awesome as you would feel otherwise. So, you know, can we have some meat, let's have some, you know, have it have a couple of eggs, or maybe have some, you know, nuts and seeds, or berries or something like that for breakfast. Or if you're getting, you know, people eat granola from the store, but that's like, okay, there's, you know, at a minimum, 15 grams of sugar per serving that's serving is probably like, quarter of a cup. So, you know, mostly, they're getting like, you know, 60 grams of sugar to start with the morning. And they think they're doing something healthy for themselves. Which is, that's, you know, one of my big pet peeves about, a lot of it is, there's so many people trying to help themselves out that they're putting out so much effort. And they think they're doing themselves a favor. And they have no idea that no, you know, they just been marketed to right now, there's these psychologists and psychiatrists on these boards that are figuring out how can we essentially get these people to buy our stuff and think that they're helping themselves out. And, you know, it's super sad, because, you know, it's just happening nonstop. And these people aren't getting results, right. So I've been doing this, I've been eating perfect, and all that good stuff myself, I'm not getting the results, you know, whatsoever. I just literally had a patient column the other day, who forever, you know, they're saying like, they're 67 years old, are actually sorry, this patient is 91 years old. She just turned 91 She was forever she said she like 60 years, she's like been trying to like lose this 30 pounds that she's had on her body ever since she had her first kid. And about a year ago, we did this thing called the shake the sugar challenge, basically, where we got rid of, for 49 days, we didn't eat any added sugars whatsoever. You know, fruit was good to go. But at least there's added sugar to anything, anything that's not you know, actually found in the whole foods and he didn't even eat it. And so she just gets rid of all these everything that had added sugar. So that was like, like granola was something she would eat. There was a couple of breads she thought were healthy, you know, good for but they had added sugar in it. You know, some crackers that were socially you know, Whole Foods, organic, all that kind of stuff. And she so she got rid of those because there's couple grams of sugar in there. And amazingly enough in so she was 90, then she's 91 Now, and she lost like three pounds during that timeframe. And she says it's just crazy. She's done literally different diets her whole life for like nothing works for her. And now it's been over a year that she could care less about any of that stuff, she loves eating whole foods, and, and she would have eaten the whole foods before, you know, just kind of gone that route didn't realize that, you know, all these things she thought was healthy, that were basically of the process variety, because they've been packaged that way. She was consuming, you know, fairly regularly. And just by getting rid of those not starving herself, you know, not counting calories, not counting macros. None of that stuff that we hear in a lot of these circles we're in and a lot of people are doing literally just changed up those getting those added sugars. And you know, she still gets deep fruit all she wants and, and all that kind of stuff. But as I mean to lose fat 91 and 90 years old to lose 30 pounds of fat. You know, it's crazy, right? Yeah, that's not something that happens every day. And if she's so vital, she's you know, she wants to do life reminds really strong, you know, she's got all this going first, she just felt like, man. I hate that. I know, this is something I wish I would have known, you know, 30 years ago, and I could just get rid of it because I would have. Right so I think that's um, yeah, you know, it is just trying to get from that we were asking about what's the first step is, okay. You know, patient number one, how can we clear out, you know, some of these processed boxed items, let's take one meal, let's just get that one meal where it's literally a Whole Foods substance you're consuming, you know, it's through its specials, it's meat, it's not that seeds. You know, if you can handle beans, or lentils, it's beans or lentils. But let's just let's start with that one meal, let's get that one meal taken care of. Once you feel good about that, you know, I mean, some people can do more promotion than that, but at least got to get four weeks under our belt, just crushing it with that one meal. And then let's get the next meal in Erbil kind of thing. And, you know, not worrying about I gotta eat six meals a day, and you know, snacks between everything. There's some people that does that does help you know how it works for them. But it's not like that's not science. That's just an idea. And a lot of the things we think are science are ideas. And it's not like there's all these, you know, nutrition journal journal articles that show that if you eat six meals a day versus three meals a day versus two meals a day. There's some you know, massive benefit in metabolism or weight loss Ossur especially long term, you know, weight loss and that kind of stuff. So, right. Well, and I've, I've been hearing a lot recently that the longer you can extend, and I don't mean, you have to specifically go into like full on intermittent fasting, the longer you can extend that it helps with blood sugar. Totally. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, if you can have that, that basic kind of time restricted eating, where you're, you know, giving yourself anywhere being pretty much I get around 14 hours, does that come that fast and window? It does seem like that's where most of the insulin sensitizing and growth hormone effects and all that kind of start really percolating and benefiting a person. And, you know, most people find that, wow, that's, um, yeah, I guess that's, that's not that big a deal. Actually. When they, when they start looking at it, it's just, you know, we're programmed to do so many things. And, and maybe, you know, it's like, okay, it's which that is a point bring up, you know, when a patient thinks about intermittent fasting or time restricted eating, and they're like, Okay, normally I would, I would eat, you know, a snack or something at 930 at night, because just kind of like, you know, it's been a few hours since I eat dinner. And I'm, you know, that kind of in a board state. Plus, you know, by the end of day, your willpower is shot. So you really don't can't decide what you want to do anymore, especially on the good side of things. But, you know, maybe they're watching the show or something, and so they're still up. However, when they're doing like, time restricted eating, they like, okay, you know, I'm finished eating at six o'clock at night. You know, it's not like they're cutting calories. And they're just like, that's when they stopped eating at six o'clock at night. Now, instead of like, you know, seeing up to 11 o'clock at night, because there's that food that happened, you know, at 930, or whatever. Now, they're all about, okay, I'll go to bed at 10 o'clock, I'm gonna go back to nine o'clock. And it's like, all these other benefits are starting to come into play, because of, you know, kind of setting up that window. So yeah, there's, there's lots of advantages to that. Okay, so going into that as well. So you mentioned nutrition, like, that seems to be where you kind of start? When other benefits sleeping? What would you say are those habits that you try to ensure that your patients are doing? And you don't have to go? You know, there's a litany of them, but like, what would you say, the top three to do? Yeah, I'm gonna say, yeah, so we get the food, we get the food routine going. And then, which could be like 400 podcasts there, but and then I would say that the exercise component, you know, getting, having a set time where you do do, you know, some little physical exertion, where you're, you're going beyond what your normal life is. Because, you know, fitness is so rewarding. And one of the things and I even have a little program for this is like, to be able to do a pull up, you know, a person being able to do pull their bodyweight, or their chin up over a bar from a dead hang, is so exhilarating for humans. And, you know, every patient I've had that's been able to go from not being able to do a pull up to being able to do a pull up. It's like, they'll go and quit their job, they'll go and like, get out of some terrible relationship, they'll go and go get this interview, they never, never, never do before they'll, they'll like, join the gym, and they were so they had so little competency that before, because you know, being able to do something, you know, very objective, I can't pull myself up over a bar. Now I can pull myself a lower bar. It seems dumb, you know, in light of eternity, I'll say, you know, it seems like completely meaningless. But it is wild, what it does for a person's confidence when they go from not being able to do that, to being able to do that. And so yeah, I'm a huge remote proponent, I would say, step two. And there's usually like, step one and a half I'm definitely usually talking about about an exercise in the first visit as well. But is, yeah, you know, let's, let's get some let's get a routine going. And, you know, there's this, the study of Keystone Habits, where they see, they show that if you were to do see, like you pick

Friday morning at 10: 29:00

30am, I'm going to do 20 minutes of physical exertion. And every Friday morning at 10:30am, you do that outside of like an atomic bomb at your home or something that six months from now, so you don't do anything else. All you did was on Friday morning, I got my workout in, and I just don't miss that. Six months from now. Like you'll be adding all these other things to your life. This is what they found in these these study participants that they're adding other things like they're they're taking more time for like reading instead of watching TV, they were more conscious about you know, some of the meals they were doing there was like relational stuff they were fixing. There was you know, their their sleep and like timing asleep and getting to bed earlier and waking up for all these things. They were starting to, literally unconsciously like this, were not conscious behaviors they were making, they were like I'm going to try to take my or my sleep now. They will just start doing it because of that one single thing that they dialed in at one single keystone habit, which exercise we Tonight, there's part of it like going to church on a Sunday is another one that seemed like it was pretty helpful. But the exercise across the board isn't like the one single thing. It's like, we know consciously and subconsciously wanting to do physical activity is to our benefit. There's like, every part of our being says, this is helping me thank you so much. Even if it's not like, you'd get this great euphoria for exercise, are being knows this is to our benefit. And so, yeah, I try, definitely try to make that a, I think, if you had the food part going, and then you know, you you don't over spend your willpower. And you get you know, that that can be five minutes could be that, like I said, that one push of the day. And, or the, you know, 20 minutes, one time a week, you just get this routine going. You just, you know, you think about it, right now, what can I do? Don't worry about tomorrow, we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. You can't do it about the past, like, okay, what can I do today, let's Okay, boom, it's

Friday, it's 10: 30:53

30am, that's when I do my workout, I'm going to do it. And then don't, it doesn't have to be perfect. Like, I just literally made this little video of myself working out this morning, before this in my garage with my older girls, my wife read violin practice. So I have my twin girls who are three years old, and my little guy who's one, one years old. And they're just like walking around in my small garage, and I'm working out in there. And, like, I gotta name sometimes not set, careful, I'm set the weight down, because my little guy came running through or something. But it's like that, you know, for a lot of patients I see is it's, it's like, well, I just, I don't have time, I can't can't do it, you know, kids and all this kind of stuff. But it is, it's okay for it not to be perfect. Like, I'm not trying to play college basketball anymore. I'm not trying to be a professional athlete, or like, do physique competitions, or, you know, I'm just trying to be super healthy and feel awesome. And you can feel awesome, and you know, be in really good shape. And not be like, I got to do the workout. So I was doing every minute on the minute. And so, you know, I do a different movement every every minute, for this 20 minute timeframe. And I can't but I but like my little guys there, then my girl was saying something. And, and, and I want to be you know, I'm, I'm their dad, and they're young, so it'd be my attention. But I could have, you know, like I wasn't getting, you know, sometimes it's a minute 30 instead of on the minute, but that's like, who cares? That's, that's fine. I still I gotta get a workout in. And it's okay to not have everything, you know, just perfect. And I like I got an hour at the gym. I did my cardio, then I did my strength training, then I did my son afterwards. Those are, that'd be great. But for, you know, if you're working, you know, I would say generally knowledge, like an influencer out there who has, you know, four hours every morning to set up their whole morning routine, then it's, yeah, it's gonna look all different. And it doesn't you don't even have to do all that stuff. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, and the added benefit, I mean, your children are seeing that this is just a natural part of what you're doing. So they were saying that benefit as well. And I'm sure I don't. I know. You said your littlest as a year, but your older two are the two that were there the 23 years. Okay. I mean, I'm sure that they were trying to do some of the exercises with you or running around you or Oh, yeah. So you're then teaching them so much with that, as well? Oh, yeah. They're always they're always asking, When are we gonna do the workout? Yeah, do you? Did you do your workout? They're like, okay, you know, they want to, like, get it get on, and they like jumping on boxes. And they're like, you know, pulling on the rings, and you know, doing burpees and that kind of stuff. So they're, they just start doing their, what they think is their part of the workout? Yeah. But yeah, I do think that's a big thing I was thinking about this morning is, you know, how do we get our kids to basically do the habits we want them to do? Or what things we know are gonna be most beneficial for them? How do we make that easy to do? And, you know, it doesn't, it just doesn't come from telling them to do stuff. Right? Right, it comes from us being an example. And just, you know, kind of creating that out that opportunity, creating that space. versus, you know, we, for instance, my three older girls, basically they do 100 Jump ropes every day, just as part of, you know, literally takes them, you know, now, like, less than a minute to do that. Because they've been doing it for so long. But, um, and it's it's just a thing, you know, it's like a routine they do and but originally No, if I just like take girls go do that. And then sometimes they will but most of the time, I'm like, I'm gonna be out there and I'm doing you know, some other little workout and like they're just do it while I'm while I was doing something. And, and so it's just like, it's no big deal. And it's like it's actually enjoyable. And they want to do tricks down. They want to do all this kind of stuff. As opposed to just just so many times I you know, the patients come in and it was a parent, and it's like the pair aren't like, I'm gonna go do my thing out here, and you do your thing, you know, somewhere else at some other time for the, you know, the kid, especially the little kids, and it's just, they don't even like you, the little kids don't even realize that, you know, the parent, Oh, Mom, you you're like you're doing Pilates every day, or you're doing yoga, or you're doing you know, this, you know, fitness routine, or your, you know, your online class or whatever you're doing, I didn't really, you know, you don't even know, cuz it's almost like parents are trying to, like, I know, I mean, I know, I'm sure you know, a mom, or even a dad wants to, like, have that time to like, recover from maybe their day to day or whatever, or just like that time for themselves. But um, I personally find that it's, when I finally kind of got out of that idea that my workouts have to be just just right set up, you know, I gotta be able to use a barbell every time. Or if it says, I don't know, like, I'll just use dumbbells, I mean, 90% of time I use dumbbells or kettlebells. Now, versus a barbell, because the barbell is huge. I'm trying to hit with my kids, there's much better control of the dumbbells or kettlebells. But it doesn't, it actually makes makes the whole experience much richer. You know, having having the kids around and being able to do it with them, and then actually enjoying it. You know, if I write a workout on the board, for my, like, one specific for my kids, which we do this often. It's like, they're like giggling and laughing when they're doing it. And they're, it's like, most adults would find it really challenging. You know what they're doing, but it's just, it's fun for them. Because they, they know, I think because of the you know, we they see us enjoying it, and then the other kids kids love running around and jumping around and, and all that. So, right. Okay, so what would you say to the mom, who is saying, like, I don't have a lot of time? I can't get a workout in like, I just I go from morning tonight. Do you have? Yeah, I definitely hear that on the regular. Yeah. I think like 75% of my patient population is females. Okay. And I would just say, well, one example is, I mean, he was we got to get like what we value right? in pretty much all of us probably looked at our phone, got in some social media, you know, check your email or a messages for no reason, you know, literally, I was just this Craig Groeschel. And he was talking about how I think there was like Duke University or Harvard is like 2000 times a day or something. The average, you know, merican looks at their phone or touches their phone. It's just, it's just insane. Which I was like, I hate that. But you know, I'm literally I'm part of that. And I don't want to be, but I am part of that right now. So I think there's the so that's like, you know, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, two minutes, five minutes, four minutes, three minutes, 20 minutes. All these are just like accumulating throughout the day. And next, you know, the day is over, like, oh, man, I I couldn't get a workout in. So I would say one, you know, consider your time. To me, my wife. So we have six, I said, we have six kids, she's still breastfeeding, okay, and our one year old. And you know, she will go in at about like, eight 830 into our garage. I mean, she often won't bite over, there's a few girls in our neighborhood, it's really kind of fun, they'll come over and even do workouts with her and bring their kids and stuff. And a lot of them are really small. And, you know, you just you get a workout in and write it on the board and do the workout. And maybe it takes 20 minutes, maybe it takes 15 minutes, maybe it's 30 minutes, maybe it's like a pile of kids in with their scooters. And we walk down the walk down the street, you know, a mile or so kind of thing. It's so there's it mean, I have not met anyone other than some of my patients who are you know, like, their legs don't work or they have MS or you know, where it's like it was really, really challenging for them to do what I think would be awesome for them to do. Right. But even that, that there's like, there's always something we can do. You know, there's literally like we could do. For instance, I had this patient with this serious, low back knee issue, right? Knee low back and knee issues. I mean, literally, they can't they really can't do anything that has to do with their legs, and they're in this aggressive physical therapy, rote routine. I was like, Okay, you could though, like you can do dumbbell curls with your arm. So that would not hurt you. Right? Like, yeah, you could, like, you know, do some like banned presses, you could do you know, push up against the wall. You could there are things we could do, we could set up a little routine and, and they agree that yes, you know, they're they're finding excuses. When the thing is those excuses, they just they won't get us anywhere we want to get to right, right. So I would say gently to the mom, you are one you're super capable. You deserve it. You're in your race so glad you did it. And it's it's okay if it's not perfect. Because it's probably not gonna be perfect. But if you get yourself you know, five minutes and say Okay, five minutes my you know, if your kids are taking a nap, your kids went to the bathroom or something. Be okay with being like I'm going to do for instance, for myself yesterday, so we went and visited a family better how I was, and I got off work. And literally, I just basically came home. And we're pretty much leaving. So I go change my clothes, I did a set of pull ups to failure and a set of steps to failure and locked in, because I literally done anything that day. And I was like, I'm gonna go sit down and eat dinner with these people. And I'm not just talking one, it helps me recalibrate my brain after talking to patients all day, but to it's just like, it feels so good have done something. So I did that took less than two minutes. And I didn't get sweaty at all, which is a huge secret because I slept really good. But those all that little stuff, it just keeps adding up. And you know, don't you just Yeah, I think you can do a class, you can do all this stuff. You know, I know you do a lot of training people. And so if you do that, that is amazing, right? But um, it's okay, if you can't do it every day. That's what I would tell myself. It is okay. I'm just gonna do a set of air squats to failure right now. And call it a good for today. Yeah, well, and I think you brought in a key component is that a lot of moms will also say like, oh, I don't have time to go get changed. And, you know, I don't want to get sweaty like, oh, yeah, I have to go do something. But like you said, You did something for two minutes, and you didn't get sweaty. So it doesn't mean you have to go get changed into your workout gear. Totally. Yep. No, you're so right. So good. Okay, so I want to know a little bit about this iron supplement that you have talked to me about this, because I know as women, this is something I mean, I've struggled with iron. I had anemia for a period of time after my third. So I want to hear about this. Yeah, so we had a well, basically my wife when when she was pregnant, the twins about four years ago, now, she was really anemic. And I was, you know, I basically get my hands on the best stuff available. And we couldn't make any difference. In fact, your iron just kept on going down, and she just felt horrible. No, Massa T, she's having headaches all the time, she couldn't keep food down, it was just really, really getting problematic. And we have, we have hombres, and we want to have the twins at home, which I know sounds kind of crazy. But we did do that. But if you can't, then midwives will not let you have a homebirth if you're anemic, it's just too much liability and stuff. So you have to have a ferritin basically, at least our midwife wanted over 21 And my wife was at nine. And so we I basically I talked to some friends who are scientists and stuff and knew about some technology that was available and related to basically better absorption and better utilization of iron, and kind of in a supplemental form. And so I talked to the picker scientists in Utah, and he basically gave me just some raw raw ingredient to try it for my wife. And amazingly enough, we checked her levels and I checked her levels again, 31 days later, and it went from nine to 23. And, and this is like 30 milligrams of elemental iron, which is not very much iron at all in some other form. And previously, she'd been taken up to 90 milligrams, and these of these other types of iron, and her ferritin just kept on going down. And, and she wasn't getting black stools anymore. She wasn't getting nausea from the iron. Her stomach wasn't hurting. She was getting these headaches from the aren't anymore. Like oh, she was just feeling awesome now. Yeah. And this is her third trimester, which is where your bloodline is really expanding and you're the babies are specially twins are just sucking up, you know, tons in your nutrition. So is our midwife was like shocked and she'd our deliver like 3000 babies, she was kind of she was one of the she's retired now, but she was one of the really big midwives in Washington state back then. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is wild. You know, this is like right in my face. This is like one of those stories where you hear people say like, you have this real personal thing that happened to you. And then you change you change the world afterwards kind of thing. So I talked to him and Pharaoh, okay, how can I basically turn this into a supplement. So because I want to try this on patients this is like I've always patients, who I don't even want to give iron to, but they are anemic and they need it because they're just going to say their stomach hurts. You know, they don't feel good their body aches, they hate it. They're nauseous from taking iron and and so I was able to basically formulate change up the form a little bit and make sure it was all like natural active ingredients in there. And then came out base with basically the product about three and a half years ago now called Blood vitality, which basically has the iron in a matrix of rice protein. So it's like hidden within the rice protein. Okay, so you're basically getting the iron like it's a Whole Foods substance, kind of like you'd get seen a piece of meat or beef or that kind of thing. And yeah, we just saw like read Nicholas results. So I had to do a clinical trial at my clinic. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's been awesome. Because we just get testimony after testimony after testimony. And I feel fantastic about about giving or recommending to my patients now, because no one did have side effects to their, they get the results they want. And I even have a patient who was set for a blood transfusion. So not just an iron infusion, but a blood transfusion because she was so anemic. But she was she was really concerned about potential of, you know, there's a lot of potential issues with, you know, receiving somebody else's blood. And she just did not want to go that route. She still wants to have more children, which is not me, and you know, what might happen. And so she came to our office, because you heard about this blood vitality from another friend of hers, but she wanted to make sure that it would, it would be okay for her. And so she started taking it. And basically, one month later, all their levels had normalized. And she was she didn't like she wasn't even she didn't need anything anymore. Her she had no need whatsoever. And so now she's at she has a huge voice out there in the world for recommending blood vitality, people are saying, you know, this is an awesome opportunity for you to get your iron levels up and, you know, not not have issues because, yeah, it's super iron deficiency. You know, it's so underreported. And you know, so many women are walking around, they're depressed or anxious heart palpitations, shortness of breath, just like, you know, underperforming in life, and just feeling like, you know, I guess this is just how I am. It's just motherhood. It's just, you know, being a mother and working and working out, I've just, I guess this is just how it is. When in reality, you know, iron deficiency, it's 2 billion people on Earth are iron deficient. And, you know, if you're probably iron deficient, if you're a female, you're menstruating and you do any kind of sports, the likelihood if you're not essentially taken an iron, or, you know, really careful about your enough, you know, red meat intake and stuff like that. You're probably are, you probably aren't efficient, you know, that would that would be very, very normal, unfortunately. And, you know, why is that? You know, it's there's a lot of theories as to why it's challenging for the body to uptake iron. Because I'm sure you know, 300 400 500, maybe 1000 years ago, that probably wasn't quite the issue. But there's, there's definitely something that's happened where our bodies have more challenges, but unfortunately, we haven't adapted in some other way to make up for that. Right. Because all the hair loss, dizziness, all that kind of stuff still happening. So yes, it's been really, really, really fun. Huh? Okay, so is it a powder form? It's comes in a capsule, so, okay, but yeah, I mean, a lot of people, you know, some some even children use it. Or people just like Swan capitals, they literally just open it up and put it on your smoothie on your, your salad on your meat, on your eggs, whatever. Because it is it's like taking like a couple of milligrams of rice protein, essentially. It is what it is. So it doesn't essentially tasteless. Okay, and is it something where you're needing to also then go get your iron levels checked? Because there's a chance of too much iron in your system? Or does it? Because it's more now. I mean, I would always I would always, you know, I think any mineral, especially but especially iron, I would definitely check you know, get your levels checked, okay, want to make sure you need it, because you don't want to take iron if you don't need it. iron iron can be super inflammatory and oxidative to the body as well. Although I would say that's, that's what because there is this condition called hemochromatosis, where essentially you hold on to way too much iron, and you just absorb it like crazy. But um, that is because there's this condition out there often, doctors and patients will be just so concerned about, you know, taking iron, because they don't want this thing happening to them when, like, that's not, that's not even though it's out there. That's not the common thing. And all the bad stuff that would happen because of that. All that bad stuff will happen to you as well if you're deficient in iron. And so, yeah, to get your levels checked, you can check your ferritin level, that's kind of the the golden standard, the ferritin is and you know, you make sure generally speaking, I try to keep it at least about 50 depending on their exercise level, a lot of people do better if there's like 70 to 120. But if it's yeah, you know, basically under 30, your bone marrow start saying, Hey, we're gonna like slow down red blood cell production, because we're running out of resources here. And if you look at a lab, most labs actually will have it at 15 or 21 being the low end. So you you really have to be your own advocate when it comes down to iron. And I mean, I've made a lot of videos on this and there's you know, there's there's groups of 10s of 1000s on like Facebook and stuff these prepper groups on talking about how terrible doctors have because I've been iron deficient forever and no and no one ever helped me out and they still don't believe me. Because it's a we often look at the sea UVC, which is just telling you if you're actually iron deficient anemia, even though if you look at the ferritin level, it's it's low, but it hasn't shown up in the CDC yet. And so a person will be iron deficient, but not called anemic yet. And so that's not considered like, in a lot of places not considered a reason to replete iron levels, when the person might have be losing hair, like I said, be depressed, having palpitations, feeling like they can catch their breath when they're working out. And they're, you know, their heart rates always at 95 when it should be at you know, 70 kind of thing, when they're just resting. So there's, yeah, there's a whole there's a lot of, I feel like it's kind of coming to the surface a little bit more now. But, um, there's, there's a lot of overlooking of iron deficiency, unfortunately. And just, you know, some people are underperforming, when it there's like, There literally is no need for whatsoever. Okay, perfect. Um, do you know, like, why is it when you work out? You need more iron? Do you know that information or? For sure, I mean, you lose, lose, lose iron via sweat. It okay. And then I mean, if you run so like, every when you hit your foot on the ground, there's, there's this thing called Iron deficiency, Humala, Hema lysis, which is basically that where the capillaries in your feet break, and you lose iron that way. And so, it's, it sounds like, wow, that's kind of crazy. But um, it happens all the time. Even male runners, you know, they can become iron deficient, literally from their foot hitting the ground over and over and over and over again. And so, and then you're just, you know, generally more more sweat more exertion. Even if you're exercise intensely, you know, you'll get micro bleeding in the intestines and that kind of stuff, which isn't, like horrible for us by any means. But you will, you'll lose blood that way. And, and blood or iron is falling blood, you know, it's part of the red blood cell. So, right. And then women probably should get checked, I feel like, you know, it's very difficult for us to maybe test our arm, because we might be right above here. But after ministration, it really drops us down low. So to make sure that you're, do you have a recommendation on when you should get blood work done for that? Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, if a if a patient is a female patient, if she's feeling that, uh, you know, man, I'm just like, so tired during menstruation. And then, you know, even like that first one to 10 days, like, Well, I'm just so exhausted, you really want to hear, I would get your own little check, you know, during that timeframe. Because you're, you're potentially, you know, you're getting, you're going just below and then you slowly start, you know, building the next, you know, three weeks or so. And then you're here back down again. And, yeah, so if you're, once you start, I would say the thing is about, if you start supplementing with iron, you want to do it at exact same time, your blood, so if you do it, you know, the day before your period, or a week before your period, or during your period, you want to make that the same because if you check your blood, you know, see your ferritin or your iron levels, like day, 24 year cycle, and you don't start menstruating until day 28. And then the next time you check it, you know, day four and your cycle of your period, your those levels is going to be you really can't compare them because when you're in the middle of bleeding and the other one you've been storing, storing up for three weeks. So definitely want to be consistent. Whichever time frame you decide. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much for all that information. Okay, sure. Can we find you? Yeah, I mean, anything that says Dear Dr. wholeness, so Dr. wholeness.com and then like all the at Dr. Wholeness on like Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok. Those are the the main places but Dr. wholeness.com is Yeah, and YouTube as well. If you type in Dr. Wholeness that's, that's where you'll find me. Okay, perfect. Anything else you'd like our listeners to know, before you leave? No, just I would start little be okay with it being so simple. And you know, that simple is going to turn into crazy awesome health accumulation. When you just keep on doing that simple day after day after day. Perfect. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day. Thank you, Cory, for having me. It's great. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcast. I hope that you found this information valuable, and I hope that you were able to immediately use some of the information that was provided. Make sure to go check out our show notes for all of the links that we discussed today. 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