Fitness, Health, and Empowerment Insights

Food can either be the most powerful medicine or the most deadly poison. Prisoners get more outside time than kids in school. It's really sad because we're killing these kids by keeping them stuck in a chair all day long and then we're not setting them up for success with health. I never realized how far degraded just basic fitness was. The lack of physical fitness is just a pandemic right now. You were born. being able to do these things. But then we let these things degrade. And on top of that, they're getting fed poison. The food that we have now is not meant to kill you quickly. It's meant to make you suffer over a long period of time. Food companies have this thing called a bliss point. They want to calculate the exact amount of sugar, the exact amount of salt, and the exact amount of fat to put into food to give you the most dopamine release, to make it more desirable, to make you crave it. What are some big mistakes that people are making on eating a healthier diet? When it comes to diet, I think people aren't human. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And... today's guest is a really special guest. Right before the podcast, actually, she was beating up my wife in our gym. I walked in there and I was like, I want no part of this. Like the fifth round of Russian split squats. I was like, yeah, I think I'll go to the kitchen. But Alexia Clark, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a huge fan of yours. I love Sage. I had so much fun with you guys at dinner and the workout I did with her was so fun too. Yeah, no, it really was. And she's a fan of yours too. And, and we're so appreciative that you came across the country. Um, you know, originally we were going to go have this meeting for, uh, to try to make America healthy. Um, and, uh, but we're so glad that you came and it was, it's been amazing getting to know you and, and, you know, watching your journey. You know, I, I, I went back and did a little research on you. And, you know, a lot of your content is from the early 2000s, 2000, 2001, when you were doing podcasts before you had this major life event that we, if you're comfortable about talking, I'd love to talk about it. But, you know, a lot of my podcasts have a very similar theme. And I find that the people that are making the greatest impact, that are the most passionate, the most purpose-driven, they've solved some kind of problem in their life. you know, maybe it was a drug and alcohol addiction and they, and they really struggled with it and they overcame it. And then they become a powerful voice and a powerful force for that. And you're obviously a powerful voice and a powerful force in the, in the fitness industry. And so what, if anything was the tipping point in your life or was there anything that really just lit that purpose on fire that gave you that drive? And you said, you know, this is my niche. Right. Yeah. Well. When I graduated from my university, I was in marketing and I knew right away I did not want to be sitting in an office. It's like when I lived in Chicago, I was like, I don't know where I want to live, but I don't want to live in Chicago. Exactly. I just knew I didn't want to do that. But one thing that I would always find myself doing, which I probably shouldn't have been doing, was I was passionate about fitness. And every day I'd go to my job, I'd sit at my computer and just research fitness stuff. Really? Yeah. Just research all day long. And I was not doing the work I should have been doing. So I thought, I have to quit this. I have to follow my passion. So I decided to become a personal trainer. And one of my very first clients, it was a, I think it was a 5 a.m. session. She came in and I could just tell something was off. I had trained her once or twice before. And we started the session and we were doing step ups. And I could tell she was almost about to cry. And so I asked her, is everything okay? And she said, my husband left me last night. And this was hours before the session, because this was like 5 a.m., right? Right. And so this just like blew me away. And I thought, like, we have to talk about this, you know? Like, I let her vent. We, you know, I told her I'd be, I was there for her if she needed anything. And just over a few more sessions, because she kept coming back, I saw... such a change in her. She became more confident. She was actually smiling. And I thought, man, fitness can impact so many people in so many different ways. I have to share this with as many people as I can. And that was when the passion started. Yeah. So what time frame is this? This was probably... 20, I think it was 2011. Oh, wow. Yeah. So a while ago. Yeah. And I love the fact that you talk about an area of fitness that most people don't talk about. And obviously we know like working out and fitness is going to make you look better. Right. Right. And maybe even feel better or certainly make you feel better. But we rarely talk about the mental impact. For sure. Right. I mean, we don't, there are even studies out right now. I've talked about them on the podcast. I even read an entire podcast short on it about how exercise. and relatively small amounts of exercise, um, were more prolific than SSRIs than actually antidepressants. And, you know, this is, I'm glad that we started with this story because it's, it's so emblematic of, you know, how exercise and fitness can actually change people's mental state. I wonder if you'd talk about that a little bit on your, your, your journey. What have you seen? I mean, I've just seen this across my entire career of, um, clients and people that do my program telling me like, my life has changed because of this. You know, I wasn't feeling great about school. I didn't really have any friends. And just by sticking with a workout, sticking with keeping exercise a part of their daily life, their life changed. Like they started feeling more comfortable in the gym or feeling more comfortable meeting people. And I think that a lot of people don't realize all of the benefits that there are with fitness just by working out 10 minutes a day. It doesn't have to be go to the gym for an hour. Also, I got to do my cardio. Also, you know, I have to do all of these things. Like you just have to take a tiny bit of time out of your day to see the results that fitness can do for you, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, I think it's the starting point, right? I mean, when I talk to people about dieting, you know, for example, I'm like, look, you don't need to be a vegan, vegetarian, keto, carnivore, paleo, you know, pescatarian, vegan overnight. Right. Right. Like those those massive shifts are too much for people to stick to. And I think a lot of times it's the way people view fitness. I either have to commit to 90 minutes a day of crushing myself in the gym and I got to do so much cardio and I have to do so much weight. So they just don't even start. Right. Exactly. And I think, you know. if you look back in time, we used to be a lot more like physically active during the day. Whether you worked on a farm, we just walked more, you know, in general. And I think we have to shift our mindset about fitness where we now have the pleasure to choose what we want to do. It's not that we have to go work on a farm and lift bales of hay and do all of this physical labor. We have the ability to choose and it's become a luxury. So you can find something that you really truly enjoy. And that's what's going to keep you consistent with your workout. So whether that's pickleball, yoga, Zumba, lifting weights, going to the gym. And I know you and I probably agree on this, that resistance training is really great for you. No doubt. Now it's directly linked to longevity. Exactly. And everybody should be doing resistance training. But if you have never worked out before, start with your very first step of what do I like? And maybe that's running. But those things can translate and take you on a new path to doing other things too. Yeah. And I think a lot of women that are watching this podcast, I hear this all the time and they're like, I don't want to get bulky, you know? And, um, and so they associate lifting weights with being very bulky and they want to lean, you know, attractive physique. And so they're like, well, I'm not going to go in and start a fitness routine if I end up just bulking up. And And what do you say to that, to the people that, you know, especially to the women that are averse to strength training, resistance training? Well, I think you have to look at it as lifting weights and just fitness in general is truly anti-aging. You know, it's not going to make you bulky, but when you work out and you do exercise, it puts your body into autophagy. A lot of people think you can only get into that state when you're fasting, but you can actually do it when you're exercising. That's going to... really promote anti-aging in your body. It's going to help your DNA. It's going to clean out your cells. It's going to do so many different things for you that are actually going to help you live longer. And with the bulky thing, like I promise you, it's not going to make you bulky. You're not bulky, clearly not. You're very fit and, and, and, and, and very attractive. And I think it's, it's, again, it's emblematic of, um, some of the misconceptions are out there. And I was wondering if you would dispel some of those, because I think. You know, so many women have osteopenia, osteoporosis, brittle bone disease. They also associate strength training largely with men. And so they don't want to start a strength training routine. And very often I'll tell my... clients, for example, and I'm by far from a fitness coach, but I'll tell them, you know, go by the mirror, not by the scale. Exactly. Right. Because you hold a lot of muscle and probably by the scale, it, uh, it might not for your height. Yes. Look so good. Right. You'd say height this way and, and, and weight here. And I think that, um, you know, women and men should, should both go by the mirror and not so much by the scale. What do you, what do you I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. You know, muscle holds differently on your body than what fat does. And so you have to look at like muscle is much more compact. So when you're starting to shape your body, like women, they want a shape, right? They want that kind of like hourglass look. Well, the way that you get that is you, you form those muscles that way. That's the natural way your body's supposed to look. So it's not like you're going to get big and bulky and thick. You're sculpting your body to look that way. And so you have to look at it that way as You're going to be an artist and you're going to sculpt your entire body yourself. Yeah. You know, but I also think that a lot of reason why there's all of these misconceptions and even for beginners to maybe they're afraid to go to the gym. I think it's because there hasn't been a way where we can keep fitness up throughout life. You know, a lot of people are afraid when they go to the gym. They're like, what if I don't do it right? I'm embarrassed in front of people. But you were born. being able to do these things. Like you look at a baby, they can do a perfect squat. They can hold onto a bar, like basically do a dead hang. They can roll over on the ground, but then we let these things degrade over time. You put kids in school, they're sitting for eight hours a day. Then you put them in high school, college, then you go straight into work and you're not keeping these things up. And so then you're in your thirties or forties wanting to take your health back and you're afraid, but. you know how to do these things. Like they are in you. And so we like something needs to change when it comes to physical activity just throughout life. Like, I don't know if you know this, but did you know prisoners get more outside time than kids? Like maximum people that are in maximum. Yeah. Maximum security prisoners get more time outdoors than kids in school. I mean, I won't say that I'm shocked by that, but I'm shocked by that. I mean, that is astounding. You know, when, when I was. when I was growing up and I'm dating myself a little bit here, I graduated high school in 1988, you know, PE. Yeah. When not only was it a required class, but you actually had to pass it. For sure. Right. Definitely. Yeah. And it wasn't like hard to pass. I mean, you had to run a mile in like under nine minutes. I think we had to dead hang for 30 seconds. We had to do 20 pushups, 20 sit-ups. It was fairly basic. It was. Yeah. But you had to pass PE. And if you couldn't do 20 pushups or sit-ups or we had over the, you know, over. whatever you call those bars that you kind of go hand over hand. Oh, like the Peg Bar? I call them monkey bars. Yeah, monkey bars. Are they monkey bars? Yeah. Okay, good. I didn't want to use a non-fitness term with a fitness expert. Monkey bars. So, you know, we had to do the monkey bars. And now, you know, we were having a conversation the other night at dinner last night. And, you know, what was astounding to me for a very short period of time, I owned a CrossFit gym. And I was telling you that we, for community outreach, we would allow these kids to come in, fourth graders to... eighth graders after school and the parents could drop them off and we'd run these classes for them for free. And I never realized how far degraded just basic fitness was. I mean, forget athletic athletes and sports. Um, but we had these kids put through a basic physical assessment and one of them was they had a dead hang for 30 seconds. Um, and the other one was they had to sit down on a one foot high box jump and just stand up. Yeah. And my partner in the gym and I, were so blown away by how many kids could not sit onto a foot high box jump and stand up. Yeah. It's sad. They would fall over and roll to the side and put their hands down. And I said, no, no, no, no. Just, just stand up, you know, and they couldn't stay. I thought they were not like getting my instructions. And then we would hold them up on the bar and they would hold on and they would just fall. And then I would say, no, no, hold on as long as you can. They just couldn't hold. And, you know, aside from all of the risks to that. child's future. Because, you know, I believe a lot of chronic disease. I mean, there's evidence to support this, you know, being very early in life. You know, the lack of physical fitness is just a pandemic right now. It is. It is. And history is honestly repeating itself because during World War I, the government looked around and they saw that the citizens weren't fit really for military. And so then they put in a physical education system. And then it happened again 50 years later with JFK. And he reformed the- JFK was big time. Yeah, he was huge on it. Some of his speeches are amazing. They're amazing. And so, I mean, it's the same thing you were talking about. You had to do a certain amount of pushups. You had to do a certain amount of pull-ups. You had to be able to run a mile in a certain amount of time. And they measured body fat percentage. Wow. And so it's like, what happened? And it's really sad because we're killing these kids. Slowly. Yes, slowly killing them by keeping them stuck in a chair all day long. And then we're not setting them up for success with health at all. And on top of that, they're getting fed poison, basically. Like. Now you're hitting all my like hot buttons right now. Don't don't don't get me on my soapbox. But yeah, I mean, have you ever heard of the bliss point? No. OK, so food companies have this thing called a bliss point. And the food scientists, they want to calculate the exact amount of sugar, the exact amount of salt and the exact amount of fat to put into food to make it give you the most dopamine release to make it more desirable, to make it like. make you crave it. Wow. And it's like, it's so sad because they're treating it like a drug. I mean, it is a drug to these people because they're eating it. They're getting that dopamine hit. Then they're needing another one. Yeah. And so it's, it's just absolutely amazing to me because we could be doing so much more about this by incentivizing companies and food companies and incentivizing consumers to make healthier food. I could not agree with you. Yeah. Like we. The government could tell these food companies, these are the healthy ingredients you need to be using. So it could be non-GMO, organic, healthy oils, things like that. If you make food this way, then that food that you make will be income tax free. And then on the flip side for the consumer, if you buy this healthy food, it's sales tax free and everybody wins. You know, because food can either be the most powerful medicine or. the most deadly poison and we have to do something about it. Want to get an extra hour of quality, good sleep every single night. Let me tell you how I do it. 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So you have an aversion to it, right? But, you know, the food that we have now is not meant to kill you quickly. It's meant to make you suffer over a long period of time, right? So we can tolerate. processed foods. We can tolerate food dyes. We can tolerate high amounts of sugar. It's just destroying our cellular biology, right? We're just bathing it in a toxic soup, but this doesn't, since it doesn't show up right away, since it doesn't taste like kerosene, you know, then we, you know, we, we eat this over a prolonged period of time. And, you know, I talk a lot about whole food diets and, and, and whatnot to my audience, but I wonder what, because you travel and you're busy and you, you've, you've got to. you know, you're, you're a fitness influencer. So obviously you have to maintain, um, you know, your, your routine. Talk a little bit about your diet. What are some big mistakes that people are making and what are some things that people could do if they're listening to this podcast and say, okay, I'm ready to make a change. Um, where do I start? Yeah. I think that when it comes to diet, I think people aren't eating enough protein in general. You know, I think one thing that shout out to Gabrielle Lyon. She would give you a big high five for that. Yeah. It's true though. People aren't eating enough protein. And I think when people are looking at the way they're making dinner or lunch is maybe they're like, okay, I'm going to make pasta for dinner, but I need some protein. So I'm just going to add maybe some chicken on top. You need to rethink your meals. So you need to number one, think about your protein and then cook around your protein. Wow. You know. I actually liked that one. Think about your protein and then cook around your protein. Yeah. Because you need to be focusing on that. Like. I think you should be eating at least one gram of protein per pound you weigh. But when you're telling somebody that that that doesn't eat healthy, that seems like a lot. So you have to give them little goals at a time to start with. You got to eat 70 grams of protein a day. You got to eat at least 100 grams of protein a day because they're going to see the results from that. And they're like, oh, well, I'm eating more protein. I'm going to eat more protein. You know, you just have to get them hooked and you got to get them taking that small little step in the right direction. What is a diet typical day in the life of Alexi Karkuk like diet wise? Yeah. So I would say I eat, you know, a lot of kind of like kind of how you eat, you know. meats, organic meats, um, vegetables, fruits. I stay away from processed foods. Um, I do protein shakes. I always, I tell people, cause I think that there's this huge, like misconception people have on protein. I don't know where this came from, but people would say, well, your body can't absorb more than 20 grams of protein. I've heard that too. I'm like, where did that go? Do you think your body's just like, Oh, that's 20 grams. I'm not, I don't need any more. We're done. So I tell people do a double scoop of protein in your protein shake. And people have never thought of that before. And they're like, well, isn't that too much? I'm like, no, like you can, you can do two scoops of protein. So, yeah, I would say I do, you know, beef, turkey, chicken. But I mix things up too, you know, because I think, I think that's the same thing with exercise. Like if you're eating the same thing every single day, it can get boring. And then you're like, well, I want something that like. is different. And then you're like, I'm going to go get fast food, you know, but you have to like, give yourself a variety. Yeah. You know, I, I've been reading a lot of clinical studies on, um, you know, how processed food, not only, not only harms our cellular biology, but it really messes with our satiation, right. Whether or not we're full or not. And how people on, uh, highly processed diets and it's well-documented versus whole food diets. They, They are hungry more often. Definitely, yeah. And, you know, one of the interesting studies, Dr. Hyman's talked about this too, is that was published, was they took, you know, two different groups of people, but they fed them the exact same content macros, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, sugars. But one was a whole food diet and one was highly processed. And what they realized across the board was the vast majority of people that were eating the processed food got hungry faster. Definitely. They had a tendency to overeat. Yeah. And, you know, part of me has got to think that this is by design. You talk about this bliss point. Yeah. It's definitely by design. Yeah. I mean, like if, I mean, so selfishly, if I was a food manufacturer, I'd want people to eat as much food as possible. So I would design it for them, maybe not feel as satiated and therefore they would eat a lot more of my product, but it's, it's sinister in terms of how it underserves, you know, humanity. And so, um. I wonder if you would just talk about the folks that are listening to this that maybe don't have an exercise routine, don't really have a diet routine, but they know they're in a place where they've got to start. I always tell people, look, walking is probably the most underrated exercise in the world. If you have to start anywhere, just start with a walk. You look at the blue zones and the people that are walking throughout their life are living the longest. In Sardinia, they're living. to 117, 119 years old, and they're walking up a 37 degree slope every day. There's not a lot of rocket scientists. Definitely. I mean, yeah, with the blue zones, it's like every blue zone eats differently. Some of them are vegan and vegetarian. Some of them are carnivore. They eat a lot of meat. Some of them are pescatarians. But the one thing that they all have in common is their physical activity throughout the day and the community that they spend their time with. And so I think when... somebody is a beginner and they're like, well, I don't know what to buy at the grocery store. Like, I don't know how to shop for healthy food. Stay on the outside of the grocery store. That's where the produce, the meat, all of, all of the more natural kinds of things are. And don't go in, don't go into the maze. Don't go down the aisles. Yeah. Don't go into the maze. I love that. Yeah. Like a mouse stuck in the maze. Yeah. And when it comes to fitness, yeah. Walking is a great place to start. But like I said before. Find something that you enjoy. And that's going to help you stay consistent. And I think that if you hate your workout or you hate working out, you're tired all the time or something, I think it could be two things. I think, one, it's you haven't found the right thing that you enjoy yet. Or two, it could be something is off in your body. So maybe it could be your thyroid. If you have brain fog or you're tired all the time, it could be your hormones are off. you're, there's some nutrient missing. So you should definitely get your blood work done and really look into that because working out is something that you should enjoy. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel productive. It gives you energy throughout the day. I would even say that if you had to choose between what would give you the most energy coffee or a workout in the morning. a thousand percent a workout in the morning. So true. Definitely. And give you energy longer, like, like, like more sustained energy. Yeah. So if you're buying a $10 cup of coffee a day, you're going to crash. You're going to need more caffeine. You're going to crash. You're going to need more. And you're spending $10 a day, every single day where a workout, whether you go on a walk outside in the sunshine or it's a 10 minute body weight workout at home, that's going to give you sustained energy throughout the day. It's going to help your mental health. It's going to. clear, like give you like more cognitive function, be more creative, definitely work out. Well, you know, it's funny too. You talk about coffee being $10 a day, which is probably Starbucks right around there. Um, you know, most gym memberships are not $300 a month. So, um, you know, we think about how expensive the gym membership might be and I don't want to get a gym membership, but I'm willing to drop 10 bucks a day on a, on a coffee. Um, so, you know, I, I, again, I'm really fascinated by your story. And when we were sitting at dinner the other night, um, you know, really hit me some of the struggles that you've been through, like very real struggles. And yet you've gotten yourself back into incredible shape. And I think a lot of people have multiple excuses that for why they don't want to begin an exercise routine or why they actually don't want to get off a processed food diet. But talk a little bit about this life-changing issue that happened to you. Yeah. So in 2021, It was actually like January 3. So I was getting ready to go into the new year. I'm like, yes, it's going to be a great year. Fitness is going to be great. I had a vulvulus, which is your intestines twisting. So I was rushed into the hospital. And how did you notice this? Like you were just, did you think you had like, you'd eaten something bad? You had food poisoning? Right. So at the time, my husband and I were just dating. He was over for dinner and I started getting a stomach ache. And I was like, man, I think I just ate something bad. I tried laying down on the couch. He was like, let me make you some tea, which was really sweet. Good husband, man. Shout out. He's like, let me make you some tea. And I was just laying there. I was like, it hurts so bad. I started just getting bloated. And then I started throwing up. And I was like, man, I must, I've never had food poisoning before. So I thought I must've had food poisoning. And so I tried to just kind of relax and lay down, but it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. So he was like, I have to take you to the hospital. This was probably like 2 a.m. At night. at this point. And on the way to the hospital, I started like passing out and I was thinking like, I, I'm going to die. Like it was, the pain was that intense when we were in the car, it was getting worse. And I started passing out and I was just telling him like, you have to drive faster. We get to the hospital. And at this point I'm hanging on to the counter where we're talking to this nurse in the emergency area at the hospital. And she's asking me these questions, like, what's your date of birth? What's your name? Like slowly. And I'm like, you're like, I'm literally dying here. I was like screaming. I was drenched in sweat. I couldn't even stand up. So they take me back. They start, you know, giving me pain meds, putting me in all of these machines, doing scans. And at this point, I'm kind of like in and out because I'm on. They've given me so many painkillers and I still don't really know what's going on. I was at the last minute. My husband threw me my phone. So at least I had my phone with. So I was able to call my parents and I said, I don't know what's wrong. My stomach really hurts. And I couldn't even really tell them what was happening. So I gave my phone to the nurse and the nurse told them her intestines twisted. We're going to have to take her into emergency surgery. And I remember the doctor waking me up and saying, hey, we're going to be taking you into surgery. And I still had no idea. You were just twilight. Yeah, just out of it. Yeah. So. go into surgery. They removed 17 inches of my intestines. Wow. Yeah. A big, big portion. And the next thing I know I'm in my hospital room. And so the hard thing was, is this was during COVID. So I couldn't have any family, any friends. I was by myself in the hospital. I'd never been through anything like this before. I was alone completely. And so day one, I was just in the worst place because everything was a question. am I ever going to be able to work out again? What is my future look like? And you were in great shape at the time, right? Yeah. I could do pull-ups. I could do pistol squats. I could do whatever I wanted to do, you know? So I went from up here to all the way down at the bottom. Overnight. And so I didn't know what this meant for my business either, because it's like, I don't know if I can work out what's going to happen to, you know, my community, my queen team community. And so the first day I didn't even want to get out of bed. And the first nurse. that I had was like, yeah, you're probably going to be in here for at least 10 days. You're probably not going to be able to work out for nine months. And I was just like, oh my goodness, this is really nine. Of course, that's a typical. Yeah, I was, it was not correct. Typical modern medicine is like, yeah, you're going to be, you know, it's nine months to recovery and having no idea what you've got going on up here. Right, exactly. I'm like, yeah, right. Okay. Hopefully you're already going, oh, hell no. That's not, yeah. Yeah. Nine days for me. So the next day I woke up in the hospital and I just like was thinking to myself, like the only thing I have two options. I can either give up and just lay here and be in a pissed off mood about this whole thing. Hmm. Or I can do whatever I can to take the next step to, to becoming better. So the, for that, that day I was like, I'm just, I'm going to get up and walk. I had to have a walker. I had to have a nurse with me and it was hard to walk, but I was able to walk just a little bit. I went back to my bed the next day. It was just that week. I was, I mean, yeah, cause I, they couldn't give me any food because my intestines had been cut, you know, apart. And so I was super weak. Um, Also just in pain. I have a huge scar down my abdomen from this. And so then the next day I thought, I'm going to walk maybe twice today. So I'd walk in the morning and then I'd walk in the evening. The next day, I'm going to walk maybe a little bit further today. So each day I would just do one step more. And I was out of the hospital in four days. The doctors were like, we've never seen anyone recover from this so quickly. And then... Even with working out, I was back to working out way quicker than the doctors expected. I didn't know if I was even going to be able to do like a pull-up again. But within, I think, like four months, I was able to do pull-ups again. Right. And so it's all about taking those tiny little steps each day. Like if you're a beginner or if you're somebody that just had an injury and you're coming back from it, like it's really hard to look at the end goal and be like, wow, I have so far to go. Yeah. Like you have to set overwhelming. Yeah. It's super overwhelming and you have to set those little daily goals and you have to celebrate them. One thing that I do that I think could be helpful to people is every day after my workout, whether my husband and I are working out together or whether I'm working out by myself, um, after the workout, I always ask, what was the favorite, my favorite exercise or what was your favorite exercise that you did today? What felt the best? So you're ending your workout on a high note. You're thinking about the positives. That's a really good idea. Yeah. So I always talk about that. We have a whole conversation on our way home about what felt the best. What are you excited about with your workouts? And I think that that's like something that's not talked about is you have to like always be thinking about the positives. Yeah. You know, I think when you go back and look at exercise that way, I mean, most of us, I mean, I'm thinking about myself right now. I'm guilty of it. You get a workout time. You're like, oh my God, that was. brutal, you know, and you're like complaining the whole time on the way home in the car. But that's a, guys are especially like this. We actually like things to be terrible. And then we like to bitch about it afterwards and then just go do it again. But, but maybe, you know, by, by looking back and being like, you know what, that, that, you know, those pistol squats where that was new and unique. I felt good doing them. I'm surprised I could do them. So just by changing the narrative a little bit, exactly. To be something that you look upon as a, as a very positive thing. I think a lot of people have issues with, you know, time in their days and saying, I just don't have the time to work out. I can't I can't budget it into my day. I've just made it non-negotiable for my life. You know, I started scheduling my meetings and travel around sleep and exercise. And I don't think anything, any modality that I have and I got tons of like crazy equipment in this unit or any particular red bed or anything has had nearly. the impact that simply making sure that sleep and exercise are non-negotiable in my schedule yeah and my wife knows it like if dinner parties run too late i just get up and go and go to bed yeah she's like where's your husband he's i know where he is he's i like that tactic i didn't do it to you guys but like what you left early enough but had you gone much after 10 30 you would have seen me what do they call it the irish exit yeah you don't say goodbye in your own home you just leave just leave you gotta find your way out um but you know it's it's it's been you know i i always thought about what i would be giving up but the truth is that you know i was just able to move my schedule around you know i don't i don't take you know i got asked to keynote a conference the other day and the keynote speech was at eight o'clock in the morning i said guys i can't i can't keynote at eight o'clock i can keynote at 11 a.m um and but you know i'll i'll be sleeping and exercising at that time and i think you know once i made it non-negotiable just the what it did for my mental impact, like my self-confidence, your self-esteem, but how do you maintain it when you're on the road and when you're traveling? And you've been here for three days, so. Yeah, I think, so I have a story for this too. No, I love it. So. We love stories. I had this client, his name is Bill, and he had. a super successful company. He had everything that you could ever imagine, like planes, boats, everything, multiple homes. And he, when he started, he was in his seventies. So when he started training with me, he would tell me like, I really put my health on the back burner. And So he was just getting going. Just getting going. Yeah. He said, I was so focused on building this company that I just put this on the back burner and I really want to get back into working out. And so we started off slow and, um, One thing that he would always say is don't sacrifice your health for your wealth. Wow. Yeah. And so I think that a lot of people, they're like, well, I'm traveling. I can't do this. Or I'm working on this business. I can't do this. Well, there's, you can still build the million dollar company or billion dollar company. You can still travel when you do these things. If you're building a company, you can still take your calls when you go on a walk. You can take the stairs instead of the elevator. If you're traveling, you can do a simple. five or 10 minute workout in your room, just, just to do it, just to stay consistent because consistency is the key. If you take one day off, it's easier to take two days off. If you take two days off, it's easier to take four days off. So you have to keep it a part of your daily routine, you know? And a lot of people are like, well, I don't even like it. We do a lot of things every day that we don't like. Like a lot of people don't like going to work, but you go to work because you have to make money to be able to support yourself. Fitness and exercising is the exact same thing. It's wealth that you can't live without. You have to be able to keep up on it and do it every single day. Yeah, I totally agree. And so how did things end for him? Where did Bill end up? Well, one day he came in and he was so excited. And I was like, what are you so excited about? He's like, today I was able to put my pants on standing on one leg. And I was like, that is so amazing. You think about that. Yeah. Yeah. Truly anti-aging, like focusing on these things is so great because, you know, balance is linked to longevity. And so just being able to do that is huge. So, yeah, he's still he's still exercising. Yeah. Falling is actually the greatest risk of, you know. mortality in older ages. And a lot of it has to do with grip strength. You know, you're just going down a regular set of steps and you don't have the grip strength to just keep yourself from falling and you end up tumbling down the steps. And I think that frailty is a real risk to longevity. In fact, so many people, you know, their grandmother falls and breaks their hip. But the truth is, it's not really how that occurs. Usually what happens is their hip breaks and then they fall. So the fracture actually caused the fall. The fall didn't cause the fracture. And, you know, Peter Atiyah talks about this in his book, Outlive. And he talks about, I think he calls it the centenarian decathlon, which is like, what are the 10 things you want to do when you're 100 years old? Exactly. And you've got to start planning for those now. And I actually really like that mentality. I tell a lot of my clients to, I call it snacking on exercise. And which means like, okay, if you don't have 90 minutes in the beginning of the morning, snack on exercise throughout the day. Yeah. just go for a 15 minute walk after your, after, after lunch. Um, or if you can get 15 minutes is better than as better than no minutes. Um, but you talked a little bit about the queen team. Yeah. The queen team. So, um, so tell me about the queen team and the, and the community that you're building because you're right. You know, when you look at blue zone research, people that are living a really long time, um, they call it a sense of purpose or community and they, they want to identify with, and I think it's super important. for people to identify with communities that are consistent with where they want to go. So talk a little bit about the queen team. Yeah. The queen team is honestly the most amazing group of women ever. Like, so what's, what's so great is we all do the same workout every single day. So we're in it together. So whether you're working out in the U S or in Australia or somewhere in Europe, we're all working out together the same day. But what I love about the queen team community is Everyone is so encouraging to each other. Like you see them giving each like high fives to each other whenever they talk about who loved or what was your favorite exercise in today's workout. Everybody chimes in. And it's so amazing to see just the friendships that are built. I had a meetup in 2019 and people flew in from all around the world and they already had a friendship. But seeing them see each other for the first time was so fun. Yeah, because they've been queen team. Like, yeah, community, but just remotely. Exactly. Yeah. And so it was just, it's just so great to be able to have such a strong community of women that are truly supporting each other and cheering each other on. That's so great. I think, I think the support system, I forget what the statistics are. You might know, but when you have a workout partner, the chance of you actually not working out goes. down dramatically. You know, when you just have, you're only holding yourself accountable. Exactly. You know, when I used to, to, to do triathlons, you know, years ago as competing in triathlons and I had a swim partner, a run partner, and I had a bike partner. And if you, if you didn't show up, man, they just, they rode you. So, you know, you didn't want to be belittled and berated. So you, you actually showed up, but sometimes, you know, you're showing up for other people. I think the community is so important. And is that how you. plan to take fitness and make your impact on the world is by creating and expanding this community? Yeah, definitely. You know, I, from that moment that I encountered that experience with that woman, I just knew I had to do whatever I could to share fitness with as many people as possible. So I just really try to share the message of fitness will change your life. Like you have to make it a priority. It's a non-negotiable, but. it will be fun. Like I think sometimes when you use the words, it's a non-negotiable, it's a priority. You have to be disciplined. Those can be scary words to people, but you can actually truly enjoy what you do. And that's kind of how I have, how my program works. I release new workouts every day because I found that when people are having fun and they're engaged in them, they're going to see the greatest results, whether you're working out for 15 minutes or whether you're working out for an hour. If you can have fun and show up every single day, that's when you're going to see results like mentally, emotionally and physically. And are you running these clean team communities? Like are you working out live with them and it's a certain time and they log in or how does it work? Sometimes I'll do live workouts with them, but I have an app and the workouts get released in the app every single day. Okay. Yeah. Hey guys, I'm really excited to announce this. Perfect Aminos has gotten a serious upgrade. They've added Nucleotides, the... building blocks of our nucleic acids, DNA and RNA. And this is important. We know essential amino acids are the building blocks of protein and collagen. Having all the essential amino acids in the correct ratio is necessary for complete protein synthesis without the caloric impact. But if we want perfect protein synthesis, we need to look at the process of protein synthesis itself. Because if the process is faulty, We won't get the correctly made protein, collagen, fibrin, or the red blood cells in our bloodstream, or our muscles. We can even stop creation of specific proteins, which can affect us in so many different ways. Our DNA and our RNA are what direct protein synthesis, building new proteins. If our DNA or RNA get damaged from toxins, harmful bacteria, or just plain aging, we get faulty protein synthesis. So cells, enzymes, and hormones are less functional and we get premature aging. By adding nucleosides and nucleotides, the building blocks of the nucleic acids DNA and RNA, our cells get exactly what they need to help repair faulty DNA and RNA and improve the process of protein synthesis itself. This is next level science and you need to try these. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. We'll put that app in the show notes at the end of the show too, guys. I'll tell you how to get in touch with her, follow her, what have you. But so we'll make sure that we put it in there. And you find that so people engage with this app and they get into this community. Do you find there's a specific profile? Do you find it's more like moms? Do you find it's young women, older women? Like what do you see across the board? Yeah, across the board. There's a lot of moms, but there's a lot of younger women too and older women. And it's just really great to see because, you know, when you're a mom, I'm not a mom yet. I'm a dog mom. but i noticed that you'd love the dog we had here the other night i forgot it was like a korean pomeranian or something korean pomeranian yeah korean papa chow or something yeah korean pomeranian it was the cutest dog when i got home i was like stalking its instagram page i was like oh my gosh his own instagram page yuki yuki yeah yeah oh my gosh i was obsessed But, um, but when you're a mom and then all of your focus goes into raising your kids, especially when you have a newborn, like you're kind of stuck inside your social life kind of goes away, but this is a way that you can still socialize when you work out and you have friends from all over the world. Even if you travel to another place, you have a friend there that you can go hang out with and get a workout in. Yeah. And, and, and we talked a little bit about, you know, traveling. So how do you maintain your consistency on the road? Are you always looking for a gym? Do you have a hotel workout routine? Do you have like minimum, I'm going to do some aeroscouts, some, you know, some planks. So what, what, so what are you doing to stay fit on the road? I always take resistance bands with me because they're very easy to pack. Okay. And I have travel workouts that I do with my resistance bands because that's really easy to do in your room, or you can take them to your hotel gym. You can take them to a park, which that's my favorite. Right. Um, and I think a lot of people underestimate resistance bands, but when I'm traveling, I start my day with my workout. So first thing I do is I wake up, get my workout in, and then I try to like go throughout my day, whether I'm traveling for pleasure or for business or whatever. So the first thing I start with is my workout and then the rest of my day is planned around there. I think it's so smart to do that because you look at the endorphin rush you get, you're getting oxygen to your brain, you're circulating, and you get the hard things out of the way early, which I heard you talk about at dinner the other night. I have this little saying that if your morning is hard, your day will be easy. I never feel like I do anything as hard as getting in a cold punch or running a hard workout. And we might even put you in the cold punch before you leave. Your brothers have already agreed. Have they? Oh my goodness. I said, well, when you were working out, I'm going to shame them into it right now on live podcast. And I was like, do you guys want to run a, you know, do a cold punch? Oh, after. after the workout. And in my mind, I was like, I know what you're doing. You think I'm just going to forget about this. You're going to slide out of my unit, but no, I'll shut the elevators off, bro. Yeah. But we can, uh, and I like having those, um, things in my life because, you know, I like having them around cause I gravitate towards those things. Like, you know, one of the things I try to do is just not have bad choices around because even though I'm empowered, to know what those bad choices lead to, you know, food wise and drink wise and everything else. I, I still, you know, we're all weak and I think very often we don't just set ourselves up for success. Exactly. So what are some of the ways that people could set themselves up for success, um, you know, to, to keep consistent with a fitness routine and maybe just start and embark on eating a healthier diet? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like I've said, find something that you enjoy, even if you just want to start off with walking, but Um, if you enjoy dancing, join a dance class. If you enjoy yoga, go to yoga because those things will, um, take you maybe into another little area. Yeah. And their communities too, right? Their communities. Yeah. Like I was always, you know, into lifting. And then a couple of years ago I got into jujitsu because, you know, I just thought I saw that on your, on your, you're a badass too. Like, I think I saw that on your, uh, in your Instagram. I was like, this girl does everything. Um, yeah, but it's really fun because you know what I saw. when I started jujitsu too, is I was able, I still have so much to learn in jujitsu, but I was able to advance quickly because I was already into fitness. And so I was, I was fast. I was able to learn things quickly. I was strong. Like I've been able to choke out grown men that are twice as big as me. Hey, that may come in handy one day. Exactly. Yeah. Um, so when you're, when somebody's starting out, you should definitely find something that's fun and that you enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, you have to tell yourself. how can I enjoy this? So maybe you want to, if you like listening to podcasts, put a podcast on, go for a walk, you know? And honestly, you'll learn so much more from that podcast because you're out and you're getting oxygen, you're getting your blood flowing. Like you're going to pick up so much more from that. So you have to take that small little step. You don't have to go 200% day one. You got to start off slow when it comes to eating healthy. Like I said, shop on the outskirts of the grocery store, focus on your protein. make your meal around your protein. I love that idea. Instead of pasta and then adding chicken, chicken and then adding your sides to that. But protein has to be a priority. Right. You know, and eating whole foods, you know, just satiating yourself so that you don't overeat. And I mean, often on the road, it's not the easiest thing. It's not, no. Restaurants, you don't know if it's cooked in seed oils or what have you. I've always tried to avoid those things. You know, I was preparing for our podcast and I didn't. listen to your podcast while I was your other podcast while I was walking, but I did listen to it in the gym today. I put it on over the, over the speaker. So to prep for today, I was listening to it in the gym and I'm super appreciative that you ran my wife through this workout. I think she's probably going to join your community. Um, cause she's a, she's a major, you know, she's a workout buff. She did great. She did awesome. Yeah, she did. All right. Sage is going to be really happy. I was going to throw some clips up here of, of, uh, Lexi, I'm beating up my wife this morning when I walked into the gym. Are there any other go-tos for you aside from exercise that you do? Because I really did enjoy the fact that even in the early, you know, 2020, 2021, when I was looking at some of your previous interviews, you really talked about the mental aspect of fitness. And I think so few people really realize the... benefits that you get to your mood, to your emotional state, to your ability to problem solve, how you can focus and concentrate your short-term recall. Like all of these like unintended benefits, if you want to say that, um, to fitness and exercise. And like, have you seen that in your community? Like what kind of transformations do you see as people are transforming their physique? Yeah. I mean, I definitely see like the physical transformations, you know, obviously, but the mental and emotional transformations, like I had someone, uh, tell me that the body positivity movement almost killed them because They were told by the media and whoever else, like, you don't have to work out, eat whatever you want. And she gained a bunch of weight. And then she started feeling bad about herself because she didn't like the way she looked or how she felt. She felt sick and gross. She joined my program and she started losing the weight. And she's like, I just feel amazing. Like, I feel so much more positive about my day, about my life. I feel more creative. I feel like I can recall things faster. And so I see that across. across the board from people who just, they see the difference in even just like the small things, like being more alert when they spend time with their family, you know, like just more present, more present. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there must be nothing worse than being a mother or father and having a young child and not really being able to engage with them and like physical activity. Kids want to run around. They want to have fun, crawl around the floor. I mean, that's like, or as a grandparent. Yeah. I mean, my, my. My daughter's 26. My son's 23. They're in a race to see who's going to make me a granddad first. But I wouldn't be able to like flop around the floor with my kids and, you know, my grandkids. And like, you know, get in a swimming pool with them and take them for bike rides and all that kind of stuff. I think that's like the greatest joy in life is our ability to be mobile without pain. So for people that have some kind of injury or they have a low back pain, which is. you know, pretty impressive what you did with my wife this morning because, you know, she has an L5 S1 Fusion. Um, and she grew up very athletic. She was a marathoner. She was, uh, I consider an absolute expert skier. She grew up in Snowmass. So she learned to ski at a really young age. So she just rips down the mountain. And I think this L5 S1 Fusion, the spinal fusion she had from a car accident, I think it really affected her mentally because, um, And marathons are kind of a permanent thing of her past, right? For sure, yeah. Too much impact. But she was able to go through a pretty intense workout today. She was, yeah. So there's people that are facing injuries or they have joint pain or they have low back pain. You know, what are some tips and tricks for them to get back into physical exercise? Yeah. And today when I was talking to Sage about her back and stuff, I could tell that she misses, you know, running marathons and she misses yoga and stuff. She does. I was telling her, like. I know that it sucks that you can't do those things anymore because you loved them, but you can still find other things that you love and enjoy. And we can work around this back injury and you can become stronger and we'll make it, you know, we'll, you'll be happy finding other things that you really enjoy. It's a new, it's a new path, you know, but for anybody that is struggling with an injury, is that what your question was? Struggling with an injury, like you have to just take it step by step with things like. If you're going back to the gym, don't go do the heaviest weight that you've ever done before. You have to start with just even body weight and really focus on the muscles that are working in that exercise. You can make yourself cry with body weight exercises. Oh, 1,000%. I mean, really? Yeah, definitely. I think I have before. Well, you like it. You're not the person to ask. But, you know, but yeah, I mean, I've had trainers just put me through like pranks and Supermans and bananas. And I'm like. This is not a Superman or banana. This is torture. Yeah. Right. But I mean, just with body weight, I'm like, man, you could do this entire routine on your hotel floor. You can. Yeah. Yeah. Body weight exercises are incredible. Sometimes I would, I'll go to the gym and I won't touch a weight. I'll just do body weight. Really? Yeah. Cause it's amazing. Like you're, they just do so much and you have to be using so many muscles to be able to do body weight exercises. And it really helps you connect with yourself, you know, being able to do body weight exercises. But. If you are struggling with an injury and you're like, okay, I want to do this exercise. I'm going to start with body weight and it feels pretty good with body weight, but then you maybe add a little bit of weight and it hurts. You got to go back to the body weight and really focus on that. Get your body comfortable with that. Make sure your form, form over everything. You have to have good form. I'm so happy to hear you say that. Yeah. Like form is the most important thing. Most people are, are. More concerned about how men especially, right? We're super guilty of this. I want to have an 80 pound dumbbell in my hands, not a 55 pound dumbbell in my hands. In case somebody walks by and just happens to look at how much weight I have in my hand, you know, who's a perfect stranger who I'm never going to talk to, you know, like, I don't know why we do that, but we do. Yeah. So form over. Yeah. Form is. The most important thing, form over weight all the time. But if you can never really get to that point to where you can add weight to that exercise, don't do that exercise. There's a million other ways you can work the muscle in the same way and keep yourself safe. The last thing you want to do is push yourself to do something that already hurts and then put yourself a few steps back. Yeah. Like you have to just be smart about it and take precautions with the things that you're doing. If it hurts. either check your form and focus on that make sure you're doing that correctly and if you are and it still isn't the right thing work it in a different way yeah i mean a lot of what you were doing today with sage was like not even weighted you know yeah they call it russian squats when you put your Bulgarian split Bulgarian Bulgarian i knew it was some foreign country um they are devil squats dude i i haven't done those since i took like a few jujitsu classes like forever ago um so in in the utopian world um what's next, what's the future hold for Alexia Clark? Where are you taking your message? Changing as many people's lives as I can. You know, that was the goal I set on, set out on in 2011. And I'm sticking with that. Like, I believe, you know, this is my passion and I followed it from having a great marketing job and left everything to go personal training. And I really feel that God and the universe led me in the path that I'm supposed to be on. I, I. I would agree with that, you know, because the whole reason why you're here is because on super short notice, we told you that we might have an opportunity to go have a meeting to, you know, with other influencers in space to go affect public policy to change, you know, the way that our food supply is handled. And I am deeply appreciative that you did that because it shows that you have very altruistic, I mean, you have a very authentic motive, you know, because it wasn't any. thing here for you other than for you to give your time and your platform to really help get a message out. And so I'm deeply appreciative of that. And I think it's important for the audience to hear that. And it just comes, you could be on the podcast. She actually came to help us deliver a message and, and really be a part of a campaign to, to try to get the corruption out of our food supply and message to people about the importance of, of, of whole foods. So I, I wind down every podcast by asking my guests the same question and there's no right or wrong answer to this question. Are you sure? Yeah. I've had some really good answers to it and I've had some really crazy ones, but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? To me, to be an ultimate human, I believe it means to live the ultimate life and to live the ultimate life. You need to have the ultimate experiences. And when you look at that, that's being able to play with your kids, being able to pick up your grandchildren, being able to live a full life without being sick and being in a bed and having to go to the doctor all the time. And so that to me is being an ultimate human because, you know, we know what we have to do. We have to eat healthy, cut out the processed foods. We have to exercise and keep that consistent. Put yourself first. Everybody can. everybody can be an ultimate human. That's amazing. Not everybody, because I trademarked the name, but trademark infringement and I will come after you. Alexia, how do people find you? How do women join your community and find more about your community? So you can find me on Instagram, Alexia underscore Clark. You can sign up for my program at www.alexia-clark.com. I'm also on YouTube and TikTok and yeah, with the same handle. Well, now the ultimate human. Yeah. And yeah, an ultimate human too. Super. And I will put all of this in the show notes for you guys. And we will definitely have Alexia Clark Black because she and I are on a mission to change public policy and food supply in America. So I'm sure this is not our last meeting, but until next time, guys, that's just science.

I never realized how far degraded just basic fitness was. The lack of physical fitness is just a pandemic right now. You were born. being able to do these things. But then we let these things degrade.

And on top of that, they're getting fed poison. The food that we have now is not meant to kill you quickly. It's meant to make you suffer over a long period of time. Food companies have this thing called a bliss point.

They want to calculate the exact amount of sugar, the exact amount of salt, and the exact amount of fat to put into food to give you the most dopamine release, to make it more desirable, to make you crave it. What are some big mistakes that people are making on eating a healthier diet? When it comes to diet, I think people aren't human.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And... today's guest is a really special guest. Right before the podcast, actually, she was beating up my wife in our gym.

I walked in there and I was like, I want no part of this. Like the fifth round of Russian split squats. I was like, yeah, I think I'll go to the kitchen.

But Alexia Clark, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a huge fan of yours. I love Sage. I had so much fun with you guys at dinner and the workout I did with her was so fun too.

Yeah, no, it really was. And she's a fan of yours too. And, and we're so appreciative that you came across the country.

Um, you know, originally we were going to go have this meeting for, uh, to try to make America healthy. Um, and, uh, but we're so glad that you came and it was, it's been amazing getting to know you and, and, you know, watching your journey. You know, I, I, I went back and did a little research on you.

And, you know, a lot of your content is from the early 2000s, 2000, 2001, when you were doing podcasts before you had this major life event that we, if you're comfortable about talking, I'd love to talk about it. But, you know, a lot of my podcasts have a very similar theme. And I find that the people that are making the greatest impact, that are the most passionate, the most purpose-driven, they've solved some kind of problem in their life. you know, maybe it was a drug and alcohol addiction and they, and they really struggled with it and they overcame it.

And then they become a powerful voice and a powerful force for that. And you're obviously a powerful voice and a powerful force in the, in the fitness industry. And so what, if anything was the tipping point in your life or was there anything that really just lit that purpose on fire that gave you that drive? And you said, you know, this is my niche.

Right. Yeah. Well. When I graduated from my university, I was in marketing and I knew right away I did not want to be sitting in an office. It's like when I lived in Chicago, I was like, I don't know where I want to live, but I don't want to live in Chicago.

Exactly. I just knew I didn't want to do that. But one thing that I would always find myself doing, which I probably shouldn't have been doing, was I was passionate about fitness.

And every day I'd go to my job, I'd sit at my computer and just research fitness stuff. Really? Yeah.

Just research all day long. And I was not doing the work I should have been doing. So I thought, I have to quit this.

I have to follow my passion. So I decided to become a personal trainer. And one of my very first clients, it was a, I think it was a 5 a.m.

session. She came in and I could just tell something was off. I had trained her once or twice before. And we started the session and we were doing step ups.

And I could tell she was almost about to cry. And so I asked her, is everything okay? And she said, my husband left me last night.

And this was hours before the session, because this was like 5 a.m., right? Right. And so this just like blew me away.

And I thought, like, we have to talk about this, you know? Like, I let her vent. We, you know, I told her I'd be, I was there for her if she needed anything.

And just over a few more sessions, because she kept coming back, I saw... such a change in her. She became more confident.

She was actually smiling. And I thought, man, fitness can impact so many people in so many different ways. I have to share this with as many people as I can.

And that was when the passion started. Yeah. So what time frame is this?

This was probably... 20, I think it was 2011. Oh, wow. Yeah. So a while ago. Yeah.

And I love the fact that you talk about an area of fitness that most people don't talk about. And obviously we know like working out and fitness is going to make you look better. Right.

Right. And maybe even feel better or certainly make you feel better. But we rarely talk about the mental impact. For sure.

Right. I mean, we don't, there are even studies out right now. I've talked about them on the podcast.

I even read an entire podcast short on it about how exercise. and relatively small amounts of exercise, um, were more prolific than SSRIs than actually antidepressants. And, you know, this is, I'm glad that we started with this story because it's, it's so emblematic of, you know, how exercise and fitness can actually change people's mental state.

I wonder if you'd talk about that a little bit on your, your, your journey. What have you seen? I mean, I've just seen this across my entire career of, um, clients and people that do my program telling me like, my life has changed because of this.

You know, I wasn't feeling great about school. I didn't really have any friends. And just by sticking with a workout, sticking with keeping exercise a part of their daily life, their life changed. Like they started feeling more comfortable in the gym or feeling more comfortable meeting people.

And I think that a lot of people don't realize all of the benefits that there are with fitness just by working out 10 minutes a day. It doesn't have to be go to the gym for an hour. Also, I got to do my cardio.

Also, you know, I have to do all of these things. Like you just have to take a tiny bit of time out of your day to see the results that fitness can do for you, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Yeah.

And I think a lot of people, I think it's the starting point, right? I mean, when I talk to people about dieting, you know, for example, I'm like, look, you don't need to be a vegan, vegetarian, keto, carnivore, paleo, you know, pescatarian, vegan overnight. Right.

Right. Like those those massive shifts are too much for people to stick to. And I think a lot of times it's the way people view fitness. I either have to commit to 90 minutes a day of crushing myself in the gym and I got to do so much cardio and I have to do so much weight.

So they just don't even start. Right. Exactly. And I think, you know.

if you look back in time, we used to be a lot more like physically active during the day. Whether you worked on a farm, we just walked more, you know, in general. And I think we have to shift our mindset about fitness where we now have the pleasure to choose what we want to do. It's not that we have to go work on a farm and lift bales of hay and do all of this physical labor.

We have the ability to choose and it's become a luxury. So you can find something that you really truly enjoy. And that's what's going to keep you consistent with your workout. So whether that's pickleball, yoga, Zumba, lifting weights, going to the gym. And I know you and I probably agree on this, that resistance training is really great for you.

No doubt. Now it's directly linked to longevity. Exactly. And everybody should be doing resistance training. But if you have never worked out before, start with your very first step of what do I like?

And maybe that's running. But those things can translate and take you on a new path to doing other things too. Yeah. And I think a lot of women that are watching this podcast, I hear this all the time and they're like, I don't want to get bulky, you know? And, um, and so they associate lifting weights with being very bulky and they want to lean, you know, attractive physique.

And so they're like, well, I'm not going to go in and start a fitness routine if I end up just bulking up. And And what do you say to that, to the people that, you know, especially to the women that are averse to strength training, resistance training? Well, I think you have to look at it as lifting weights and just fitness in general is truly anti-aging.

You know, it's not going to make you bulky, but when you work out and you do exercise, it puts your body into autophagy. A lot of people think you can only get into that state when you're fasting, but you can actually do it when you're exercising. That's going to... really promote anti-aging in your body.

It's going to help your DNA. It's going to clean out your cells. It's going to do so many different things for you that are actually going to help you live longer. And with the bulky thing, like I promise you, it's not going to make you bulky. You're not bulky, clearly not.

You're very fit and, and, and, and, and very attractive. And I think it's, it's, again, it's emblematic of, um, some of the misconceptions are out there. And I was wondering if you would dispel some of those, because I think.

You know, so many women have osteopenia, osteoporosis, brittle bone disease. They also associate strength training largely with men. And so they don't want to start a strength training routine. And very often I'll tell my... clients, for example, and I'm by far from a fitness coach, but I'll tell them, you know, go by the mirror, not by the scale.

Exactly. Right. Because you hold a lot of muscle and probably by the scale, it, uh, it might not for your height.

Yes. Look so good. Right. You'd say height this way and, and, and weight here.

And I think that, um, you know, women and men should, should both go by the mirror and not so much by the scale. What do you, what do you I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. You know, muscle holds differently on your body than what fat does.

And so you have to look at like muscle is much more compact. So when you're starting to shape your body, like women, they want a shape, right? They want that kind of like hourglass look. Well, the way that you get that is you, you form those muscles that way.

That's the natural way your body's supposed to look. So it's not like you're going to get big and bulky and thick. You're sculpting your body to look that way. And so you have to look at it that way as You're going to be an artist and you're going to sculpt your entire body yourself.

Yeah. You know, but I also think that a lot of reason why there's all of these misconceptions and even for beginners to maybe they're afraid to go to the gym. I think it's because there hasn't been a way where we can keep fitness up throughout life.

You know, a lot of people are afraid when they go to the gym. They're like, what if I don't do it right? I'm embarrassed in front of people.

But you were born. being able to do these things. Like you look at a baby, they can do a perfect squat.

They can hold onto a bar, like basically do a dead hang. They can roll over on the ground, but then we let these things degrade over time. You put kids in school, they're sitting for eight hours a day. Then you put them in high school, college, then you go straight into work and you're not keeping these things up. And so then you're in your thirties or forties wanting to take your health back and you're afraid, but.

you know how to do these things. Like they are in you. And so we like something needs to change when it comes to physical activity just throughout life.

Like, I don't know if you know this, but did you know prisoners get more outside time than kids? Like maximum people that are in maximum. Yeah.

Maximum security prisoners get more time outdoors than kids in school. I mean, I won't say that I'm shocked by that, but I'm shocked by that. I mean, that is astounding. You know, when, when I was.

when I was growing up and I'm dating myself a little bit here, I graduated high school in 1988, you know, PE. Yeah. When not only was it a required class, but you actually had to pass it.

For sure. Right. Definitely.

Yeah. And it wasn't like hard to pass. I mean, you had to run a mile in like under nine minutes.

I think we had to dead hang for 30 seconds. We had to do 20 pushups, 20 sit-ups. It was fairly basic.

It was. Yeah. But you had to pass PE. And if you couldn't do 20 pushups or sit-ups or we had over the, you know, over. whatever you call those bars that you kind of go hand over hand.

Oh, like the Peg Bar? I call them monkey bars. Yeah, monkey bars. Are they monkey bars?

Yeah. Okay, good. I didn't want to use a non-fitness term with a fitness expert. Monkey bars. So, you know, we had to do the monkey bars.

And now, you know, we were having a conversation the other night at dinner last night. And, you know, what was astounding to me for a very short period of time, I owned a CrossFit gym. And I was telling you that we, for community outreach, we would allow these kids to come in, fourth graders to... eighth graders after school and the parents could drop them off and we'd run these classes for them for free.

And I never realized how far degraded just basic fitness was. I mean, forget athletic athletes and sports. Um, but we had these kids put through a basic physical assessment and one of them was they had a dead hang for 30 seconds.

Um, and the other one was they had to sit down on a one foot high box jump and just stand up. Yeah. And my partner in the gym and I, were so blown away by how many kids could not sit onto a foot high box jump and stand up.

Yeah. It's sad. They would fall over and roll to the side and put their hands down. And I said, no, no, no, no. Just, just stand up, you know, and they couldn't stay.

I thought they were not like getting my instructions. And then we would hold them up on the bar and they would hold on and they would just fall. And then I would say, no, no, hold on as long as you can.

They just couldn't hold. And, you know, aside from all of the risks to that. child's future. Because, you know, I believe a lot of chronic disease.

I mean, there's evidence to support this, you know, being very early in life. You know, the lack of physical fitness is just a pandemic right now. It is.

It is. And history is honestly repeating itself because during World War I, the government looked around and they saw that the citizens weren't fit really for military. And so then they put in a physical education system.

And then it happened again 50 years later with JFK. And he reformed the- JFK was big time. Yeah, he was huge on it. Some of his speeches are amazing. They're amazing.

And so, I mean, it's the same thing you were talking about. You had to do a certain amount of pushups. You had to do a certain amount of pull-ups.

You had to be able to run a mile in a certain amount of time. And they measured body fat percentage. Wow. And so it's like, what happened? And it's really sad because we're killing these kids.

Slowly. Yes, slowly killing them by keeping them stuck in a chair all day long. And then we're not setting them up for success with health at all. And on top of that, they're getting fed poison, basically.

Like. Now you're hitting all my like hot buttons right now. Don't don't don't get me on my soapbox. But yeah, I mean, have you ever heard of the bliss point?

No. OK, so food companies have this thing called a bliss point. And the food scientists, they want to calculate the exact amount of sugar, the exact amount of salt and the exact amount of fat to put into food to make it give you the most dopamine release to make it more desirable, to make it like.

make you crave it. Wow. And it's like, it's so sad because they're treating it like a drug.

I mean, it is a drug to these people because they're eating it. They're getting that dopamine hit. Then they're needing another one. Yeah. And so it's, it's just absolutely amazing to me because we could be doing so much more about this by incentivizing companies and food companies and incentivizing consumers to make healthier food.

I could not agree with you. Yeah. Like we. The government could tell these food companies, these are the healthy ingredients you need to be using. So it could be non-GMO, organic, healthy oils, things like that.

If you make food this way, then that food that you make will be income tax free. And then on the flip side for the consumer, if you buy this healthy food, it's sales tax free and everybody wins. You know, because food can either be the most powerful medicine or. the most deadly poison and we have to do something about it. Want to get an extra hour of quality, good sleep every single night.

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And use the code Gary, G-A-R-Y, for your discount. Transform your nights and elevate your sleep. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. And I feel like the sad thing is about food is, you know, if something is poisonous enough, it makes you sick right away.

So you have an aversion to it, right? But, you know, the food that we have now is not meant to kill you quickly. It's meant to make you suffer over a long period of time, right? So we can tolerate. processed foods.

We can tolerate food dyes. We can tolerate high amounts of sugar. It's just destroying our cellular biology, right? We're just bathing it in a toxic soup, but this doesn't, since it doesn't show up right away, since it doesn't taste like kerosene, you know, then we, you know, we, we eat this over a prolonged period of time.

And, you know, I talk a lot about whole food diets and, and, and whatnot to my audience, but I wonder what, because you travel and you're busy and you, you've, you've got to. you know, you're, you're a fitness influencer. So obviously you have to maintain, um, you know, your, your routine. Talk a little bit about your diet. What are some big mistakes that people are making and what are some things that people could do if they're listening to this podcast and say, okay, I'm ready to make a change.

Um, where do I start? Yeah. I think that when it comes to diet, I think people aren't eating enough protein in general. You know, I think one thing that shout out to Gabrielle Lyon.

She would give you a big high five for that. Yeah. It's true though.

People aren't eating enough protein. And I think when people are looking at the way they're making dinner or lunch is maybe they're like, okay, I'm going to make pasta for dinner, but I need some protein. So I'm just going to add maybe some chicken on top. You need to rethink your meals. So you need to number one, think about your protein and then cook around your protein.

Wow. You know. I actually liked that one.

Think about your protein and then cook around your protein. Yeah. Because you need to be focusing on that.

Like. I think you should be eating at least one gram of protein per pound you weigh. But when you're telling somebody that that that doesn't eat healthy, that seems like a lot. So you have to give them little goals at a time to start with. You got to eat 70 grams of protein a day.

You got to eat at least 100 grams of protein a day because they're going to see the results from that. And they're like, oh, well, I'm eating more protein. I'm going to eat more protein. You know, you just have to get them hooked and you got to get them taking that small little step in the right direction.

What is a diet typical day in the life of Alexi Karkuk like diet wise? Yeah. So I would say I eat, you know, a lot of kind of like kind of how you eat, you know.

meats, organic meats, um, vegetables, fruits. I stay away from processed foods. Um, I do protein shakes.

I always, I tell people, cause I think that there's this huge, like misconception people have on protein. I don't know where this came from, but people would say, well, your body can't absorb more than 20 grams of protein. I've heard that too.

I'm like, where did that go? Do you think your body's just like, Oh, that's 20 grams. I'm not, I don't need any more.

We're done. So I tell people do a double scoop of protein in your protein shake. And people have never thought of that before. And they're like, well, isn't that too much? I'm like, no, like you can, you can do two scoops of protein.

So, yeah, I would say I do, you know, beef, turkey, chicken. But I mix things up too, you know, because I think, I think that's the same thing with exercise. Like if you're eating the same thing every single day, it can get boring. And then you're like, well, I want something that like. is different.

And then you're like, I'm going to go get fast food, you know, but you have to like, give yourself a variety. Yeah. You know, I, I've been reading a lot of clinical studies on, um, you know, how processed food, not only, not only harms our cellular biology, but it really messes with our satiation, right. Whether or not we're full or not.

And how people on, uh, highly processed diets and it's well-documented versus whole food diets. They, They are hungry more often. Definitely, yeah.

And, you know, one of the interesting studies, Dr. Hyman's talked about this too, is that was published, was they took, you know, two different groups of people, but they fed them the exact same content macros, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, sugars. But one was a whole food diet and one was highly processed. And what they realized across the board was the vast majority of people that were eating the processed food got hungry faster.

Definitely. They had a tendency to overeat. Yeah.

And, you know, part of me has got to think that this is by design. You talk about this bliss point. Yeah. It's definitely by design.

Yeah. I mean, like if, I mean, so selfishly, if I was a food manufacturer, I'd want people to eat as much food as possible. So I would design it for them, maybe not feel as satiated and therefore they would eat a lot more of my product, but it's, it's sinister in terms of how it underserves, you know, humanity. And so, um.

I wonder if you would just talk about the folks that are listening to this that maybe don't have an exercise routine, don't really have a diet routine, but they know they're in a place where they've got to start. I always tell people, look, walking is probably the most underrated exercise in the world. If you have to start anywhere, just start with a walk. You look at the blue zones and the people that are walking throughout their life are living the longest. In Sardinia, they're living.

to 117, 119 years old, and they're walking up a 37 degree slope every day. There's not a lot of rocket scientists. Definitely.

I mean, yeah, with the blue zones, it's like every blue zone eats differently. Some of them are vegan and vegetarian. Some of them are carnivore.

They eat a lot of meat. Some of them are pescatarians. But the one thing that they all have in common is their physical activity throughout the day and the community that they spend their time with.

And so I think when... somebody is a beginner and they're like, well, I don't know what to buy at the grocery store. Like, I don't know how to shop for healthy food.

Stay on the outside of the grocery store. That's where the produce, the meat, all of, all of the more natural kinds of things are. And don't go in, don't go into the maze.

Don't go down the aisles. Yeah. Don't go into the maze.

I love that. Yeah. Like a mouse stuck in the maze. Yeah.

And when it comes to fitness, yeah. Walking is a great place to start. But like I said before. Find something that you enjoy. And that's going to help you stay consistent.

And I think that if you hate your workout or you hate working out, you're tired all the time or something, I think it could be two things. I think, one, it's you haven't found the right thing that you enjoy yet. Or two, it could be something is off in your body. So maybe it could be your thyroid.

If you have brain fog or you're tired all the time, it could be your hormones are off. you're, there's some nutrient missing. So you should definitely get your blood work done and really look into that because working out is something that you should enjoy.

It makes you feel good. It makes you feel productive. It gives you energy throughout the day.

I would even say that if you had to choose between what would give you the most energy coffee or a workout in the morning. a thousand percent a workout in the morning. So true. Definitely. And give you energy longer, like, like, like more sustained energy.

Yeah. So if you're buying a $10 cup of coffee a day, you're going to crash. You're going to need more caffeine.

You're going to crash. You're going to need more. And you're spending $10 a day, every single day where a workout, whether you go on a walk outside in the sunshine or it's a 10 minute body weight workout at home, that's going to give you sustained energy throughout the day.

It's going to help your mental health. It's going to. clear, like give you like more cognitive function, be more creative, definitely work out. Well, you know, it's funny too. You talk about coffee being $10 a day, which is probably Starbucks right around there.

Um, you know, most gym memberships are not $300 a month. So, um, you know, we think about how expensive the gym membership might be and I don't want to get a gym membership, but I'm willing to drop 10 bucks a day on a, on a coffee. Um, so, you know, I, I, again, I'm really fascinated by your story. And when we were sitting at dinner the other night, um, you know, really hit me some of the struggles that you've been through, like very real struggles.

And yet you've gotten yourself back into incredible shape. And I think a lot of people have multiple excuses that for why they don't want to begin an exercise routine or why they actually don't want to get off a processed food diet. But talk a little bit about this life-changing issue that happened to you.

Yeah. So in 2021, It was actually like January 3. So I was getting ready to go into the new year. I'm like, yes, it's going to be a great year.

Fitness is going to be great. I had a vulvulus, which is your intestines twisting. So I was rushed into the hospital. And how did you notice this? Like you were just, did you think you had like, you'd eaten something bad?

You had food poisoning? Right. So at the time, my husband and I were just dating.

He was over for dinner and I started getting a stomach ache. And I was like, man, I think I just ate something bad. I tried laying down on the couch. He was like, let me make you some tea, which was really sweet.

Good husband, man. Shout out. He's like, let me make you some tea.

And I was just laying there. I was like, it hurts so bad. I started just getting bloated. And then I started throwing up.

And I was like, man, I must, I've never had food poisoning before. So I thought I must've had food poisoning. And so I tried to just kind of relax and lay down, but it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.

So he was like, I have to take you to the hospital. This was probably like 2 a.m. At night. at this point.

And on the way to the hospital, I started like passing out and I was thinking like, I, I'm going to die. Like it was, the pain was that intense when we were in the car, it was getting worse. And I started passing out and I was just telling him like, you have to drive faster. We get to the hospital. And at this point I'm hanging on to the counter where we're talking to this nurse in the emergency area at the hospital.

And she's asking me these questions, like, what's your date of birth? What's your name? Like slowly. And I'm like, you're like, I'm literally dying here. I was like screaming.

I was drenched in sweat. I couldn't even stand up. So they take me back. They start, you know, giving me pain meds, putting me in all of these machines, doing scans.

And at this point, I'm kind of like in and out because I'm on. They've given me so many painkillers and I still don't really know what's going on. I was at the last minute.

My husband threw me my phone. So at least I had my phone with. So I was able to call my parents and I said, I don't know what's wrong.

My stomach really hurts. And I couldn't even really tell them what was happening. So I gave my phone to the nurse and the nurse told them her intestines twisted.

We're going to have to take her into emergency surgery. And I remember the doctor waking me up and saying, hey, we're going to be taking you into surgery. And I still had no idea. You were just twilight. Yeah, just out of it.

Yeah. So. go into surgery. They removed 17 inches of my intestines. Wow.

Yeah. A big, big portion. And the next thing I know I'm in my hospital room. And so the hard thing was, is this was during COVID.

So I couldn't have any family, any friends. I was by myself in the hospital. I'd never been through anything like this before.

I was alone completely. And so day one, I was just in the worst place because everything was a question. am I ever going to be able to work out again?

What is my future look like? And you were in great shape at the time, right? Yeah.

I could do pull-ups. I could do pistol squats. I could do whatever I wanted to do, you know?

So I went from up here to all the way down at the bottom. Overnight. And so I didn't know what this meant for my business either, because it's like, I don't know if I can work out what's going to happen to, you know, my community, my queen team community.

And so the first day I didn't even want to get out of bed. And the first nurse. that I had was like, yeah, you're probably going to be in here for at least 10 days. You're probably not going to be able to work out for nine months. And I was just like, oh my goodness, this is really nine.

Of course, that's a typical. Yeah, I was, it was not correct. Typical modern medicine is like, yeah, you're going to be, you know, it's nine months to recovery and having no idea what you've got going on up here. Right, exactly. I'm like, yeah, right.

Okay. Hopefully you're already going, oh, hell no. That's not, yeah. Yeah.

Nine days for me. So the next day I woke up in the hospital and I just like was thinking to myself, like the only thing I have two options. I can either give up and just lay here and be in a pissed off mood about this whole thing. Hmm. Or I can do whatever I can to take the next step to, to becoming better.

So the, for that, that day I was like, I'm just, I'm going to get up and walk. I had to have a walker. I had to have a nurse with me and it was hard to walk, but I was able to walk just a little bit. I went back to my bed the next day.

It was just that week. I was, I mean, yeah, cause I, they couldn't give me any food because my intestines had been cut, you know, apart. And so I was super weak.

Um, Also just in pain. I have a huge scar down my abdomen from this. And so then the next day I thought, I'm going to walk maybe twice today. So I'd walk in the morning and then I'd walk in the evening. The next day, I'm going to walk maybe a little bit further today.

So each day I would just do one step more. And I was out of the hospital in four days. The doctors were like, we've never seen anyone recover from this so quickly.

And then... Even with working out, I was back to working out way quicker than the doctors expected. I didn't know if I was even going to be able to do like a pull-up again. But within, I think, like four months, I was able to do pull-ups again.

Right. And so it's all about taking those tiny little steps each day. Like if you're a beginner or if you're somebody that just had an injury and you're coming back from it, like it's really hard to look at the end goal and be like, wow, I have so far to go. Yeah.

Like you have to set overwhelming. Yeah. It's super overwhelming and you have to set those little daily goals and you have to celebrate them.

One thing that I do that I think could be helpful to people is every day after my workout, whether my husband and I are working out together or whether I'm working out by myself, um, after the workout, I always ask, what was the favorite, my favorite exercise or what was your favorite exercise that you did today? What felt the best? So you're ending your workout on a high note.

You're thinking about the positives. That's a really good idea. Yeah.

So I always talk about that. We have a whole conversation on our way home about what felt the best. What are you excited about with your workouts? And I think that that's like something that's not talked about is you have to like always be thinking about the positives.

Yeah. You know, I think when you go back and look at exercise that way, I mean, most of us, I mean, I'm thinking about myself right now. I'm guilty of it. You get a workout time. You're like, oh my God, that was.

brutal, you know, and you're like complaining the whole time on the way home in the car. But that's a, guys are especially like this. We actually like things to be terrible. And then we like to bitch about it afterwards and then just go do it again. But, but maybe, you know, by, by looking back and being like, you know what, that, that, you know, those pistol squats where that was new and unique.

I felt good doing them. I'm surprised I could do them. So just by changing the narrative a little bit, exactly.

To be something that you look upon as a, as a very positive thing. I think a lot of people have issues with, you know, time in their days and saying, I just don't have the time to work out. I can't I can't budget it into my day.

I've just made it non-negotiable for my life. You know, I started scheduling my meetings and travel around sleep and exercise. And I don't think anything, any modality that I have and I got tons of like crazy equipment in this unit or any particular red bed or anything has had nearly. the impact that simply making sure that sleep and exercise are non-negotiable in my schedule yeah and my wife knows it like if dinner parties run too late i just get up and go and go to bed yeah she's like where's your husband he's i know where he is he's i like that tactic i didn't do it to you guys but like what you left early enough but had you gone much after 10 30 you would have seen me what do they call it the irish exit yeah you don't say goodbye in your own home you just leave just leave you gotta find your way out um but you know it's it's it's been you know i i always thought about what i would be giving up but the truth is that you know i was just able to move my schedule around you know i don't i don't take you know i got asked to keynote a conference the other day and the keynote speech was at eight o'clock in the morning i said guys i can't i can't keynote at eight o'clock i can keynote at 11 a.m um and but you know i'll i'll be sleeping and exercising at that time and i think you know once i made it non-negotiable just the what it did for my mental impact, like my self-confidence, your self-esteem, but how do you maintain it when you're on the road and when you're traveling?

And you've been here for three days, so. Yeah, I think, so I have a story for this too. No, I love it.

So. We love stories. I had this client, his name is Bill, and he had. a super successful company. He had everything that you could ever imagine, like planes, boats, everything, multiple homes.

And he, when he started, he was in his seventies. So when he started training with me, he would tell me like, I really put my health on the back burner. And So he was just getting going.

Just getting going. Yeah. He said, I was so focused on building this company that I just put this on the back burner and I really want to get back into working out. And so we started off slow and, um, One thing that he would always say is don't sacrifice your health for your wealth. Wow.

Yeah. And so I think that a lot of people, they're like, well, I'm traveling. I can't do this.

Or I'm working on this business. I can't do this. Well, there's, you can still build the million dollar company or billion dollar company. You can still travel when you do these things.

If you're building a company, you can still take your calls when you go on a walk. You can take the stairs instead of the elevator. If you're traveling, you can do a simple. five or 10 minute workout in your room, just, just to do it, just to stay consistent because consistency is the key. If you take one day off, it's easier to take two days off.

If you take two days off, it's easier to take four days off. So you have to keep it a part of your daily routine, you know? And a lot of people are like, well, I don't even like it. We do a lot of things every day that we don't like.

Like a lot of people don't like going to work, but you go to work because you have to make money to be able to support yourself. Fitness and exercising is the exact same thing. It's wealth that you can't live without.

You have to be able to keep up on it and do it every single day. Yeah, I totally agree. And so how did things end for him?

Where did Bill end up? Well, one day he came in and he was so excited. And I was like, what are you so excited about? He's like, today I was able to put my pants on standing on one leg. And I was like, that is so amazing.

You think about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Truly anti-aging, like focusing on these things is so great because, you know, balance is linked to longevity. And so just being able to do that is huge. So, yeah, he's still he's still exercising. Yeah.

Falling is actually the greatest risk of, you know. mortality in older ages. And a lot of it has to do with grip strength. You know, you're just going down a regular set of steps and you don't have the grip strength to just keep yourself from falling and you end up tumbling down the steps.

And I think that frailty is a real risk to longevity. In fact, so many people, you know, their grandmother falls and breaks their hip. But the truth is, it's not really how that occurs.

Usually what happens is their hip breaks and then they fall. So the fracture actually caused the fall. The fall didn't cause the fracture. And, you know, Peter Atiyah talks about this in his book, Outlive. And he talks about, I think he calls it the centenarian decathlon, which is like, what are the 10 things you want to do when you're 100 years old?

Exactly. And you've got to start planning for those now. And I actually really like that mentality. I tell a lot of my clients to, I call it snacking on exercise.

And which means like, okay, if you don't have 90 minutes in the beginning of the morning, snack on exercise throughout the day. Yeah. just go for a 15 minute walk after your, after, after lunch. Um, or if you can get 15 minutes is better than as better than no minutes.

Um, but you talked a little bit about the queen team. Yeah. The queen team.

So, um, so tell me about the queen team and the, and the community that you're building because you're right. You know, when you look at blue zone research, people that are living a really long time, um, they call it a sense of purpose or community and they, they want to identify with, and I think it's super important. for people to identify with communities that are consistent with where they want to go.

So talk a little bit about the queen team. Yeah. The queen team is honestly the most amazing group of women ever. Like, so what's, what's so great is we all do the same workout every single day.

So we're in it together. So whether you're working out in the U S or in Australia or somewhere in Europe, we're all working out together the same day. But what I love about the queen team community is Everyone is so encouraging to each other. Like you see them giving each like high fives to each other whenever they talk about who loved or what was your favorite exercise in today's workout. Everybody chimes in.

And it's so amazing to see just the friendships that are built. I had a meetup in 2019 and people flew in from all around the world and they already had a friendship. But seeing them see each other for the first time was so fun.

Yeah, because they've been queen team. Like, yeah, community, but just remotely. Exactly. Yeah. And so it was just, it's just so great to be able to have such a strong community of women that are truly supporting each other and cheering each other on.

That's so great. I think, I think the support system, I forget what the statistics are. You might know, but when you have a workout partner, the chance of you actually not working out goes. down dramatically. You know, when you just have, you're only holding yourself accountable.

Exactly. You know, when I used to, to, to do triathlons, you know, years ago as competing in triathlons and I had a swim partner, a run partner, and I had a bike partner. And if you, if you didn't show up, man, they just, they rode you. So, you know, you didn't want to be belittled and berated. So you, you actually showed up, but sometimes, you know, you're showing up for other people.

I think the community is so important. And is that how you. plan to take fitness and make your impact on the world is by creating and expanding this community? Yeah, definitely. You know, I, from that moment that I encountered that experience with that woman, I just knew I had to do whatever I could to share fitness with as many people as possible.

So I just really try to share the message of fitness will change your life. Like you have to make it a priority. It's a non-negotiable, but.

it will be fun. Like I think sometimes when you use the words, it's a non-negotiable, it's a priority. You have to be disciplined. Those can be scary words to people, but you can actually truly enjoy what you do. And that's kind of how I have, how my program works.

I release new workouts every day because I found that when people are having fun and they're engaged in them, they're going to see the greatest results, whether you're working out for 15 minutes or whether you're working out for an hour. If you can have fun and show up every single day, that's when you're going to see results like mentally, emotionally and physically. And are you running these clean team communities?

Like are you working out live with them and it's a certain time and they log in or how does it work? Sometimes I'll do live workouts with them, but I have an app and the workouts get released in the app every single day. Okay. Yeah.

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We'll put that app in the show notes at the end of the show too, guys. I'll tell you how to get in touch with her, follow her, what have you. But so we'll make sure that we put it in there. And you find that so people engage with this app and they get into this community.

Do you find there's a specific profile? Do you find it's more like moms? Do you find it's young women, older women?

Like what do you see across the board? Yeah, across the board. There's a lot of moms, but there's a lot of younger women too and older women. And it's just really great to see because, you know, when you're a mom, I'm not a mom yet.

I'm a dog mom. but i noticed that you'd love the dog we had here the other night i forgot it was like a korean pomeranian or something korean pomeranian yeah korean papa chow or something yeah korean pomeranian it was the cutest dog when i got home i was like stalking its instagram page i was like oh my gosh his own instagram page yuki yuki yeah yeah oh my gosh i was obsessed But, um, but when you're a mom and then all of your focus goes into raising your kids, especially when you have a newborn, like you're kind of stuck inside your social life kind of goes away, but this is a way that you can still socialize when you work out and you have friends from all over the world. Even if you travel to another place, you have a friend there that you can go hang out with and get a workout in. Yeah.

And, and, and we talked a little bit about, you know, traveling. So how do you maintain your consistency on the road? Are you always looking for a gym? Do you have a hotel workout routine?

Do you have like minimum, I'm going to do some aeroscouts, some, you know, some planks. So what, what, so what are you doing to stay fit on the road? I always take resistance bands with me because they're very easy to pack. Okay.

And I have travel workouts that I do with my resistance bands because that's really easy to do in your room, or you can take them to your hotel gym. You can take them to a park, which that's my favorite. Right.

Um, and I think a lot of people underestimate resistance bands, but when I'm traveling, I start my day with my workout. So first thing I do is I wake up, get my workout in, and then I try to like go throughout my day, whether I'm traveling for pleasure or for business or whatever. So the first thing I start with is my workout and then the rest of my day is planned around there.

I think it's so smart to do that because you look at the endorphin rush you get, you're getting oxygen to your brain, you're circulating, and you get the hard things out of the way early, which I heard you talk about at dinner the other night. I have this little saying that if your morning is hard, your day will be easy. I never feel like I do anything as hard as getting in a cold punch or running a hard workout.

And we might even put you in the cold punch before you leave. Your brothers have already agreed. Have they?

Oh my goodness. I said, well, when you were working out, I'm going to shame them into it right now on live podcast. And I was like, do you guys want to run a, you know, do a cold punch?

Oh, after. after the workout. And in my mind, I was like, I know what you're doing. You think I'm just going to forget about this.

You're going to slide out of my unit, but no, I'll shut the elevators off, bro. Yeah. But we can, uh, and I like having those, um, things in my life because, you know, I like having them around cause I gravitate towards those things. Like, you know, one of the things I try to do is just not have bad choices around because even though I'm empowered, to know what those bad choices lead to, you know, food wise and drink wise and everything else. I, I still, you know, we're all weak and I think very often we don't just set ourselves up for success.

Exactly. So what are some of the ways that people could set themselves up for success, um, you know, to, to keep consistent with a fitness routine and maybe just start and embark on eating a healthier diet? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like I've said, find something that you enjoy, even if you just want to start off with walking, but Um, if you enjoy dancing, join a dance class. If you enjoy yoga, go to yoga because those things will, um, take you maybe into another little area.

Yeah. And their communities too, right? Their communities. Yeah. Like I was always, you know, into lifting.

And then a couple of years ago I got into jujitsu because, you know, I just thought I saw that on your, on your, you're a badass too. Like, I think I saw that on your, uh, in your Instagram. I was like, this girl does everything.

Um, yeah, but it's really fun because you know what I saw. when I started jujitsu too, is I was able, I still have so much to learn in jujitsu, but I was able to advance quickly because I was already into fitness. And so I was, I was fast.

I was able to learn things quickly. I was strong. Like I've been able to choke out grown men that are twice as big as me.

Hey, that may come in handy one day. Exactly. Yeah.

Um, so when you're, when somebody's starting out, you should definitely find something that's fun and that you enjoy. If you don't enjoy it, you have to tell yourself. how can I enjoy this?

So maybe you want to, if you like listening to podcasts, put a podcast on, go for a walk, you know? And honestly, you'll learn so much more from that podcast because you're out and you're getting oxygen, you're getting your blood flowing. Like you're going to pick up so much more from that. So you have to take that small little step. You don't have to go 200% day one.

You got to start off slow when it comes to eating healthy. Like I said, shop on the outskirts of the grocery store, focus on your protein. make your meal around your protein. I love that idea. Instead of pasta and then adding chicken, chicken and then adding your sides to that.

But protein has to be a priority. Right. You know, and eating whole foods, you know, just satiating yourself so that you don't overeat.

And I mean, often on the road, it's not the easiest thing. It's not, no. Restaurants, you don't know if it's cooked in seed oils or what have you.

I've always tried to avoid those things. You know, I was preparing for our podcast and I didn't. listen to your podcast while I was your other podcast while I was walking, but I did listen to it in the gym today.

I put it on over the, over the speaker. So to prep for today, I was listening to it in the gym and I'm super appreciative that you ran my wife through this workout. I think she's probably going to join your community.

Um, cause she's a, she's a major, you know, she's a workout buff. She did great. She did awesome. Yeah, she did.

All right. Sage is going to be really happy. I was going to throw some clips up here of, of, uh, Lexi, I'm beating up my wife this morning when I walked into the gym.

Are there any other go-tos for you aside from exercise that you do? Because I really did enjoy the fact that even in the early, you know, 2020, 2021, when I was looking at some of your previous interviews, you really talked about the mental aspect of fitness. And I think so few people really realize the...

benefits that you get to your mood, to your emotional state, to your ability to problem solve, how you can focus and concentrate your short-term recall. Like all of these like unintended benefits, if you want to say that, um, to fitness and exercise. And like, have you seen that in your community?

Like what kind of transformations do you see as people are transforming their physique? Yeah. I mean, I definitely see like the physical transformations, you know, obviously, but the mental and emotional transformations, like I had someone, uh, tell me that the body positivity movement almost killed them because They were told by the media and whoever else, like, you don't have to work out, eat whatever you want.

And she gained a bunch of weight. And then she started feeling bad about herself because she didn't like the way she looked or how she felt. She felt sick and gross. She joined my program and she started losing the weight. And she's like, I just feel amazing.

Like, I feel so much more positive about my day, about my life. I feel more creative. I feel like I can recall things faster. And so I see that across. across the board from people who just, they see the difference in even just like the small things, like being more alert when they spend time with their family, you know, like just more present, more present.

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there must be nothing worse than being a mother or father and having a young child and not really being able to engage with them and like physical activity. Kids want to run around. They want to have fun, crawl around the floor.

I mean, that's like, or as a grandparent. Yeah. I mean, my, my. My daughter's 26. My son's 23. They're in a race to see who's going to make me a granddad first. But I wouldn't be able to like flop around the floor with my kids and, you know, my grandkids.

And like, you know, get in a swimming pool with them and take them for bike rides and all that kind of stuff. I think that's like the greatest joy in life is our ability to be mobile without pain. So for people that have some kind of injury or they have a low back pain, which is. you know, pretty impressive what you did with my wife this morning because, you know, she has an L5 S1 Fusion. Um, and she grew up very athletic.

She was a marathoner. She was, uh, I consider an absolute expert skier. She grew up in Snowmass. So she learned to ski at a really young age.

So she just rips down the mountain. And I think this L5 S1 Fusion, the spinal fusion she had from a car accident, I think it really affected her mentally because, um, And marathons are kind of a permanent thing of her past, right? For sure, yeah. Too much impact. But she was able to go through a pretty intense workout today.

She was, yeah. So there's people that are facing injuries or they have joint pain or they have low back pain. You know, what are some tips and tricks for them to get back into physical exercise? Yeah. And today when I was talking to Sage about her back and stuff, I could tell that she misses, you know, running marathons and she misses yoga and stuff.

She does. I was telling her, like. I know that it sucks that you can't do those things anymore because you loved them, but you can still find other things that you love and enjoy.

And we can work around this back injury and you can become stronger and we'll make it, you know, we'll, you'll be happy finding other things that you really enjoy. It's a new, it's a new path, you know, but for anybody that is struggling with an injury, is that what your question was? Struggling with an injury, like you have to just take it step by step with things like. If you're going back to the gym, don't go do the heaviest weight that you've ever done before. You have to start with just even body weight and really focus on the muscles that are working in that exercise.

You can make yourself cry with body weight exercises. Oh, 1,000%. I mean, really? Yeah, definitely. I think I have before.

Well, you like it. You're not the person to ask. But, you know, but yeah, I mean, I've had trainers just put me through like pranks and Supermans and bananas.

And I'm like. This is not a Superman or banana. This is torture.

Yeah. Right. But I mean, just with body weight, I'm like, man, you could do this entire routine on your hotel floor.

You can. Yeah. Yeah.

Body weight exercises are incredible. Sometimes I would, I'll go to the gym and I won't touch a weight. I'll just do body weight.

Really? Yeah. Cause it's amazing. Like you're, they just do so much and you have to be using so many muscles to be able to do body weight exercises.

And it really helps you connect with yourself, you know, being able to do body weight exercises. But. If you are struggling with an injury and you're like, okay, I want to do this exercise. I'm going to start with body weight and it feels pretty good with body weight, but then you maybe add a little bit of weight and it hurts.

You got to go back to the body weight and really focus on that. Get your body comfortable with that. Make sure your form, form over everything.

You have to have good form. I'm so happy to hear you say that. Yeah.

Like form is the most important thing. Most people are, are. More concerned about how men especially, right? We're super guilty of this. I want to have an 80 pound dumbbell in my hands, not a 55 pound dumbbell in my hands.

In case somebody walks by and just happens to look at how much weight I have in my hand, you know, who's a perfect stranger who I'm never going to talk to, you know, like, I don't know why we do that, but we do. Yeah. So form over. Yeah. Form is.

The most important thing, form over weight all the time. But if you can never really get to that point to where you can add weight to that exercise, don't do that exercise. There's a million other ways you can work the muscle in the same way and keep yourself safe. The last thing you want to do is push yourself to do something that already hurts and then put yourself a few steps back. Yeah.

Like you have to just be smart about it and take precautions with the things that you're doing. If it hurts. either check your form and focus on that make sure you're doing that correctly and if you are and it still isn't the right thing work it in a different way yeah i mean a lot of what you were doing today with sage was like not even weighted you know yeah they call it russian squats when you put your Bulgarian split Bulgarian Bulgarian i knew it was some foreign country um they are devil squats dude i i haven't done those since i took like a few jujitsu classes like forever ago um so in in the utopian world um what's next, what's the future hold for Alexia Clark?

Where are you taking your message? Changing as many people's lives as I can. You know, that was the goal I set on, set out on in 2011. And I'm sticking with that. Like, I believe, you know, this is my passion and I followed it from having a great marketing job and left everything to go personal training.

And I really feel that God and the universe led me in the path that I'm supposed to be on. I, I. I would agree with that, you know, because the whole reason why you're here is because on super short notice, we told you that we might have an opportunity to go have a meeting to, you know, with other influencers in space to go affect public policy to change, you know, the way that our food supply is handled. And I am deeply appreciative that you did that because it shows that you have very altruistic, I mean, you have a very authentic motive, you know, because it wasn't any. thing here for you other than for you to give your time and your platform to really help get a message out. And so I'm deeply appreciative of that.

And I think it's important for the audience to hear that. And it just comes, you could be on the podcast. She actually came to help us deliver a message and, and really be a part of a campaign to, to try to get the corruption out of our food supply and message to people about the importance of, of, of whole foods. So I, I wind down every podcast by asking my guests the same question and there's no right or wrong answer to this question. Are you sure?

Yeah. I've had some really good answers to it and I've had some really crazy ones, but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? To me, to be an ultimate human, I believe it means to live the ultimate life and to live the ultimate life.

You need to have the ultimate experiences. And when you look at that, that's being able to play with your kids, being able to pick up your grandchildren, being able to live a full life without being sick and being in a bed and having to go to the doctor all the time. And so that to me is being an ultimate human because, you know, we know what we have to do. We have to eat healthy, cut out the processed foods. We have to exercise and keep that consistent.

Put yourself first. Everybody can. everybody can be an ultimate human.

That's amazing. Not everybody, because I trademarked the name, but trademark infringement and I will come after you. Alexia, how do people find you? How do women join your community and find more about your community? So you can find me on Instagram, Alexia underscore Clark.

You can sign up for my program at www.alexia-clark.com. I'm also on YouTube and TikTok and yeah, with the same handle. Well, now the ultimate human.

Yeah. And yeah, an ultimate human too. Super. And I will put all of this in the show notes for you guys.

And we will definitely have Alexia Clark Black because she and I are on a mission to change public policy and food supply in America. So I'm sure this is not our last meeting, but until next time, guys, that's just science.

Transcript for:Fitness, Health, and Empowerment Insights

Transcript for:
Fitness, Health, and Empowerment Insights