A Better Second Half

This episode of beyond you'd why is brought to you by our why App. Head over to yinstitute.com to take the why app so you can discover your why today. Knowing your why is the essential first step in having the clarity to move forward faster and have a bigger impact.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so, if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about a particular why, one of the nine whys. And then I bring on somebody that has that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we are going to be talking about the why a better way to find a better way and share it. If this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator. You constantly seek better ways to do everything from the most mundane task of brushing your teeth to improving rocket fuel that powers the space shuttle. You can't stop yourself. You take virtually anything and you want to improve it, make it better, and share your improvements with the world. You invent things and take what has already been invented and improve that too. You constantly ask yourself the question, what if we tried it differently? What if we tried it this way? Or what if we did it differently? You contribute to the world with better processes, better systems, and operate under the motto often Pleased, never satisfied. You are excellent at associating and taking from one industry and discipline and applying it to another, always with the aim of improving and making something better. You generally operate with a high level of energy because after all, the that too is a better way. And so today I've brought on a wonderful guest. His name is Dr. Kirk Price. Now, he is the owner and founder of the World's Best Health Coach. He's the owner and founder of Midwest Fat Loss. He's been doing that for 33 plus years. He's worked with over 10,000 patients. He's the author of 100 plus how to add 20 to 30 quality years to youo Life. He's also the author of Fibromyalgia that Can Be Reversed, which was in 2010. He was nominated for entrepreneur of the year in 1995. He's been married for 30 years and the father of four boys and four grandkids. Dr. Price, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me here today, Gary.

I'm excited, as always, to talk to another better way person because I think we see the same world.

Yeah, you know, you know, when you're talking about the better way and the attributes of that. It's funny because when I was growing up, one of the things I thought I was going to be was like, an inventor, because I was always thinking about how to invent something to fix this or that.

That's funny because I am an inventor.

I have.

I do have inventions and patents and products. And that's just the way we think. Right? We can't turn it off.

Absolutely. I mean, I've been that way my whole life, and I think my mom instilled that on me. But I'm always searching for a better way, and that's when I took that. You know, the Y app definitely hit the nail on the head. Yeah.

What did that feel like to you when you saw the words better way come up? What ran through your head?

Well, I think, you know, I mean, that's what my whole life's about. And just like I said, hit the nail on the head because that's exactly what I want to do. I want to find a better way to do this better way to do that. Whatever it is. I'm always searching for a better way to be able to implement it, to be able to fix something, to be able to get something working better, whatever it is.

So tell us about being the world's best health coach. What does that mean?

Well, my main thing is I really want people to have a better second half of their life than their first half. And it's really possible now. And, you know, if you get nothing out other from this podcast today than just to understand this one thing. I don't want to sell you a program. I just want you to understand that you can truly have a better second half of your life than your first half. You don't have to be, you know, once you go past 40, you don't have to be have less energy, have poor sleep, not be able to think quick, not be able to remember. Good. Not be able to stage your weight. Good. Not be able to feel good. You know, there's really fast and easy ways to make simple changes. And if you come out of this broadcast today thinking you know you want to change, man, this is going to be a win for everybody. And, you know, New Year's resolutions are coming up pretty soon, too. And what a great New Year's resolution that would be.

So how do we do it? Okay, I'm sitting here listening to the podcast and I say, man, I like what he's saying. It's right up my alley. I just turned 40. I just turned 50. I just turned 60, whatever that number is, and you're like, I'm not feeling that great. I do feel like I have less energy. I do feel like, you know, I'm not quite as excited about things. I don't have that motivation. I'm feeling all these aches and pains. What am I supposed to do? Give me a couple of easy things that I can do to make myself feel better.

Sure, absolutely. Let's, let's do a couple things. You can start today and start feeling better tomorrow with energy and just feel better all over. One thing is this vitamin B12. We're really short on vitamin B12 because stress really depletes our B vitamins. And if you just take vitamin B12 a couple times a day in the morning and at lunchtime, it really helps boost your energy throughout the day and also really helps without. So after lunch you don't get that post lunch sleepiness where you're one o' clock meeting and you're just falling asleep. You know, it keeps you awake and keeps you better all day long. That's just one easy thing you can do with that. Another thing is just when you eat. As far as they've done a lot of studies at the Salk Institute and they've done a lot of studies on the cycle, circadian cycle, when you eat and sleep and health and all these things. And they found out if you simply don't change anything else in your diet, how much you eat or anything, but if you only change the time you eat from 8 o' clock in the morning to 6 o' clock at night, you're going to feel better, your cholesterol goes down, chance of cancer goes down, you're going to live longer, you're going to have better weight and you're actually going to eat less food even though you have the same food available just because you're eating during those daytime hours.

So when should I eat?

The best time is from 8am to 6pm okay. They found out like after six, they took two groups of mice and they took the first group of mice, they gave them a big glob of sugar about noontime. Another one that gave them about 8 o' clock at night. Neither one's good to have the sugar. But understand this is how your body deals with it. It can deal with stress better during the daylight hours as far as food goes. So what happened for the ones that got this big glob of sugar during the noontime, the sugar spiked and came back down. The ones that got it at night, it Spiked higher. It stayed higher longer and went down a lot slower. So basically the pancreas is this one organ that says, you know, after six o' clock at night the kitchen's closed. Kind of like your mom said when you were growing up. Remember that? Yeah, pancreas says that too. And says when it's dark time, when it's six o', clock, I'm not going to process stuff as good as I do during the day, so. So just doing those two things can make you have more energy and get you started on the right path tomorrow.

So any B12 is good. I just walk into grocery store and buy some B12 and that's fine.

They're all pretty good. There's some a little bit better quality than others. There's a PR labs I like a lot. It's a liquid form of B12, but most of B12s are pretty good and you can at least start with that.

Well, so you said B12 and eating. Now let me go back to the eating thing for just a second because what do you think about this intermittent fasting?

Well, that's kind of a form of intermittent fasting. If you don't eat from 6 o' clock at night to 8 o' clock in the morning, that's a 14 hour fast. And they call it breakfast because you're breaking the fast, you should be breaking a fast. But if, you know, in our society today we're so busy during the day, we go home at night and we're eating from like 6 o' clock till 10 o' clock or midnight. And our bodies, you know, when you go to bed, you know this, that your body's supposed to do the three Rs it's supposed to rest, repair and regenerate. But if you're busy digesting food, it can't do any of those things. So just to get better sleep and a better quality sleep, you know, we have an epidemic of this poor sleep in the United States. That's one thing that can help with that among a myriad of other things. But that's one easy thing you can do today.

So just don't eat after six. So for people, what about people that don't get off work till like 7?

Well, you have to do the best you can. I mean if that's your situation, that you're going to eat as early as you can, if it's 7 o', clock, 8 o', clock, get it done then and stop after that.

Okay, so what got you into coaching? What got you into health coaching in particular? Why are you on this path?

Well, I think a couple different things really. You know, first of all, I was born with a very, very poor health. You know, people might think, oh, you are the world's best health coach. You've always had a silver spoon with health, you know, and. But that's not the case. From when I was born until I was seven, I almost died several times because I had such severe allergies and asthma that I spent a total of two years in the hospital all those first seven years of my life. I just want to be a normal kid. And if you can think back to when you were like in grade school or if you have a son or daughter or granddaughter or grandson that's in that kindergarten first year age, they just want to be able to go to school. And I was missed like half my school. They want to be able to do the normal things other kids do. I had to go to speech class, so they pulled me out of class for that. I couldn't have normal food that the other kids were eating at lunchtime. Half the time when they were going outside for recess, I couldn't go outside. So I just wanted to be normal. So my mom really fought for my health and taught me that better way attitude from the very beginning. I think that's what really instilled it. But she found a doctor that really helped bring my health around. So by the time I was a teenager, I wasn't fighting for my health anymore, but I was still way behind the eight ball as far as the average teenager's health. It wasn't until I got to be about mid-20s when I got out of my schooling that I really felt for the first time in life that I had the exact same type of health as people around me. But even then I didn't want to stop finding a better way. I want to keep working better. You know, my whole life's been trying to fight for my health. So even though I average health, I really want to be better and better. So now at almost 60, I'm in the top 1% of my health for my age bracket. I was having a party a couple years ago, a birthday party, and I wanted to invite my friends over for my party that were my age to do some stand up jet skiing, because I love to do that and I think you've done that before, haven't you Gary?

Oh, yeah.

I love that it's a very physical sport and when I do it, I don't just puts you around. I'm gonna go full speed, do tricks and have fun at, you know, go full throttle on there. Yep. And I'm thinking about it. I'm like, I want to invite this guy that's close to my age and he can't do it. This other friend can't do it. This other friend can't do it. None of my friends my age could do what I wanted to do. And these are things that they used to do and used to love doing and would love to still do, but they can't do anymore. And I'm thinking, man, I've got to get this out as far as how I take care of myself and how I've come from really poor health to top health where everybody else is kind of going opposite direction. And that's what my real passion. You know, I've always been working with patients, helping them feel better. But it wasn't until then I really said, man, I need to take this online and work with people, you know, wherever, and help them have a better second half their life. And that's truly, truly my passion and my better way.

Yeah. I can imagine seeing, you know, all of your friends kind of falling apart and knowing that it doesn't have to be that way. Right. There's ways around it. If only they knew, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

What has been your experience as far as why people let themselves go, why people are not healthier at age 60?

I think the number one thing is people think it's just normal. I mean, it used to be normal with our generations before us, but we've advanced so much with our knowledge and things that we have available today with products and technology and foods and things like that, that we can really take care of ourselves in a way that we never could before. People just think once you pass 35 or 40, it's just normal to go downhill, you know, it's just normal to feel.

To lose your teeth.

Yeah. Slow. I feel slow and tired in the morning. I feel tired after lunch. I don't sleep good. It's hard to maintain my weight. I don't think as quick as I used to. My memory is not as good. It's just normal because I'm older, but that's not how it has to be. Yeah.

You know, I hear that as a dentist all the time, too. People assume that, hey, and I'm over 50, that means I'm going to start losing my teeth. And obviously it doesn't have to be that way because we have many, many patients in their 90s that have all their teeth. And so it's more about choice than it is.

That's a great point. Yeah.

It's more about choices that we make than it is about age. And you're finding the same thing.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So what percentage of health, being healthy, being able to do what you want to do is diet, what percent is exercise, what percent is mind? What is the biggest fact in being able to stay healthy longer?

Well, you know, I don't know if I can really put a number on it, but definitely all those things are really important. You know, when you eat, when you don't eat, what you eat, what you don't eat. As far as exercise and types of exercise, rest in between, your exercise is just as important as the exercise type of nutrients that you get in your body. We're learning more and more nutrients that can really help reverse or stop some of the aging processes. As far as the medical technologies, there's so many medical technologies available now, and so many of them are starting to be affordable where you can have in your house now.

So what is it that you do for somebody? So I'm now, let's just say I'm 65 years old. I'm sitting in my house listening to this podcast. I know that I've, you know, put on some weight. I'm probably 30 pounds heavier. I put on a couple pounds a year for the last 10 years in a row. So now I find myself 30 pounds heavier. I don't feel good. I just don't even feel like doing anything. I'm just sitting on the couch here watching the TV or listening to the podcast. And now I want to make a change. What is it that you actually do for people? How's your process? What happens?

Well, first of all, I want to congratulate you because you want to make a change. So that's the first step. And then the second thing is we want to find out where you're at. You've kind of said about, you know, 30 pounds overweight, all these other things, as far as how you're feeling, but really find out where you're at, what are your goals, where do you want to be, and what do you want to be able to do? And to be able to do certain things, you have to be at a certain physical fitness or weight or whatever it is, you know, mental ability, whatever it is. But want to find out where you're at, where you're headed, and then we're going to break it down and find out. It's going to be the best thing for you, because everything that we do is customized for your body because what you need, maybe your most important thing is your weight. And you might need a different program than somebody else does for their weight. This other person over here might have a lot of energy problems and they need to do some things to really boost that energy. But you know, we're going to find out what your metabolism is, find out your body water level. We're going to find out, you know, if your hormones are balanced. Good. We want to find out exactly what's going on to your body and, and really put you on a path to really make some big changes quick because you should be able to make some huge changes in 3, 4, 5, 6 months.

So tell us about some of your clients. Tell us about somebody that's been through that, what you did for them, what happened to them and where they are now.

Oh yeah, man. A lot of people come to my mind. I guess probably the number one person I want to think about right now is somebody. Colleen. She came in a little over a year ago. In this last year she's lost about 110 pounds. Wow. And when she first came in, I've heard this before, but this is what she exact words she told me. She goes, you know, I've tried every type of weight loss program out there before and nothing's ever worked. This is my last straw. If this doesn't work, I told my husband today, we're going to do this, but if this doesn't work, I'm done. I'm not going to do any more weight loss programs because I've tried everything and this doesn't work. So first of all, we got her weight off really good. We got her energy up dramatically.

How'd you get her weight off?

Well, there's a program that we, that we use for her is really a non exercise program. She's in her late 60s so we didn't want to do a lot of exercise. So there's different programs that we incorporate. Some that use a lot of exercise, some that use very little or no exercise and basically balance the hormones, get the energy up, get her metabolism working better, get her the really good foods, tell her what to eat, when to eat, and the kind of body starts healing itself and taking care of itself. But if you can get the body into fat burning really good, you go through something Gary call autophagy that you know about. It's where the body cleans up the old damaged cells and replace them with new healthy cells. It takes the toxins out of cells. It takes the toxins out of the extracellular area as well. So it's almost like a reboot for your body. And so many good things can happen when you get fat, burning really good like that.

So you were able to get her weight down. You got her energy up. And then what happened to her?

Well, one of the best, I guess, side effects that she got from this was her confidence went way up. She told me, she's told me several times since that, you know, she used to struggle with her confidence so much, but her confidence went up so much just because she feels like she feels really good. She's sleeping good, and she's had a really good spot with her weight and her health and even her mind, she's just thinking better. She told me that she most of the time gets up now without an alarm clock. Before, she used to struggle and hit that alarm clock several times, you know, the snooze button. Because, like, I just can't get out of bed. I'm too tired. I'm not sleeping good. And that's another thing that if you can get your sleep working really good, that's going to help all areas of your life as well.

Yeah. So that's always a struggle for people. You know, as a dentist, I hear it all the time about people having trouble sleeping, and they, you know, it seems like everybody now has a CPAP machine.

Anyone who.

Anyone who gets a sleep study needs a cpap. So I don't know how that all has happened, but suddenly everyone has to have one. They aren't sleeping well. And I know when, for me in particular, if I don't get a good night's sleep, I don't feel good the next day. So what is it that you have found works for sleep?

Well, number one, if you have some weight issues, you need to get those taken care of. And a lot of the sleep problems can resolve themselves with that. In fact, Colleen, I was just telling you about her husband. His name is Blaine. He came in and he was about 50 pounds overweight. We got off to 50 pounds. And in the process of getting off to 50 pounds and getting his body working a lot better, he was able to get off almost $6,000 a year of medications. Wow. Including a CPAP machine. And now he's able to go golfing. He says his golf swings even better because he doesn't have that big gut in front of his body. He can actually swing the club free now. And he's just enjoying life more. That's what it's all about. If you feel really good, you know, whatever you want to do, whatever your. Why Gets you, you know, as far as your purpose. If you want to give more, learn more, teach more. If you want to be able to travel and see the world more, be with your family, you know, keep your independence, your dignity, keep your mind sharp, whatever it is. If you feel really good, you can do all those things. And that's what it's really all about. My why basically helps my purpose. Help other people get their purpose better. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So your ability to find a better way allows them to do more of what their why is?

Yes. Right.

Gives them the energy, the desire, the possibilities to actually live again.

Absolutely. Living in a good way. You know, that's the kind of difference between healthspan and lifespan. Lifespan is how long you live. And I'm not really interested in a long lifespan for myself. Health spans how long you live healthy. And that's what I really want to improve for myself and others. Because it doesn't do you any good if you live 80 or 90 or 100 or however long you live if you don't have that quality of life. I want that good quality of life where I can feel good. I feel like doing things. I feel like helping people and traveling and being with my family.

Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, when we look back, you said that you had a lot of health problems. And I think from a listener's perspective, or at least from my perspective, I don't want this to come out wrong, but I'm actually glad that you went through some of the challenges that other people are facing. Because if you've always been healthy, if you've always had the perfect body, you've always been healthy, you've never had any issues, you don't get it right, people won't relate to you, but you have lived that. It's been a struggle and a challenge for you that you had to overcome.

That's exactly right. You know, when I got into my around 40, I started having a little bit of weight issues around my belly. When I got to late 40s, I started having energy problems. When I got in my 50s, I started having sleep problems. And I had to find ways to really get those back up to where they should or maybe higher than they've been. Energy, I think, is probably higher it's ever been in my life right now, and I'm almost 60 now, and it's just trial and error. And what I try to do is do all the trial and error on myself so that we can give these people a faster, easier way to make a few simple changes.

Yeah, you use yourself as the guinea pig, right?

Yes, myself number one, my family, number two, my patients, number three.

So you're collecting data and most specifically data on yourself.

That's who I start with all the time. I started with myself and it doesn't work for me. It doesn't go any further.

So of all the things you've tried over all these years, what is that one thing you are not willing to give up? You are going to do it because it makes the biggest difference of all the things that you have tried.

Wow. You might think this might be a cop out answer, but I am going to say change. And what I mean by that is your body is a great adapter. And if you start doing the same thing all the time, your body can does such a good job adapting to it that it really atrophies and makes it really easy for the body. And your body just kind of goes downhill. So you constantly have to change things with your diet, with your exercise, with all these different things. If you keep switching things up all the time, your body never gets used to anything and it keeps it stressed in a good way. That makes sense.

Yeah. So you mean chicken and rice, three meals a day every day is not ideal.

Correct. Just like, you know, they tell you with exercise, you might be doing a great exercise, but you can't do it every day because after a couple weeks your body starts to adapt to it and it's not that effective. That's why it's important to do some, maybe some weightlifting or maybe some lightweight weightlifting, do some yoga, do a sport, do some sprints, you know, a couple times a day, mix things up. It just keeps your body from adapting and makes it keep growing.

Well, if you always change, does it allow you to ever get proficient at anything? You know, what does it? Or do you change your perspective in that at age 60, maybe you're not looking to be the best bike rider or cyclist, you're just looking to stay healthy. I mean, is it a difference in perspective? Have you ever been a competitive athlete?

I've never been like a professional level type athlete, but I have some goals as far as when I'm like 80, to be able to. One of my goals is to be able to do a 50 meter dash in under eight seconds. So you know, I have different goals like that and I think how do.

You come to those goals?

I think you have to evaluate things. But like I said, when we meet, when I meet with people to begin with, that's what we look. What are you heading towards? What what's your goals that you want to have? Because based on from where you're at to where you're going, we have to adjust what we're doing to get there. If you have a goal to be able to travel and see the world when you're 80, that's different than if you have a goal that you want to be able to swim the English channel when you're 80. So you have to adjust what you're doing and how you're getting there based on where you're going.

So you sit down with somebody, you figure out where they are, where they want to go, then design their program for them to be able to achieve those goals.

Absolutely.

And kind of irrespective of, oh, I guess you have to factor in their age because not everybody's going to be able to do, you know, 30 pull ups or something.

Absolutely, yes. We got to find out their starting point, their age and where they're headed to.

So if I'm listening to this now and I say, you know what, I would love to meet with Kirk and I would love to find a way to get my health back. I'd love to find a way to get my energy back. I'd love to find a way to sleep better. I just don't feel like I'm up to par. I feel like I'm getting old. How do they get a hold of you?

The best way is through my website. It's Dr. Pricecoach.com. that's Dr. As in Dr. Dr. Pricecoach.com and you can get more information on Colleen's story there. You can find out, you know, different things about having a better second half of life. And you can also set up a consult with me, a phone consult where you talk to me directly and we'll sit down and we'll find out, you know, where you're at, where you're headed. If I think it's something I can help you with, I'll let you know. If it's something I don't think I can help you with, I'll let you know that too and see if we're a good fit for each other.

So last question for you. How do you define old? What is old? What if people say I've gotten old? What's the difference between youth and old?

Well, I think it comes down to both mental and physical properties. Both because you can feel old mentally where your mind's not sharp, you can't think good, don't have good memory. You can feel old with, you know, just I just ache, I'm tired. I can't control my weight. I just don't feel good. I don't feel like doing things. I don't feel like going anyplace. My body aches all the time. I hear people say I feel like I'm 100 years old or whatever. So I think in either way, you know, it's how you're feeling mentally and physically. It's not actually your chronological age because I think you can be 80 or 90 and have life of like a 50 year old or I think it can be reversed. You can be a 40 year old and feel like you have a life of a 90 year old.

And so what is the difference between youth and old?

It's a way you're going about life. You're going, you know, you really are going to take charge of your life and kind of help create your destiny, your legacy by doing things to make you feel better mentally and physically both.

You know, I have a patient that in my dental practice that was my neighbor growing up and he's now his son and I went to school together. And he's from Austria, he's a doctor here in town. And he's 93 now. And at about age 30, he was quite overweight. And at age 30 he decided to get into running. And so he's now been running for 63 years. And one day he was here a week or so ago and I asked him how many miles does he think he has on his feet now? And he said because he still runs at night at 93 years old, he takes the tram from Albuquerque, the outskirts of Albuquerque, up to the top of the mountains. And then he runs five miles up there two times a week at 93. And so I asked him how many miles does he think he has on his feet? And he said, you know what, I don't know, but I've done. I think he said he did 30100 mile races, he's done a hundred marathons. And he's just amazing how far this guy's run still on his original parts. But he said that he was traveling, he's from Austria. And he said he went back to his 75th high school reunion. And I said, Dr. Abbot, his name is Dr. Abenzlow. And I said, I bet you you were the youngest, first of all. I said, I can't imagine there's very many people there. And he said there was, surprisingly. And I said, but I bet you you were the youngest one there. And he said, well, I have a little bit different definition of young. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, I believe that you're young when you're contributing to society, when you're giving back to society, and I believe that you're old when you're just taking from society. And he said, that's why this year I published three research papers. He said, I'm continuing to give, and that makes me feel young. And I thought that was an interesting distinction and definition of young versus older.

Yeah, I love that definition. I just love that story. But that's a great definition of young and old. And, you know, I think that's one of the problems when we retire early. People just, if they don't have some type of thing where they're giving back, they're not learning and helping other people, their mind and their body starts going downhill fast. So that's one of the reasons why you need to keep having goals. And when you start feeling better, that's one of the things I see a lot with my patients is, man, they're like, now I've got goals and dreams I never thought I could even accomplish before. I was like, I'm heading down the hill, and there's not much I can do. And now it's like, what am I going to do with next 20 years of my life? I'm going to do this. I want to accomplish this. So I think that's a really good barometer as far as where you're at is by what kind of goals and dreams you have.

Yeah. Are you imagining dreams and what you want to do, or are you just sitting there waiting to fall apart?

Absolutely. Yes.

Well, very good. Well, listen, Kirk, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. And those of you that are listening, if you want to get a hold of Kirk, tell them one more time how they get a hold of you.

My website is doctor as in Dr. Dr. Price coach dot com.

Awesome. Well, thanks again for being here, and I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Well, I really enjoy all your podcasts, so keep it up and keep up with the great work area, and I'll be listening to all those as well.

Thank you, Kirk. Take care.

All right, bye.