Listen to “How to Stay Well, Thin and Healthy Beyond the Pandemic Holidays” on Spreaker.
 

How to Stay Well, Thin and Healthy Beyond the Pandemic Holidays

[00:00:00] It’s been a hectic year for everyone with kids in school. For you at worst, staying healthy and all the stuff that’s going on this year, getting sick is the worst. Regardless of what you think about flus and colds and covid, you just don’t want to get it in general. So the best thing to do is prepare, keep your body healthy, and remember that health comes from the inside, not the outside.

You can take all the supplements, all the lotions and potions that you want, but if your insides are not healthy, you will get. Sick. You will be unhealthy, you will be unhappy, and your body will not function right. It’s never too early to start on your New Year’s resolutions. I wouldn’t wait till January.

I made that commitment last year in December because I didn’t want to gain another five to 10 pounds through December and then have that much more work to do in January and February. When is the best time to get health? The answer is right now. So for 2020, let’s finish Strong game on sports, fitness and health fans for another episode of the Sporting Good Posture podcast.

You’re up for Coach Mar’s advice from the sidelines as he helps you crush your game no matter what health or fitness game you play. Hey, I’m Coach [00:01:00] Marella. I’m sporting good posture. What are you sporting? The coach’s door is always open. Let’s join him now. Hey coach, what do you got for us today? Welcome back to another episode of Sporting Good Posture.

This is Coach Margiela, and today’s episode is the Posture of Commitment. Today marks one year since I went back to the gym and started getting back into shape and really committing myself back into a healthy lifestyle. I had been getting lazy, overweight, and I just wanted to do something that was beneficial.

I looked around. I’ve seen a lot of people have bad health this past year. Uh, this was 2019, and I just wanted to do something for myself and get back into shape and get myself back into the gym consistently eat better, and just be more conscious about my health. Fast forward a year later, and it’s really helped me, especially with the pandemic going on.[00:02:00]

It was able to keep me healthy this past year and really get my health back into shape. I was able to lose 10 pounds. I’ve gained seven pounds of muscle this past year, and I’ve lost about six inches in my midsection. It was a combination of things. It was working out consistently, eating better and actually eating more, which I’ll get to in a second.

And. Just being consistent with it all year. You know, I went three, four times a week for the past year and it’s really made a big difference. On top of that, I go once a year for blood work and I get a physical, and my cholesterol’s gone down about 20 or 30 points. My triglycerides had actually gotten really high, and that was.

Partly because of diet and partly just because I hadn’t been working out. So it was a combination of, of those two things, but I was able to cut those down [00:03:00] back into the normal range. I, I actually had ’em up and, uh, it was about two 50, which is really bad, and I was able to cut ’em back down under one 50 where they should be, and that’s really helped me a lot.

I feel a lot better. My energy’s up. It just reminded me of what I really need to be doing. I have two young kids. I have a wife, I have a practice, I’m a doctor, and I wanted to be a better example of health. I want to be a better example of practice what you preach and be in shape. So when somebody comes to my office and they look at me, they go, yeah, this guy, Is in shape.

This guy knows what he’s talking about. The worst thing to do is be a doctor that is outta shape, overweight, living an unhealthy lifestyle. That’s just not what I wanna exemplify in my practice. I wanna make sure that I’m doing things that make me healthy, that keep me in health, so that I don’t have to go [00:04:00] chase it.

Nothing’s worse than chasing your health. When you lose your health, it’s hard to get it back. And as we’ve seen this past year, when you have unhealthy conditions in your body that are preexisting, like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, asthma, allergies, all these things make you way more susceptible to having colds, flus, covid, cancer, and any other thing that that you wanna talk about.

Joint pain, poor sleep, poor digestion. Depression, anxiety, all these things bottle up because your body is not doing what it’s supposed to do, and when it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do, it’s not working in sync. So I decided that last year I needed to just get on it, get back in shape, and be consistent with it because I looked at my two kids and I wanted to be a better example for them, and I want to be around for them so that I could ride bikes with ’em, play basketball.[00:05:00]

Take ’em to the park, do all the things that I really want to do with them. Whatever it is, I just want it to be a better, consistent version of myself so that I can be there for them in the long run, and I get it. It’s very easy to get outta shape. It’s very easy to make excuses, and I know better. And I teach everybody every day, and I speak to people in my office, I do webinars, and I fell into the trap too.

And it’s very easy to fall into the trap and make excuses, and then a week turns into a month. A month turns into six months, and then all of a sudden you, you go a year maybe two, and you’re not working out. And you’re just not living. You’re healthier life and you’re not being consistent with your good habits that got you here.

And it’s important to immediately turn course and just decide that you’re gonna do something. And I decided on December 2nd, last year in 2019, that I was gonna make that commitment and get back in the gym and be [00:06:00] consistent with it, and be a motivation for other people where I can show them what I’m doing.

And also I learned so much this past year, even though I knew a lot about working out nutrition, exercise and being healthy, getting back into it, doing it myself. I did the Lipo Laser program. I was consistent with it. I did. A different eating pattern. I actually ate way more than I had been eating. I had been skipping meals.

I was just like, well, it’s better. I’m just not going to eat. Then. Uh, instead of eating something bad, and honestly in the long run, that cost me an extra 10 or 15 pounds of weight that I had gained because I just wasn’t eating enough. Your body needs fuel throughout the day, and also your body needs fuel because, If you don’t have enough fuel in your body, if you don’t eat enough food, your body’s gonna think that it’s in starvation mode.

And the first thing that happens is you store fat. And then no [00:07:00] matter what you do, I don’t care if you’re working out 5, 6, 7 days a week in the gym for two hours a day, it doesn’t matter. Your body’s not gonna move. And then if you do lose some weight, you’re gonna immediately gain it back within a month or two as soon as you change anything around, uh, with your workout schedule.

So eating plays a huge role and I actually ate. Even more. I was eating about 2,400 calories a day for most of this year here, and before that I’d probably been eating like 1500. So I ate, I added almost an extra thousand calories a day and I lost more weight in a short amount of time. And now I’ve kept it off this year by eating more.

So I know that a lot of you are skipping meals. I have a lot of patients come in that that do the Lipo Laser program, and the first thing I ask them is, What are you eating? How many calories a day are you eating, and then how much protein are you eating? It’s so important to have protein throughout your day if you’re trying to keep your muscle.

And if [00:08:00] you keep your muscle, it makes your resting metabolism way higher, and then you’re gonna burn more fat naturally. That’s how you keep your weight down. And when you keep your weight down with eating more, which sounds crazy, but it’s really true, you eat more to keep your weight down so it doesn’t fluctuate as much.

You hold onto your muscle and you’re more consistently burning fat. And then at rest your metabolism is just naturally burning more fat than it ever was before. And that’s the nice part. If you have more muscle on you, you are a fat burning machine 24 7. If you don’t have as much muscle on you, then you’re not gonna burn as much fat.

And I’m not saying you have to be Arnold a Schwarzenegger type big, but you have to have some muscle on you and you have to do some weight lifting exercises to get that muscle. And no, believe me, I’ve worked out really hard this past year and. I am still not as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger, nowhere near it, and nowhere near as good a shape as he was back in the day.

And [00:09:00] it’s about being consistent with it. And if you really had to do something to be like a bodybuilder, you would have to do it for years to gain muscle. So for you women out there that think that as soon as you start lifting weights, you’re gonna get bulky. Well, you’re not. I’m telling you that because I’ve tried to get even bigger this past year with muscle, and I’ve gained a lot of muscle, but I’ve slimmed down a lot and I’ve lost a lot of fat and lost inches.

So I’ve been able to put on that muscle. And lose weight, but also I didn’t lose as much weight. As I could have because I put on some muscle weight, which I’m, which I’m totally fine with. And again, I don’t go by the scale. That’s not the end all be all. So when you go and weigh yourself, don’t do that every day.

It’s the worst thing to do because you weigh yourself in the morning and it might be five to even 10 pounds different than if you weigh yourself at night. And it’s very frustrating then to chase that scale and that doesn’t tell the whole story. What I really think tells the [00:10:00] story is I went back into my closet where I hadn’t worn some pants and shirts for 2, 3, 4 years, and I had put ’em on the side of the closet because I knew at some point that I would be wearing them again.

Because I don’t wanna buy new clothes. There’s no reason when I have those clothes sitting there, I just need to slim down. And I’ve now put all those clothes back in my closet, a bunch of dress shirts, a bunch of dress pants that were tight, that now I’m wearing again. And this is a year now, and I’m still wearing these pants and I’m still wearing these shirts, and I’m still down the weight that I was.

And I’ve been able to maintain my muscle this year and everything I’ve done this year. Was really to help myself get healthy and be a better example, but I really want to help all the patients that come in my office. You. I want to help you figure out how to navigate this because the hardest part is getting started.

Once you get started and you get past those first couple weeks, it’s a lot easier than because you’re setting up these habits to be more consistent [00:11:00] and to make it part of your lifestyle, to make it part of your day. Once you start, you have that mindset that you’re gonna just do it and you’re gonna find a way to go to the gym to go eat properly, to make meals in advance, or to buy small meals where like I go to Nutri shop in front Franklin, and I buy a lot of these small meals there because it helps me meal prep so I don’t have to sit there all weekend and cook a ton of food.

Um, they sell cheap meals there, so I go there a lot and buy these meals. And I recommend that if you need something more consistent to have food in place where you can get that consistent protein, like I talked about, go buy Nutrishop and go grab some of their food because it’s really good. It’s very cheap and it saves you a lot of time if you don’t wanna sit there.

And meal prep also, I’ve read a lot of studies this year that adding muscle and muscle fibers in your body naturally makes your immune system stronger. So yes, when you go to the [00:12:00] gym and you gain muscle and you work out consistently and you get your body in a better shape, your immune system will be much higher than it was before.

And as a testament, I, for the last year, I had a small cold back in February for about a week. And other than that, I haven’t been sick this year. And it has a lot to do with going back to the gym. And every study I’ve read this year tells me that that is true. I didn’t get sick from anybody throughout this whole year, and I want to keep it that way.

Getting sick is the worst, and regardless of what you think about flus and colds and covid, you just don’t want to get it in general. So the best thing to do is prepare and keep your body healthy. And remember that health comes from the inside, not the outside. You can take all the supplements you want, you can take all the lotions and [00:13:00] potions that you want, but if your insides are not healthy, you will get sick.

You will be unhealthy, you will be unhappy, and your body will not function. Right. So I’ve made it a consistent factor this year to work out, eat better, get adjusted, and honestly getting adjusted has gotten me through these workouts cause I’ve put my body through. A lot more stress this year at the gym than I have in, in many years.

I started benching again because I had worried about my shoulder in the past. I wanna make sure my, that my shoulder doesn’t get hurt, but I’ve been adjusted all year. I changed the form I was doing on these bench presses, both on barbell and dumbbell, and I got my bench press back up to 2 25, which I haven’t done in 15 years.

So I posted some videos over the summer. Of me doing bench press, uh, at the gym doing 2 25. And honestly, I never thought I would do that again because of some shoulder injuries I’d [00:14:00] had in college. And just that I didn’t wanna hurt myself again and be in practice. I. And not be able to see patients. But I took my time, I, I worked up to it and I got my body strong enough and I got the form right where I was able to do that again and not compromise my health, and not compromise my shoulders and, and my ability to go to work.

So it’s really been a great year as far as learning these things, doing different workouts cuz I was a football player growing up. I. I was just lift, heavy, lift as much weight as you can and form wasn’t that great and I. I looked pretty good, but I didn’t really know what I was doing, even though I thought I did.

And it’s taken a long time to learn these things over the years through some personal trainers I’ve worked with, from some of them that I’ve interviewed on on this podcast, and I really want to be there to help you do that so that you don’t make the same mistakes that I did and that you’re probably making right [00:15:00] now.

And it makes your body that much better because you’re gonna be able to get through the workouts. And not have those injuries. On top of that, I wear my orthotics all the time, and those are game changers. I wear ’em at work, I wear ’em when I work out, and it’s kept me from having knee injuries and back injuries throughout the year, even lift and heavy squats, dead lifts and everything.

I highly recommend if you haven’t had a foot scan, come get a foot scan and just see what’s going on with your feet, because my strength has gone up tremendously because now my body is balanced when I’m doing. Curls and bench and squats and deadlifts and shoulder press and back movements and everything.

It’s really helped my body be in a better position. It also makes me less likely to have an injury, so as 2020 comes to a close, I wanna leave you with this. It’s been a hectic year for everyone. It’s been a hectic year with kids in school. It’s been a hectic year for you at work. [00:16:00] It’s been a hectic year for staying healthy and.

Navigating through the election and social media and all the stuff that’s going on this year. So for 2020, let’s finish strong. If you haven’t done this already, make a commitment to start going back to the gym, eating better, and pick a date. And let’s start together. If you need some help, DM me at Sporting Good Posture.

Contact me on Facebook at Ideal Health and Wellness Center. Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you what I think. This is the year to get healthy because you never know what’s up against the wall going into next year. You wanna make sure that your body is in a good place so that you can live a healthy and happy life, and you don’t have to worry as much about these things that are going on because you know your body’s strong to handle whatever comes at you.[00:17:00]

It’s never too early to start on your New Year’s resolutions, and I’d say December is the best time to do it. I wouldn’t wait till January. I made that commitment last year in December because I didn’t want to gain another five to 10 pounds through December and then have that much more work to do in January and February.

So pick a date here in December and start working out. Start eating better. Yeah, just do something. The most important thing and the hardest step to do is just to start, and if you need help, like I said, reach out to me at Sporting Good Posture on Instagram and on Facebook at Ideal Health and Wellness Center, and I will help you any way I can, whether you come in my office or not.

I’m glad to answer those questions. I want to help you live your best life and be happy and healthy so that you go through this next year without the same issues that you had this year. When is the best time to get healthy? [00:18:00] The answer is right now I always talk about my grandmother. She lived to be 104 and she didn’t start her healthy habits when she was 60 or 70.

She started doing that when she was a kid and she lived her whole life with those habits. That’s why she lived to be 104. She never took any medication till her mid nineties. She never had any big health problems, so, It’s about consistency and it’s about discipline, and it’s about doing it every day so that you have the most success in your life and you give your body the best chance to stay healthy.

I have some great interviews coming up with one of my local gyms here, F 45. I also have Nutra Shop I’m gonna be interviewing over the next month here, so I have some great episodes for you that. You definitely want to hear about. It’s gonna really help you go into the new year, strong, healthy, and have [00:19:00] the knowledge and the consistency that you need and the support so that you can stick with it and make 2021 your best year.

But let’s finish 2020 strong and I’m here to help. Remember, the coach’s door is always open. This is Coach Margiela. I’m sporting good posture. How about you? The Sporting Good Posture Podcast is a broadcast wellness production powered by Ideal Health Wellness Center. All content copyright 2020, all rights reserved.

Executive producer Frank Sardella. Dr. Marcella appears courtesy of Ideal Health Wellness Center in Franklin. For more information, visit sporting good posture.com and follow Coach on Instagram at Sporting Good.