How Busy Parents Can Get Healthy & Stay Healthy

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we’re going to focus on your physical health as parents and why this is so important for raising children. You know that a big focus of my work and philosophy is that adults need to manage their stuff in order to be able to help kids manage theirs. This applies to physical health, mental health habits, behaviors, everything else in life with our kids. Here in the US, and even in many other places around the world, adults and children have become increasingly unhealthy. The rates of chronic and physical mental illness issues are on the rise. And I firmly believe that one of the ways we start turning those stats around is by taking stock of our own personal health and how it’s impacting not only us, but our families. And then we work on making changes. One of my favorite people helping moms and dads do just that is Dr. Anthony Balduzzi. He’s joining us on the show today. Let me tell you a little bit about him.

He is a health and weight loss expert and the founder of the The Fit Father Project and The Fit Mother Project. These are leading health and weight loss programs for busy fathers, 40+ and mothers 35+, which most of you fit in those categories. Dr. Balduzzi holds dual degrees in nutrition and neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania, has a doctorate in naturopathic medicine, and is a former national champion bodybuilder. He’s most proud of the fact that he’s helped over 40,000 families in over 100 countries lose weight and get healthy through his Fit Father and Fit Mother programs. He is also a new dad, he’ll tell us about that. Welcome to the show. Dr. Anthony, thanks so much for being here.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Thanks for having me here. And for being a champion for wellness for parents, for kids. We’re obviously so aligned about all this, and I’m really excited to chat.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

We’ve been wanting to have this conversation for a while. Whenever you and I get together, it’s like we just talk for hours about all kinds of things. I’m really excited to focus on this topic for parents today, because I think it’s something that is on the radar of a lot of people like “Oh, I really, maybe I should be doing more for my own health.” Or maybe “Gosh, I know it was already five years ago, now I went to my health checkup and my primary care told me I really needed to do some things for my health.” But I think in the day to day, that stuff just gets lost, right? We’re focusing on what’s happening with our kids, with work, and we tend to put ourselves last. So I think you’re going to give us some really tangible steps that we can take for ourselves, but I actually want to start with your personal story behind your Fit Father Project, Fit Mother project, because this actually is a very personal mission for you.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

For sure. Yeah. I didn’t grow up thinking I wanted to be a doctor or necessarily teach people health and fitness. I was an average kid born in New York to two loving parents, I have a younger brother named Nick. We had a really great childhood. And we saw my dad bust his butt to put food on the table, and my mom do the same to raise us. And in the process, my dad worked himself to the bone, he ended up getting a cancer diagnosis, and he died when he was just 42 years old. That was just before my 10th birthday, I was 9 at the time. It rocked our entire world, as you can imagine what it’s like to lose a dad. But it also really spurred some very deep and powerful questions and feelings for me at a young age. I came to learn about mortality and that you can die, and that my superhero, my dad, this man I looked up to, he lost something that was important and special. And so I started to want to seek that out. I started to ask questions about how I could become strong. How could I be there to take care of my mom and my little brother? And it ignited this passion for studying the things that I knew were intuitively important, like how you move your body, how you eat, your mindset, and it put me on this journey. And as a young man, it started off in the physical fitness domain. I wanted to get stronger because I felt if I was stronger, I’d perform better, and I started to gain some confidence. And as it progressed through my medical training, and in my undergrad studies, I just started seeing so many people who were in a very similar position to my dad, and quite frankly, my mom, raising two kids as a single mom, who were just like overworked, overtaxed, health gets put on the backburner and these things start to pile up until they become big problems, like a first heart attack, like a cancer diagnosis. And I realized that all the stuff I was studying and learning in the fitness domain and in the naturopathic medicine was able to help people if it could be systematized. If we can find a way to make nutrition simple and sustainable, moving your body more enjoyable, and have this all fit into the eye of the storm of the chaos of being a busy parent with an aging body and aging metabolism. If you could crack that code, you could really help people. And so that’s what I really spent, I’d say the last 20 years of my professional life and deep work, is in trying to figure out how to do that. And I wouldn’t say that we have the answer, because there’s no one “the answer”. It’s really helping every single individual find their own path. But we absolutely have a very effective system, based on some principles around nutrition, mindset, exercise, sleep restoration, supplementation, that helps a vast majority of people succeed wildly with their health. And so, I’m here to spread the good word that it’s possible to be healthy into old age, it’s possible to turn your health around, it is possible to have a sustainable nutrition plan, and a culture of health in your family. No matter what you’ve gone through, how much weight you have to lose—I can say that with such confidence, because we see thousands of people transform all the time. So for me, this was born out of tragedy, but now it’s this beautiful mission, because I believe all of us deserve to have this beautiful gift of health, and we can turn it around.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s beautiful, and what I think is unique about your story is that you started doing this work focusing on moms and dads before you were a parent yourself. A lot of people, they come to this, they’re parents, they’re in middle age, and they themselves have a health scare. And it’s like, “Oh, now it’s my mission to help people with this.” You came at it from such an early age, even as a young professional, saying, “I want to help moms and dads, because I don’t want to have more kids in the position I was in as a nine-year-old losing my parent.” And so I think that’s just such an amazing thing that this really has been your focus and, and I imagine now that it takes on even more significance for you, now that you are dad.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

For sure it does. On that note, today, my daughter is five months old. This is our first child. So I’m really getting to now see the actual lived experience side of being a parent in the eye of the storm, and applying all the stuff that I’ve been teaching practically into our family and our life, and trying to set my daughter up for the greatest success that she can have with her well-being, and supporting my wife and creating our new normal. You know, the interesting thing about this health and fitness, and I’d like to get into some of the methodology stuff too, is that it’s a constant moving and evolving target. Life is dynamic, it is changing constantly; our bodies are changing, our circumstances and environment are changing. So we always need to recreate this new path and flow that allows us to proceed forward and be adaptive. So for us, a lot of things have changed recently. And it’s been really beautiful.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah. Let’s springboard off of that and talk about, sort of frame out for our listeners, why it is that physical health for parents is so important. I mean, yeah, you touched on the one big piece of we don’t want to die at a young age and leave our kids without a parent. But beyond that, I think it is so easy for parents to go “No, my focus, the time and energy I have needs to be focused directly on my kids.” But actually, there’s really something to be said about us focusing on our own health in order to benefit our kids, right? Let’s talk about that, why that’s so important.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

I want to have everyone picture this: We’ve seen those Venn diagrams, the two circles, and then they kind of overlap, but let’s separate those circles for a second. I think this is a kind of a cognitive psychological trap that a lot of people fall in, is that they put their whole life in one category and they put their physical fitness in another one. And they think, “Oh, these are my responsibilities with my kids, with my work, everything that has to happen. And then health is something different that I’ll get to if I have the time and resources”, right? And when you think of these things as separate, then you have two things to manage, and obviously one seems to be more important, and you’re going to invest in your kids, your finances and stuff and you’re on the backburner. But that is a logical fallacy, because what our real lived experience is, and everyone can confirm this right now in this moment, is that we can take a breath in, we have these bodies. And the quality of that body’s health, the energy, the clarity of mental thinking, how good we feel in our own skin, and bones, if you will, is coloring and influencing everything we experience, especially as we get into old age, keeping cognitive health is massively important. It’s shaping everything, right? So when you can start to collapse this distinction, understand that we are gifted these body vehicles, and anything that we can do to help them function better and feel better and have more vitality, is going to really just skyrocket everything else in life. So the questions to ask yourself, as you’re reflecting on this is like how are your current health and fitness behaviors influencing the important areas of your life? How is it influencing your parenting? How is it influencing your ability to make money? How is it influencing your connected feeling of your spirituality, or your deep sense of self? How is it influencing your ability to contribute and give back? And when you start asking these questions and actually going through the work of doing the answers, you’re creating new neural associations where you’re collapsing those two parts separate circles into one thing. You’re seeing “Oh, it is really interesting, I find that I’m having these constant energy crashes, and I know that I’m feeling out of control with binge eating, and I can see now how that’s actually affecting stuff that I really care about, which is showing up really presently at work so I can do really good and put food on the table”, that could be one example. The first step of our program methodology is effectively this: It’s to gain some powerful psychological, emotional, mental leverage, and to create this deep reason for why we’re healthy. And if I can be frank, too, I think a lot of people stay healthy in young age when they’re looking to find sexual partners. It is a natural drive for us to want to look as good as possible, and then many of us get married, and when we do, a different kind of psychology kicks in and there’s not as much of a drive to look sexy, or to do whatever. And that’s okay, that’s a natural change that happens in life. Now, if that was your main motivation, we need to kind of create new ones. And some of those will be personal, some of those will be the feeling that you just want to be aligned in a body that feels right. This has felt like a deficient area, and you want to have energy and accomplish something. And some of this stuff is beyond you. It’s your kids, it’s being around to be there for maybe your grandkids, it’s modeling good, healthy behaviors. But creating these clusters of reasons into your why, your why power, as we call it in our programs, is the first essential step because it’s going to get tough, and we will need to actually exert energy to create behavioral change. But having this deep sense of motivation as well that you can pull through, that is clear and systematized, is going to help propel you, especially in the early days. Getting healthy is a lot like launching a rocket. At first, there’s a lot of activation energy that needs to happen to get out of like the gravitational orbit and that’s the early days of a health plan. And a huge part of that fuel reserve is your feeling of connection to your reason why. And once you blast off, and you’ve been consistent for some time, and you kind of escape, you have this positive momentum, and it does get easier. But in those early days, that motivation, that why power is so huge. And that’s why all our program members actually write this mission statement and do this reflection before they even look at the meal plan or the workouts. We believe it’s that foundational.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It makes so much sense. And I love what you’re talking about with merging these two things, that we do tend to see it as separate. And yet, our physical health, our metabolic health, which influences our mental health, everything about our health is so intertwined with how we are able to show up in the world, how we’re able to be in our relationships, in our work. And I think we don’t often think about the merging of those. You’re right, we think of it as separate. And when it comes to things with parenting, what I’ve noticed over 25 years of doing this work is, often parents do see this as disconnected, they see it as “No, I need to focus on how I’m supposed to be parenting my kids”, or “What I’m supposed to be doing for them”, and not realizing that you’re not really able to parent your kids in the way that you want to, or need to, or to do the things that are needed, whether your child has a diagnosis or not, whatever your child’s struggles might be, because you’re exhausted all the time, because you have brain fog, because you’re anxious, because you are maybe severely overweight and don’t have the energy or the mobility. The list goes on. And we can say, “Okay, these are the things I know I need to be doing to be a better parent.” But it’s not just about me giving you parenting strategies. It’s about being able to show up and be in life day by day, minute by minute, doing those things and engaging in life and with your kids in that way, because you’re healthy enough to do it. And I think that people lose sight of that. That’s it. That’s such a critical piece.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Yep, for sure. And take this in. These are connections to why this stuff is so important. And great health gives you emotional resiliency, and a greater, deeper sense of peace. There’s many ways you can look at a problem and want to fix something, and I’m talking in a philosophical sense here. One way is you can look at the most immediate emergent property of the problem: “My kid has behavioral issues, this is the specific behavior in the context”, and you can work on that. But you could also look at a problem very upstream, like “What are the highest order things that are causing stuff to trickle down?” And I think when it comes to our health and fitness, it is one of the most upstream things that we can do, because when we put in the right inputs in terms of food, in terms of proper circadian rhythm, in terms of good nose breathing and keeping the nervous system in a good state, the stuff that trickles down from those good healthy roots, it takes care of itself. So my thought is that look, things get very complicated if we’re looking at picking all the ends of these buds off, but what if we actually start to nourish deeper roots? And this is what health and fitness is. And then the unfortunate fact is we have these bodies that kind of require certain inputs in the constraints of what I call natural law. Our bodies have certain inputs that lead to thriving, and certain ones that do not. So let’s work on improving those.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It just makes perfect sense. I love what you’re talking about the most upstream thing we can do, because as I say to parents all the time, look, there might be a lot of challenges, a lot of issues, a lot of things going on in your family, a lot of things going on with your kids. All you can control is yourself and how you show up to the relationship and the situation with your kids. And if you are not able to show up in a way where your nervous system is regulated, then you’re never going to be able to implement the communication and the relational tools that are going to be helpful, and you’re going to constantly be coming into like appointments with someone like me going, “I just can’t make this work. I don’t know why this isn’t working. I just can’t stay calm and just get so upset all the time.” Well, part of that is, as you’re talking about, managing at such a foundational level, those inputs for ourselves to get our brains and bodies functioning well. And then guess what? It isn’t such a huge, uphill battle to keep ourselves calm and regulated when our kids aren’t. To remember, what are the tools I’m supposed to be implementing? So yeah, I love that. I think that’s huge. The other piece I wanted to touch on is, as you and I both know, there’s quite a lot of research now around the modeling piece for kids. When we look at health and wellness physically and mentally for kids, but we’ll talk just physically for a minute, when we look at all of the data and the research has been done around things like childhood obesity, and metabolic disorder, and just children’s health in general, what we’re seeing is the massive importance of parents and other adult modeling, that so much of the health habits and the ways that kids eat and move or don’t move and sleep, so much of that is influenced not even overtly by what we say to kids or are teaching them, but by what they see us doing. And I don’t raise this to shame people who are listening. But I just think this is an important thing for me even, as a parent, to be aware of our kids, even from when they’re teeny tiny, they are observing, they are seeing what we’re doing. And so that modeling piece becomes so important in terms of us taking care of ourselves, right?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Correct. And maybe that might even be one of the biggest, most motivating reasons for someone to get healthy. It’s like, look, okay, I’m past the point of wanting to have the abs look a certain way, but I am highly motivated by knowing that my young daughter is watching everything I’m doing. And maybe in that moment, even just understanding that when I’m thinking about a late night chip binge or ice cream or something that I know is not as aligned with what I want to do, there’s just an extra reason now about why this might not be the right course of action, or at least the positive one. Yeah. If you’re open to it, I would love to get into some things that I think are very practical to help people win the day and kind of get into some of the structure methodology. Can we go there?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I would love to, because I think that’s the biggest obstacle that I hear from parents in practice when I explore this with them. Everybody knows, yeah, I should eat healthy, I should be exercising. But what does that mean? And what are the steps? It just feels overwhelming to people. Parents will say to me, “I know I should be doing these things. But I don’t know where to start”, or “It just feels overwhelming.” And I know you probably hear this a lot with the parents in your program. They’ll say, “Yeah, I’ve gone through spurts. I’ll set that New Year’s resolution for sure. I’ll work out for the month of January, or maybe I’ll even do six months or whatever. But when I look at the history of my life, I haven’t been able to build habits or set up things that are sustainable. And then I just end up feeling bad about myself.” There’s all of these obstacles. So yeah, let’s get into what are some good starting points, some practical things people can think about.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Okay, the first one is going to be a mindset. And I think it’s that this feeling of overwhelm is so common. Basically what I’m going to describe is that you feel like you have a set amount of energy, and it needs to be distributed in too many directions, and you don’t know where to start. Well, when it comes to health and fitness, there’s a couple domains that you can invest energy in. You can invest energy into exercising more frequently and more vigorously, you can invest energy into getting your eating right, you can invest energy into cleaning up your sleep. So let’s talk about those three categories for a second. The best place to not start or the place that is the least important of those three is the exercise component. And I think this could actually be a very liberating thing for many people to hear because exercise takes time and it’s hard if you’re out of shape. So it’s like the least motivating component here. And I want to bring this up because we have people we’ve helped lose over 100 pounds, and they’ve never done a single exercise outside of taking a daily walk and cleaning up their nutrition. And you probably don’t have 100 pounds to lose, maybe you do, but just to understand that exercise is good for optimizing, there are a lot of benefits we’ll probably talk about in this conversation, but it’s the least important part of reestablishing a healthy lifestyle. The two most important parts outside of the base mindset stuff we’ve already talked about, which is that fuel in the tank, is getting a sustainable nutrition plan and getting a circadian rhythm, meaning sleeping better and helping to establish that. Now, I’ll mention sleep quickly because I don’t want to go too deep into it. But look, if you are not sleeping well, you are kind of creating this hormonal environment in your body that makes it very hard for you to release weight and feel good. When you’re not sleeping well, you’re more insulin resistant, you have higher blood sugar levels, cortisol levels are higher, your nervous system is in more of a fight or flight state. That makes it like a lot more likely you’re going to want to crave certain kinds of foods. So if you know that sleep is a gap for you, I’d say definitely zone in on trying to improve that because you’ll create the right hormonal environment where it’s going to be easier for your body to release weight. And then the real kicker that requires the most behavioral change for people is the nutrition component.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Can I just say something about the sleep thing real quick? Just because I know that there’s some parents who are thinking, “Listen, hello, I’m a parent of kids who are not sleeping, how can I have good sleep?” I want to say, this is why, to me, addressing kids’ sleep issues is one of the main priorities when they come to see us. If your child is having a sleep issue, it is critical to address that, not just for your child. It’s vitally important for them and for their development. But for you, because when a kid isn’t sleeping well, at least one adult in the house is not sleeping well. And so I just want to piggyback on that to say if you’re thinking, Well “Dr. Anthony, I can’t do anything about my sleep, my kid doesn’t sleep.” Okay, then let’s problem solve that, not use that as an excuse of, “Well, I can’t fix my health and clean up my sleep because I have a child who doesn’t sleep.” No, you say, “Okay, this is an obstacle. But you know what? I need to address the sleep thing because it’s important for my child and also for me”, and prioritize that. Get the support you need, the education you need, the medical intervention, whatever you need there. To me, that sleep piece, too, is so critical. And I just hear a lot of parents say to me, “Well of course I don’t get good sleep because I have kids.” No, I have been a parent for 22 years. I really addressed sleep with my kids early on because it’s so important for me and my health, and you can do that too. Sometimes there are additional challenges, but really tackle that because it’s going to make a huge difference for your kids and for you.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

So I’m glad you brought that up. Amazing point. So sleep, address that in the most foundational way with your kids and with yourself. Cool. And you know, the simple habits around that are going to be cutting down on blue light, and I’m sure a lot of things have been discussed on this podcast, on the show, to optimize it. So I think you know the things, but like, the other thing I’d say that I believe is important for human health is to get morning sunshine in the eyes. We’re learning so much more about how effective the circadian biology stuff is. It’s really connected. And when we do get the sunshine in the eyes, it does create shifts in the neurochemistry, where we produce more serotonin, it helps us create more melatonin at night, there’s less inflammation in the brain. Lots of good stuff.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I’ve noticed a personal difference with that. I did a podcast, for those of you, maybe you caught it, maybe a couple months ago now, with the founder of VivaRays. He talked about the research with that. And so I have been committed over the last few months to doing that. It makes a significant difference. I think that’s so key.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

We have this natural pharmacy from light. And yeah, I know we were moving on from this, but the light creates this natural pharmacy. Yes.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah. So nutrition. So this is the piece. I think you made a lot of friends when you said a few minutes ago that, hey, exercise is not the thing to leverage first, it’s the least important. I think that did relieve people, like “Oh, you’re not going to tell me to go spend two hours of my day in a gym.” But now we’re going to the nutrition piece, and that can bring up a lot for parents too, around like, “Ah, you’re going to tell me that I have to change everything about my eating, and to do all of this.” So yeah, I’m excited to see where you go with this.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Yeah, so I’ll share how I’ve come to think about helping people establish new nutrition cycles. And the first place we start with our program members is not what to eat, but when to eat. We help our members establish, for them, the proper meal timing schedule setup, because this is the proactive scaffolding in your life through which you can build behavior change on top of. And what we actually do literally in our meal plans for Fit Mother and Fit Father, is we give you four or five different meal timing setups that work for most people. So there’s meal timing setups where you may have breakfast in the morning, lunch around noon, afternoon snack and then dinner at six or seven. There are setups where you may fast and skip the first meal of the day. There are setups if you work the night shift or the third shift. The point is you want to find that one that fits your life with the least amount of friction and that actually is most desirable for you. Because when it comes down to sustainability, we need things that are smooth, that don’t have a lot of friction points, and are actually enjoyable as well, that we can stick to. And I think insofar as we look at our actual physical bodies, we have the skeletal structures on which the muscles hang and move the bones. The timing is the skeleton of your nutrition plan, and when we’re looking at rewiring things, our relationship to food and being more consistent, we need the scaffolding to be able to practice on every single day. So simply getting proactive and saying “This is my mealtime schedule setup. I have breakfast at eight, lunch at noon, snack at three, dinner at six” as an option, if that works for you is the first step. The next part we’d like to do is actually standardize the first meal of the day. Because we believe that the first meal is a really important behavioral hook for people. It’s a time where you’re busy, maybe you’re getting kids ready for whatever in the morning. Your day is going, you need something that does not require a lot of cognitive effort, it’s dialed in, it’s easy and quick to make. So we basically help our members dial in that first meal of the day. And I think this is massively important. Because just think about this: Let’s say you eat three meals per day, seven days per week, just as an average thing. That’s 21 meals. If we can nail that first meal of the day and make it pretty regimented, maybe one or two go-to options if you will, and you could be really consistent with that, every morning, you’re creating a powerful behavioral hook that’s going to propel positive momentum, and it also serves as something that can help course-correct you. Because what happens a lot of times with people who fall on yo-yo diets is they’re on a very intense plan that probably requires multiple days of exercise, probably very restrictive eating, and you can only do that for so long until those friction gears grind down and then you fall off track. Well, if you have a sustainable plan with behavioral hooks every single day, okay, maybe you had pizza that you weren’t planning on and some alcohol, some wine or something like that the night before, now you have a pre-decided, simple behavioral book the next day, to help shift what could be a massive slide back into what I might call negative momentum or falling off track into positive momentum. The game of health and fitness is about momentum management. Every choice we make every single day is kind of like investing in what we might consider this proactive healthy momentum or it’s backsliding a little bit. And the goal is not to be perfect, but to be trending forward. So how do we create this structure and this track that’s going to work? So I’m a huge fan of standardizing the first meal of the day and making it easy. Practical things, what this looks like for people is sometimes making some kind of awesome breakfast smoothie. It could be overnight oatmeal, it could be eggs with even like Ezekiel bread toast. It could be some fruit and some other things. It really doesn’t matter what it is, insofar as it matters that it’s something you enjoy, that is quick to make, and that you can standardize and make that every single day.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that because it’s what I talked with parents about, and if you’ve heard episodes on nutrition that I’ve done on the show previously, this is sounding familiar because this is what we talk about for your kids: Starting the day, having your go-to so that you don’t have to put additional cognitive energy and physical energy into it. You’re not getting into power struggles with the kids, it’s a routine and you’ve got this. So everything that Anthony just said about the things that are great options, those are great options for your kids too. You can do this for everybody. And I love what you’re talking about with having a positive, successful start to the day. It sets us and kids up for making better choices and just feeling better about ourselves. As you said, even if maybe the day before things kind of fell apart, it’s like, okay, but today’s a new day. Literally like a reset, a starting over and I’ve got my plan. And so I just wanted to say I think this works so well, whether you’re a single person not having kids in the home, or you have tons of kids in the home. What you’re talking about is applicable to families.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

For sure, I’m with you 100%. And you know, when you came on our podcast, you basically said the same things around kids, this breakfast stuff. And it was like light bulbs were just going off for me. It completely resonates. Now, I’ll say one thing before I go to talk about water and hydration in the morning. In nutrition, we want to balance these two forces of consistency and variety. We must balance them. And I think this balance point is a little different for everyone, based on their unique personality, but what I found is at the very least, having at least one of those meals per day being very consistent, gives you enough structure to be successful. And then later in the day, at dinner is actually where you introduce a little bit more variety. So you get both because it feels good to eat different kinds of foods and stuff that we really enjoy, especially after a long day. You can have both. And when you start to pull these levers properly together, that’s what actually makes something sustainable. Now in the morning, there’s one thing that’s actually more important than the food, and this is kind of like the ritual that we really drill into our Fit Fathers and Fit Mothers is this morning rehydration ritual. Our bodies need water. We need water more than food, especially over the overnight fast. We can go long periods without food, but we must prioritize hydration. And I think one of the simplest things you can do for your health every single day as a small affirmation, is first thing in the morning, within an hour of waking up, drink a big glass of water. I’m talking 16, maybe even up to 32 ounces. There are so many benefits: One, we need to rehydrate in the morning. You can actually throw some really good minerals in there. I know you recently had Caroline Allen, mineral expert extraordinaire on there. So you could throw some humic and fulvic acid minerals in there. Remineralize, rehydrate the body. And the cool thing about water is it’s so simple. You can do it anywhere, no matter where you are, have the glass, rehydrate. And it actually is good for a lot of other reasons too. Chugging a large bolus of water actually helps stretch the stomach and move stuff through the intestines. So you may be more likely to get a good poop, which feels great in the morning. And if you do that before you have coffee, if you do have coffee or tea or whatever, it’s really good. I honestly think of it today as a little bit of a blessing. It’s like every day I’m going to bless myself with good health by starting off with this little bit of water. And then that might cascade into your standardized first meal of the day. And then you’re off to the races.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I was going to ask. I’m glad you mentioned that, coffee, because you know, a lot of us are coffee drinkers. And so I can imagine the question a lot of people have is “Okay, well, my routine is I get up out of bed, I go right to the coffee machine, and I have my coffee. But what you’re saying is to do this hydration ritual, to get in the habit of having our water first, and then we have our coffee.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Yup, water, coffee, and then and then you either continue to fast or you have your first meal whenever that ends up coming for you. And so then the next thing we like to do, it’s kind of like zooming out, outside of standardizing the first meal is, in the process of educating and creating your own unique health system, we have people decide what their go-to healthy foods are in the main categories. What are your go to healthy proteins? What are your favorite proteins that you love? For me I do enjoy eggs, I love sardines, I love some grass-fed ground beef. These are things that were for me. But someone who is completely plant-based could also answer that question. For you. You’ve slotted those in. What are your go-to proteins? What are your go-to healthy vegetables? What are the vegetables that you and your family generally like? The things that you actually enjoy? Is it asparagus? Is it broccoli? Is it a spring salad mix? Is it some kind of squash? But if you decide what those three are in each of the categories of proteins, veggies, healthy carbs, healthy fats, and you buy those things in bulk, it’s a lot easier to kind of start to stay on track. The main metapoint I’m trying to make here is this is all about using some strategic planning and pre-thinking to create a structure that you can then go into your family’s dojo and start to work. So if you do go grocery shopping and you know that your family likes these three proteins, these three carbs, these three veggies, you could do something like meal prep. That works for many people, not for all people. But you can at least cook these things a couple of times per week, and now you’re starting to be a little more consistent.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

What keeps coming back to me is something that you said a couple of minutes ago about the key is to reduce friction. What a great way to think about that, that the reason we so often fail with making these changes in any area of our life, especially when it comes to our health or with our kids is because we don’t plan and think about making the structure and the plan fit the reality of our life and our circumstances. Instead of “I’m going to take XYZ plan that I found on the internet or social media or whatever, and I’m going to try to force fit that into the reality of my life.” That’s a non-starter. So I just think how you’re talking about this is so important. I hope for all of you listening, there’s a lot of light bulbs going off here. Make the plan and the structure and the reality of your life and situation.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

You totally get it. And this is the probably subtle, but most important point: When you start to walk things through this perspective, in this path, you’re actually building something that’s unique for you and your family, that is very free-flowing, with not a lot of friction points, and that’s something you can actually stick to. I thought of this early when I started training people on losing weight and getting healthier. It’s like if I showed up at your house every single day when it was mealtime with your favorite food, and I was like, “Nicole, here’s your favorite healthy meal for lunch. I hope you enjoy it. I’ll see you in five hours for dinner.” And I gave that to you every single day, it’d be amazing, right? You’d eat that, it’d be wonderful food. And I was like, how can we start to do this for ourselves? And I guess it just comes down to some simple pre-cognizing what are those go to foods? How do I go to the store? How do I effectively make these things and reduce those friction points? So reducing friction is absolutely huge. We also like to help people decide what their go-to snacks are. What are some healthy snacks that work for you, your kids, your family? Is it nuts? Is it fruit? Is it jerky? Is it some kind of protein bar, protein shake? Whatever it ends up being that’s healthy, that your family enjoys, make that stuff, have it around, take it with you when you travel, when you’re in the car. It’s almost like you’re bringing your little system, like a turtle as a shell on its back, you’re bringing that with you, no matter where you go. And that gives you some resiliency, right?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I love it. It’s so true. Because if it’s there, we’ll eat it. If it’s not, then we’re just going to grab whatever it is that’s around, that probably isn’t the best thing for us.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Proactive versus reactive. How do we make this more proactive? And proactive just comes down to having clarity on what we’re doing and having it there, acquiring it. And it’s not that hard to do, but once you start to decide what these things are and achieve more clarity, it’s easy for you to take all that energy that normally feels overwhelmed. And now you’re like, “Oh, this is where I direct that focus energy.” And then you start to lose weight. And when you start to lose weight and you clean up your nutrition, and you’re losing a couple pounds per week, consistently, then this whole internal motivation thing kicks in where you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, this is working and I’m feeling better.” And then it starts to snowball you into “Okay, well, actually, I think I want to start exercising more. When are the right times when I can schedule that in?” And treating exercise like a meeting, and you put it on your calendar two to three times a week, or whenever it is, and then you start to build on top of the scaffolding. And the one thing I’ll mention just to round things out: The philosophy that we teach in our programs for dinner is this idea of what we call a building a perfect plate, where if you looked at a plate of food and you filled half of that with some kind of vegetable you love, a non-starchy vegetable, a quarter with any kind of protein you love, and a quarter with any kind of healthy carb or healthy fat. That framework alone, if you build a perfect plate, they’re typically around 500 to 700 calories max for a perfect plate. And you could have things like salmon, asparagus, brown rice, grass fed ground beef with some quinoa with some sautéed peppers. You can have a quinoa bowl with some black beans and some tofu or tempeh. These fit this perfect plate framework. And you can start to make meals for your family based off of that. What’s the protein you want to swap out this day? What’s the family’s vegetable? And something brilliant that you said on the podcast when you came on ours is basically saying this is what we’re serving today as the family. You can choose to eat this if you want. And like I’d love for you to speak to that because I think that a little perspective you have here will round out this, how to make it practical for a family with dinner.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, because I think again, one of the obstacles/excuses that a lot of parents bring up is “Well, I can’t do this because my kids won’t eat XYZ or whatever.” It’s like no, when we think about how we want to go about instilling behaviors, habits, things around mealtimes, family meals are important, and not being a short order cook is important. Now again, if you have a child with a clinical feeding disorder, that’s a separate issue. But that’s a very, very small minority of you listening. The rest of you may have kids who are picky or just normal kids who like to squawk about “I don’t want that, I want this other thing.” Well, what the research shows is best is when we as parents stick to our job with feeding our kids, which is deciding what’s going to be served and when. Our kids, their role and their job is to decide whether they’re going to eat and how much. And if we can stick to those jobs and say, “This is what’s served tonight for dinner. Now we’re not going to force, we’re not going to bribe. You can eat it or not eat it, but this is what’s available.” That’s what best meets everybody’s needs, even if the kids do initially squawk about it or choose not to eat something or whatever. So I’m glad you raised that because I think again, as you’re talking about this, for some parents, there’s this sort of wall that goes up and they say, “Oh, well, that won’t work for me because I have kids who don’t eat vegetables”, well, you absolutely can and should still make vegetables part of the meal, put them on the table, you should eat them, and let your kids do what they’re going to do with them. And incidentally, this is where some really cool recent research comes into play, even when I said vegetables, it made me think of this: We have studies now showing that even with something as specific as vegetable intake, you know what the biggest determining factor is whether kids eat vegetables? Whether their parents eat vegetables! Everything else aside. When they do the studies and they look at all the factors, that’s the number one thing that determines whether kids eat veggies: Do they see their parents eating veggies? So you should not be cooking for yourself and your family in accordance with just the things that your kids are going to be happy eating. And what Anthony’s talking about with the perfect plate and the food, yes, this is great for everybody in the family, and serving things in that way meets kids’ nutritional needs too. Making sure we’ve got healthy carbs, healthy fats, we’ve got veggies, we’ve got proteins. That’s what kids need, too. And you’re talking about it in the realm of overall health, but also particularly for adults who are wanting to support a healthier weight for them, this way of eating, even if you have kids whose weight is not a concern, which is for most of you, that’s not our concern with most of our kids, but this way of eating is what supports their optimal health and development, even when we’re not trying to address weight with that. It’s not meant to sound accusing in any way, but I just know from working with parents for so many years, the objections that are raised, the “But you don’t understand”, the “But, but, but,” and it’s like, well, are those really obstacles? Or are those opportunities for us to say, “Wait a minute, I probably could figure out a way to problem solve that”?

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Yeah, great, wonderful points. And as you continue on this journey, and you do start to implement these habits and behaviors, it becomes more enjoyable for you, your kids will see that. And they’ll see your body change too, and your energy and your mood change probably first. And that will also be another additive reason why they see this as a good behavior to model. And the tastebuds of your family will change too. There is a period of time and transition when if you have been doing a lot of processed sugary to overly salty stuff, there’s a little transition period. But over time, what happens is your kids will actually like vegetables more, even if they started off not liking them. You will as well. Your taste palate will change. Sugar will start getting out of the house and be coming in more natural forms through fruits and stuff like this. And then good stuff starts happening. Now your family has a culture of health that’s budding, and continues to grow as the pillar members, parents, and the kids as well, everyone starts to be working generally in the same realm. And food is the uniting factor, right? Food is the uniting factor of families and their health. Kids may go to sports and do exercise, you may work out in the garage or something like this. But the food is something that is shared. And so standardize the beginning of the day, do something like we talked about the perfect plate at the end of the day, and you’re off to a wonderful start.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I really liked what you said too, about making it accessible and having things like snacks handy. I mean, I think sometimes families will come into the clinic. And you know, it’s not that atypical for me to be with a family where they’re stopping at the gas station on the way home from work every day or on the way home from school because the kids are hangry, they’re hangry, they don’t have anything. And then most of the time the snacks you’re going to buy at a gas station, I know this is a broad stereotype, but most of the time it is true, are not going to be real healthy or brain or body supportive. So I love that you’re helping people think about how they can plan ahead a little bit. Yes, your kids are going to be hangry after school, plan ahead. What can you have in the car? Yeah, you might want a snack or need a snack on the commute home to get you through until dinner or whatever it’s going to be. What can you have with you so you’re not falling into these traps of maybe in the moment making more impulsive decisions for how you’re feeding yourself or your kids, that end up backfiring.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Correct. And to be very practical, I think great snacks are like fruit, nuts, and low process bars. These are things that are you can keep, they’re non-perishable in the sense of they don’t have to necessarily be in a refrigerator. But if you got in the habit of just bringing some fruit for your kids, some kind of nut mix that they like, or some lower processed bar that still has great ingredients in it, man, that’s the kind of easy stuff. Buy like seven or eight of those, put them in a bag in the car. They’re there, and that’ll take care of a lot of these reactive nutrition problems, because the more you’re reactive, the more you’re reactive in the future. And we’re trying to shift that reactive into proactive.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I know we’re going to have to wrap up here soon, but I want to have you speak to something because I think there’s probably a segment of the listeners who are thinking, “Okay, I hear this. I’ve been concerned about my weight, my health, my blood pressure, my cholesterol, whatever it might be for a while. I know I need to address this. But I’ve got a history where I’ve tried these things, they don’t work, I can’t stick to things”, talk to the person, the parent who’s listening who’s like, “I just don’t know that this can work. I don’t know that this can happen for me. Maybe this is just the reality for me, that I am just not going to be healthy, that I’m not going to be able to lose the weight or I’m not going to be able to get this under control.” What would you say? Because I’m sure you have people who join your programs that think about it. That’s kind of where they are.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Maybe most people, right? I mean, that’s a natural mindset that comes from a history of feeling like you’ve struggled, you’ve failed at things, and that’s the natural mindset. I think what I found probably to be one of the magic factors, is not just knowing these strategies with the proper meal plan and knowing what to do with your workouts, but being in a container that is good for your change. What I mean by that is that it’s like a program where you have coaches directly working with someone like yourself to provide emotional support. When we don’t believe in ourselves in the early days, you can borrow that belief from people who are just encouraging you. And seeing the success of people in very similar situations. So this is why our Fit Fathers and Fit Mothers are in their unique groups with thousands of members who are all seeing everyone go through the same thing, and it humanizes the process. It’s scary to make dramatic change in isolation. We’re social creatures, and one plus one equals three sometimes when we get together, so having just some coaching, and having other like-minded people in community with you can help you overcome these early thinking patterns that you can’t do it. You can just start even if you feel that way. And if you have a community that helps you stay more accountable in the process, it’s very helpful. And I don’t think our members would be nearly as successful if they weren’t in the shared groups, if they weren’t talking with our coaches on an ongoing basis, receiving check-ins, and emails. It’s rare that you find people dramatically change their health in isolation. It’s very common that you see people dramatically change their health in community.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s such an important point. And I think, like you said, it is part of the tremendous success that you’ve had with moms and dads in your program. And, yeah, let’s share with people where they can find out more about the Fit Father Fit Mother project, and what they can expect there, you kind of touched on it throughout the conversation.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Yeah, so the URLs are fitfatherproject.com or fitmotherproject.com. You can also find our YouTube channels, we have like 500 amazing videos on there. And on our websites, we have these programs, our Fit Father 30 Day Program and our Fit Mother 30 Day Program are the best place to start, where you’re doing the things we talked about in today’s call: Getting super clear on your deep motivations and writing a mission statement, getting this Fit Father and Fit Mother meal plan to start to work these things. And then also getting our workouts you can sprinkle in and build up over a period of time. And in 30 days, we have people lose 10 plus pounds on a regular basis and start to feel like they’re on a positive momentum track and so much more inspired, and of course, we help you far past those 30 days. You can see on our websites the incredible photos of people. Our members are with us years down the line because it’s not like they’re following our program. They’re following their program that they happen to have created in the context of the Fit Father and Fit Mother community. So fitfatherproject.com or fitmotherproject.com, those are the websites, you can definitely find we have free meal plans and free workouts so you can also download as well.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And what I love about this, thinking about community, is these are people who are parents, and so you’re in community with people who are troubleshooting and dealing with the same obstacles. And I think there’s just so much power in that. Anthony, what you have created, I think, is amazing. It’s so, so needed. And I’m just very appreciative of the work that you’re doing around these things, and I’m very appreciative of you spending time with us today. So thank you for being here.

Dr. Anthony Balduzzi

Thanks, Dr. Nicole. I appreciate you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.