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July 21, 2023

225. The Power of Synergy: How David Greenwalt Helps You Optimize Exercise and Nutrition

225. The Power of Synergy: How David Greenwalt Helps You Optimize Exercise and Nutrition

Happiness Solved with Sandee Sgarlata. In this episode, Sandee interviews David Greenwalt. David is a Certified Health Coach, fitness expert, author, husband, father, former police officer, and former competitive state-level body builder and...

Happiness Solved with Sandee Sgarlata. In this episode, Sandee interviews David Greenwalt. David is a Certified Health Coach, fitness expert, author, husband, father, former police officer, and former competitive state-level body builder and powerlifter. At age 32 and a body weight of 235 pounds, he used an an evidence-based approach for getting off his own 50 excess pounds and he's kept it off for 25 years and counting. Since 1999, through his company Leanness Lifestyle University, David has been helping student members, from every walk of life, lose excess fat, keep the muscle and manage this crazy life.

Connect with David: www.lluniversity.com  

Connect with Sandee www.sandeesgarlata.com

Podcast: www.happinesssolved.com

www.facebook.com/coachsandeesgarlata

www.twitter.com/sandeesgarlata

www.instagram.com/coachsandeesgarlata

 

Transcript

00:00:06
This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

00:00:17
Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

00:00:33
Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together, and since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

00:01:13
Today's episode is amazing, and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at Coach. Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

00:01:28
David.

00:01:33
David Greenwalt. So excited to have you on today. How's everything going? I love your background, by the way. You've got some thanks so much.

00:01:40
Yeah, this is my real office. I'm not whatever. I don't have the background thing on today, but no, I'm doing great. It's a great day here in Springfield, Illinois. Awesome.

00:01:52
I'm in North Carolina right now. We're testing the area out on Lake Norman. But I live in Leesburg, Virginia, and because it's a condo, I'm actually in a bedroom, and I had to come up with a virtual background. So you weren't seeing a bed behind. You know what's so funny, Sandy, is that wife and I went to Florida for January and February.

00:02:15
Okay. While we were there, we rented a really nice house, and it was a three bedroom blah, blah, blah. But I did a number of interviews, like this podcast interviews, and I was in a room with a bed right behind me, and I had to do the same thing. I had to have a virtual background, otherwise I was going to have a bed literally six inches behind my chair. Well, I have interviewed guests before with a bed behind them, and the dog and the cat hop on the bed.

00:02:39
And it's actually kind of funny, but as the host, but because I do a lot of coaching, I can switch out this graphic with my coaching academy on there. So it all worked out. So, for the audience, David is David. Sorry. David.

00:02:56
I'm sure you go by David, too, right? Either way. Yeah, either way. Right. So you're a certified health coach, fitness expert, author, husband, father, former police officer.

00:03:05
Thank you so much for your service. And a former competitive, state level bodybuilder and power lifter. Wow. All right, so we're going to dive into all of that. First, I like to hear about people's stories because everybody has a backstory.

00:03:19
So tell me about yours. So mine, for whatever reason, even as a kid, I was interested in fitness. And I remember in grade school wanting the President's Council on Physical Fitness award. I was not a great athlete. Yeah.

00:03:39
And you got a patch and a sticker and a certificate and I don't know, I just really wanted I thought it'd be really cool. You had to broad jump a certain distance, run full baseball, things like that. And even though I wasn't a good athlete, I was B team, C team kid. I was not a team. I wasn't going to be a starter, that's for sure.

00:04:00
I was really interested in fitness, and I found that I was decent at it, even young. And so I did get that award. And then we kind of fast forward, and I got to my senior year of high school, and a young man that was one year ahead of me had already created incredible physique. And anyway, one night we were at a parking lot with cars like you do in small towns, and you're just chitchatting with the guys, and there's 15 cars in the Ace Hardware parking lot. And we were just chatting, and he just David, hey, you want to come down and work out with us sometime with him and a group of guys?

00:04:35
And I David, oh. I was like, oh, my gosh, yes. I think it'd be awesome. I didn't know, but that was in August of 1982. Well, I haven't been more than two weeks out of a gym, Sandy, since August of 1982.

00:04:49
Wow. Yeah, I'm the opposite. I used to be that person that would I was like the perfect gym client, where I would commit to a two year contract and come in twice. But I did a little mind hack. Trip we can talk about later to get me into the gym now.

00:05:06
Yeah. Again, don't ask me why. Everybody gets their thing. For whatever reason, I had this as an interest for me, too. It was something that I could do.

00:05:16
Lifting anyway, was something I could do that I wasn't going to hurt anybody else doing it, like on a team sport, I wasn't going to harm the team. And so anyway, I really loved it. I went to college, came out, was a police officer. When I came out, I started as a city police officer. Then I went on, became an Illinois state trooper, so I had to go to the academy twice.

00:05:42
When I came out of the academy the second time, I was still lifting and training and kind of amateur bodybuilding and that kind of thing. And my goal was to I started this company, not this company I have now, but a different company. And my goal was to make enough money with this company to just pay for my own supplements. That's all I wanted to do. Protein powder, vitamins and minerals.

00:06:04
I just wanted to make enough money for that. And I promise I'm getting to the point here kind of this journey. Well, no, that's a good goal, because those are expensive. Yeah. And I was just like, I'm a state trooper.

00:06:13
It's fine. It pays you fine. It was just like I also had this besides having kind of something in me that's fitness oriented, I also had, even though I grew up very blue collar, my dad was an electrician forever, my mom was more office work, and it was just great upbringing, great parents. But that's my upbringing. I didn't have somebody in business, but I had this entrepreneurial spirit for whatever reason.

00:06:36
I don't know why. So I started this business, and it was a mail order supplement company, and I put little classified ads in the back of bodybuilding magazines. That's all there was. There was no Internet. This is 1992.

00:06:47
Little classified ads with a toll free number. I couldn't even answer the phone, Sandy, because I was working, so they would leave a message, hey, I want to get some protein powder. All right, so that I call them back. Anyway, that started this little tiny room in my home, and over five years, I built it to 5 million in revenue and 45 employees. Holy moly.

00:07:08
Yeah. It's still a tiny company in some respects, but it was did. I mean, it just blew me out of the water, what we were able to do with this. And I was still a trooper, so I finally did take a leave of absence. But here's the thing.

00:07:21
While I was growing this company, I researched and wrote a monthly newsletter for my customers, and it was on fitness and nutrition and exercise and all the things related to all those elements. And back then, I had to go to a research library, photocopy the journals, the articles that I wanted, find the articles, photocopy them, bring them back, read about it, write about it. And I put this out as a monthly paper newsletter. Again. No Internet.

00:07:50
But then the Internet came, and oh, my gosh, Sandy, we have email. Game changer. Yeah. There's two way communication now. Whoa.

00:08:02
With people knowing my history. And at that time, too, all throughout those years, I was powerlifting and bodybuilding. So I would bulk up to about 235 pounds as a power lifter, and I would compete as a bodybuilder at, like, 175 pounds. So I had a 60 pound swing there between when I was power lifting and bulking up and when I was getting lean for a bodybuilding show. But for me, I pretty much took my body where I wanted it.

00:08:29
Okay? That's for me. But what happened was I started getting people emailing me because they knew my history again. I was kind of a Ralph Nader, too, in that I called out the supplement companies that weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing. If someone wasn't doing the right thing, if they were lying to us or whatever they were doing anyway, they would write to me and say, hey, David, real quick, don't want to be a bother, but if you get a chance, could you just tell me real quick how I can lose 30 pounds and keep it off forever?

00:08:56
And that was in an email. And you're like, I'm going to give it the college try because I want to help these people. I want to help people get to the better place. They're usually they were always at someplace heavier, less healthy. They just wanted to get to someplace leaner and healthier.

00:09:10
Okay. Most of them didn't want to compete. Most of them, and that's who my clients are today, 99% of them don't want to compete, and that's not who we're all about. And so I realized quickly I wasn't doing them justice by trying to answer it in an email. So I spent a year writing a book and then the internet was here for sure, websites were here.

00:09:33
I created our website in 1999 and we started coaching people online after I wrote my book. We started coaching people online in 19 you're a trailblazer. It was early and I still am coaching people online, just with, of course, much better tools and experience and everything's evolved so much, but that's my history. It kind of went through there. And I sold that supplement company.

00:10:01
I don't sell any supplements. I sold that supplement company because I was so passionate. And that's the thing. I found I was so passionate about wanting to help people really, truly change their lives for the better that I realized that the supplement company was fine, it was delivering a benefit, it was a good service. It was helping people in certain ways in the fitness area.

00:10:26
But this was just I was just so passionate about it. Sold the supplement company and been going 24 years with this ever since. Wow, that's a long time. Especially to be doing it online when most coaches were not doing it online. Yeah, we were fairly alone back then.

00:10:47
Yeah, I've been coaching since early two thousand s. And it was all over the telephone or in person and workshops in front of people. There was no online anything other than a website. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

00:11:01
And at first it was pretty raw, it was pretty basic, but we were doing it. Excuse me? We were doing it. And, and I'm I would say I'm more passionate today even than I was then because, because of all the experience that I have, because of the working with so many people over, over these years, I feel that I can bring so much more to the table for them. And with our incredibly obeseogenic environment we're all living in and trying to navigate, I feel more hopeful because of what I know because I've kept my nose in research since way back when.

00:11:40
I continue to look at research every single week, continue to work with people in the trenches every single day. So I've got that real world practical, what's really going on? What are people really struggling with? I've got both sides, not just I'm sitting up here and I don't know. I'm trying to go off of what I knew ten years ago.

00:11:58
I'm current, and I'm working with people every day now. I'm encouraged. There's a lot that can be won. Oh, yeah, okay, so you help people lose excess fat, keep the muscle, and manage this crazy life. Love that part because it's really it really is all about mind, body, spirit.

00:12:21
Yes. So what are a couple of things that people really need to take a look at first? When they start on this journey, when they reach that, whatever that point is for them, whether they feel like they've hit rock bottom, okay, I've got to make a change in my life, or God forbid, they get sick, and they have to make serious changes in their life. What are some of the things that people can focus on right away that will help them to start basically on the trajectory toward having that healthy lifestyle? Yeah, so I think that people are even back then.

00:13:04
That email I told you about, hey, can you tell me real quick, don't want to be a bother. Can you just help me get 30 pounds off and keep it off for life? There's a certain sentiment that people have that is there's a kind of a minimization of what is involved or what should be involved for this? A lot of people have, even if they haven't David it or thought it specifically, there's kind of a mindset with a lot of people. If I know what to do, I just need to do it.

00:13:29
And if they think that in any way or they believe that, they're usually just referring to the nutrition and exercise kind of things. They know, I need to eat a little better and a little less. I need to move a little more and a little better, or whatever some version of that. Right. It's kind of the energy and energy out.

00:13:45
Calories in, calories out. Right. But if you're asking me about starting, yes, some element of that is true. If we want to get from someplace usually heavier, less healthy to someplace leaner and healthier, yes, elements of that are true, but there's other factors that are driving those two to do what they're doing. There's other the factors that are driving those two to not support the goals that someone may have or are going to be about more.

00:14:24
The mindset, willpower, emotional fitness, having support, those kinds of things. So starting off, what I would say is anytime someone can do even one more thing to eat real food compared to ultra processed food, we're moving in a good direction, literally, even if it's one bite of real food extra a day or in lieu of something that would have been ultra processed. So now there's a lot of confusion out there about what does that mean? He says, some people say eat clean. I don't say that.

00:15:02
I David eat real food. So I'm saying real food. What does that mean? And again, this is kind of like first step. And when I say first step, I really mean first step, not like revamp your entire menu and every single thing needs to be real food.

00:15:18
Oh, gosh, no. Well, that's not going to work. You're just setting people up for failure. It's just not and it's not anything we would yeah, it's just going to be a crazy way to start that is destined to fail for 99.9% of people. Right.

00:15:36
So, no, we don't want to do that. But just making incremental improvements toward having more real food. So just to help someone, if they were going to go to the grocery store today, and they were going to say, I'm not committing to a bunch of this, but I know I'd like to make some changes. So I will do what David David, and I will have one more bite of real food. Compared to ultra processed food, I think they should have a working definition of real food.

00:15:58
So here's my adapted definition of real food, okay? So that they could go to a store and kind of kind of get a feel. Real food, whole or minimally processed, edible parts of plant or animal where if anything's been added, it's whole or minimally processed. Ingredients commonly found in kitchens. Now, let me simplify it even further.

00:16:22
Believe it or not, that's the short version of an adaptation. Even simpler David plant and animal, single ingredient, where if anything was added to it, it's only ingredients commonly found in Great Grandma's kitchen. Okay? The way we used to cook. That's why I went Great Grandma.

00:16:44
Yeah. So I even went Great Grandma because some of the audience might be if they're 30, we may have to go to Great Grandma. But anyway, so single ingredient, plant or animal. Okay. And if you're vegan, of course you just knock out the animal.

00:16:59
And if you're whatever. If you're carnivore, I guess you just knock out the plant. But it's real food, single ingredient. And then if anything's been added, only ingredients commonly found in Great Grandma's kitchen. So what does that look like?

00:17:14
If you're looking at the back of a package? Well, I don't get into you'll hear this. If it has more than five ingredients, don't eat it. I don't care if it has 50 ingredients, because you could have a soup with 20 ingredients. That's right.

00:17:26
Yeah. So I don't care how many don't eat it if you can't pronounce it. We've got some people that can really pronounce some. I did an interview with a pharmacist. You know what they can pronounce, you know, a medical doctor, whoever can pronounce, they can pronounce anything.

00:17:42
So that's not okay. So I don't care if you can pronounce it. I don't care if it has more than five ingredients. I just want if it's real food. If we're trying to move in that direction, we're looking for a single ingredient where it was in great Grandma's kitchen, if anything else was added to it.

00:17:57
What is that? Spices, vinegars, oils, things like that. Okay, so that's the place to start, if you ask me. Where could you start? Yes, there's a lot more to it than just eat less, exercise more, better nutrition, exercise move better and all that, but if I was going to start someplace and just try to make that first kind of inroad into having something really substantive that could make a significant improvement pretty quickly, I would start moving in that direction.

00:18:27
Okay. So I've heard that exercise is a very small part of losing weight. I know it's important for anyone at any age, especially as we age, it's just very important. And I just know, like, from my own personal experience, I lost 25 pounds nine and a half years ago and have kept it off, and I didn't exercise at all. Yeah, well, palling on myself when I used to do the bodybuilding shows, i, of course, was always exercising, but compared to what people were doing that were my compadres in this, where they were doing twice the exercise I was, I relied 95% on nutrition to get lean.

00:19:23
Okay, so is it true that typically nutrition is 80, 90% of it? Typically. That's the mindset we do want to have. Okay, that is mostly true. However, to me and from all the research and what I've seen, real world and research combined, the greatest benefit of exercise, or the benefits of exercise aren't even related to the caloric burn.

00:19:54
They're related to the mindset shifts, related to the energy. They're related to stress reduction, anxiety reduction, mood, cognitive function and all of that. If you just think about it, everything's related, all of that kind of comes back around and supports our nutritional decisions. Yeah. So it's one feeding another for sure.

00:20:18
And I'm going to say this, I did my last bodybuilding show when I was 42. So that's 15 years ago. It was the state competition. Did it, got it, didn't want to compete anymore. I still train kind of like I am going to, but I'm not going to compete.

00:20:35
But if I was going to compete and get down to 5% body fat again, I would do more exercise than I did, meaning more minutes. I would put more into it because I now understand even more so the benefit of doing so. I wouldn't overdo it, I wouldn't get crazy, but I would do more than I did back in the day when I relied kind of like you. I was exercising, but it really was 90, 95% nutrition. That got me lean.

00:21:05
Yeah. I just simply had a major life change in my life. And being away from the house all of a sudden, 10 hours a day, taking care of my son, being a single mother, all of those things, I was able to lose the weight. I just didn't have time to exercise. So the reason I wanted to have this conversation is because so many people feel like it's all about the exercise, but what happens is they walk for 20 minutes and think, oh, well, now I can eat this.

00:21:36
Well, you didn't burn enough calories, number one. And I know my own experience, part of that weight that I had gained was I trained for I was doing marathons. I only actually did one marathon, and that was the Marine Corps Marathon in 2006. I gained ten pounds. And you know why?

00:21:55
Because I'd do a 15 miles run and come back and eat like six pieces of pizza. Yeah. I was like, how did I gain ten pounds? And I just trained for a year for a marathon. And it wasn't muscle weight, because I was only running.

00:22:07
And your body I think I've been an elite athlete my entire life. And what I do know to be true is that if you're doing the same things over and over and over your body, you need to mix it up. You need to confuse the muscles and all of that. So just running really wasn't enough. So that's why I wanted to bring that up, because I just know so many people.

00:22:26
Oh, well, I've been going to the gym and nothing's happening. I'm like, but what about your diet? Well, no, it's all about exercise. No, it's not. It's not.

00:22:34
The thing is that 20 minutes walk, if you're walking 3 miles an hour, that's a mile and you burn. It varies. But 80 to 120 calories per mile walk. You know how fast we can eat 100 calories? Literally two, 3 seconds.

00:22:51
Yeah, I mean, if you just had a couple of Oreos, you're done. You just ate the mile walk. Yeah. And so, I mean, it doesn't take any time at all to do that, so no, and that's why I David that's kind of why I started on kind of the real food, but absolutely acknowledging the benefit of exercise and to tie into what you were saying about just running. Only there's this thing called specific adaptations to impose demands.

00:23:19
And our body will become however we train it, however we behave, whatever we train, that's what our body will become. That's why you see a World's Strongest Man competition. These guys are six, 5360 pounds, behemoths of a human being. It's fresh in my mind because it was just this past weekend and a friend of mine was coaching someone in it. But anyway, so these are huge human beings.

00:23:40
Okay, well, they're that way partly because they were born with just big structures, but mostly because they eat a certain amount, they train incredibly hard with strength training and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, you get that, you get a CrossFitter. A CrossFitter looks very different. A bodybuilder looks different. A runner looks different.

00:23:56
A sprinter looks different than a long distance runner, right? A swimmer looks different than a high jumper, and on and on and on, specific adaptations to impose demands. And also, I think the more important thing is big whoop. David used an acronym. David David and nobody cares.

00:24:13
But what I want people to remember with regard to kind of that running part is no amount of running will save muscle loss as we age. So we have to do some strength training and consistently, two days a week at a minimum, to preserve muscle loss and put off what's called sarcopenia. Sarcopenia. The quote I'm throwing in quotes natural age related decline of muscle. It's inevitable, mostly, but it can be minimized immensely with consistent strength training.

00:24:50
So this isn't about, again, any listener trying to turn them into a bodybuilder, but if we aren't doing some strength training, then we're going to lose precious muscle, and we don't want to lose any muscle at all as we age. It's so important not only for metabolism, but it's so important for independent living as we age. Functional living. Being able to get up and down off a ladder, being able to put a piece of luggage up in the overhead compartment of an airplane, being able to go up and downstairs, being able to lift a grandchild or a child. All of these things are strength related, and it is a use it or lose it phenomenon.

00:25:27
Oh, for sure. And for me and this goes back, I'll circle back to my little mind hack to get myself into the gym is I take care of my mother, who's 82 years old, and she was because of her sedentary life, she's now having to use a walker, has trouble getting out of a chair. I have a physical therapist coming to her house. I'm moving her back into a senior living community, so she has to leave her apartment and go sit down with other people. So for me, everything I'm doing today is for my future self because I am obsessed with tennis.

00:26:02
I set really massive goals for myself when it comes to things. I'm a retired US. National and international figure skating coach and ice dancing, which is my background. But now it's all tennis, and it's like, I want to be on the tennis court when I'm 82 years old, not walking around with a walker. And so that simple thing, it's like, I have these goals and I write it all out.

00:26:25
I'm like, this is what I want to do. And if I want to get to this goal, I have to do all of this every single week. Yeah, again, just kind of piggybacking on what you're saying there. It's like if people will can project to that point where when I'm 80, when I'm 90, if I make it to 100, whatever that may be, what do I want to be doing? And the thing is that let's say someone listening is 40 right now or whatever, and they're thinking about they even give a thought to the 80, 90, what do you want to be doing?

00:26:59
Whatever it is that you want to be doing. We have to expect some natural decline that is going to happen. And so what we want to do, if we can, no matter what age we are, is we want to try to create some additional fitness as a buffer fitness as defined fitness is at least there's many components. But if we look at the five physical components of physical fitness, we've got body composition, okay, that's more how much fat, muscle, bone, what's that relationship? But then we get into flexibility, we get into muscular strength, muscular endurance, aerobic capacity.

00:27:50
When we look at all of that, we want to have reasonable amounts of those things now. And if possible, build in a little bit extra now so that when the decline does occur to some degree, we've got the room for it. So that like you're saying you can still go play tennis, right? Because even though maybe when you're 80, you're not as strong as you are now, maybe you're stronger. There's nothing that to say.

00:28:16
You can reverse it. You could. It kind of depends on where someone's starting. These guys have just competed in the World's Strongest Man. They're not going to be as strong at 80 as they are now, but that's because they are the highest that they're ever going to be in their life.

00:28:30
But most people aren't starting at that elite level. If you haven't done anything in quite a while, you might be stronger 20 years from now. And so that can be built in. I'm just saying that it is something that most people don't think about, but it's important to kind of think about. It's important to build in as much fitness, buffer fitness as a whole, everything, at least the five health related physical fitness components as you can love it.

00:28:58
Well, we're running out of time here. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience that we haven't touched on? And how can people get a hold of you and find your website? Yeah, can I ask a question? I want to answer.

00:29:11
I can answer you and I could talk, you know this because in your field you're an expert. I could talk for four or 5 hours on this subject and we still wouldn't touch all the stuff below the surface right, of this iceberg sticking out of the water. Little tip, right, for your audience. And I want to speak to them directly with this. What do you think would be most on their mind that I could answer your.

00:29:39
Question with that would help them maybe the most, what's most important to them? I don't want to try to guess because you're an expert in knowing who your audience is. What do you think the area might be? I would think based on the topic of my show Happiness Solved, I love giving golden nuggets that people can apply to their life right away, and you already gave a really great one in terms of going to the grocery store. What about mindset when it comes to this?

00:30:07
Do you have any little anything that could help somebody flip the switch to inspire them that we haven't touched on? Yes, and thank you for giving me that area, because one of the areas earlier I had David, hey, nutrition and exercise is what most people think of, and that's where it begins and ends. I got to clean this up. I got to do more of this, and that's where it ends. But a huge part of what keeps those two things going where we want them to go and feeling good is something it's a huge area that I refer to as emotional fitness.

00:30:42
Love it. Okay. And so being emotionally fit means we're better able to overcome challenges, make good decisions in the face of adversity, that is, and maintain a positive outlook on life. So this huge area is about personal growth, and it's about always trying to grow and become better at better life managers. And again, it's about helping us to feel authentically good more often.

00:31:08
All right? Yes. We want to be able to overcome challenges. We want to be able to make those good decisions in the moment, in the moment of anxiety, in the moment of stress, in the moment of the bad news, in the moment of this and that. And emotional fitness is a massive area that the stronger we grow it, and it can be grown.

00:31:28
It's not a trait like eye color. Whatever level of emotional fitness we have right now, you're not stuck with it. It can be grown. And most people aren't aware of what it is, what's related to it, what could help it. So just as far as a nugget goes, I want to say to everybody, one of the first things I want to say is get sleep.

00:31:51
Please get sleep. Because if you're not getting on average and we're human, so we're not always going to get it, if you're not getting on average about 7 hours or more per night on average, then we're going to have a harder time managing our emotions in those moments of stress. We're going to have a harder time thinking clearly. It's going to impact negatively every area of our life. All right?

00:32:21
So sleep is under the umbrella for me of emotional fitness. And I'm going to put that right up front because absolutely, your sleep hygiene, if you can cut those electronic devices a little earlier, if you can make sure your room is really, really dark. If you can cut out all light, if you can make your room really just for sleeping and sex and that's it or whatever. But instead of TV and watching this anyway, if you can just improve your sleep hygiene, bring things down. Also, please don't have that difficult conversation five minutes before bed.

00:32:55
No, don't check the email one more time. Don't open up the thing. It's going to be something distressing. And now your brain is racing for, all right, that sleep. The next one.

00:33:08
And this is not a particular order, and I know time is short, but I'll just say this. The power of focus, focusing on what you want rather than what you fear or don't want. And so a lot of people, if you ask them, hey, what's your goal? What do you want? I don't want to feel like this.

00:33:28
Well, I get it, but that's not what you want. It's what you don't want. And so we want to keep framing in our mind. We want to keep as best we can, focusing positively on what we want rather than what we fear, don't want whatever we focus on the most grows. Yes, it does.

00:33:51
And so it's something that we want to be aware of. It draws our attention to it, and it's really, really important as a part of this. How can we feel better sooner? The last one, there's dozens of these that we just work on little by little. We learn about them little by little.

00:34:10
And this isn't anything where you just flip a switch, and now you're a great Zen master, and you're just always at peace with, you know, it isn't how it works. But as we learn about these things and we teach our students these things incrementally over time, and we also depending on what level we're working with a client, we can bring these things out as needed, quickly. Ideally, what we want to have happen for our clients is them to get I say we want to become lifestyle ninjas. It's like no matter what life is throwing at us, we can pull these things out as we need them, and we can be like, oh, okay, I've got to get my focus where it belongs. I've got to get better sleep.

00:34:48
And my focus has been in the wrong place. I'm going down the wrong path. I've been negative. I've been this and that. Okay, been worried.

00:34:56
The last one at least. I'll give I'll consider it a nugget, but it's just huge. Is gratitude. Yes. Thank you.

00:35:04
So the Roman philosopher Cicero was quoted as saying, gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but it's the parent of all others. And so the thing about gratitude is it's about being grateful for what we already have, no matter what that is, and being proactively grateful. If somebody does something nice for you and you say thank you, we at least want that. That's reactive gratitude. We at least want that.

00:35:35
But we want to be proactive. We want to be looking for the littlest things in other people, in ourselves, in the world to be grateful for. And the more that we do that, the more that we are looking for things to be grateful for. It's been David that truly living in a state of gratitude is an antidote for kind of low level depression and blues and blah. You know, it's it's really tough to really be feeling, don't get me wrong, depression is no, no small thing, and it can be chemical based.

00:36:11
And honestly, it's very complex. I'm not trying to minimize it, but for the lower level stuff that we all feel on some given day, truly living in gratitude, it's pretty tough to feel that other way. It's pretty tough to feel the blues, blonde, negative way. If you're really grateful about what you have and where you're at, no matter. What it is right now, yeah, you can't be feeling one way and being grateful at the same time.

00:36:37
David, what is your website so that I can make sure it's in the show notes and send people there as well? You bet. It is real simple. It is just lluniversity.com. Awesome.

00:36:50
Lluniversity.com. And that stands for Leanness, if I can say it. See why I change, see why I have the website as Ll University. I love it. Yeah.

00:37:03
David, thank you so much for your time today and just sharing so much wisdom with the audience. I really appreciate it. And thank you to everybody listening today. Thanks so much for having me. It's really been fun.

00:37:26
I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care, everyone.