In this episode, John recounts the blessings of 2023. In particular, he draws attention to the foods and possessions that made the year great. He covers everything from fitness wearables to powdered peanut butter.
Topics include:
and more!
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In this episode, John recounts the blessings of 2023. In particular, he draws attention to the foods and possessions that made the year great. He covers everything from fitness wearables to powdered peanut butter.
Topics include:
and more!
Buy my book! 75 EASY: the ultimate challenge for personal growth
Amazon US
UK
CA
AU
Weight loss coaching - Join the Weight Loss Freedom Academy today
To inquire about 1 -1 Coaching with John - email John at john@oakesweightloss.com
Check out the EASY WAY OUT Blog/Newsletter site
Join the free "Lose Weight with John" community
Watch the Easy Way Out on Youtube
Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Hello and welcome. Got into some pretty heady stuff last week and I'm perfectly fine with that out. I bounce right back to that. But it just so happens that this morning, while I was out walking open to receive an idea for what to talk about on the podcast today, I just that song from Sound of Music popped in my head. These are a few of my favorite things. So. And I think Oprah does a version of that. Right? Is that where she gives everything away? You get a car, you get a car. So I won't be giving you any of these things for free today. But I will be telling you that I enjoy having them. And this is it's been a hard year, so it's good to to sit back and reflect on the things that were good, the things that went well, the things that were beneficial, the things that we can carry into 2024 to help give us the most advantage possible. So I think it's a good it's a good reframe for me, especially holidays is a tough time of year.
Speaker 1 (00:00:53) - Not my favorite. So I usually sometimes I have a hard time making it a productive time of year for like in the sense of my personal development, a lot of times it just feels like get through it and then breathe again once it's January. But I don't want to do that. I'm going to, um, yeah, just talk about some of the things that were clutch for me this year. Some of them are material possessions, some of them are diet and exercise related. And yeah, so start off with something. This is the first time I've ever had like a really nice fitness wearable. I mean, it's the most basic version of the Apple Watch, but it's pretty nice for me. And I had a good time this year testing it out. It was really nice to have something that could count my steps even when my phone wasn't on me. It was nice to actually have like, notifications pop up on my watch sometimes, because a lot of times I miss texts because my phone is on silent, whereas that would like make sure that I got whatever message was coming through.
Speaker 1 (00:01:51) - There were a lot more notifications than I wanted though, so I got it. Got to be kind of annoying, which I'm sure I can adjust that, but I haven't worn it for a bit because I do like wearing a regular watch as well. I guess I could do both, but it feels excessive. Overall, I really liked the functionality. I liked the the data, the all kinds of health data that it could measure, and it allowed me to, you know, see things like my VO2 max, which I didn't know before. Turns out I have a really good VO2 max for somebody who, you know, probably is less fit than they've been in some time, which I'm thankful for that too. I'm thankful that despite it's been a hard year and I haven't always been very good to myself. Um, still more or less healthy physically. Oh, and by the way, if you saw my newsletter that went out yesterday, there was a slight typo in there. I said that the events were took place on October 19th, 2023, and I thought for sure I typed 2019 and I thought I'd double checked it too, but somehow it came out as 2023, which would have implied that that story happened two months ago.
Speaker 1 (00:02:51) - It did not. It happened four years and two months ago. The purpose of that was to not to talk about something that recently happened, but to talk about a formative experience. So it's really important that one little detail be in there. But whatever. Embrace chaos can't be perfect. Yeah. That's a that's an interesting story. I'm going to talk more about pain I think in this Wednesday's newsletter. So make sure you're signed up for that if you're not already. There's a link to that in the show notes. So if you had a fitness wearable this year, if this was like your first year using one, or if you tried something different this year, I'd be curious to hear your experience. I think generally speaking, they're good. Sometimes the data can psych people out, but I get the feeling that most people don't really get into the data side that much. I think it'd be interesting to hear from people like what they actually use their fitness wearable for the most. Is it just steps? Is it? I hope people aren't taking the calorie burning very seriously, although I will say I think it's consistent.
Speaker 1 (00:03:47) - I don't think it's accurate, but I think it is consistent. Meaning if the Apple Watch told me that I burned a thousand calories in the day, I'm guessing it probably burned maybe 700 to be conservative a thousand calories. Again, I'm going to also believe that it's about 700. I think that the variability is does show up in the data, but that's just my opinion. So as long as I'm hitting my number every day, like if I want to get to a thousand calories burned on the Apple Watch, I don't think that's actually true. I'm just using that as a benchmark for my activity. How many calories a day do I actually burn? There's no way to know, other than watching your weight on the scale and cataloging what you eat, and then identifying where your body stays at maintenance, what calorie level your body stops losing or gaining weight. One thing I got this year was a nice podcast microphone. I think you remember all the audio troubles I was having with the Blue Yeti. That seems like ages ago now.
Speaker 1 (00:04:43) - I love this thing. It's been so great. It's easy. I just plug and play. I don't have to toy around with settings and stuff like that. It's awesome. This is the Shure Mv7. It's the Cadillac of podcasting mics, but I use it also for recording my, um, coaching calls. My like my group coaching calls, where I'm going to post the audio to the group later, and my teaching in the Weight Loss Freedom Academy this year, I taught, golly, something like 70 to 80 lessons over like six modules. And man was that a big achievement getting that course taught. I just finished it this last Saturday. It's never going to be done. I think it'll be like a living thing, like it'll always be adding to it. And the people who come into the weight Loss Freedom Academy, they have lifetime access to it. So they'll be able to enjoy the the improvements over time. So yeah, having a nicer microphone has been really nice for that. This isn't something I discovered this year, but magnesium supplementation, my word do I need that? I think it's specifically for for me and my PTSD issues.
Speaker 1 (00:05:47) - It really helps when my body is super tense and it's just burning through magnesium way faster than normally you would when you're chill, which then leads to cramps, muscle soreness, headaches. I get spikes in hunger. I like magnesium malate and I take about. I take pills that are like 150mg of it. I'm not recommending it for you necessarily, but this isn't medical advice. But generally speaking, I think a lot of people would benefit from having a little more magnesium via supplementation. Speaking of supplementation, I don't take a lot of supplements, but one thing that does qualify technically as supplementation, I think most people would say is whey protein. I am super thankful for whey protein. It's just a it's a wonderful thing that we have nowadays. It makes weight loss and muscle gain so much easier. And you can yeah, you can get a ton of protein. Pure protein. It's good for you. There's no drawbacks as long as you're not, like lactose intolerant. And even then it might does it have lactose in it? I don't know, I don't think I think they remove a lot of the lactose in order to isolate the protein.
Speaker 1 (00:06:50) - But hey, I'm not a milk scientist, so don't take my word for it. I really like the optimum nutrition gold standard way that you can get at Costco. It's you can get like a £5 bag of it and it lasts you quite a while. Reasonably priced. And yeah, overall I'm thankful for Costco to Costco is pretty great. I it's one of the only like large scale like, you know, big box sort of it's one of the cheapest places to acquire kimchi. It's apart from going to like an Asian market, which I don't have a lot of here in the northwest, at least in the interior northwest over on the Seattle side of the mountains, then, yeah, you're good. But over on this side of the Cascades, not so many Asians. And with their delicious foods, More's the pity, which we do have a decent. There's a decent amount of Koreans in town because there's an Air Force base. And so, you know, people bring, you know, people oftentimes meet and marry a Korean person while they're stationed overseas.
Speaker 1 (00:07:52) - Koreans are lovely people, good people, good fermented cabbage, good soju. Yeah. I used to live in Korea. I went there twice. It was fun times. Another thing I get at Costco is egg whites. Egg whites. So thankful for egg whites. They just make life so much easier. You can have them plain and they'll take whatever flavor you put in them. Or I usually just when I'm having eggs, I just always add some egg whites. That way I boost the protein to fat ratio. Still getting lots of vitamins and nutrients from the eggs, but then just ramping up the protein. It's awesome. It keeps me full for quite a while and it's a more voluminous food as well, so that helps fill you up. Another thing I get at Costco is frozen blueberries. So thankful it's such a little thing. You know, frozen blueberries. But it makes my life so much better. And it makes healthy eating so, so easy. I could eat those things freaking every day, and I usually put them in a sort of a parfait that I make with one of my other things that I'm most thankful for this year and in years past.
Speaker 1 (00:08:58) - Greek yogurt. I think I probably ate more Greek yogurt this year than I have in any other year. It was just such a go to like lunch because it was so easy. It was quick. I could throw it together and you know it keep me satiated all the way till dinnertime. Just about 400g of Greek yogurt in a bowl. I'd add some, like zero calorie Hershey's zero sugar Hershey's chocolate sauce. Mix that up. If I need the calories, I could throw in some peanut butter. If I'm trying to keep calories lower, leave out the peanut butter, and then I throw frozen blueberries in it. And then a bit of granola, which normally granola, you know, it's it's very calorie dense. I would never thought I'd be eating it regularly, but you just sprinkle some on there. You don't need a whole ton. It just and it provides this crunch. And so even if you just throw on like 100 calories worth of granola, it really I think it's worth it. But I like something to just give that a little bit of a crunch.
Speaker 1 (00:09:55) - Anyways, super simple takes three minutes to put together and also stuff like. That travels really well if you need to make it beforehand. So yeah, Greek yogurt. Super thankful. And while we're on the topic of food, the very thankful for. Yeah cottage cheese that's that definitely gets an honorable mention that that kept me on the days where I didn't feel like having a something on the sweeter side, you know, with the fruit and the granola and the, you know, zero calorie chocolate sauce. I would just have cottage cheese sometimes with crackers. Or for a while there I was just like cutting up pickles and carrots and just seeing, like, you know, that old David Letterman bit of will it float, right? Testing of whether things would float or not. I was like, Will it cottage cheese? Will it blend with cottage cheese? That's amazing. I mean, I you can blend cottage cheese with it much like yogurt. You can make it sweet, you can make it savory. You can add it to stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:10:46) - I made a lasagna this year through cottage cheese in there. The other day I found some of these, like Pepperidge Farm, like elf crackers that were like, you know, cinnamon flavored. And I thought that they were like the Pepperidge Farm, like, like a pretzel thing. So I threw them in into my cottage cheese before I realized what they were. And I was like, all right, screw it, will it? Cottage cheese. And sure enough, it was delightful. So if you put cinnamon or fruit with your cottage cheese, it just takes on the the sweeter side. So incredibly versatile food, reasonably priced. And those things just kept me fed. This year. I always knew something I could eat in the middle of my workday. Go grab it, you know, bring it back to my desk if I need to. It's quick. It's simple. It's filling lots of protein. Yeah, just very thankful for those beautiful dairy products whey, yogurt and cottage cheese. As my my Norwegian client, one that's not really a client anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:11:42) - Just a friend now asked, do you have cottage cheese in Norway? And she thought for a second. She's like, yeah. I was like, what do you call it? She, she said tacos or something like that, where it's literally like hut cheese. So it's like, all right in every language. Apparently this is, this cheese has something to do with a small dwelling. Not sure why, but probably because you could make it pretty easily, I'm guessing. No idea. Cottage cheese is a mystery of the universe. Nobody knows. Nobody knows how to make cottage cheese. It's a state secret. Yeah, I should YouTube that later. How does cottage cheese made? Oh, I should look up how whey protein is made as well. That would be very interesting. In years past, I would have said I was really thankful for PB two or PB fit powdered peanut butter, but I just don't really eat it anymore. I just don't eat peanut butter. Hardly ever. And if I'm going to have peanut butter, something with peanut butter flavor, I just have peanut butter.
Speaker 1 (00:12:34) - And if I don't want to eat the calories, I just don't have peanut butter. I'm perfectly fine without it. I didn't grow up eating a ton of peanut butter. I didn't like it a ton as a kid, so maybe that's why it's easier for me to go without it. But for other people, I realize that would be sacrilege. So yeah, definitely. If you haven't tried some powdered peanut butter, get that in your life. You can put it in all sorts of stuff. It's good. And again, it goes with sweets. It goes with savories like it's, you know, peanut butter is pretty amazing like that. Let's see, this year I got an air fryer. Finally joined the air fryer club. And boy howdy, what a revelation. Air fryers are awesome. I can't believe I ever lived without it. It's very nice to have. Probably use it most for heating up. Like if I'm doing like chicken nuggets or something or fish sticks for the girls. I've cooked bigger meals in there, but generally it's like while I'm cooking some kind of protein and I want to have fries, like fries or just, however, cut up potatoes, you know, and just throw them in there and you can make fries, potato wedges, chunks, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1 (00:13:39) - Just roast the potatoes. And it takes way less time than in the oven. So, you know, you can really throw it together in a in about 20 minutes. But yeah, there's there's a ton of things you can do. I think I made chicken wings in that it was a lot of work, but because I, because I did them like from scratch. But it was delicious. This year I moved from our apartment into a house and, you know, just feel very lucky. We were we were largely staying at the apartment because it was very convenient and the amenities were nice. Having a pool in the summer and having a playground right outside our door basically was nice for the girls, and I used the hell out of the fitness center when I was losing weight, I would. I was in there times a week for my cardio sessions. It's just a very small fitness center, but I had a recumbent bike in there and I yeah, I spent a lot of time on the recumbent bike as I was losing weight.
Speaker 1 (00:14:30) - Yeah, it's great to be in a house. It was nice to have a garden this year. I was really thankful for that. I grew some pretty epic cucumbers and a tomato plant that was probably ten feet tall. I kid you not, this thing was massive. I was just churning out these little cherry tomatoes like crazy. So that was fun. Got some really nice zucchinis. Pretty much everything else was a bust, but the soil in the flower beds in this place is just like trash. The owners of. This house. They never really gardened very much and they didn't really take care of it. So it's just it was so overgrown with like, you know, those kinds of plants where they'll just like basically carpet the ground beneath the ground with roots just like nothing but roots. It's just crazy. So they really choked a lot of the life out of the soil. So if I'm going to try to grow more stuff in the spring, I'm going to need to do a lot of work amending the soil.
Speaker 1 (00:15:24) - I had some nice peppers, got some good spicy peppers out of the deal, and this was the year my younger daughter finally got on board with spice, and now she's all about it, which makes life so much more enjoyable. I love sharing that that love with them. I'm not like a huge spice junkie. I'm not like sitting here, you know, buying these crazy hot sauces or anything. It's just hot sauce, man. I'm super thankful for it. I got some other things to mention about, you know, the living situation, but hot sauce always near the top of my list of things I'm thankful for. It just makes so many things so much better. Yes. Thank you. Hot sauce. Probably this year the hot sauce I ate the most was Cholula. Just kind of a classic. Also, get those in the big bottles at Costco. Thank you Costco. One of the things that comes with having a house usually is a garage. And our garage at this place is just insane.
Speaker 1 (00:16:14) - So the owners of the house had a bit of a, um, what do you call it, polyamorous living situation? I think the husband was bi, so he had a also bi friend living in the house with his wife. And so there was like two adult couples basically living in the house. I don't think everybody was interfering with everybody, but I think I don't know what you'd call it. It was not a love triangle or love square. It was more of like a love you or something, I don't know, but good for them, but especially good for them because that's why they put in, like, this big ass garage. That's enough for like four cars. And yeah, so they could all keep their cars safe. So that's pretty sweet being a two person couple, having space for four cars has been nice, but the I honestly didn't use the garage for parking a lot this year. What I did use it for was setting up an honest to goodness, you know, home gym, which I've had at home, but I just have to like, I would just have to like, put it up, put it, take it down, put it up, take it down.
Speaker 1 (00:17:19) - You know, I had fitness gear hidden in nooks and crannies around around the apartment. And so I'd go behind this door is a barbell and an easy bar. And then here's my where I, you know, hide my weight plates. And in fact, back at the old place where, where I was, like, sitting by my desk, that's where my weights were, my free weights. So I had like 45, 35, 20 fives and on down, just leaning up against the desk there and to my left was behind. The door was where I keep the barbells. So yes, my office was pretty much my. Also my home gym, except it was too small to actually work out in there, so I'd have to take stuff, take it to the living room. So yeah, it's so nice to have the space. You know, I didn't buy a ton of equipment. I really just put out there what I already have, which is astonishing because I have a pretty good little home gym set up just with what I had in the apartment.
Speaker 1 (00:18:12) - I've got an exercise bike that I bought in 2017. Paid like $1,700 for it. That was a great investment. Fitness equipment, such a great investment. You really can't go wrong. I got my $150 treadmill, which I got used on Facebook Marketplace a couple summers ago. That thing still works great. It doesn't have a very powerful motor, so if I use it on anything below, like a three incline, you know, because I'm a bigger guy, I can actually, you know, anybody who's bigger knows what it's like to walk on a treadmill, and then all of a sudden the, the belt like reverses because you actually pushed it the other way. So you need something with a pretty strong motor. So I just keep that thing at a three incline. And that's my normal walking. So it's like, hey, I'm doing this for fitness and for, you know, burning some calories. Just keep it at an incline all the time. I will never again walk on a treadmill at anything less than a three incline, because I don't see the point and I even run at that.
Speaker 1 (00:19:07) - So yeah, I put it older TV out there, got it hooked up on a, on a on a Roku that I had laying around and eventually got a Wi-Fi booster to to actually get the Wi-Fi out to the garage. But all in all, it's fairly inexpensive to have this pretty ridiculously sweet setup out there. I did buy a little squat rack bench press kind of thing just to to be able to have a bit more, a bit more functionality. I honestly don't do a lot of squatting barbell squatting because it's with my anatomy. It just doesn't feel quite right. But I do use that to like set my barbells on. I'll do like like inverse rows on it. So I'll be rowing underneath a barbell and it's just laying on the in the pins where you normally put it if you're squatting. Just have the pin set much lower. So yeah. So a cheap little again off Facebook Marketplace little we call that an adjustable bench which is really nice for doing like rear flies. Or I put in a pull up bar.
Speaker 1 (00:20:14) - I love this pull up bar. It was a bit of work getting it installed. I'm not the most handy guy. I don't really know. I don't really use power drills and all that stuff very much. I had to borrow a ratchet set for my friend, but I got that sucker up there and I'm a big boy, but I can hang on that sucker and it doesn't even budge. So yeah, really thankful for that. It's super cool having a pull up bar. One day I will learn to do a pull up, I promise. No, I'm kidding. I couldn't do a pull up right now because I haven't been working out hard enough and I'm a little too heavy. Even at my lightest, I'm still quite a large individual. So yes, I used to be able to do pull ups quite well. I'll get back to it. But you know, I can do assisted pull ups with bands I can do. I'll put the bench underneath the the pull up bar and you can jump up and then just do slow eccentrics where you're just letting yourself down slowly because that's going to build muscle.
Speaker 1 (00:21:03) - Sometimes I'll just hang from the bar and just do scapular retraction, which is the first part of a good pull up where you're just retracting your scapula. And, you know, for me, I'm a big person, so I can go from, you know, hanging at rest by retracting my scapula. It could bring me up about, you know, almost a foot, and I haven't even beat my arms yet. So that's that'll really work. Your upper back big time. It's good for you. Yeah, and I got the gym flooring for it, like actual rubber flooring. I went to a guy. I found him on Facebook Marketplace. Maybe he was selling a bunch of, you know, half inch rubber flooring. The interlocks and I show up in this dude is like, he looks like he's some tweaker, but he's just like, he's just had a baby. And he's, like, working these crazy hours and, like, not sleeping. So he was all bloodshot eyes and whatever. And so we get the stuff loaded up, we get like 12 of these big ass, you know, rubber mats loaded up into my Pathfinder.
Speaker 1 (00:22:03) - And then I'm like, okay, so what's your Venmo? And he's like, I don't have any of that. I'm like, I don't have cash. So I was like, okay, I'll just go really quick and get the cash. And but we've already loaded this stuff into my vehicle and it's we'd have to take it out would be a big pain in the ass. And so he let me go take cash and but when I showed back up, I knew he thought that I was about to scam him. And I knew that he was just so frazzled. He wasn't thinking straight, but I came back, gave him his cash in a little bit extra just for being cool and having a little faith in humanity. But yeah, I got that. The flooring in. So nice to have just basic. Some people call them horse stall mats, but other people use them for like workshops and stuff. So you having a nice actual like rubber mat flooring for the gym has been pretty great. So yeah, I'm super thankful for a lot of things this year, and I'm thankful that I live in a in a place where I can walk around in more different ways, you know, back at the apartment we were pinned in, so the only place I could walk was really around.
Speaker 1 (00:23:05) - The whole apartment complex took about 15 minutes, 12 to 15 minutes. So it was a good loop, but it was a little bit mundane here. I can walk in any direction and and there's a nature trail, you know, just a couple blocks away that runs for miles and miles along this bluff that skirts a big section of the town. So it goes on for like 4 or 5 miles if you want to go to the end. There's a lot of wildlife out there. Definitely saw saw a lot of marmots. My wife saw a snake on the trail, but bull snake? Probably nothing poisonous. There's occasionally a moose or two who will wander through. Apparently we're starting to get coyotes in this area, which is crazy. Coyotes. Now there's a fascinating animal. Yeah, once you get coyotes, you're you're not getting rid of them. So if they're here to stay. I realize the trick with having a garage gym is that you're going to have more temperature fluctuations. Luckily, the garage is quite large and it's new, so it's pretty well insulated, which means in the summertime it's cooler inside the garage than it is outside.
Speaker 1 (00:24:13) - And generally speaking, in the wintertime it's a little bit warmer on the inside than it is outside. Maybe not the case. Some days. If it's warmer outside, it'll still be cooler inside because it takes a while for that temperature change to happen. But the trick is like I found myself not wanting to go to the gym because it's cold out. It's winter and I'm like, but dude, you go out and you walk every day like you'll walk in a downpour. You'll go for a walk. If it's snowing, you'll go for a walk. If it's, you know, five degrees outside, you don't. That's never stopped you from being active. So why is it stopping you from going to the gym? Like, just if you got to wear a coat and then you'll warm up as soon as you start moving around. And then you take off that coat or strip off a layer. So I've got a I'll probably force myself to go out for a workout when I'm done here because it's, you know, it really is nice to talk about the things you're thankful for.
Speaker 1 (00:25:07) - It reminds you that it's like, oh, when I think about the garage gym, it's not just shame that I'm not using it. It's like, no, I'm really thankful for this. And I built this. I, you know, I acquired the equipment on the cheap bit by bit, you know, starting in the the early days of the pandemic, at the beginning of 2020. And speaking of which, I have some equipment that I didn't end up using. I got some stuff off of like Prime Day. I saw some great deals, so I snapped up a barbell, a seven foot Olympic barbell, a hex bar trap bar which I just haven't put together yet. I'm not sure that I just haven't used it very much. I seem to do okay with the barbell. I found a style of deadlifting that I think really works for me, so I don't really need the trap bar so much. I've got a £40 kettlebell that got sent to my sister. She got a double. They sent her two instead of one.
Speaker 1 (00:26:02) - So she's like, do you want an extra kettlebell? I was like, sure, I've already got £240 kettlebells, so that's superfluous and brand new. And I got sent. This was a while ago last year, but there's a cool guy on YouTube. I think it's his name is like Hampton or something like that, but he's this Asian dude in Hawaii who teaches, like, functional calisthenics, and he's just a really cool dude. So I bought his gymnastics rings and that was, man, super thankful for gymnastics rings. Those are so awesome. Because when you're doing bodyweight stuff at home and you can do so much with bodyweight, right? Just especially if you're a bigger person, you have to have a lot of weight to work with. So you don't really need a lot of free weights. You could just you could build so much strength and muscle mass just with pushups, squats, lunges and some kind of pulling movement. The problem is, it's harder to find a pulling movement that helps you train at home when you're bigger, because you're not going to be knocking out pull ups at 350, right? Or for for a lot of people, you know, a woman who's five two, if she's £200 or £275 or £350, she's not going to be doing pull ups.
Speaker 1 (00:27:08) - So how do we build pulling strength? Gymnastics rings are awesome for that. You can hook them up in so many different ways. They're adjustable so you can find some way to to you know, you could run a stick through the straps and put it behind a door and close the door and just use the top of the door as like your, your leverage point. And so you're pulling sort of at an angle. You can attach them eventually. I want to actually put in a couple of eyelets at the, in the ceiling of the garage, see if I can figure out how to do that without wrecking the drywall. But yeah, they just they make pulling movements a lot easier. It's hard to explain, but and they work for people of any size because if you don't, if you're not very strong, you can just do your pulling movements more like closer to standing up. So like if you're standing straight up and you lean back from a wall and you can pull back toward the wall, that's going to be the easiest form of pulling movement.
Speaker 1 (00:28:03) - And that's why one way for people to get started with pulling movements is literally to hold on to both sides of a door jamb or something and lean back and then pull themselves in and then eventually, fine, increase the angle until you can do like what I what I do, which is inverted lunges where my feet are straight out on the ground and I start out flat, arms hanging, and then I pull myself up to the bar and then back down. And when I was stronger at those, I was doing them a lot. During the pandemic, I would have to put my feet up on a chair and then go from there. You really get you get a lot of, uh, a lot of resistance out of that pulling movements. I'm very thankful for pulling movements as well. I got into barbell rowing this year. I really enjoy that. And I found a style of of deadlifting that is really good for me. It's, you know, like I said, my anatomy is a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (00:28:51) - You know, I'm a big, tall guy. I have a longer torso. And so it's stuff just I don't. It doesn't always move exactly the way you want it to. So traditional deadlifting I've always found very difficult, along with barbell squatting. Like it just doesn't. It's hard to do it without hurting my knees or my hips, whereas straight leg deadlifting is awesome and I'm built for that. And so I get a lot of the same benefits out of a, you know, traditional style deadlift, just using a more straighter leg. And so I think I'll post something about this in the Facebook group, Lose Weight with John. You can find that post and then comment below it some of your favorite things from the year. Some of the things whether it's, you know, especially anything health or fitness related. I think we all we all love hearing about new things and new ideas. So hopefully we can share some of our wins from the year and the things we're excited about taking into 2024. If you're looking at 2024 and you're ready to make some big changes, you think that like, this is the year.
Speaker 1 (00:29:49) - This is the year I want to do coaching with John. Let's do it. Let's talk about it. And you know, if that's the right thing for you, I'll get you, you know, on that path, if it's not the right thing for you, I'll help you figure out what is the right thing for you. I have a sort of beginner's group that I'm putting together. It's basically an experiment. It's not coaching per se, like my weight loss Freedom Academy, where we really get into the root causes of our weight issues and mindset and things like that, so we can really become, like, healthy and brand new from the inside out. This is more focused on the basics of calories in, calories out, how do we get activity and how do we strategically find ways to eat less and and do that in a way that doesn't put too much stress on our system? So that's the focus. It's really practical, less so about mindset and emotional eating and motivation and more just like a traditional weight loss coach would do.
Speaker 1 (00:30:42) - It's called the easy weight loss club. Um, right now it's very I just have it very cheap, $29 a month because because it is just an experiment. I'm just doing it for fun. Basically. It's not like a big moneymaker at this point. It's not. I just there's a lot of people who I would love to work with in some capacity, and maybe they can't afford the full on coaching or they're not ready for it for whatever reason. And this is a way for us to start working together at that sort of beginner level. So I think of it as like all my little minnows and in the pond, and we'll grow them into full size fish that can go on and, you know, swim to their little heart's content, do their thing, or potentially get them to a place where they're really ready for moving into the weight loss Freedom Academy, or my 1 to 1 coaching program, which the Weight Loss Feeder is a one on one coaching program. It's just a lot of it's systematized.
Speaker 1 (00:31:33) - So yeah, if you're interested in coaching in any of those options to shoot me an email. John at Oaks weight loss comm that's oaks with an e j own at ox weight loss comm. Speaking of fitness gear, we're doing a giveaway in the Facebook group, so Facebook did not let hardly anybody see my post about it. So that's problematic. Thank you Facebook. I just don't know what to do about Facebook. That running that Facebook group lose Weight with John is like, so it's made me just insane for the last two years because Facebook won't show people my posts. So it's like, how am I supposed to run the group? And then I get discouraged and then I, you know, move on to other things, and I come back and I try to revive it. And then Facebook's like, who are you? I'm like, yeah, I own the group. This is my group. Like, let me talk to these people. They signed up for a reason because they want help. And yeah, I'm lucky if I can get 200 people to see a post that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (00:32:24) - In a group with 4000 people, I do have this fitness equipment that's still like in its brand new packaging. Never been open. I'd like to give it away to people. And in exchange for them, you know, becoming active in the group again, helping me revive it, that's going to help more people in the group see the posts and remind them that, hey, you have this really awesome community resource with more and more free resources in the guides section. Be sure to check that out. I got lots of cool stuff in there, free trainings and whatnot, and also access to me and other people. You can ask questions, offer support, ask for support, share your journey. You know, give us an update on your progress. Anything and everything. Share a recipe and I'd really love it if you did a post on your favorite things from the year, especially anything that might help someone else with their diet, exercise, general well-being, hashtag favorite things. And lastly, make sure you're signed up for the newsletter.
Speaker 1 (00:33:19) - The Easy Way Out newsletter is on a platform called Substack, which basically sends out emails just like you would have an email newsletter, but it also takes those inputs them into blog form, so I'm really enjoying using it. I'm sending out more newsletters. I've sent out more newsletters in the last couple months that I probably have in my entire coaching journey, because Substack just makes it so slick and so easy. I love it, um, and I think it's more fun for the readers as well. I've been getting some good feedback, so yeah, I'd love it if you join me over there. If you are reading those posts, throw me a like there's a like button. Okay, I know emails don't usually have a like button, so you're not used. To it, but throw me a like throw me a comment. I would really appreciate it. It's nice to know that people read my stuff. I know people are reading it. I know like a thousand people open that email. I can see that.
Speaker 1 (00:34:06) - So not every single one of those people read it and got nothing out of it. So there's got to be a few hundred people who could drop me a like. So. If even a dozen of them did it, it would mean a lot. Me, me, me help my Facebook group like my stuff. No, it's tough putting out this much content sometimes and, you know, not always hearing from people. I'll hear months down the road like, oh, I've been listening to your stuff. I'm obsessed with your stuff. And it's like, I tell me, I like it then over here. So sad. Turning out podcasts and newsletters with the tears rolling down my cheeks as I do so now. It's not quite that bad, but I genuinely do appreciate any support you can offer in the way of interaction, because that's ultimately why I'm doing all this. That's why I'm doing all this free stuff. I love knowing that I'm helping people make life a little bit simpler, a little bit easier, a little bit better.
Speaker 1 (00:34:56) - And on that note, have a great week and hopefully we'll talk to you soon.