The Fit Mother & Father Blueprint: Health Wisdom after 40 with Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Speaker 1: 0:00

And common leaders welcome back. This is the uncommon leader podcast, and I'm your host, john Gallagher. As we kick off 2024, it's a time to start working on new goals, and one of those goals critical to us as leaders is improving our health. Today, we dive deep into the world of health and motivation with a great first time guest, dr Anthony Balduzzi. Dr Balduzzi is not your average health guru. He's recognized as the brain behind the fit father and fit mother projects and he's on a mission to help busy parents over 40 established consistent health routines for themselves and their families. In fact, he's already helped over 70,000 families in over a hundred countries. It's just an amazing conversation today, so tune in as he shares his inspiring journey from being a child watching his father battle a terminal illness to becoming a leader in the wellness industry. Get ready to redefine your perception of health and be inspired by his tales of transforming challenges into strengths. On this episode, let's get started. Dr Anthony Balduzzi, it's a pleasure to have you on the Uncommon leader podcast. My friend, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2: 1:04

Happy New Year. It's my pleasure as well. I'm doing very well.

Speaker 1: 1:08

I'm certainly looking forward to our conversation today, and I know the listeners are going to gain a lot, as I've prepared for this interview and even some of our conversation beforehand. It's just going to be something that resonates so well, so I can't wait to chat with you today. I want to start you off, though, with the first question I always ask my first time guests on the show, and that's to tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are as a person or as a leader today.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Well, I run two companies One is Fitfather Project and the other is Fitmother Project and it's my life's work and mission to help busy parents particularly parents over 40, lose weight, establish consistent health routines and be healthy for their families. And, as you can imagine, when I reflect back to my childhood, I didn't grow up thinking I wanted to be a doctor doing this kind of health work. I love basketball and sports, and I thought that was what I want to do with my life is, you know, be an athlete and all that, like many kids do when they're young. What was unique about my childhood, though, is as I watch my dad's health deteriorate basically my whole life. When I was three, my dad had a grand mal seizure. He fell out of bed, and it was one of the scariest things ever for me to just watch my dad like my superhero. This guy looked up to so much, just absolutely helpless, and we took him to the hospital, and we found out that he had cancer. At that time, it was a terminal brain cancer, and I watched him fight for his life for the better part of six years multiple brain surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation and I had such a firsthand witness and impact of like how foundational our health is because my dad wanted to do all these things with us. He wanted to show up and provide, to work, to play with us, but he didn't have the health and the vitality to do so and he fought really hard. He was a great dad but ultimately, when he was 42 years old, I was nine years old he died. And when my dad died, I mean it ripped a hole open in my heart, as you can imagine from that kind of trauma, and I filled it with this fire and this determination that I wanted to personally become so healthy that cancer wouldn't affect me. And so my mom gave me a pair of my dad's old dumbbells when I was on my 10th birthday and I started to train. You know, I didn't know exactly what I was doing at the time, but I was doing my pushups and my curls and my squats and as I started to train I noticed I started to heal. I started to strengthen this idea in my mind that I could transform my pain into strength through my will and determination. And then that drove me for for many years and as I got stronger and more fit, I got into university, I started competing in bodybuilding, I started doing training plans. I worked as a personal trainer in some gym settings and helping people of all ages and shapes and then when I got to medical school, I saw so many people, just like my dad, who want to do well with their health but were burdened by stress. Their health routines were put on the back burner. They couldn't figure out how to juggle it all and make it work. So I'm like I got to really help fix this, because I see exactly where society's heading. I see how important families are. I see that health is really a cultural component for our families. Unhealthy kids come from unhealthy parents and it's all kind of like seemed like epidemic for me. So I need to find a way to make it sustainable and I've been doing this work for over 10 years between Fitfather and Fitmother. We've had over 70,000 people go through our programs in over 100 countries. These are not just like people watching videos, like people actually having purchasing, gone through our programs and transformed, and you know I'm proud of that impact. I'm proud of the fact that you know I've had this tremendous experience with my dad and in many sense, he's still living through the echo of this work of basically me calling up parents to get themselves healthy.

Speaker 1: 4:30

And I love that story and the reason I mean we touched on this a little bit before we hit the record button how it impacts me is it was part of my journey, you know, in my 40s, back in 2017, when I walked in the gym and I had a health scare and I said I don't want to end up like that. And my kids were still young, they were just coming out of high school and I said there's got to be something better in terms of what I do. And then the trainer that I met had lost her father at a young age to a heart attack. So you know this, this community that we live in, that's been unhealthy at almost and I say this weirdly like it's sometimes worn as a badge of honor. You tie it to busy as well, and I'll get to taking care of my health when I'm through with my career kind of work, and I'm too busy with work to take care of that. So we'll get a chance to talk about that a little bit, but I'd love you sharing how it turned into that Fitfather project you mentioned. 70,000 families have been impacted in 100 different countries. This might be an unfair question. I'll ask it right off the bat in terms of that number. Is there one that really one or two that really sticks out to you, that you're proud of, that says holy cow. That was quite impactful. Someone that you worked with in the program.

Speaker 2: 5:36

Well, sure, there's a man that comes to my name, stephen Alexander, and the reason that I want to bring him up is because I think there's many people who have this idea that at a certain point you're like over the hill or like too far gone, and this is oftentimes when people get you know into their late fifties, their sixties, and you're very overweight, you're on tons of medications, you haven't been healthy for decades and you can just feel like there's no chance that I could transform. Well, stephen started our program. He was over 400 pounds, maybe 415, 420 pounds, maybe at like five, six, five, seven, like. I mean this is a very, very heavy guy. Over the course of 18 months, stephen lost 200 pounds in his fifties and I bring this up and now he runs like he runs half marathons with his daughter now getting close to 60 years old, and so it never ceases to amaze me how much the human body can change with the right inputs. And even if it took you decades to get unhealthy, you can unwind that picture in around. You know 12 months and ideally, you know just, you do it in a very sustainable way, like not quick, fixed by any means, but like when you do establish the right routines, you can buy back literally years of decades of your life. And what you said before is is, I think, very important. There is this logical fallacy that people believe they don't have time for their health, and that comes from this idea that people compartmentalize their health as like one circle over here. It's a circumscribed thing, it's your health, it's how you eat, how you move, your habits, and then they think their life is something different, it's like the second circle and and that there's not this true overlap and they have to manage these two things by saying I don't have the time. You feel like your health and your life are two different things. But it is absolutely not true. And what we help people realize when they start our programs, before we get into the nutritional science and the exercise and all that stuff, is we are embodied beings. We have these body vehicles and the quality of the energy which is our blood sugar, the levels of inflammation, how much weight we're carrying, is literally coloring and affecting every experience we have. It is inextricable. You cannot take your health out of the rest of your life. It is impacting the energy and the presence you have at work, how comfortable you feel in your own skin, which impacts you in corporate settings for sure. It impacts your internal feeling of alignment. We have this idea of like body, mind and spirit, and health means wholeness. So there's a sense of congruency that we have deeply when our body is healthy and a lack of integrity when the body is not healthy. It impacts how we interact with our kids because ultimately, they're going to see what we do, not just what we say. So this is a very deep game and I think when people start to collapse down those, those mental fallacies and understand, oh, wow, this is me and my own personal, emotional, spiritual development, this is me in my career life and it's all related to my health. Now you, you're going to approach health in a slightly different way than oh, I'm just going to start a diet kick for XYZ reason, oh, oh, I just need to work out more. It's a. It's a such a deeper game. And when you start to play it as a deeper game and you go beyond the superficial levels, which is just diets and workout programs, and you start to look at like lifestyle relationships, to food, to yourself, now you're working in these deeper currents psychologically that are going to be the foundation of actually sustainable progress.

Speaker 1: 8:45

Dr Baudouzi, I appreciate that and one of the things that, again, I unfortunately keep running the highlight reel of my story going through there, because it was that healthcare, and sometimes people wait until that healthcare work and, as we said, they wait too long and it's too late In terms of getting that done. When you work with individuals, though, and families, though, you're not necessarily focused on that lifestyle of fitness and nutrition. You talk about starting something out with a deep motivation or the power of why Tell us a little bit about that and how you get that, how you take your clients and individuals through that.

Speaker 2: 9:20

Yeah, and I think it's really cool because this is not just like. This is our process that we run in our programs, why we start with like some foundational mission statement reflection before we get into nutrition. But I like to basically explain that this is truly based in the actual anatomy of your brain and in some foundational neuroscience. So when we're trying, we're being high performers. You know, we're looking at creating things, managing people, managing ourselves. We are. We are working on both the logical, like higher executive functioning areas of our brain, which is that neocortex, the outer area of the brain that has a lot of like the data processing functions and stuff like this. But in the middle of the brain is our limbic system. These are our emotional brain centers, like our amygdala, our thalamus and in our hippocampus. This is where our memory and emotions are subconscious processes that are always running in the background, we might not be aware of, but are always influencing our thoughts, our decisions and ultimately, like what we do. And so we need to get both of these things aligned, because what most people do when it comes to health and fitness is they just try to go on the logical side and create another plan or try to figure out what I should be eating and they're just working there and they're not addressing this deep root. There's a really cool behavioral psychologist named Jonathan Haight and he has this very powerful model of behavior change where he talks about the elephant, the rider and the path. So if you imagine there's this giant elephant, there's this little rider on top of it and they're walking down a path and to change you got to get all three of these factors going in the right direction. Well, the elephant is this very powerful creature that if moving in the right direction is going to be very helpful, but if the elephant doesn't want to go left but the rider says let's go left, it's not going to go that way. That elephant is your limbic system. That elephant is this deep subconscious current. So you got to get that aligned. You know, in your particular story I'm reflecting like you got such a shock in that near death scare to your limbic system that it shook up that default programming and made this a very deep priority. So then you went and used your executive functioning to go get a trainer, get into a system, and then you started to change your environment, which is the path to steer you forward. What we help people do before they even have to necessarily get to those big, scary moments, is do some deep reflection, to tap into that limbic system and ask yourself, like okay, with the trajectory I'm on right now. First off, how is my health affecting every area of my life that I care about? How is it affecting my finances, my spirituality, my marriage, my relationships, my ability to contribute, my sense of own self, love and importance? So you're starting to tie your health in this bigger tapestry which is making it more emotional. You're also going to future cast out like what happens if I don't make any changes? And what that? What does that really look like? Viscerally, because it's a bias of the human nervous system that we are really good at responding to short term threats, like things that are very scary in our immediate environment. You're about to be mugged. You know there's a dangerous animal, like whatever short term deaths, but we don't have a good detection mechanism for long term threats and, unfortunately, heart disease, smoldering inflammation, depressed immune system and cancer creeping up. That is a long term game you've been playing. That's 10, 20 years down the line. We don't really recognize this. So we got to make those realities, bring them into the present to actually motivate that elephant limbic system. And then you got to get the proper, clear plan like a simple directive to follow, and this is a little more where it comes into the art of executing a health plan. You got to have something that's sustainable, that doesn't have too many friction points, that fits into your life and that's ideally age appropriate. That's why we typically work with busy parents over 40. And then all the environmental stuff, like how do you get surrounded with the right community? How do you stay on track with all these motivational factors Like that's the process of change. So step one of our program is basically doing this internal work to get you aligned and it culminates in writing a mission statement which is basically like a written goal for what you want to achieve in this first initial short timeframe, why that's important to you, what the costs are going to be of making that change and why it's absolutely worth it for you to like, take that investment, incur those costs because of this great long term benefit and promise of getting healthy.

Speaker 1: 13:20

Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you. Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations. If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom. Forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me. It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team. Okay, let's get back to the show, and I love that. I that's where I think we miss so many times, regardless of the age. We see a picture of what we want to look like, but we don't really understand why, and so we'll go after him. We'll do a training program or we'll do a diet or whatever it is to get there. And you're exactly right. Again, going back to the conversation I had with my trainer when I plateaued on my first phase of weight loss, she's she said okay, you're doing really good on exercise, but what are you eating? And I started to go through that. She's just. She literally just laughed at me and said okay, you're ready Like you're. Now it's time to go to the next step in terms of this journey, regardless of how I went through it. But I get this. You know the sense of. You know people will change when the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of the change itself, because it's not easy. It requires discipline, and you have to have that why, I believe, out in front of you so that every day, when you have to get out of bed and put those fitness clothes on and get to the gym, if you don't understand why you're going to tuck right back underneath those covers, it doesn't matter. You're going to make that happen because because the it's not going to drive you enough. So I do appreciate you sharing that, and so maybe those are a couple of those barriers too. When you first meet with individuals who you know say they want to make this change, what are some of the barriers that they're going through? I mean to say I'm busy is not a barrier, right? That's an excuse. What are some of the barriers that they have, whether it's mindset or whether it's actual that they have to overcome to get started with you.

Speaker 2: 15:18

Well, let's look at the, the pillars that it requires for people to be healthy. It's kind of like we can look at a plant and we understand there's a number of ingredients the plant needs to actually grow. It needs healthy soil, it needs water, it needs sunshine and a safe of enough environment. Well, the human anatomy and system has a certain number of those factors. We need good restorative rest and sleep, which is our stress management, management, circadian rhythm. We need a good enough food input, which is how we're fueling our body, the stability of our blood sugar, good nutrition. We need enough movement and then we need this whole idea of like, accountability and community to keep us on track, and I think people have hangups in all three of these. One, people are oftentimes very stressed with their work and this could be just strictly. There's a lot of pressure in your life, but also sometimes how we're relating to the things in our lives can create a psychological layer of stress and, as a byproduct that typically falls into, people use things related to health, or lack thereof, to stress release. So food is a huge thing that people use because it changes our neurocounter, neurochemistry when we eat. What do they call them Comfort foods? Why do. They call them comfort foods, cause you eat these things and they make you feel good temporarily, get the blood sugar spike, you get higher serotonin levels from that really carb heavy meal and you're really just changing your neurochemistry to cope with stresses in other areas of your lives and it's the accessible version. I mean if, like, people think it's kind of like socially taboo for you to go and like just do a bunch of heroin at the side of something, cause you're like, oh, I'm just having a stressful work day, but it's okay If you have a bag of chips or have some ice cream or whatever, and it's still working on the same kind of neurochemistry and changes. So I just like I hope people see the obstacles are that your whole life is interfacing with your default health habits and there's a very good chance that you do have the legitimate pressures of being busy, having a busy family, needing to find a routine that actually slots into your life that's not overly complicated. There's a good chance If you're in your fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh decade of life, you have some aches and pains and bumps and your joints don't feel like they did when you were 20. So that's an obstacle that many people will be like oh you know, my body hurts so much I can't do this exercise, so I'm not going to do anything. This all or nothing thinking starts to creep in. And then the idea of just straight up long-term sustainability, that it's easy to follow something for a certain amount of time when you're motivated, but as friction builds up, as life happens, like how do you actually stay on track? And so this is a deep game. That's like I guess that's what I want to say is is I really want to respect everyone who who has been struggling with this process, because it's not as simple as just like committing and starting. It's getting these factors aligned over the course of time and practice, and and I like to think insofar as the way to actually launch a rocket into space is that you need to get a ton of fuel to blast through that initial gravity and inertia, and then, once you're in orbit, it takes a lot less to just small and course correct. The process of getting healthy is a lot like that. If you're going from zero to getting up to speed, I think the best people, that who really do succeed. They really channel all this stuff up, they make it a deep priority for one, three, six months they get themselves a proper clear program. They really make this a top priority in their life. They have written goals around this and they blast off through that time. I think if this is something you're trying to do, kind of like half-assed admits the chaos of your life, it's probably not going to work for you because you just don't have enough energy focused to really get out of the ground.

Speaker 1: 18:39

Back to that mission statement you got to be aligned with why you want to do this. Because it's not. It's just not easy. I mean, if it were easy. Everybody being shaped. It's a society that you know moves toward convenience and it's not always convenient, but it has to be an important part. Just like your work has to be an important part, or church and faith has to be an important part, your fitness or health has to be an important part of what you have going on. There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 2: 19:03

I'll say this too Humans in our just natural geometry and how we're made up, like we do hard things better when we're in teams, like we enjoy doing things, going to church or being in an organization, not just because there's a great message, not just because we have a connection to the truth that we experienced there, but because we're around other people that are on the similar vibe, that feel great and we feel connected in work. You know, like most of the greatest accomplishments that humans have ever done have been in teams of people working collaboratively and pushing through. It's like when we're with other people and there's hard things, we can lean on each other. There's the, there's the commiseration of like pushing through big, hard pushes and then getting on the other side. Our health can be the same way. I just don't think you would have been nearly as successful if you tried to do this fitness thing without the partnership you had with your trainer at the time. But the problem people make with this health stuff is that there's a little bit of shame built into it. People think they can do it on their own from a bit of just like pride. Oh, this should be simple. I'll just do this workout program I find online so they they try to do it on their own, which is not the formula that actually helps people succeed. People get healthy and make results when they're doing it in some kind of community, if they have connection, because there's going to be hard days and it's okay if you like fall off the eating plan or you miss workouts for like one days, two days, three days. It's just making sure that doesn't shift back into a whole pattern. It's like constantly course correcting and being in a social community where other people are doing this to, where they share your values, where you're getting support. You're now in this like humble and connected mindset versus the prideful, isolated mindset that is massively important for the trajectory of your success. I could give you the same meal plan and workouts and if you have an accountability partner, the statistics are massive. You're going to get like a 90 plus percent increased chance of success if you have regular accountability partner meetings with a real person along this journey, versus just having the same information and doing it on your own. We can fall off track easily in our own mindsets when we're isolated.

Speaker 1: 21:01

So let's stay right there on the community side. On accountability, the Fit Father Project, is that something that really has that community impact, community aspect as well, that allows?

Speaker 2: 21:11

folks to succeed. Oh yeah, I mean, we have the best fitness community on the entire internet for dads over 40 through Fit Father, and then moms as well, like. So when you join, you obviously get the meal plan, the workouts, the guidance from me. I walk you through every step of this. We start with mission statement all that but it's wrapped in this amazing community that exists pretty much every place that you'd want to hang out. We have our own mobile app and web app. So it's in there. The chat groups. People are posting hundreds of messages a day. You see people going through their own journeys, being super vulnerable, congratulating you, answering questions. It's just like it's kind of like fitness church, if you will, for people who want to get healthy. It's just like it has all the goodness all in one spot. There's so much shared experience and it's really deep. And we also have our communities on Facebook as well. Like these are for our paid members who are all in there, and it's just really cool because you start something that many other people have gone through. So when you're coming in on your day one, you have veterans that have been with us for three, five years that are being like you got this man like I used to be there. This is where I was at and before you necessarily even believe in yourself, you can borrow belief from other people who are like trust me, I was in worse shape than you. I overcame these challenges and that is actually helping change your psychology and creating new neuro associations and connections on what's possible. It's like the classic story of like the breaking the four minute mile barrier, like it was never done. Then it was broken and then everyone starts to break it again. It's like what is possible. It's like taking the governor off our minds. I think there's a benefit to community in that and you know we have a really, really amazing community on both Fitfather and Fitmother.

Speaker 1: 22:45

All right, I'm going to come back to that when we can talk a little bit more about that program specifically. I maybe want to talk about a couple of things I've just read that might be close to me as well. So in 2024, for me, you know, one of the health goals that I have is to improve my sleep, and you talk about that in great length. Help our listeners understand the role that sleep plays in health, and maybe one or two tips as to how we can improve our sleep, and then I'll write those down because I need those myself.

Speaker 2: 23:13

For sure, sleep is probably the most underappreciated aspect of our lives and I think, as we have this bias of really just thinking about our lives as the time when we're in the waking state of consciousness where we're active, doing the duties and activities of our work and our families, and you can almost think of that as like the idea of the yin and the yang, this idea that we have when we look in nature. There's like the light in the dark, there's these cyclical aspects of all things in nature, there's the summertime that flows into the wintertime. Our bodies and our nervous systems actually operate on this exact same principle because, not surprisingly, we emerge from this natural process and you can think of the nervous system as having two primary branches. We have the sympathetic, which is the activated, stressed state that we engage when we're legitimately stressed or if we're doing high intensity exercise, and then we have the parasympathetic, which is the rest, relaxation. We're digesting, the body's actually healing in the parasympathetic and we're constantly balancing these branches of the nervous system and I'll tell you this, the people who live the longest are in a parasympathetic dominant state and the people who ultimately burn out and just crash and burn, even if they perform well for a short period of time are in a sympathetic dominant state and they don't get the restoration. The body to live a long time needs to be in a parasympathetic dominant state. Sleep is like the pinnacle of when we can get into parasympathetic dominance. And here's what happens when you sleep. First off, your body releases all the different hormones and chemicals that are released specifically at night that heal and regenerate all of your organs. First off, melatonin is the master neurochemical that's released in your brain, and melatonin, we used to think, is just like a good for sleep, but it turns out it is phenomenally more important than that. Most of your white blood cells, your immune cells that you want to be strong with age. These are the immune cells that clean up damaged tissue, keep your skin looking good, fight cancer all of this they have melatonin receptors. That is not by accident, because it turns out melatonin is massively immune, stimulatory and modulatory. So when you're sleeping well, you actually have a stronger immune system, which helps you age well. And, on the converse, if I wanted to get you sick, what I would do is feed you a lot of sugar, give you a bunch of caffeine and not let you sleep. I can get you sick in like 24 to 48 hours very easily because it crushes your immune system. Melatonin also triggers this cascade at night where your brain literally cleans itself. Around all of your neurons there are these specialized immune cells called glimphatic cells, this little glial cells, but this whole glimphatic system where your brain literally gets rid of all the debris from the metabolic activity of the day Metabolism, just like when we're in our homes and we're cleaning and cooking and taking things out. It builds up garbage and trash. There's a byproduct of all activity and it happens on a cellular level. If we are missing sleep, effectively that stuff builds up and it does not get taken out and the good sleep actually helps us clean the brain. And we know a lot of these neurodegenerative diseases which are on the rise are because of people having way too high blood sugars, from improper eating, eating inflammatory foods, and then missing sleep. Because the missing of the sleep component doesn't give the brain the ability to clean itself. So we can build up these different kinds of plaques and this can be a precursor to things like Alzheimer's and dementia and those are absolutely on the rise and it's related to sleep disturbances. So when you are missing sleep, as well your ability to process carbohydrates the next day and your metabolism is basically jacked up. You become acutely insulin resistant. So when you eat food, basically your blood sugar stays higher longer, you burn less fat and your body's releasing more cortisol, this stressed out hormone, because it's like I am not restored, I am not well. As a byproduct, this stresses your heart and when you have more sugar floating around, that is inflammatory and your body lays down cholesterol plaques on top of that. So like I could go on. I mean I think you got enough of a picture Like. This is literally the regenerative system that runs all of this healing processes for our bodies, and if we miss that and then we think we're going to go push harder on workouts or just take more coffee and stimulants or try to eat healthier, we're pushing a giant ball uphill. We must address the body at the root levels of what it needs, and sleep and restoration is there. It needs to be perfect, but you got to improve it and it's going to help every aspect of your life and certainly your fitness and your fat loss.

Speaker 1: 27:27

Wow, you know I just kind of read something the other day that the brain itself, you know that only represents 5% of your mass, but it's 20% of the energy that you live and, if you know, if you're not recharging that, as you said, and getting the junk out of there at night, I can imagine it makes it very difficult to move forward. That's cool. All right, I got cool stuff to go with on the sleep side. I'm not up on a time. This. I mean I could talk for a while. I know the stories are really good. The process behind the Fitfather project Okay, If you're having advice for someone who's just been struggling like that to get started, what's the advice that you have for someone who wants to get started in that space?

Speaker 2: 28:08

Well, I'll say a couple of things. One, it's to get a plan to follow. You do not have to figure this out on your own. It's so funny to me, like the greatest athletes on the planet typically have multiple coaches. Like Michael Jordan had a couple of different shooting coaches, so did Kobe Bryant, but like we think that we don't need coaches, oftentimes when we start these cell journeys you are the foresight to do that, which was very smart. But like, get a plan that has been designed by somebody who's a professional, who knows the landscape, so you can actually get into the seat of the athlete or I guess in this analogy and just execute on it. Two, understand the order of importance and hierarchy. Here you do not need to start everything all at once and exercise believe it or not is the least important part of this equation. First, off mindset, because that's the baseline of your sustainability and all that takes is going through a formal process of doing some of this journaling reflection, because that's an important baseline. Pass that to you. Do, improve your sleep Because, again, as I mentioned, if this is not right and I'd say if you're sleeping less than six hours, waking up like unrefreshed, constantly relying on stimulants there is stuff that you can do in the sleep category, because if you don't, you're just going to be pushing a ball uphill. And last thing I'll say on sleep is they put two groups on the same exact diet. The group that doesn't sleep well, they not only lose far, far, far less weight, but they actually lose muscle mass. So you can go work out if you're missing sleep. That's there. So you've got to fix your sleep. And then three, you actually start nutrition. Like we've had program members lose over 100 pounds of weight not doing anything more than daily walking and improving their nutrition. So the cool thing is, if you have the idea in your mind right now that you got to go get into the gym multiple days per week or start a complex workout, that's not the place to start. You actually start with upgrading your nutrition. And the cool thing about this is this literally can actually save you time and give you more energy, because what we're typically doing with our nutrition for most people is you're eating. Let's say you're eating three meals per day, like if we can just upgrade those baseline meal. Like we can upgrade your meal number one, standardize a healthy meal number one, breakfast, whenever you do have that, but make it's a healthy meal that you like. It doesn't take a lot of time to prep and we standardize that and we did that for all of 2024 that literally you removed one third of your meals, that you need to think about their default baseline healthy, works for your schedule and it's something you can come back to as an anchor. So these ideas of looking at nutrition more in terms of, like, systemizing it as opposed to just like what food is healthy and what am I going to do on a given day, is going to be a really good thing. And so inside the program we help people one, decide their proactive meal timing schedule, set up so like when are you eating and how does that work with your family life, and reduce friction. Two, we help you decide your go to meals for breakfast and lunch. And three, we help you make consistent, healthy dinners in a way that gives you some variety. So the nutrition is the next component I'd say on top of, as I'm building out this pyramid of progression. The next aspect is actually walking more strictly, just moving more human body. We need daily movement. We don't necessarily need formal workouts. If we look around the world and we see the pockets of longevity, that people living to a hundred plus consistently in communities. They're not doing P90X workouts, they are gardening, they're moving, they're active, and so we can just incorporate this into our lives and get out of the all nothing mindset of oh, I don't have time to work out. That might actually legitimately be true for you. Right now you might not have time, but you do have time to walk 5,000 steps throughout the day. You know, taking a work break here, take a call while you're walking, walk in the morning, walk after dinner, just accumulating steps. And if you can get to the mindset in 2024 of checking the movement box every day in some way, you're going to be massively, massively successful. And then the final aspect is layering in some formal workouts and sprinkling those in. You do the proper strength training workouts that are age appropriate, that mix in some cardio, strength training, mobility. All in one. These workouts only take around 45 minutes. If you did those three times a week, that's all you would need to get going on this. Even two times per week would be great. But the point being is the formal workouts get sprinkled in on top of the baseline of daily activity and good nutrition and proper sleep. And now the art of getting that all together is a real journey, I mean and this is what we exactly, why we do and why so many people have jumped to our programs because we walk you through every step of it and we keep you accountable. We don't have to figure it out, but that is generally the process.

Speaker 1: 32:24

So cool, so simple. It's so difficult. Yeah for sure, right, and I'm pretty sure you know if you had your pot, your podcast, you're not gonna get playing of fitness as one of your sponsors number five. You know the that's how they get their revenue. Right is that January 1 to January 5, when people are walking in there with their New Year's resolutions that they're gonna get in shape, and you're exactly right, I'm again. I remember the second conversation with my About nutrition, with my trainer. The big conversation was we had a hashtag for the rest of the year will stop eating french fries. You know, just, it's just a simple, one simple step. You mentioned starting with one meal a day and making that go forward. That's pretty cool. I appreciate sharing that. That is worth folks rewinding and listening to. Again, with regards to how you get started, all right, I want to have a little bit of fun, kind of some over and under you. Okay for that, just some Some really good stuff, okay, and then we'll. We'll close it out with how folks can stay in touch with you. So overrated or underrated, real quick, whatever first comes to mind. From a health standpoint, cold plunging underrated. Yeah 100%.

Speaker 2: 33:29

you want to go on more than just a real quick yeah, just a real quick, why?

Speaker 1: 33:33

why is cold plunging good thing?

Speaker 2: 33:36

Cold is one of the the great Adapting stressors of our bodies. When we get into the cold, our immune system increases. Our dopamine levels increase more than if you did a hit of Cocaine. It gives you energy and it increases a specific kind of fat called brown fat that actually burns fat. So it makes you leaner, more motivated mentally and it improves your immune system. And it only takes three minutes to do excellent creatine underrated. People have been kind of kind of afraid of of creatine because they think it's like some kind of super intense workout supplement. Turns out that it's one of the best supplements for longevity. You take three to five grams of it every single day. You do not need to cycle it. It is safe for like ninety, nine, point, nine percent of people and it's actually really good for your brain and cognitive health. And if you have aging parents who are still alive, if you give them creatine, even if they do no exercise, they'll retain their muscle mass. Creatine helps your body proves more ATP, which is literally energy. So it benefits in all scenarios athletes and not Love it cheat meals and I would say I would say underrated, and because I think that it's an important part, especially as you're getting healthy, of not having an over restricted plan, and so we actually build these into our program, especially when you're starting. We just make them proactive. So you're going out with some friends or your family, it's a Friday night, saturday night You're going out to dinner. We just have it be a pre-planned thing. It's not reactive and we actually call them free meals instead of cheat meals, because cheat Me implies you're doing something bad. We're free implies that you are eating whatever you want, guilt free, during the script period of time. And the reason I actually said they're underrated is because they teach you a lot, because you go ahead and you get to have the pizza and the beer or the burger or whatever you have, and then the next day you get feedback. You get to feel how your body feels and typically it's like damn, I feel a lot worse than I used to and it starts to rewire your psychology. So they're a very powerful tool. You can enjoy them. They're not going to offset your progress and they're a feedback loop.

Speaker 1: 35:29

Love that. Thank you for sharing that Last one intermittent fasting.

Speaker 2: 35:35

I would say underrated it's. It's a really deep and interesting topic. But the human physiology is built to do periods of fasting and it engages a very unique aspect of our metabolism when we burn a lot of fat. We get into some of these regenerative processes and if you do longer fast I'm not just talking about skipping breakfast, I'm talking about a 24 hour fast, up to 72 hour fast your immune system can really regenerate itself and you get rid of a lot of old, damaged cells. So in phase two of our programs for Fitfather and Fitmother, like past the first 30 days, we introduce once per week a 24 hour fast. This could be dinner to dinner or breakfast for to breakfast, and not only is it great for weight loss and fat loss and breaking through plateaus, but it just really helps regenerate the body and you'll find a lot of people end up looking forward to it, because it's a very simple thing. That being said, on a daily framework. Not everyone needs to intermittent fast. You need to find a meal timing schedule that works well for you. If that's skipping breakfast or eating an earlier dinner, that is absolutely wonderful. But the real, real benefits of fasting metabolically happen in these longer fasts and that's something that can be incorporated by pretty much everyone.

Speaker 1: 36:40

This has been fascinating. I wish we could just keep keep going in the conversation. Dr Balduzzi, I know folks are gonna want to be in touch with you and learn more, both about you and about the Fitfather project. How do they stay in touch with you and learn more?

Speaker 2: 36:53

Well, purse off. Thank you for the great questions in the really fun conversation. Now is a good time, right? I mean, if you're thinking about health and fitness resolutions and you've watched and listened to this conversation up this point, like I'm just straight up gonna tell you, like I can help you and my team can help you. This is exactly what we do. We have our Fitfather project and Fitmother project websites. You can type it in on any search engine or just in the search bar wwwfitfatherprojectcom or Fitmother project, and on there You'll see hundreds of case studies, all of our reviews, our programs and our supplements. So all that stuff's just like right there on the website. And Specifically, what I'd recommend if someone's interested in joining a program is our first 30-day program is called FF 30x or Fitmother 30x, fm 30x. Those are available on the websites. You'll get the meal plan, the workouts, the mindset, motivation stuff will walk you through the whole initial phase and then we have advanced phases past that. So the websites are great and we also have free meal plans and workouts that you can get there as well. And our YouTube channel is wonderful. I mean across the two channels we have over a million subscribers and 600 videos, so there's a lot of good stuff. If you want to go down the rabbit hole of Looking at all sorts of videos workouts, meal plan ideas, mindset stuff, fitfather or Fitmother on YouTube, you'll find us. We'll pop right up.

Speaker 1: 38:06

Dr Baldus a it has been a pleasure to have you on the show. I Know again that folks are gonna find tremendous value in it. I'm gonna give you the last word. It's a question I always ask my first time guests to finish up with. But I'm gonna give you a billboard you put there in Scottsdale or whatever you want to, for millions of people to see what's the message you're gonna put on that billboard and why do you write that on there.

Speaker 2: 38:29

The message I would say and you know I need a good marketing agency to pare it down into some fewer words but health is so much deeper than just your body. Health is about your integrity, it's about your personal development journey. It is about your relationship to your habits, the stuff that's keeping you trapped right now. It is your ability to express your willpower and create this body vehicle that enables you to have impact on your family and your business long into the future. And I want people to get a deeper cut of this. It's not about the biceps or the amount of belly fat you have. It is your whole entire life to wrapped up in this body vehicle, and you can find such a deep meaning in heroes journey and related to that. So health is more than just your body, perhaps, but there needs to be a better way to say that. But that's the, that's the deeper undercurrent here.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Thank you very much. I appreciate you, dr Baldusie. Best wishes to you.

Speaker 2: 39:21

Thank you, happy new year.

Speaker 1: 39:23

Happy new year to you. Well, that's all for today's episode of the uncommon leader podcast. Thanks for listening in. Please take just a minute to share this podcast with that someone you know that you thought of when you heard this episode. One of the most valuable things you can do is to rate the podcast and leave a review. You can do that on Apple podcast or on Spotify or any other platform you listen. Until next time, go and grow champs.