Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi and welcome to Hustle and Pro. I'm Kelly Walker. I'm your podcast guest and host today because I'm going to be going over the recent program I just went through, 85 medium is what I'm calling it. It's not a real thing. You guys have probably heard of 75 hard. I didn't do that. It was too hard. I knew that it would be too hard before I even started. So I modified it and did like a mod and I built in 10 grace days. So 85 days before my 45th birthday, I started a program on August 1st that would sort of reset my lifestyle, my priorities, my health habits. And so I'm calling it like 75 mod. It was really 85 days. So it's just one of those made up things that I kind of built to do myself by myself.
[00:00:57] In July, I noticed in a photo that I didn't like what I was seeing. And I really think that I. Throughout the beginning of 2024, I let a lot of other things in my life just take priority over me and my time of keeping myself healthy.
[00:01:16] That goes from everything from, you know, having a senior in high school with all the things and all the college things coming up to then earlier this year having, you know, a kiddo getting hur. And then my. I took on the role of appointment scheduler and driving back and forth to PT mom and all that stuff. And those are all excuses that you can totally manage with better habits, but I didn't have them at the time. And so I just sort of reset myself to do that. So really quick, I want to tell you what my 75 days was. 75 hard is really five elements. And I modified those into five for myself that included one was taking a progress picture every day. Two is reading at least 10 pages of a book, like an actual book that has to be nonfiction, like educational or self help. And three, drinking a gallon of water every day.
[00:02:20] Four is a 45 minute workout every day.
[00:02:26] It can be broken up into different day part like times, you know, half seas, which I did a lot. And then the fifth one, the big one, is you pick an eating plan. And for me, I decided I was gonna eat well and I thought, what can I do? I went plant based five years ago and I was turning 40.
[00:02:45] What can I do? So I wondered, oh, what is this clean eating and this processed food bit that I heard so much about and know nothing about? So after a few searches and reading, I thought, okay, that's a good challenge. I can do that if I Mean, can I do that? Which is a lot of things that I eliminated really from my daily life, which is no ultra processed foods, no alcohol and no caffeine, which means also no coffee. I had already gone to a decaf coffee option over the last, I don't know, year or two. And so this was completely cutting that out. Because one thing I have learned from elimination diets is that I don't always like the actual thing. I like the flavorings in the thing. For example, I don't like coffee, but I like my lattes with my sweetened milks and things. My almond milk or coconut milk or whatever, they have a lot of sweetened, sugary things in them. So I get used to those habits and then I find myself the first thing I'm putting in my body every day is sugary junk. So no caffeine, no alcohol, hence the water, gallon of water, all that kind of stuff was part of my journey. Like I said, started on August 1st, was my day one and I went for it and I just finished, had my birthday last week and I'm done and I feel great. I feel better about myself, I feel that I look better, I feel that I'm more well rested and have way more energy and all those kinds of things. When people find out that you're on a program like this, they want to talk about the food a lot. And so when I started kind of going down this road, I learned what ultra processed food really was. I didn't know there are four, like nova groups of foods, unminally un or minimally processed food, processed culinary ingredients like oils and spices and butters and salt. Three is just processed food and then four is the ultra processed food. So I did dig into that things that includes high fructose corn syrup, modified starches, additives, color flavorings, and the foods that have these that I'm not eating is everything from ice cream, mass produced breads, carbonated drinks, instant souped, a lot of canned foods, energy drinks, vegan meats, potato chips, frozen pizzas, packaged crackers and candies, basically baked goods and cookies and any of that, of course I cut out fast foods, all that kind of stuff.
[00:05:30] It's a lot of stuff. So then that leaves you going, okay, what's left? And I had that question so many times over the last 85 days. But I do say it gets easier as you go. Just like with any modification lifestyle, the more you get accustomed to it, the more your body is adjusted, your mind is adjusted, your taste buds are adjusted. Just like years ago, I never Would have thought I would like hummus or tofu or all those things. And now those are the things that my body craves. So as you adapt, all the things around you adapt as well and it becomes easier. So here are some of the things that were on my approved clean eating list that I've been chomping on for the last several months. Ezekiel. Bread. Sourdough bread, apples, bananas, blueberries, grapes. I mean, just get ready. It's basically any fruit and veggies, oranges, strawberries, carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, nuts with no added sugar, salts and oils. So I got really good at going to sprouts into the bulk bins and do a daily dose of whole raw almonds, cashews, pistachios. So good. Those kind of things.
[00:06:46] Chickpeas, lentils, edamame, steel cut oats. I try to limit my oats, but I do usually like once a week do a nice, like, oatmeal with fruits and nuts and things like that on it.
[00:06:58] Spinach, whole wheat pastas. I tried to reduce my pastas in general, but there are, I've learned there are some really minimally processed pastas.
[00:07:07] Tea. I never drink a tea. Maybe once at a work lunch, but I'm not a big tea drinker. I might work that in a little more, but you can do it. On this clean plan. You can have asparagus, cucumbers, onions, mushrooms, garlic, lemons, avocado, cherry tomatoes, cherries, chia zoodles.
[00:07:29] And then for sweets, I have dark chocolate written down and I have a note with at least 70% cacao or more. So I also learned that that is a new, like my new kind of sweet treat if I really, really need something sweet. The more you get away from no added sugars and all this processed food, the more you get away from your sugar cravings. It is a very cyclical eating habit. The more you're eating fruits and vegetables, especially vegetables that don't have, like added sugars, the less you crave the sugary junk that you were used to having before. So that was a big takeaway from me. But my dark chocolate, I learned that most chocolate is super sweetened with a lot of added sugars, but dark chocolate is the really high percentage of cacao. I just bought a bar for Halloween for me to enjoy on Halloween that is 100%. And I can tell you if you're expecting it to taste like the chocolate that you're used to, it ain't gonna. It is bitter, more bitter. But what I do to enjoy it is balance it out with a handful of like cashews or almonds or something that just makes it feel like a better sweet treat for me. That's, that's how I kind of get through it. And then like I said, have grown to love it now. I thought at first I would not be able to come up with enough food to eat every day that wasn't processed and it was hard. But I learned some really fun recipes. Now I feel like I'm really good at peeling and chopping and dicing sweet potato and putting it in the oven with all the spices on it and making a really good like basically like a taco maybe on a corn tortilla, no flour tortillas for me or just in a bowl form with avocado and a lime crema that I made with basically just lime juice and avocado and some things like that that were like really great finds that I have now come to like rotate into my normal life. And I know how to make my version of a pizza. And I found the best black bean DIY home burger that's no processed, it's a four ingredient burger patty. And it's so easy to do. I use my food processor. It's just some chopped up carrots and oats and black beans and salsa and I don't know how but when you put it all together and mix it up and mush it and scoop it and cook it, it is a fantastic black bean burger. And then I use the leftovers of that and make it into like a meatball for like if I'm gonna do like a pasta type of option. But those are some really good examples of food that I've learned to love and make at home that are healthy for me and filling and make me feel like I'm you know, not just eating on bell peppers, carrots and some fruit all day long.
[00:10:21] I want to talk about the books portion of 75 mod that I did. I have this list of all of these books that are fantastic that I have. Some I've gotten to, some I haven't. But I will say having to read 10 pages or more every day completely changed the way I prioritize like screen time which is the whole point of so many five day hard is to like don't get caught doom scrolling and like you come home in the rat race of your work life and your home life and you just sit and then you go to bed. And then the weekends you're like, oh, I'm so exhausted. And then you don't get Anything done and productive because you're just in this rut. So anyway, I will get to some more of these books, but let's see, the anxious generation is super high on my list. I was on wait for that. And I'm still probably on weight, but I'm gonna get to that one. But I read the Ticking Clock, which is a 60 Minutes book about a producer that was fascinating and educational. Loved it. I read like a mom self help book about mom, you know, 40 something mom, that kind of thing that was cute and funny, made me think and it was nice, kind of a therapeutic book. And then the last one is my big one that I'm still working on, but it is a complete game changer.
[00:11:37] It's called good energy by Dr. Casey Means. So Jill Schroeder, my friend, had shared a podcast, a Tucker Carlson podcast, with Dr. Casey Means and her brother Callie. And it's a long podcast and I loved it and got through it. And then I said, ryan, you should listen to this with me. And we did on a road trip. And he loved it. And in the, in the podcast they talk about Casey's book. And I was like, yep, I gotta get that. And Good Energy is full of such relevant information of this journey that I'm on right now about cutting out the junk in your diet and how nutrition impacts our metabolic health and our at the cellular level. And so it is. Most of the book is so over my head because I just don't know a lot about it, but I'm sure learning. And it's not just about food. It's really an entire lifestyle of your sleep, your consistent sleep, your sleep patterns, your sleep start and stop times, your screen time, the technology in your life, obviously the food that you eat, what you're drinking, and the impact of added sugars in your life.
[00:12:52] There's so many factors.
[00:12:54] Talks a lot about medication and medicine and the weird juxtaposition of something's wrong with me. You go to the doctor and they medicate you instead of fixing what is actually causing the thing to be wrong with you. And the first place, y'all, I can't even go into it here because I'm such a novice at it, but I can't explain how informative and fascinating this podcast episode is.
[00:13:19] Probably the only time I'll recommend a Tucker Carlson podcast, but it was good. And so go listen to that if you haven't yet because it might open your eyes to things you just didn't realize were going on out there. And I think it's super important. And hopefully there can be some changes made as a whole as our food system, with the way that our government allows things in our food system where other countries don't allow it. Yet in our country, we have these things that are killing us in the foods that we eat every day and impacting the way that we market are marketed to as adults and especially as children. The amount of added sugar and the food that our children eat is deplorable and super sad and super scary.
[00:14:06] So go check that out.
[00:14:09] Okay. I want to talk about kind of the results. So I mentioned at the beginning I feel like I look better and I feel better. And people comment that I, you know, they can tell that something's different or whatever as I'm looking at my hair in the mirror here. And I'm always the hardest on myself and judge things, but I've always said that I. I firmly believe that dairy impacts the way I feel as far as bloating and inflammation in my skin as well. Inflammation in my skin and like, acne and stuff. And so that was a big one. I do feel that the way I was eating cleared, like, cleared my body up. It's funny because I. I have these pimples that just popped up. But that's because the next day when I was done with my program, I like, you know, went off my diet and had like, dairy and I think I was eating pizza or something with my family and normally I would make my own and do all this stuff, but anyway, I just did it. Lazy, an excuse, whatever. And literally the next day I got a pimple and I'm just like, it's so in my head that it does that to me, but my dermatologist disagrees. But I don't know, sometimes when you have a gut feeling, you just kind of know what's going on in your body, you know. But I want to talk about some of the. Just sort of the numbers that I saw. I took all of these measurements on day one, and it's really just through the scale that I've been using now for several years. And it tells you things from your pound, your weight in pounds, bmi, body fat, fat free weight, subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, muscle mass, skeletal muscle, body water, bone mass, mass, protein, bmr, metabolic age, all that stuff. Some of it I do care about, and some of it I don't really get as much and care about as much.
[00:16:08] But it's. It's really fascinating to me to just to sort of see what's going on inside My body. And I took a blood test before this and I'm gonna take one soon to sort of check some levels because I was off on a few things and I want to see how I did. In my 20s and 30s, doctors told me that I had high cholesterol and just in general wanted to medicate me with things, medicate statins and things. And I just didn't feel right about that in my gut. I don't like to be. I don't like to be on medicine, period. And so I like took it as a challenge to figure out how to get healthy without the medicines. This was years ago. And so going plant based changed those metrics, like enormously, almost instantly. Now I have like low blood pressure and my cholesterol is right, normal levels. I don't, I don't eat cholesterol anymore because most of that is in animal fat and animal products. And so that's a pretty easy way to help your cholesterol out is to stop eating the things that it is. So just some quick stats. I went down in weight 16 pounds.
[00:17:27] So to me, that's a big deal. Some people that's nothing. Some people that's a ton. To me, it's what I was. My goal was to do. I didn't actually have a specific number so much that I needed to hit. But I. I don't weigh myself a lot, but I can feel how I look in clothes and how I look in the mirror and those kind of things. I feel how much I weigh. Right. And a big factor to me and a huge motivator for me is when I put my hands on my hips if I don't feel like love handles and I feel thin and slender, like that is what I want. That's how I feel that I'm making progress and that's how I like my body to feel. So down 16 pounds was a big deal for me. I know that's going to vary as I get back into not as strict of this program. I can already tell in the week that I've been off of it. But anyway, whatever.
[00:18:19] I'm doing my best and it's a really strict plan that I can't, Won't stick to super strict, but I'm doing my best. So anyways, down BMI 1.9 down, my body fat percentage went down almost 2%. And I'm very proud that I'm in like an athlete zone instead of just a fitness zone or OB zone. In my little tracker, I'm at the lowest end of the zone for Me, that is, that was a goal. I like, I've always been an athlete growing up and so I like the feeling of being in that body fat percentage where I feel strong about my body composition.
[00:18:59] My subcutaneous fat went down 1.2%. That's probably those love handles that I was feeling, not feeling my visceral fat went down and my skeletal, my muscle went up.
[00:19:13] So that brings me to my workout portion of this. So 45 minutes every day could look like a lot of things for me. Some days it was weights for the whole time on a program like on my beachbody app.
[00:19:28] Sometimes it was the peloton in my gym for the whole time. Sometimes I would read while I was on the peloton to knock two birds with one stone. And usually that was like on a good resistance. Sometimes it was just walking around my neighborhood, sometimes it was going to the Frisco Athletic center and doing a combo of some cardio on treadmills, some weights, those kind of things.
[00:19:54] And sometimes it was even on my little at home elliptical machine while I'm watching TV. Because if I really wanted something to watch on TV, but I hadn't done my 45, I'll just drag that puppy in front of my TV, get on it, get some hand weights, do some stuff while I'm watching tv. And before I know it, I've done my workout and I'm enjoying a little bit of leisure time too. So my workouts varied. But I do think that's also important. I think if you do the same thing every day all the time, your body's going to adjust to it too much and it's boring. So a combo of walking, some jogging, some body strength training, and a lot of lifting, light weights, light to medium weights. And I've noticed I've gotten stronger as I've gone on. Of course, like you can't, you know, work out for 85 days and not make progress, right? So that was a big one for me. So I do feel stronger. And I, I'm not gonna say I'm addicted to workouts because I know some people are truly like addicted to it. But when I don't do it a day, I feel worse because of it. Like my body craves it now and I'm like, I want to go move. So I think that's a key, is just moving. So I'm now moving more throughout all the day parts. I'm not just gonna work out for 45 minutes early, early in the morning before I start my day. I'm now trying to get up from my desk at work and go for a 5, 10 minute walk around the building or go up and down the stairs a few times or whatever just so that I'm not sedentary and sitting there all day at work, same in the afternoon and then same at night trying to move a little bit after I eat meals, just make myself feel a little bit better too. So those are some of the exercise component lifestyle changes that I've incorporated from this program, which I've loved them. Some of them were so hard. There were so many days I didn't want to do it, but glad that I did on the other side of it and will definitely continue to incorporate that into my daily life.
[00:21:54] So that is basically it. I wanted to give a quick rundown.
[00:21:59] Some of it is for my obviously my own self reasons is just selfish reasons to document this for myself. When I did this leading up to age 40.
[00:22:11] I wrote about it when I was working for Lifestyle Frisco and I love that I wrote about it and have that article and I've gone on other people's podcasts and sort of talked about my journey like to being plant based. And so it's another motivator, it's accountability factor too.
[00:22:30] Obviously I wouldn't have to have reset if my 5 years ago transitions would have kept and stuck. But I know that as a 45 year old woman, your body changes if you're doing the same thing, your body can still change and not adapt or not like what you're doing anymore. So this was just a much needed change in my life for now. And it's going to work for me right now. Not sure how long, not sure what the future holds, but we'll get to that when we get there. So I wanted to talk about it for myself and for putting it in my log historically for those selfish reasons, but also for others. I've talked so much about good energy and the podcast with my mom, my mom and my sister and my friends and colleagues at work that are probably sick of hearing about it from me. But I think it's important and so I want others to jump in on it too. Jump in on like the getting healthier wagon and eliminating the junk that's in our fridges and pantries and kids lunchboxes and our lives every day. Because I am now a firm believer that when you cut out the junk and you just eat clean and you just drink water, you're. You're 100% gonna be healthier, happier, look better, feel better, sleep better, all the things just fall into a natural rhythm. I can't tell you how many times I lay before this. I would lay down and mind race before bed and just lay there or wake up and think and like get so stressed and have so much anxiety on a daily basis. And this program like washed that away because I was prioritizing myself, my health, what I was eating, all that. And it all matters. I sleep really great now, so there's just so many factors. I could go on and on. This is already too long of a podcast for just me talking, but if you're still sticking with me, thank you. Thank you for sticking with me and ask me questions, comment or I get Instagram comments and questions all the time about when I post something about food or what I'm working on. So I would love to talk to anyone more about it. And you'll help keep me accountable too, so that I could keep within my healthy lifestyle and boundaries. So thank you for watching or listening to this episode of Hustle and Pro. Go find me on Instagram at Hustle and Underscore Pro and on YouTube of course.
[00:25:12] So thanks for joining and we'll see you next episode.
