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Hello and welcome to The Own Your Health podcast, I'm Cyndi Lynne and I can't wait to help you step into your health power. I very often get asked, "hey, Cyndi what's the best...", you name it. What's the best exercise? What's the best supplement?
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How do I get started on a healthy diet? What's the best way to... In all different shapes and forms. And obviously there is not going to be one best answer for each of these questions.
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It's going to depend highly on the individual. And that's why, as a health coach, it's imperative that I'm able to do some type of assessment with the person to figure out what the starting point is. Because any good coach for any type of coaching is going to meet a client where they are right now and, and start working for that point.
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But there are some guidelines. And so I wanted to give you my five or six top best answers. And there'll be caveats in that. I'll give you the starter answer and then the upgrade answer where if you're an individual who's already been working on this area somewhat, what's the, what's the next, big hitter?
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What's the next, upgrade that I can do? I'll talk about that a little bit as well. As always, this is highly dependent upon you and your body. And if you need help, as always, reach out and I'll be happy to help you with that.
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But let's start with what is the best exercise routine? Now, I get this question a lot, and I have lived through the cardio for ages, through yoga, only through Pilates, through. And I teach these things and they're part of my practice.
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When someone comes to me and says, what is the best exercise routine? The very first answer is the one that you'll actually do and the one that you can continue to do because you don't hurt yourself doing it.
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So it's not an exercise routine where you injure yourself. It's one that you can actually do and that you will continue to do. Now, that's the short and dirty answer, and it's probably a bit of a disappointment. But if you're not doing anything at all, what's one thing that you're willing to do?
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Now, if you're willing to do something and then want a little bit more or you've started moving around and are a little bit more active, probably the best universal exercise is walking and walking regularly and walking for distance and walking hills and walking different terrains, walking on paths versus just sidewalks.
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To use a lot of the different muscles that you have in your feet and your ankles, your legs. And walking is an outstanding exercise, and it's something that takes very little equipment or resources. You need time for it.
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But very often it can be integrated into other parts of your day, places you're going or things that you're doing. The follow on to that is what is the best time to exercise. Again, the best time to do it is when you're willing to do it.
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If you have some flexibility or you're moving up in that process and you've had, some commitment, then exercising on an empty stomach for most folks is a really good idea because then your body is forced to tap into your stored energy both in your liver and in your muscles, as opposed to exercising on a full stomach.
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Now, we talked a couple of weeks ago about the evening stroll. Strolling like an Italian. If you didn't catch that episode, you can go and grab that one. And that's something very different. That's not walking for exercise. That is walking for digestion, walking for socialization.
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But if you're going to walk, if you're going to go out and focus and walk for exercise, ideally on an empty stomach. So before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner. If the heat of the day comes into play, obviously early in the morning. Look at your environment. Look at where you're going to be walking.
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If it's on a treadmill, you may have more flexibility. But then, yes, the best time to exercise of any kind for most people is on an empty stomach. Now, if you have blood sugar issues, if you're diabetic, you'll have to balance that. If that's not the case, best to tap into the energy that is already stored in our muscles and in our liver and burn that for our exercise.
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The next question I get is, what should I start taking for supplements? I don't like taking pills. I don't really want to take anything. If I was going to take one thing, what would I take? I practice here in the North. Although I would say at this point, with the level of use of sunscreens and hats and protection, that this is probably a safe bet for everyone.
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My number one supplement recommendation is vitamin D3 along with K2. You can get these combined, you can get them separate. But that would be my number one because I have never met anyone who isn't actually deficient upon testing or has the symptoms and the, manifestations of having low or suboptimal vitamin D levels.
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And suboptimal, is a, is a different than saying deficient, because a deficiency in our modern medical system is an extremely low level of vitamin D. But when I talk about optimal levels of vitamin D, it's where your body actually feels good and you're able to, able to move better.
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I've seen people's ability to tolerate exercise increase tremendously when they get their vitamin D level up. Now you can do this with sunshine. And I've done an episode on that as well. Might be time to do another one because we're here in summer, but you need sun contact on the vast majority of your body, think swimming suit, for a period of time during midday when the sun's actually strong enough.
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So if you look at the guidelines that are put out by the folks that have us fearing the sun, they warn you to stay out of the sun between 10 and 2. Now, these times vary depending where you are, how far you are from the equator, but those are actually when your body has the most ability to absorb the sun's rays and actually make vitamin D.
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In order to do that, you have to have fat in your system, you have to have some cholesterol in your system, and you need to not wash your skin immediately after being out in the sun. So that's kind of a quick overview of what it takes to make vitamin D in the wild.
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And if any of that sounds to you like, oh, my gosh, I don't ever do that, chances are you could use a good vitamin D supplement. So that would be my number one best recommendation, vitamin D with the K2. If you're going to up level, I would say add magnesium, because that's another one that we tend to run very short in.
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Last week I talked about the different types of magnesium. Why you would use each one in kind of a guide, because there's a lot of confusion for all the different types of magnesium. But again, many, many people are short on magnesium because we use, one of the main reasons is we need magnesium to process our, sugar, to process glucose.
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So in order to do that, we burn up, we use a lot of magnesium in most traditional diets. Speaking of diet, what's the best diet recommendation? Where should I start? Whether you're trying to get healthy, trying to lose weight, trying to have less pain, getting rid of the sugar is the absolute first diet change I would make for anyone who came to see me.
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Now, people argue about sugar and carbohydrates and good ones and bad ones and all of that kind of thing. The fact of the matter is there are three macronutrients. There's protein, fat and carbohydrates.
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Carbohydrates all become some form of sugar. If you cut down on the carbohydrates, you're going to feel better, get healthier. And this doesn't mean you have to go keto, it doesn't mean you have to have a carnivore diet.
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It means get rid of a lot of the sugar because then what you're going to be filling it with is proteins and fats. And fats are our friend when it comes to being healthy, when it becomes to our brain health, when it comes to vitamin D levels.
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So getting rid of the sugar food makes more space in your stomach, in your daily food plan for proteins and fats. Now what would be the upgrade after that?
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I would say then start to after you get the sugar out for the most part, especially the simple sugars and then a lot of the complex ones then would be actually work with your macros, work with those three protein, fat, carbohydrates.
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How do you want to balance those with intention and eat that way? So for the first one, getting rid of the sugar, no measuring, no counting, nothing complex. Just if it's not fat, it's not protein.
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Do you really want it? Push it out of the way. The rices, the potatoes, obviously it goes without saying, the baked goods, the candies, that sort of thing. Upgrade is adding some math to it, looking at the macros, looking at your protein, carbohydrates and fat in relationship with each other.
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Next, what's your best health practice? And I talk about a variety of health practices on this podcast. And if somebody says what should I do first? For most of my folks, whether it's young and stressed, mid career or going through hormone changes, premenopausal, menopausal sleep. Sleep is the number one health practice because most of us aren't getting enough quality sleep. Really good sleep.
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And that would be the first practice that I would have somebody work on. I often get the follow up question, which is more important, sleep or exercise? And it's a little bit of a catch 22 because if you haven't been moving enough, if you haven't gotten enough exercise during the day, you may have trouble falling asleep.
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But I do not advocate for skipping the sleep to exercise until you have a good strong sleep foundation. I'm talking about months of good sleep foundation. Would I ever cut in on sleep to exercise?
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How about the best source for information? So you're sitting here now, you're listening to this podcast, you're listening what I have to say. You may have known me, you may have worked with me, and you understand where I come from, my background, what information you can get from me.
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One of the things I've always advocated for, excuse me, is being able to ask better questions. And that's actually one of the ways you determine a good source for information. So, for example, I would never go to any single person as the expert on everything.
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There are people I go to when I want more information on, certain specific supplements. When I want information on yoga practices, when I want meditation or breathing practices, I go to different experts. And I've collected this group of experts, and I continue to vet them and change them out.
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Sometimes I outgrow an expert where I've learned more and I'm ready to go on to someone who is more practiced or more knowledgeable. Sometimes their philosophy diverges from mine. I don't know if you've ever had that experience where you listen to someone and you really like what they say and after a certain time, they seem to go off in a different direction or they seem to take an approach that's very different.
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I'm also very skeptical of experts who have their full line of branded product, and that's what they're doing - they're selling. Now, we all teach so we can sell. I teach you about me and what I can help you with, and that determines whether or not you would want to purchase time with me in coaching.
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But I'm careful of people who have, who become full product lines, who become more store than information. I like to have experts who also refer to other experts who bring people's work on or bring other people's research on, who collect information from other folks so that they aren't just the only person that they expect you to get information from.
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It shows that they're continuing to research, they continue to read, they continue to grow, they continue to learn. Because that is part of your process here. So I will do a podcast, in the future on some of my favorite resources.
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And, that might be of interest to you, but I think right now we're going to wrap that up because these are the best. These are the best five, I think it was four or five, questions that I get and answers that I give.
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And rather than approaching these with frustration, if these are things that you're already doing, then congratulations, you're ready to move on to the next step. You're ready to go, just from the practice and the upgrade onto what's next and continue to build.
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And I'm happy for you, and that's why we're on this journey. But if you're just starting and this is one of the first podcasts you're listening to, then take these bests, take these practices, and then when you do them, take credit for them. Take credit for going for that walk.
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Take credit for remembering your supplements every day this week. Take credit for getting your sleep. These are things that are often minimized or dismissed. There's not a lot of glamour in them, but there's a whole lot of owning your own health.
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So until next week, let's go out and own it.
