Motivation to Move for Longevity: One Doctor’s Message

If you need a little push today, you're gonna love this episode. We're talking all about motivation, but really so much more. We get into muscle, we get into really talking about— it's not just you, by the way, with a motivational issue. It's me, it's all of us. So what can you do about it? And how do you really think about longevity? Because 'cause we, I think, redefine it today. You're gonna love this one. You're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause, and you're not slowing down, you're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12, right here on this podcast, and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. This episode is all about the motivation to move. Truth is, if we don't fix this issue, we're not going to fix sarcopenia, obesity, Osteoporosis or Alzheimer's. Muscle is necessary. But today's guest is an anomaly and you're gonna love this. If you are a legal-to-drive AARP member, as I am, reading your journal, you're gonna recognize his name. A few weeks after this appointment dropped into my podcast calendar, this name stared me back in the bio, the bio line of an article in AARP. Journal. I wondered why, why do I know this name? And of course now I know when I see he's in my schedule for the interview today. So having just recently been on a panel in front of a room of physicians in New York City and a stage in front of hundreds of others at the Women's Health Summit in Scottsdale, what I've learned over my 42 years is alive and well. Physicians for the most part have zero training in exercise in med school. Those that profess it have either come to it as athletes themselves, they were undergrads in kinesiology, physiology, or maybe are in sports medicine, hence my guest. Even then, orthopedic surgeons are not notorious for promoting physical activity without some reservations. So, to say my guest is standing out in a field is an understatement. And to say he is an overachiever, though a very high percentage of Ironman athletes are indeed physicians, high stress and high stress seem to find each other. He is most definitely an overachiever as you'll hear. Listen to this. My guest today is Dr. Jordan Metzl. He's an internationally recognized sports medicine physician, researcher, best-selling author, bestselling author and fitness instructor who practices at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, the world's premier orthopedic hospital. He lectures around the world, researches topics on injury prevention and performance optimization, and founded the first physician-led fitness community called IronStrength in 2010, now with more than 50,000 members, to promote health and community. He created the IronStrength Workout, a functional fitness program for improved performance and injury prevention that has been performed by more than 1 million people. An elite athlete himself, he practices what he preaches. Dr. Metzl is a 40-time— that was 4-0 time marathoner and 15-time Ironman finisher, is a regularly featured expert in the media including the Today Show, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and so many more, including Flipping 50: The Stronger Way podcast. Let's go. Dr. Jordan Metzl, thanks so much for joining me.

It's my absolute pleasure to be here.

I feel like maybe we should be on a trainer on a bike or something. Like, that'd be fun. And actually, I'm in a really cold room. It'd be a lot more fun than what I'm doing right now.

I love movement meetings of all kinds, so I'm down.

Absolutely. Okay, so imagine my surprise. I am thumbing and I rarely do this, so I don't know what prompted me. I get it in the mail. I'm illegal to drive at AARP, and I'm thumbing through that journal and I'm reading, you know, this, this author got it right. Like, this— the problem is the motivation, it's not other things. So I go to the bio right away. I'm like, it's a doctor. That's pretty cool because he's an anomaly. And then I'm like, why is that name familiar? And then There you are in my schedule. I'm like, that's it.

That's it. That's how I knew that name. That's good. I'm glad those dots connected.

Serendipity. So good. So I actually want to start there, number one. And, you know, everybody just heard your bio. And so we know you have a background in sports medicine. And I'm going to ask you if you also feel, or am I stereotyping, that It's really docs who are in sports medicine or whose undergrad might have been kinesiology, physi— physiology, and/or they were athletes when they were younger who really are talking the talk most about the importance of exercise as medicine.

Well, I think that people who gravitate towards our field both talk the talk walk the walk and run the run. Um, I think that definitely it attracts a certain kind of person. Uh, I think overall, uh, here at Cornell at the medical school, which is adjacent to Hospital for Special Surgery where I am in New York City, uh, about 10 years ago, having previously started a fitness community and been very much involved in athletics myself, I wanted to start a seminar for the second-year med students called Prescribing the Medicine of Exercise, which was about teaching physicians of the future how to talk to their patients about exercise. The reason I wanted to do that was having worked in the field for a number of years, I was deeply and am deeply convinced that among the most powerful things we can do to our patients is get them up and moving every single day of their lives. And it's a different equation if you are, you know, a 10-year-old gymnast is a different equation than if you're a 60-year-old person with arthritic knees or a 70-year-old person that's had a heart attack or a 50-year-old person who's dealing with obesity and wants to move. So there's a lot of different variables in the exercise prescription. And so we wanted to start a seminar, uh, with a couple of my colleagues who I roped into helping with this, um, around prescribing exercise for medical students to teach to their patients of the future. And so we were looking around for curriculum to kind of start this program, and surprisingly, there was almost nothing for teaching doctors of the future how to prescribe exercise, about the medicine of exercise for their patients. So, I think you're absolutely right that it's still a somewhat small subset beyond the exercise 30 minutes a day, which is such a generic comment that it's not inspirational and it's not super effective. And so, I think there's a lot of room to grow.

Amen. And, I have a course for that. If somebody wants to teach exercise prescription to women 40 over, I'm teaching it to physicians. But, I want to call everybody's attention to There It Was, All right. And if we need— we have any doubt, we need proof that you should stay tuned, at 2 minutes and 34 seconds, you just had the mic drop of today.

All right, we can quit now. Nice talking to you. I know, right?

So yeah, bye-bye. All right. But at least we've got a great clip and we know it. So there's that. Okay. So much good. And I love, love what you've said there. So you started this course, so I don't really have the end of the story. So is this course now present? Is it existing?

It's still ongoing. Yeah. We do it every fall for the second-year med students, but it's just part of the formal curriculum. But it just is an example of how challenging it is. Everybody knows this is good for people to do, and we've known it since the 1950s. And we have great evidence increasing every year. We get more evidence on the multi-systemic benefits of exercise for disease prevention and treatment and disease expression. So we've got a lot of great information on everything for every single thing. If there was a medicine that worked for every single person around the world, young or old, rich or poor, it had 100% efficacy and zero side effects, you'd be really committing malpractice by not prescribing this medicine to every single person that came across your path. And that medicine, of course, is movement, and we have it. And so by not formally thinking about the exercise prescription with every patient you see, if you're a psychologist or a psychiatrist or an endocrinologist or a neurologist or a cardiologist, or an oncologist, or an orthopedist. It doesn't matter what your field is. Exercise has a role in disease prevention and expression and treatment. And so, getting people to think about that in a meaningful way beyond just do it is, I think, very important.

Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Thank you. Okay. I love that. And again, there we go. Mic drop number 2. I told you this guy, he's way ahead of the curve. Okay. So, so much good there too. But, I also want to back up because somebody may not have noticed, but I absolutely did. You called it movement, you didn't call it exercise. Was that conscious?

Absolutely. So, I think exercise is kind of I formally go out and I exercise. This morning, I wake up an hour early and I go to the gym and I formally exercise. That is an intentional period of time dedicated to movement where I'm targeting what I'm gonna do. I'm doing cardio, I'm doing strength, I'm doing treadmill, I'm doing StairMaster, I'm doing elliptical, I'm whatever it is I'm doing. I'm doing yoga. I'm doing something where I'm targeting what I'm doing. That is different than I live in New York City and I walk to work, or I get to my office and I take the stairs, which is not quote unquote exercise in the formal idea of exercise, but it's very much movement built into my day around the idea that the more I move, the healthier I will be. And I want people to think about putting both those things into their lives. We had an old term that we had called NEAT, which is an acronym for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which was just—

yep—

burning calories throughout the day by moving. And increasingly we've replaced that with what's called VILPA, which is variable intensity lifestyle physical activity, or the idea being that movement is great, but more intense movement is better. So, for example, taking the stairs better than walking, taking 2 stairs at a time better than taking 1 stair at a time. And so that— I want people to think about exercise and movement for health, and they're both very important.

Okay, full disclosure, when you said, or were in making that statement, we've replaced NEAT with— here's where I thought— no, here's where I thought you were going. With remote controls, with Instacart, and with Amazon so we don't have to move. Unfortunately, that's kind of what's happened.

You're absolutely right. I had— I did a whole, uh, op-ed on this a couple years, several years ago in, in the New York Times, um, called Working from Home May Not Be as Healthy as You Think. And the whole idea is with every technological advance from, you know, the wheel to the bike to the car to the airplane to the phone to the computer to the smartphone, we move a little bit less, yet our biological imperative to move remains exactly the same. And so, I really went through the evidence on why that's really not great for our overall health and why movement and consistent movement is incredibly important. And I thought people were going to write in like, "Oh my God, thank you so much for bringing all this information together in one place. I'm so appreciative for this op-ed." It was literally like I had slapped everybody's mom. It was like 10 to 1, like, "How dare you talk about my remote work? You're never You're taking it away out of my dead hands. You're going to pry it. I mean, I was like, damn, I really touched a nerve. People are very temperamental. I mean, because we can— medicine, our job never changed. Like, I'm still going to the office like I did before the pandemic, but around us there's a lot of people doing remote work. I personally think it's not great for people, yeah, for a number of reasons, but, uh, people are very passionate about it. But I think the biological imperative to move is the point I want to highlight, and that really has remained constant, but people move less with— they can work from home, socialize-ish from home, order their food from home, um, and so they're moving less and less and less. So that— you're exactly right.

Yeah. And I want to come back to— to— and by the way, it also doesn't escape me, you are so eloquent in pausing. I love it. So thank you. So it's perfectly timed, but I Going back, back, you know, I think the word exercise has been both intimidating and hearing exercise 30 minutes a day on average, you know, obviously it hasn't worked. I mean, we're looking at, we're 40 years into, and I say that because I'm 40 years into a career, but maybe it goes back further than that. I mean, and we still know that on average, about 80% of people self-admit. So we have to guess maybe there's more out there who are not exercising the minimum amount to impact their metabolic health. And so what is it that you think is not working? Just getting the basics of here's how you do it or what to do, that even— there's no shortage of that knowledge. If we're going to use AI for anything, we could do that. And yet that's not enough.

Why?

Why do you think that is?

So, you know, that I guess is a good segue into my most recent book that I'm happy to mention if that's okay, just because I feel like that's the purpose of our even getting together around this. So this is actually my fifth book. This book is called Push, and it's about the science of motivation. And this book comes out of exactly your question. So several books ago, I did a book called The Exercise Cure, which was a compilation of the current evidence at that point, 15 years ago, of the medicine of exercise, how exercise works for heart disease and asthma and metabolism and headaches and anxiety and sleep and all the evidence on the different types of role exercise could have. And the summation of the entire book was, get off your ass. That was the summation of the entire book.

Number 3. I'm counting, by the way.

Exactly. Now, that being said, 15 years later, I have been thinking more about how do we take that? Some people, we give them the knowledge, and they get up, and they walk 10,000 steps a day, and they commit to a life of movement, and they're consistent, rain, shine, sleet, snow. It becomes a big part of their habit of who they are. And yet many other people, they don't. In fact, most people, they don't. And so what is it we can learn about that? And different than my first book was about my job as a sports medicine doctor, um, called Athlete's Book of Home Remedies. And that book was a lot about what I do every day. Like you hurt your knee, you come in, we get an MRI of your knee. Here's an MRI showing your torn ACL. Your ACL is why your knee feels unstable. We need to figure out how you can work on fixing your knee. That was easy, like MRI, here's your hurt knee. Motivation is much more difficult to understand. You had it, you have it, you used to have it, you've lost it, it flew out the window, I got it back. How do you evaluate it? How do you know if you've got it? What steps can you take to improve it? Which is a lot. This whole book is about the science of motivation as a conduit to healthy longevity, meaning if you don't do what you're thinking about doing, it's not going to make any difference. So I really try and break down this concept into kind of 3 different domains. Knowledge, which was the exercise cure. I know I should be doing it for my health. Followed by emotion. I emotionally feel like I want to make this a part of what I do. Followed by belief. I believe I can do this. And why do I believe I can do this? And that's the kind of lens through which through which I try and approach, you know, the whole bit of information that I'm giving in the book.

So good. Okay. So the challenge then, if, um, and I'm, I'm just going to throw this out there like devil's advocate. I like it, but I, like you, like iron distance triathlons. Shouldn't the name of the book be Pull, not Push? This episode is sponsored by the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. It is the framework that we designed our entire membership and program based on. Since 2013, I've been developing that after 30 years of working with women in midlife. That was born, and in 2018 we rolled out the Menopause Fitness Specialist to train other fitness and health pros on how to actually prescribe exercise. Here's where we're going next, in case you want to get started now, that we're actually training physicians on exercise prescription, knowing they get very little of it in medical school, and hoping that it also bridges the gap for you who may be a fitness or health professional, or want to be, who works with women in menopause, because there is so much demand and so much room for you right now. If you are working with women in menopause but not getting all the results, don't have a reliable, predictable framework that gets you results over and over that people know, like, and trust, come and talk to us. We'll put the link in the show notes for today. That's the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. And if you want to head on over to fitnessmarketingacademy.com, it's where we have all of the content dedicated to you, health and fitness pros.

It's a great idea. And are you pulling somebody along or are you pushing them? And so for me, and it's a great question, I love it and very thoughtfully asked. What I would tell you is I think there are 3 ways in which I have been thinking about pushing people and teaching people to push themselves. And the small backstory of this book is it's dedicated to the amazing memory of my dad who passed this past year at age 89 and 1 week shy of his 90th birthday, who was the most positive human force in the history of the world, who came to America at age 13, not speaking a word of English. And a lot of our family had— his family had been killed in the Holocaust and came here and ended up in Kansas City with my grandparents. And with that backstory, many people slid into a very deep depressive existence they never got out of. But instead, he embraced every life experience and was just a pediatrician, a huge positive life force for every single person he met. And, and so the end result is with his 4 sons, uh, and my mom as well, there are basically 6 doctors Metzl, um, that, that, that the push was in the water. I thought I was just growing up in Kansas City. I didn't realize I was drinking push for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single meal for my life, but I was. Um, and so the idea of push is a lot about, and the dedication of this book is to my dad, who taught me how to push myself in mind and body. And with that knowledge, taught me how to push myself and my community. And so the idea of learning how to push. And so to me, push is really 3 different domains. Pushing yourself mentally, how you get yourself to push yourself out the door when it's dark, it's 6 o'clock in the morning, it's cold, it's snowy. I'm feeling unmotivated. I'm tired. You know, all the different things that make bed and the couch more appealing than getting out and moving. So push number 1, mentally. Number 2, push myself physically. I'm a big fan of challenges. It's not that I love doing— I mean, I do love it, but it's not like I love— like, I was at mile 18 of the marathon last year here in New York, coming over the 59th Street Bridge. Everything hurt. I was having a cramp in my hamstring. I was like, what the hell? It was actually marathon number 40. I'm like, what the hell do I need this for? It sucks. I want to just pull off. But the idea of pushing yourself physically is very important. And I think that's a great vehicle to learn how to push yourself in other aspects of your life. And then finally, pushing yourself physiologically. So the physiologic import of learning how to push yourself. I'm actually just working on a piece for the Washington Post called Yes, Your Grandmother Can Do Burpees. And she should. And the idea of importance of short bursts of intense exercise are important at any stage of your life, even up into your 80s and 90s. And so pushing yourself mentally, physically, and physiologically. And to me, that push concept has worked very well. Although pull is also appropriate because you gotta pull people by the ears to go do it. But my goal is that I will teach them how to learn how to push themselves. And so then they can push themselves and learn how to push others in their world as well.

Yeah, it's so, so interesting. Yeah. And my other question, you know, following that pull was maybe that's the one you write for the doctor who needs to help pull them forward with, with whatever words they would, you know, like, you know, attracting somebody to a magnet so much better than threatening them with If you don't do this, then medication is the answer or whatever that might be. Who's the intended audience? I mean, who do you really—

So when I started, I thought it was going to be people who were having motivational problems, as you mentioned, which is almost everybody. But as I've kind of gotten more— and I interviewed a whole number of my patients over the past 4 or 5 years. This took a while to put together because I wanted a broad swath of people. From— I start the book with the story of a woman who came to see me, uh, in her early 70s. Um, she'd already, uh, in her late 60s, was— she was a college professor. She had a breast cancer diagnosis, and then her husband died, all in the same 2-year span. She was very, very depressed, and, uh, and then went out and started walking, and then started slow jogging, and then at age 70 ran her first marathon. By age 82, she'd run 14 marathons. She now teaches a kettlebell class for people over 80. And, you know, she's the kind of person that I loved talking with. So I thought I was writing a book for people that had motivational challenges. It turns out everybody has motivational challenges. So I was thinking about myself and I'm like, all right, fine. I love doing the Ironman, but I did one Ironman. I did number 14 10 years ago, and this past year I did number 15. What was I doing for the 9 years in between? I guess I retired from that distance triathlon. Yeah. But I needed a kick in the ass. I really did. I needed a goal. I needed something that scared me, something I could train for. And I got to tell you, I felt so good about doing the training. I just felt great. I felt healthy. I felt vibrant. I really appreciated how it made me feel and makes me feel. And so I think everybody needs to understand motivation. And when you start looking at motivational science, as I did for this book, I realized that there's not a one-size-fits-all. It's different than looking at your torn ACL, which is like your ACL's torn or not. Motivational science is such a broad concept and so different for everybody. There's not a one-size-fits-all.

Love that. And so I really want to ask you this, and I think that there are some listeners who probably a fraction of my listeners might even be interested in doing endurance or distance, but I know there are a couple in our community who are kind of recovering endurance athletes, um, multi-distance, you know, ultras even. But is that something that you might say at some point, this might actually accelerate aging? Versus this is a sweet spot for, you know, supporting your health. I mean, where is that point? I wrestle with that right now. Yeah, I'm like, up here, I like want to register. I left a very expensive backpack in Cozumel in November because the rest of me was like, I don't think you want to do that.

So here's what I can tell you on that. I think that, you know, there There is such a thing in a small subset of people as unhealthy exercise. Um, that manifests itself as, you know, my whole body hurts like hell every time I do something. My knees are so sore I can't go up and down the stairs. I'm fatigued all the time. I'm getting chest palpitations because I put myself into atrial fibrillation because I've, uh, you know, not paid attention to things and I've gone too much. That is a very small, small subset of the population. The vast majority of people can do and should do, but they need to be smart about what they're doing. They need to respect ramping up, ramping down. They need to respect what we call the acute-to-chronic workload ratio, not loading on— what I call violating the rule of two, is too much too fast. They need to be mindful about how they build up their activity and how they recover on the way back down. They need to be good body listeners and physical listeners, and they need to be good communicators with themselves and their healthcare practitioners, whoever they may be. And they need to be mindful about where they are in their own journey and their own lives, what motivates them. They need to be careful they're not just following some generic training program that's true for somebody that's 25 or 55, because 25 is not 55. They're different. They need to be careful about, you know, what types of activities they're doing. But to me, and I'm going to put a pin in this myself, The holy grail of fitness is compliance, and the holy grail of compliance is enjoyment. Meaning, people will do what they like to do. And so my job as a sports medicine doctor is to keep them going in the thing they love doing. Some weirdos like me love doing Ironman distance triathlons, but not everybody. And I don't think it's good for— for me, it's very healthy, but for other people, it may not be. And so it doesn't mean you have to shoehorn yourself into something somebody else has said is healthy. I want you smiling and consistent with what you're doing. And if you're doing that, I think you'll be in good shape.

Yeah, that's so good. So good. So let's take that one step further. I open the door in terms of where do we maybe accelerate aging. So really we're starting to talk about longevity. What, what is the impact of physical exercise on longevity and Let's say that. And then for those of you listening, we all want immediate gratification. I mean, Amazon, you're disappointed if it's not coming till tomorrow morning. Let's be real. I moved from Phoenix to the Midwest and that was a shock to my little Amazon system. I'm like, what? Not till tomorrow? So let's talk longevity and then come back to, but what are the immediate gratification things?

Sure.

How long does it take? How much does it take? What's the ROI on investment of energy and time?

Great questions. And so listen, I have a section in, in Push about, uh, called, uh, Pills Over Pull-Ups. And the idea is that the money spent in nutritional— on nutritional supplements is, is about $47 billion a year. The money spent on gym memberships is about $32 billion a year in the United States. So we're spending basically, uh, two-thirds of the money on gyms and the full— and about a third more on supplements. People would rather take a pill than do the work, um, in general. But to me, the joy is in the process. Um, and so I think when it comes to longevity, the message I want to give is that I feel like the early generation, quote-unquote, longevity specialists, uh, talked about how you make people healthy, what we call now healthspan or healthy longevity. And my book and my message and myself and my patients, I am all in for healthy longevity. The effect of exercise on cancer risk, the effect of exercise on diabetes control, the effect of exercise on neurodegenerative disease, the effect of exercise on cancer prevention and treatment. We have great evidence on healthy longevity. But just straight, plain old-fashioned lifespan, live longer, longevity is unfortunately, you know, that has been done in the 120 years before us. That has been done by, you know, if you were alive in the 1890s, your life expectancy was about 41 years old. Now it's almost double that. That's not because of red light therapy or peptides. That's because of vaccines and antibiotics and clean water. And medicine and on those types of things. That made a huge difference for people's longevity. So healthy longevity, I'm all in. But longevity per se, the people are kind of looking for the fountain of youth. You know, listen, the fountain of healthy youth is muscle and getting off your butt and moving every single day and building those muscles. That's the fountain of youth when it comes to health and movement. We can talk about all that stuff. But the, the, I'm going to take these pills or supplements and I'm going to all of a sudden live to 120 years old. No, that's not what we're after. And I think that's the wrong message. And there's a lot of money. That industry, by the way, the wellness and longevity group together industry is expected to reach $8 trillion by 2030, one of the fastest growing sectors in our economy. And so it's important to really think about the things we can make a difference with and make sure people are focusing on those.

Yeah. Well, and so I want to come back to this community that you have started, 50,000 members. Universe right now, or at least at the time that I'm reading your bio. So maybe it's grown since then, but talk to me about the importance of that community.

Yeah, absolutely. So I— what I do in Push is I try and look at the things that are impeding people's motivation and what are the changes they can make. I introduce a concept that comes out of the Wharton School of Behavioral Economics, which is a joint program between Wharton the business school, and the med school. And the idea of this program and center is to figure out what are the changes people can make to change behavior, behavioral economics. And they have a term that they've put out called lowering the cost to act, which is a behavioral economics term, meaning what are the things I can do to change my behavior pattern? And are these big things or are these small things? And the answer is these are very small changes that can make a big difference. And so let's say you want to be more consistent with your fitness, you want to improve your motivation. When I started researching Push, I was convinced that there were people that were motivated and people that were unmotivated. As I finished this project and put out this book, I believe everybody's motivated, and the people that are successful over years and decades are people that have figured out how to lower their cost to act, meaning they've made the desired thing they want to do, do more activity, something that is really built into the framework of their lives. And they've done that through, uh, basically making those changes part of what they do. So they join a gym on the way home, or they prepay sessions with a personal trainer, or they buy exercise clothes once every 6 weeks that gets them inspired, or they have a walking group. Uh, but the key things around that are fun and community. And so for me, when I started thinking about prescribing exercise to my patients, one of the first things that I started doing was building this community, which started very, very small. We had 15 people in the basement of a gym just near here with very bad music, and I didn't know how to put together a playlist. I was probably the worst fitness instructor of all times. But the idea that—

no, wait a minute. I mean, like, terrible leg warmers and the whole thing.

No, it wasn't Jane Fonda. It was pretty bad. But in any case, over time, I've learned to figure out what are the things that make people want to come and keep coming. I've had people coming to my classes for you know, 14 years on now. So it's pretty wild to see that growth over time, and it's been very gratifying. Um, and I just cannot emphasize enough the importance of community, which is why, again, I think this remote work is a disaster for people because they've lost so much of that communal oomph that gets them going in all aspects of what they do.

I totally agree with that. And then I have to disagree a little bit because I have an online membership, so, you know, Everybody but me. No, and I totally get it, but I do think that if you try in, in certain ways and you meet live, you know, for some of you it works. And if you live in North Dakota, maybe that's the way you're doing it. But I think the other thing is people are really hungry for something that helps them feel safe, like I won't be hurt, I won't be injured. Because, you know, I think there are a lot of people, and I could be wrong, if you're listening right now, you're the expert. I need you to comment on this. So find me in DMs. I see them, nobody else does. But I think there are a lot of people who might be weighing, here's where I am now, but if I start to exercise and I get hurt, I won't even be able to do what I'm doing now. And I, I really am fearing, like, I'm vulnerable. And, you know, But you and I probably say, no, you're at far greater risk if you don't exercise than if you do. But that's still a personal decision. I think people wrestle with that. What do you, what do you say to that?

Sure. So listen, I think there are a couple things. First of all, there was an interesting study done by a professor at MIT who looked at virtual community and its effect on behavior modification and found that if you had people in your immediate subset of friends that were more active, you were more likely to be more active.

Yeah.

And looked at that in terms of number of standard deviations from your own personal friends. So friends of friends. So I think online communities can make a big difference for people for motivation. So I think that if you're out in the middle of North Dakota listening to this, you are part of a community also. It's, it's, I think it's more effective if you are in person in a community. But if you can't access that in-person community, having a virtual community. And so having both is wonderful, but certainly virtual community is better than no community. Yeah, yeah.

I love to say, you know, I mean, don't meet a friend for coffee, meet a friend for a walk. Meet a friend. And if you're a woman listening and you think, well, we're preaching to the choir because you're already doing it, be one of those who reaches out for the woman in your life who's not doing it, because you know there's one, if there's not five, and be that person. What's a question, Dr. Jordan, that I should have asked you that I haven't yet?

I think that the importance of— and these are wonderful, thoughtful questions, and this is a different and very thoughtfully constructed interview, so I really appreciate it. I think that the importance of muscle as part of this discussion is particularly important to all your listeners, but particularly to women. And that's because, you know, again, some of the women listening to your podcast have grown through the generation when women didn't have muscles to now some of their daughters and granddaughters are jacked, right? And so there's a whole change in what it looks like to be a woman. Yeah. And they may have missed the boat on the importance of muscle at their younger times when that wasn't something that people were aspiring to do or available. Um, but what I would say is that skeletal muscle, your muscles, are the most important reservoir you have for healthy longevity. And it's true in several ways. It's true in helping you move. So if you have an achy knee and you strengthen your muscles around your hip and your quad around your knee, that will make your knees and hips feel better. So it's true functionally, it's also true metabolically. So muscle is a storage site for glucose in the form of, it's called muscle glycogen. And that's a very important way of helping people modulate their blood sugar, among other things. And so it's very important for your metabolic health. And then furthermore, muscle, when you use it, secretes something called myokines, which are anti-inflammatory agents, which affect the way disease expresses itself. There's a great term I go through in the book called InflammaGing, or InflammaGing, the inflammatory basis of chronic disease. And disease is affected by chronic inflammation, and muscle is the anecdote to that. And so I think that the key points here are that you want to make sure that you are comfortable building and maintaining muscle, and that does not need anything but body weight. I have a whole series of exercises people can do to use their body weight to keep their muscle mass wherever they are in their lives. And I wanna make sure they're comfortable doing that. I think it's a barrier for many women, particularly women who didn't grow up in the build muscle generation.

Totally agree. Yeah. The only thing I heard there is muscle is medicine, you all. So, all right.

You got it.

Dr. Metzl, where can everybody find you? Where can they get their hands on the book? I'm gonna guess everywhere books are sold, but tell me if otherwise.

Yeah, that's the stock answer. Everywhere books are sold. And there's not only the written and electronic, but the audio where I read the intro with the same passion. And hopefully it's been nice to have people listen along the way. And then they can find me @DrJordanMetzl.

And what's the next book?

I'm just kind of coming through with this one. I'm thinking about it. I'm not sure yet. I'm just in the process of this one. But this one took about 5 years. I'll let you know.

And what's the next Ironman?

Oh, so I'm taking a year off Ironman this year because I'm doing with my youngest brother, I'm doing the Leadville 100 mountain bike race in Leadville. And my thing, my thing on this every year is you need to pick a goal that's a goal in the future, several months in the future, that scares you a little bit. Mountain biking scares the hell out of me, so it scares me a lot. So I'm going to learn how to do that as best I can.

Amazing. I love it. And if you're listening and you're looking for one of those, just scares you a little bit, Flipping 50 retreats every year. We're headed to Boulder in June and we'll probably do another one in September, October. So we require you do it early so that you can do the training with us. Dr. Metzl, thank you so much for being here.

Truly a pleasure. I loved our conversation.

The information shared on Flipping 50 the Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified healthcare provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast.