Sustaining a Healthy Lifestyle

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health so you can go out there and live that big life you're meant to live. Now today's show is all about how to keep it once you got it. Well, we're going to talk a little bit about how to get it too. And I've got the gosh, the man to tell you how to get it. The man that came from eating double cheese chimichangas and drinking loads of beer to being the top fitness star of all time. In fact, he just got the Jack lalanne award. Yep. I'm talking to Tony Horton today on how sustain a healthy lifestyle. And you know what? It's not what you think it is and it's way easier than you're going to believe. Plus there's some incredible quotables in this. So let me tell you a little bit about Tony, things you may not know about him. Of course you know that he is the creator of the fitness series P90X P90X2 3 the 10 minute trainer and now the 22 minute military inspired workout. 22 minute hard hard core. He's a motivational speaker and he's an author of the top selling book bring it, crush it and the big picture 11 laws that will change your life. He's been all over the place on TV talking healthy living through exercise and nutrition. Plus he's just teamed up with some beauty experts to create th care by Tony Horton. Because he is he said been out in the sun a lot. Now he's got to undo that damage. And so he has just like got it going on and you're gonna hear it in this talk today. He gets super fired up and just does a lot of Tonyisms. It's really fun and I'm excited to share them with you. And I want to remind you that we've got a great website for you to visit too. So stay tuned throughout the talk. Listen for these quotables there's one about exercise bipolar that's just so spot on. So with that, let me bring on today's guest, Tony Hort. All right, so let's do it. Tony Horton, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Jj. Great talking to you, my dear.

Such a great topic. And you know, it's fun because people always want to know how to get in shape. But it's like now you're talking about how to stay there and what do you need to do to sustain it. So let's talk, let's dive into what you see. You talk about these five mandatory healthy lifestyle staples. What the heck are they?

Well, number one is hydration. Seems pretty simple. You drink your eight, eight ounce glasses of water every day. Doesn't seem that hard. But with all the coffee and alcohol and other kinds of drinks that we're dehydrated, you take most people, you check them out and you see whether they're hydrated or not. Most people aren't. And so it doesn't seem like much, but really it's incredibly important. I go to UCLA track on Sundays and this guy, Coach Vitti, who still has records, he's in his 60s and still has records at UCLA as a track athlete. And he says you have to drink two large 10 ounce glasses of water before you even show up at the track in the morning to kind of prevent injuries and to be completely hydrated. And you have to do that throughout the entire process. If you watch the Tour de France right now and you watch these guys on bikes going on 99 miles, they're hydrating the entire time. And so it's just, it's just common sense, but people don't do it. You know, the other thing is stress management. You know, we're just bringing work, we're bringing work home and we're incredibly stressed out. We're not dealing with things maybe as well as we should be. And our adrenal glands are freaking out, Cortisol levels are through the roof, and our brains aren't functioning at the regular rate, which the way they're supposed to. And what ends up happening is you feel as if, you know, you're just craving fat, sugar, salt and chemicals in every meal. So it's this spiral effect that happens just as a result of not being able to deal with your day to day stuff, whether it's in traffic or family or work or whatever. It is, you know, obvious. The two obvious ones are food and fitness. You know, those are, those are critical they're the foundation of feeling great and being comfortable in your own skin and having your brain function. Well, it's a mental and emotional thing as well, not only a physical thing. And so hydration.

So hey, let's pop into hydration for a minute because I'm so glad you brought that up because it's not very sexy. It's like, okay, eight glasses of water. But you know, even if you're 1 or 2% dehydrated, which you would never know, it can just put the brakes on fat burning and raise stress hormones. So it's like to me, you drink water, you boost your metabolism. This is one of the easy peasy ones. But you threw something out there and you said, if you're tracking and you're dehydrated, do you have a way that you look for people to be dehydrated? How would someone know?

Well, it's not easy to know. I think for me personally what I did was I get up in the morning and I drink my 8 to 10 ounce glasses of water the first thing in the morning. Most people are drinking coffee, which actually dehydrates you, so that's not a good thing. And getting into that pattern of just doing that. And then I usually wait about 10 minutes and I drink another one. And I keep a glass in the house right next to the sink, a big, red, beautiful glass that every time I see it, it forces me to drink another glass of water. And this hard for me, this is not one that I'm very good at. I think this in the sleep piece of this equation is also another area where I'm not as good at. So I have to constantly work at it.

I like that you're being totally vulnerable here because I think people look there going, it's Tony Horton, he must do all these things perfectly. But even you, it's like with these things, we have to track them. That's why it's great that you have that cup sitting there to remind you. Otherwise it's easy to blow it off.

Well, I think the way scientifically you've got to go to an endocrinologist or nutritionist, have your blood drawn. I mean, I do that every six months and they can tell me exactly what I'm short on. Wow, you're short on vitamin B this month. You're short on. You got too much potassium in your blood, which means I'm probably drinking too much energizer kind of pre workout formulas and post workout formulas. And so, I mean, I do that every six months and they can tell you instantly whether you're dehydrated or not. And so the protocol is pretty simple. It comes from almost any nutritionist that I know of is just be conscious that you're drinking water all day long. And quite often people think, well, I get that from my soup or I get that from food to a certain extent. And maybe you do, but you don't want to over drink water. But most people just don't.

Yeah, it's like most people are not overnourished and over hydrated. You know what's a quick and dirty one is if people are weighing in every day on a body fat scale and all of a sudden they see their weight drop and their body fat goes up. That's because they lost body water, that's because they're starting to get dehydrated. So you can actually get a total body water read on a Tanita scale and then manage it that way if.

You'Ve got one, which is, I don't know how many folks do.

Oh, they're cheap now. We can all get one. They're an important thing there. All right, so water and stress and food and fitness then. You said sleep, you brought that in. Sleep.

You know, everybody's sleep deprived. Not everybody, but so many of us are and we don't really need to be. And you know, I have a little note that I've just written down. It's on my bathroom mirror. It's 11 to 7. That's all it says. It just says 11 to 7. And I try to go to bed at 11 o' clock and get up at 7. I get my eight hours. But you know, of course the Tour de France is on and I want to watch it and you know, the replay is five hours. Then I'm screwed, you know, but you know, these things happen. We just have to kind of turn it off. And sleeping is healing. You know, there's a circadian cycle that happens for all of us every night. These little 40 minute, give or take time frames in which our body goes from REM to deep sleep. And if it's interrupted, then of course we're in big trouble. Then the stress kicks in and then the craving for fat, sugar, salt and chemicals come into our morning when we get up. It's harder to be more disciplined with your food and your fitness if you're sleep deprived. If you're stressed out, you're dehydrated and you're sleep deprived. Forget about the next trifecta of doom.

Oh, my goodness. Doom is correct.

There's no chance. Oh, wow, look, I've been in traffic all day. My cortisol levels are through the roof, My adrenal glands are expensive exploding. I've survived the day drinking four or five cups of coffee. And now I'm going to go home and do P90X plio not a shot.

But you know, these things you just talked about, it's like these are not the hardcore things. No one just said, hey, now you're going to do like hiit training for 15 minutes. We said, drink some water and get to bed. So let's talk about those because those seem so easy. But probably at the core of all of them is some accountability stuff. So what about accountability? Why is it so important here?

Well, I think it's everything. I mean, the idea here is to try to stay motivated, right? You know, I mean, you want to be consistent, we're consistent with going to work and paying our bills and the basic things that we do to survive. But I think most people would like to thrive. And thriving comes from having some form of purpose and making sure that there is an accountability factor for people who want to have this lifestyle. And accountability usually comes through the people that you spend the most time with. I mean, if you're self motivated, if you're one of those people who lives in Minnesota and in the middle of February you get up in your cold basement and you put in that hour and a half yoga routine and I don't know who you are because you're not me. That's superstar material there. Accountability. If you don't have the friends, the family, the coworkers, the people in your life that motivate and stimulate you when it comes to this lifestyle, then you've got to find some other purpose. And so that usually comes through education. I mean, you've got to understand that your reason why has so much more to do than the scale and the tape measure and dress sizes and what people say about you. And it has everything to do with the quality of your life. So if you're exercising with the hope that you're going to look good in the future as a result of eating certain things or doing a particular exercise program, well, good luck staying motivated with that for the rest of your life. But if you exercise today and eat right today, knowing that that improves today, the past is history, the future is a mystery. What do you've got? You've got right here, right now. If you want to be present, if you want to feel energized, if you want to feel like you can kind of take on the day, then I highly recommend that you figure these five things out. And if you can do them on a regular basis, then your life will thrive. And people think, well, that's too easy. Well, why shouldn't it be? Why shouldn't it be as easy as pie, drink water, go to bed, deal with your stress? And so that way those three things will allow you to do the other two, which will give you the life that you probably want.

Actually is a lot. It is that easy. And I think there's a lot of people out there trying to make it complicated so that we feel like we need them. It's actually super easy. I think the accountability and having the big why that you just talked about is so key. And then of course, what you're known for, fitness. Now let's talk fitness for a bit here. And you talk about fitness a little bit differently like that it's food for the brain, which, you know, I think most people wouldn't go there first with fitness. So what do you mean by that?

Well, you know, I'm a big fan of John Ratey's book Spark. If anybody's listening and haven't read that book yet, I think that would certainly change your mind about why you need to exercise. And it is about aesthetics and it is about ego. And that's unfortunately the reason why so many companies sell their fitness programs. I mean, you have to, it's before and after pictures and that type of thing. But in reality, it's really the effects of physical activity on the brain. And so when you're breathing hard simply for 20 minutes, 30, 40 minutes, depending on what your routine is, then you change your brain chemistry. You release norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, something called brain derived neurotropic factor bdnf. And I learned all this from John's book. I've become a good friend. He's a Harvard professor and he knows his stuff. And here's what's so funny. He's known this for 12, 15 years. And you can see all these articles popping up in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal about it now, all these years later. But the science is in. And it says that when you breathe heavily, when you oxygenate the blood, these proteins and molecules inside your dentate gyrus, which is inside the temporal lobe, changes. And so there's sort of this sense of euphoria that you get after a workout. And that'll last for 18 to 24 hours, depending on the individual. And so to be able to sustain and maintain that sense of feel good, that sense of enthusiasm, that memory improvement, cognition improvement, sleep improvement, all the things that come from, from various parts of the brain that you have to do it five, six, seven days a week. If you don't, I write about it in my book the Big Picture. If you only work out two, three, maybe even four days a week, you end up with exercise bipolar disorder, because you get all the release of all those chemicals and you take two days off and you can't figure out why you're in a bad mood again. It's because you gave yourself this chemical fix through physical movement that changed you mentally and emotionally. And then you stopped for two days. And so it's like anything, when you drink four or five beers, there's that feeling and sensation you get until you feel like crap again. And that's why people become alcoholics, because they're chasing that dopamine fix, right? That's the reason why people become drug addicts. So why not do it in a more natural way, by using a source inside of yourself as opposed to a source outside of yourself. That's why coffee and alcohol and drugs and sex with strangers is so popular, because it's easy. But if you want to earn it and you want to be consistent and oh, by the way, it improves your health and fitness along the way and longevity. You're doing it through behavior. You're doing it through disciplined behavior. You surround yourself with some badasses and people who are into it as well. At home or maybe somebody online. I don't care. You can find them. You can go to a cycling club and find them. You can go to a rock climbing club and find them. You can go to a ping pong club and find them. They're everywhere. So you just have to get outside of your comfort zone, go jump in the pool and begin to enjoy this incredible lifestyle. If I looked away at the person I was before, I drank too much all the time. I barely got five and a half hours of sleep. I never exercised. And I lived on Dr. Pepper and double cheese chimichangas. What a shock. I was a miserable son of a bitch. But I just stopped doing that stuff because I hated the way I felt. I hated being poor, I hated not having energy. I couldn't keep up with anybody physically, athletically. And I just decided to, you know. And this came through a lot of personal development. It came from conversations like ours, going to Tony Robbins seminars, Deepak Chopra seminars, M. Scott Peck books. I mean, I did it all Because I didn't get any of that in high school or college, and I had to get it on my own. And so you have to search. You have to be willing to work hard at this process. And after a while, it becomes incredibly familiar and it becomes easy, and it's just part of who you are. And then you go. You wake up every day going, jeez, I feel good. And I can't wait to go climb that mountain. And I can't wait to go on that mountain biking trip. And I can't wait to sort of earn income in a new way that's more about me instead of just working for the man. And that's what happened for me. That's what hydration, stress management, sleep, food and fitness did for me.

And it all started with that mindset shift that you just talked about. So I love that you brought that up, because it's huge. Because once your mindset gets big and you start to surround yourself because you talked about the people that you then went and surrounded yourself around, and then you can do those basic things and that just becomes who you are. I mean, no one would ever think of you as like, double cheese chimichanga eating Tony ever. Like, it's like, what? So, all right, let's dive into, like, what you're so what? Like, you're fired up. So what are you, like, most fired up about right now? What are some. A couple of the cool things you're. I know there's a ton of stuff you got your fingers in now. So, like, just like, give me a couple of the questions.

My top two are, you know, a brand new 22 minute hardcore. I was just at idea, the World Health Fitness Conference in here in Los Angeles, and I premiered a couple of workouts there. I was also there receiving the Jack LaLanne Award by Elaine LaLanne, which is a heck of an honor. I got goosebumps thinking about it.

Yeah.

So it's funny because Jack and Elaine and her son John came up to me several times and said that nobody really emulates Jack as well as I do. And maybe because I have a passion for it like Jack did, I have a delivery system that's like Jack's, but, you know, and I'm still in this business 18 years later. A lot of people have come and gone. It's very hard to be able to sustain sort of a top one or two position in my industry. And I think because I'm pretty good at reinventing myself, I add a lot of variety. If you look at 22 minute hardcore, which is very different than P90X. You know, just a willingness to sort of learn. I mean, I'm not afraid to learn. I mean, I learned from you. I learned from, I learned from Brendon Bouchard. I learned from, you know, all kinds of people who are experts in their field. And I'm not, not embarrassed to say that I don't mind being a neophyte from day to day. I think it's an incredible thing. So 22 minute hardcore.

Here it is.

It's premiered as big or bigger than P90X. The infomercial comes out in September. When it comes to my own brand, TH Care, which is a hair and skin care line, I've had really bad issues with both because I came out to California and fried my skin. So I've been sort of playing catch up, trying to improve the outside, even though I've been working on the inside. I'm working with the folks that enjoy and they've got salon quality products all around the country. And I just like what they do. And they made this formula for me and I thought, well, why not share it with everybody else? So you can go to tonyhortonlife.com if you're interested in some beautiful shampoo and.

Lotion and lots of cool stuff@tonihortonlife.com and you know what? I. You just said another one. You're saying some things, focusing on one thing, but you've got these pearls coming out that you're probably not even realizing are flying out of your mouth. Like, you know, a big takeaway here is that you are approaching everything with a beginner's mind. Because, you know, one of the things that one of my favorite mentors said is just remember your beginnings and always, just approach it with, like, what do I have to learn here? Because I think people, as they get bigger, they're like, oh, I've got it all. So I love that you're doing that and you're still out there learning every day, which is what's keeping you. Amazing. And someone to follow. So everyone listening, you'll definitely want to jump onto Toni's website, and that's tonyhortonlife.com because you're addressing so many different things. Now. You started in fitness, but now it's fitness and nutrition and stress and sleep and brain health and mindset and beauty care. It's like, awesome. So thank you so much for doing all of that and thank you for joining me today. Now, after the break, I'm going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question is awesome. And as usual, they always seem to fit perfectly with whatever we're talking about. It's amazing how the universe does that. But this one comes from Sarah in Minnesota and she says, gosh, jj, I get so motivated and then I fall apart. Seems like all my friends are hanging out and eating pizza and going to the movies and not working out. How do I keep this all together and how do I stay motivated, especially when my friends just aren't into it like I am? Well, you know, it's very interesting when they look at studies on being overweight or obese, they actually found that it was contagious. Yes, you could catch it from your friends and that even if someone is across the country from you, the people who you're closest to you tend to resemble. Now, this doesn't mean necessarily dump your friends and family, but you may need to add some in. And what I'd say first is, you know, came down to and Tony talked about this, really getting to that mindset, that big why between behind what you're doing it and then surrounding yourself with a circle of support. And what's key here is these people could be online. They could be. It's just find them. Find people with the same goals, the same interests who can support you and not think you're crazy. When it's freezing in Minnesota and you are going to go make sure you get that workout in and you're not going to go for the comfort food. So you really do need to dial in that circle of support. I know with both of my online programs, the Virgin diet and the Sugar impact diet, we make sure that we have private Facebook groups where everyone can support each other. And I will tell you, there's a lot of those places out there. And then also I've got a dialed in group of support near me here in San Diego so that if I want to go to a cooking class or go out and work out. I've got people right here with me that'll want to do it too and they're going to help hold you accountable. They can become your lifeline if something happens because hey, stuff comes up, doesn't it? And where they can talk you off the ledge and talk you off the cheesecake. So make sure you create that circle of support online, in person, on the phone. So that you are both getting help and being able to help as well. Because one of the fastest ways to get better is to be able to teach what you know and help other people. Now if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com ask and you can leave a voicemail for me. I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way, I'd love to hear from you. I would so appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or iTunes and leave a review for me. It helps a bunch of and be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy Dare to Live a life that matters.

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