The Secret in Your Breath

Welcome to the Balanced Body Podcast, where Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness in Omaha, talks to us about health, wellness, and balancing hormones. With Sherri Griggs from Balanced Body Medical here in Omaha, and we're coming out of the last podcast talking about what are ways in which we can work out a little bit better or plan for or whatever. I'm a huge data person. I'm sorry, I'm jumping right in. I'm all excited about this. But like, I'm a huge data person because I love looking at everything sort of historical and then saying, okay, this is how I build off of it. Right?

Right.

And a lot of times people don't jump in to working out that way. They just start, you know, what I do, and maybe, maybe I'm weird, but I just start like going out and running and then I hurt myself or I go to the gym and then I don't know what I need to focus on. Is that normal?

You know, John, it is, right? I mean, a lot of times we do. We just, oh, I'm just gonna start working out. And because I'm working out, I can eat this piece of cake. So I'll just work out a little longer or I'm working out. And so I expect that by the end of the week I should have lost weight.

Yeah, the expectation, right?

Yeah. But, you know, one of the things is you need to know where you started. So, for instance, one— I have a couple of tools I use. One of them I use is called the InBody.

Oh.

And the InBody machine, it's noninvasive. You stand on it, it uses resistance, and it will weigh you, but it will also look at your fat mass and your muscle mass. Right? So, I had a gal come in the other day and she had gained 2 pounds and she's like, oh, I'm just not getting anywhere with this. Except that when we looked at her InBody results, she had actually gained 3 pounds in muscle and lost a pound of fat.

Oh.

So, her 2-pound weight gain wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Yeah.

And because muscle weighs more than fat, muscle is more condensed. So you may find that you are not losing weight, but your clothes start to fit a little looser.

Interesting. Is it like a proportional thing? Like, I, I don't know where I thought of this, but when I was younger and I swam, I always thought that there was like more of a fat layer on the outside of all my muscle. You know, is that like you lose it from like your, your hips and stuff and then all of a sudden you're just like, you got better shoulders or whatever it is that you're looking at, like for the For the muscle gain?

Yes, don't you wish? At least I do. Everybody, you know, our body types are so different. It depends on it. You know, women, we're always like, oh my gosh, whenever I gain weight, I always gain it on my hips, right? But when I lose it, it comes off my face first.

Yeah, it's just like we all have our places that it— we all have the places that it pulls off first, right?

Right. And it's not where you want it to pull off first. And no. And so, it's just something you have to keep up. But different body types, I had a friend back in my early 20s, and I could lift twice as much as she could, but she was very cut looking. You could see every muscle and every definition.

Oh my gosh.

But yet, I could lift more.

Huh.

So, our bodies are just so different and the strengths of our muscle fibers. And like you said, where do we hold the fat? We're all just so different. So it, you know, I wish I could say, yeah, you know, you're gonna get on there and she lost that fat off of her shoulders and she gained it all in her shoulders. So now she looks, you know, all buff. Yeah. But it doesn't work that way, sadly.

Well, that's okay. I mean, shoot, again, going back to the original discussion for this, this gives you the data that you need so that you can be Not lose your motivation, which I think a lot of times that's what happens when you start going to the gym or you go back to it, right? It's harder because you're maybe just a little bit older and you're more tired or your kids run you down. And then all of a sudden it's like, I'm trying to get fit, but it's harder. And then you get demotivated for like the craziest reasons. But the Zinbody seems like it can kind of help you keep that motivation up, which is important.

Well, and it can and it does. Because for that particular patient, that was huge for her.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, she looked at the trend and could see muscle going up and fat going down. And so, the initial getting on the scale, because it does your weight first before you get the readout, was deflation. Oh, and then it was excitement when she saw that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, right?

Mm-hmm.

Of course, she also wants to, in general, be lighter and lose a lot more fat.

Mm-hmm.

But at least she knows she's going the right direction because as we increase our muscle, we also increase our caloric burning ability because muscle burns more calories than fat.

Mm-hmm.

So, even though her overall weight gain was 2 pounds, again, it was 3 pounds muscle, lose a pound of fat, that means she has increased her resting metabolic rate. She is increasing her metabolism, which in turn will, will cause her to lose the fat. But it's a slow process.

It's slow.

It doesn't happen overnight.

I think that's the other thing, demotivation for like weight loss or expectation. I always am like, you know, can't I lose 10 pounds in a week and then it be safe?

Right? Yeah. Well, and usually if you do lose something that quickly, it's water weight. You know, you've— you're carrying a lot of fluid. And people will say to me, but, but my ankles aren't swollen, but, but I don't have any fluid on me. Well, we also have intracellular fluid. We have fluid in our body and our, you know, if we have inflammation within our body causing us to hold on to fluid, that doesn't necessarily mean it's exterior, you know, swelling that you see. directly under the skin. So, you generally will start to lose some of that inflammation first, some of that fluid first that you're carrying around in an unhealthy sense. That's usually the first thing that goes. But yeah, that's where you said the unhealthy way, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, if it's the unhealthy way of not eating at all, then we know that we're slowing our metabolic rate down because our body says, I'm starving, I'm starving, I'm starving.

I better stop burning calories so I can stay Yeah, you don't want to trick your body thinking that way, that's for sure.

And that happens to so many people because, I mean, there will be the frustrated people that they're very, very overweight, right? So they're carrying a lot of fat. Their metabolic rate is not the greatest because of that reason. And then they say, I don't drink, I don't eat anything all day, I barely eat anything. But their body's gone into starvation mode. So their metabolism is slowed down to nothing. It wasn't great to begin with. And, you know, and then it's, and then everything they're, they eat, their body wants to hang onto.

Mm-hmm.

Because it thinks it's starving and it's trying to save itself.

I, you know, as a, as a person that probably fits into that category myself, I feel as if a lot of things that gets me in trouble is from a nutrition standpoint, like snacking while I'm walking around or not really counting the calories that I'm like looking at with like the chip bag or something. And so it feels as if I haven't sat down and had a true proper meal, but then my caloric intake is different than what I'm thinking.

Right. And there's a couple things you said there, John. You know, one is, um, nutrition is huge. You, you cannot, you cannot out-exercise a bad diet. Okay? So, again, it isn't the, I'm going to work out an extra half an hour because I ate this. And then the other thing you said was looking at the caloric value on the chip bag, right?

Mm-hmm.

So, let's just say the caloric value on the chip bag is 180 calories. But if you ate 180 calories of broccoli, your body's going to do something completely different with that 180 calories of broccoli than it is that 180 calories of chips.

It's true. It's also a ton more broccoli than chips, I think.

It would be a ton more. But the idea is that it's what you're feeding your body. It's not— so, the days of really— I know I brought up resting metabolic rate and calories, but the days of truly, truly counting calories, it's not enough. Okay? You cannot just count calories. You also have to look at what your calories are, what you're taking in.

I think you're right. Totally. Yeah, I believe that. I'm getting more knowledgeable about that every day, it seems.

Right. Well, and I learned it personally. I mean, 9, 10 years ago, one of the companies I worked with, we did a challenge at the gym, right? And they set us up with what we should be eating. And I— you know, John, I was into this. Okay. Oh, it was just me and my 2 dogs at the house, so I had plenty of time, right? I didn't have to worry about anybody else, and I could not eat as much food as they wanted me to eat. Really? It was impossible for me to get all that food in, and I was losing weight like crazy and eating more food than I'd probably eaten in my life in a day, every day.

Oh my gosh. What was this challenge?

But it was what I was eating.

Oh.

They told us what to eat. So, I was eating lean meats, I was eating vegetables, I was in between these meals supposed to be doing a protein shake, which I could never get the last one in of the day because I was just too full. It was— and it was what was going into it, right? So, it was completely what I was eating even though my caloric intake— and my caloric intake being high enough that my body didn't feel like it was starving that it had to— so, it turned my metabolism on. It increased my metabolism. I was working out, so I was increasing muscle. So, that's why the weight started coming off.

Interesting.

And I got lean.

Man, it's so crazy just to think about how, like, a change like that can be so great long-term.

But it's not easy to do because it requires meal planning.

Yes.

It requires food prepping, which, if it's new to you, is very time-consuming and feels very time-consuming. You've got to have your meals ready. You can't just come home and say, oh, I'm hungry, I'm going to eat this, right?

Mm-hmm.

You're pre-planning your meals. I'm carrying my food with me in a cooler. You know, I was very dedicated to it. Now, I can't live like that. I mean, obviously, your bodybuilder people or your fitness people that do shows, it's very restrictive.

Oh yeah, totally.

Yeah, it's, it's very restrictive. Um, but, you know, looking at that, like you said, you like to have information, right? You like to have stuff. I also have— I said one of my 2 was the Embody. The other one is, it's called PNOE. P-N-O-E.

That's right.

Yes.

Which is the main thing we wanted to talk about today. And I got us off track by talking—

That's okay.

Nutrition.

Because the thing is, is this— the Pinoy really, it gives you a baseline, okay? And it gives you something that you can work off. For instance, it looks at your resting metabolic rate, which is where we talked about, you know, when I'm resting, how many calories am I burning? It even tells you what your fat-burning efficiency is.

That's cool.

Like, how well is your body burning fat? And then it tells you how to improve it.

Okay, so that leads into another discussion. Not just the part for improvement, but telling you very specifically things that you need to be focusing on, right?

Yes. So for instance, I won't tell you all my numbers, but when I did it, my lungs were 100%, my lung fitness. So I don't need to do anything to improve my lungs. They can't get any better. They're great.

How do you improve your lungs? Is it capacity or just ability to absorb oxygen or what?

Well, all of the above, because the machine— the test is actually a breathing test. You wear a mask and you breathe into this mask for 10 minutes. So yes, it is looking at how your lungs are exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. How well are your lungs working? What is your lung capacity? Right. So exactly all the things you said, John, like how much air you have in your lungs. Yes. How well your lungs are transferring the oxygen into your body and the carbon dioxide out? Yes.

I never thought about. I never thought about training that. I don't even know how you would, to be honest.

Well, I'll tell you what. My recommendation didn't tell me how I needed to improve it, but it talked about, you know, keeping it there and interval training. Oh, at a zone 4 was my number one thing that I should do. And then endurance at a zone 2.

So it tells you very specifically where you need to be focusing for the interval type training that you're that you're going to be doing to improve to improve that particular that particular one.

The other there's breathing and cognition how well you breathe. A lot of people. 50% of the population hyperventilates, meaning they don't take deep enough breaths all day long.

Oh.

And that has a lot to do with brain health and how well you think, because our brain needs oxygen.

That's true. Yeah.

And we— it looks at heart fitness, metabolic fitness. Okay, so metabolic fitness. And your metabolic risk. And the metabolic risk is your risk of coming down with a metabolic disease, which, as we know, is one of my specialties— metabolic balance. So what is the— your metabolic dysfunction risk? What is your risk of coming down with a metabolic disease like diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure? Right?

Yeah.

And it'll tell you what your risk is.

So interesting.

You don't want, you know, and, and it can tell you how to improve at all of these things, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And how to do it.

Well, I was just about to say, so you're, I think you're going exactly where I was gonna ask, but it, it told you out of what things that you should be kind of focusing on, right? Like, so when we were prepping for this, you said, yeah, it'll tell you the type of exercise and how, like, so what are the different ones that it was telling you that you should, if you want to share, or like what it should kind of tell us?

Okay. So, let's just say now my fat-burning efficiency was 76%, which is pretty good. But let's say I want to improve that. I want to burn fat easier or increase my efficiency. Well, then I need to— actually, when we talked the first time, I was telling you what was in the front. I needed to look at the arrows. I need to do some Low-intensity zone 2 to improve my mitochondrial function and enhance my fat-burning efficiency. So, it looked at how well my mitochondria was working and what my fat-burning efficiency was.

Interesting. All from just watching you breathe.

All from— and it's a very specific The way you have to calibrate it, the machine takes 3 hours to warm up. You have to calibrate it for the air at the moment, and that takes 10 minutes.

Oh.

And it's very, very touchy, very. And so while you are filling out some information that you fill out, for instance, what do you want to do? Do you want to increase your performance, your endurance? Do you want to lose weight? Do you, you know, what do you want to do? And it will then give you your recommendations based on where you're at on how to get to where you want to be.

Wow.

So fat burning efficiency, endurance, fatty fish, cocoa, coffee.

So you got to drink more coffee. I wonder if mine will tell me the same.

You know what? I only drink 1 cup a day. It says 2 to 3.

Interesting.

So I just had a Monster, which is so unhealthy. Do not drink Monster. And I shouldn't name brands because of this, because of the bad sweetener that's not real in it. Okay. Um, meal timing, scheduling when I eat my meals, what part time of the day, how long I should wait before I go to bed. Cold exposure, cryotherapy. Ugh.

Oh no. I don't like cold. Yeah, we talked about that. I also, I agree with you. I do not like being cold.

So maybe I do 1 or 2 of these things and I do 1 or 2 of all of these things because I would love to increase my metabolic fitness, right?

Mm-hmm.

Because I— this is how well my body converts nutrients into the energy it needs to move and sustain its vital functions. 64%. It could be better. Yeah.

So it's telling you where you need to focus. Like, these are places that you can focus attention. Now, I'm, I'm unsure about this, and this is probably the wrong question to ask, but you said that you needed to be in level 2 of the zone. Zone. That's right. Zone 2.

Yep.

So is that basically telling you that you need to do like low intensity Like, so like walking or something? Like doing more walking?

Right? Yep. So low intensity, steady state training. Um, so not like a lot of times we thought we should be doing, right? Is that high zone 5, get your heart rate up, feel like you're gonna vomit.

Yeah, the HIIT training, right? You want to go in the room and be all sweaty and pull on stuff.

That might not be good for you. It might be. But for me, zone 5 training to increase my metabolic fitness is the least amount of training I need to do. Number 1 is resistance. Number 2 is endurance. And lastly is interval.

Wow. So that you could like track what exercises are going to be most proficient for you. For not just weight loss, but strengthening and fixing your breath in this case, right? Like, you don't need that, but it could tell us that if I'm a weak breather or something.

Essentially, yes. And a weak breather might be somebody that unknowingly hyperventilates because you're not getting those deep breaths into your lungs.

I did. I was told one time, and I think I might have said this, so if I'm repeating myself, I'm sorry, but I was told by somebody that we as people tend to breathe through our mouths a little bit too much and we need to work on like focusing on breathing through our nose because too much oxygen is bad.

That's hyperventilating.

Yeah, absolutely. So that sounds—

and that's what happens. Breathe through your mouth. And so when somebody is, is say hyperventilating or panicking, that's why you're like in through your nose, out through your mouth.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Don't slow the breath down.

Yeah. This is crazy. So the Pinoy machine.

Yeah.

And then the other one, the InBody. Both are ways that you can use data to basically help you with your workouts, plan, make sure that you are not getting demotivated because maybe you did gain, you know, a little extra weight, but then it turns out it's muscle. So it's like you are actually doing a good job with your weight training, right?

Exactly right. Because the muscle again increases the metabolism, increase the metabolism so she can keep it up. Eventually you start to turn enough fat into muscle or not— you don't literally turn fat into muscle, but you start to replace that weight you're carrying with muscle over fat. You could continue to, you know, maybe Eat similar, work out similar, and over time you'd still lose weight because muscle burns more calories than fat. Muscle is better for metabolism than fat is.

Well, that sounds— it sounds like a plan, and it seems like I need to jump on this machine. So we will schedule that and we'll talk about my results. I'm happy to talk about all my things.

That would be fun. And we can talk about your results and then we can talk about what you need to do Right. For your change.

Yeah.

And then we get you back in. You know, the Embody is a monthly thing. The Pinoy is 6 months. Now, one other thing it does do is it also works for athletes. So if you want to increase your performance as an athlete, for instance, Ray does his row, you know, he rows. We talked about the Creighton rowing team, the girls doing this. And seeing that, you know, here's the beginning of the season, here's where you're at now, where are you at the end of the season?

Oh, yeah. So then you can, then you can use that data and then compile it and compare and see what you did actually focus on, maybe where you slipped.

Right, exactly.

Well, that's awesome. So if I was somebody that's not me wanting to call in, we could obviously go a couple different places to find you. We have been talking to Sherri Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness website, balancedbodymedical.com, which you can go on and find. But if you're searching for the business and you want to find Sherri, obviously search Balanced Body Health and Wellness.

In Omaha, Nebraska. And I'm over on 10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza. If you want to schedule your 15-minute, like, discovery call to talk about this.

Yeah.

You know, that's just go to mybalancedbodymedical.com and just sign right up. It's free. We can talk about it. We will be running a special very soon. We're getting it all put together and the calendar put together where people will be able to go to the website and just click, I want to do metabolic testing. We'll run those for $99 to the end of March.

Nice. That's a great— that's a great special.

Yeah, it really is. I know that there are some providers in other states up to $300. Um, we won't be doing that. Our regular price will be $149, but to the end of March, you know, just to help people get back into it, make sure enough people know about it. You know, things that aren't that well known, people don't— you know, if you know about it, everybody's doing it kind of thing. Um, but we need to get the word out there and let people find out about it. And, and they're always welcome to call. The clinic, it's 402-807-5333.

We didn't even talk about how long the results usually take, because I know that that is also something that it doesn't come back instantly, but it comes back fairly quick, right?

Fairly quickly. Okay. So yes, I— my last person we just did, so we're getting this going, I told her maybe a day or two, and it was back in 20 minutes.

Whoa.

Yeah. Yeah. Before she even left, I saw the thing pop up on my computer that said I had my results. And so, my Panoe scientist was quick on the spot going through things and he released them. And she was really neat.

She's—

in fact, tomorrow, she'll be 69. She's 68 years old and her chronological age was 68. Her biological age, 55.

Oh, my gosh.

So, her body is running at the efficiency of a 55-year-old and she's 68. Now she's a supplement rep. So supplements are good for you, obviously.

Look, we're, we're going to be talking about not just working out and not just these machines. Really, Balanced Body Medical is a place you just get information about where you are at and then help you get to the next point, which is, is it healthier? Is it Hormone balance. Is it just trying to get to know where you're at? Or if you're at the athlete level, how do I get just a little bit more oomph for—

How can I improve? Yeah, right. Because, you know, for women, if we don't have testosterone, we're not going to build muscle.

Yeah.

Hormone balance. People probably think, oh, hormone, you know, what's that have to do with my exercising? Everything, right? Even for men.

Oh yeah. And it's, so I feel from the outside going in with no knowledge, I feel like hormone imbalance can happen at any point in time. So it's just weird.

It definitely can. One of my patients, he's thrilled to death. He's in one of my networking groups and he, he's like, oh my gosh, I went and saw Sherri and I'm getting my energy back. Sometimes I'm too energetic now. You know, I said, well, we're not done with you yet. You know, we just started. If everybody could always, it could be that easy. But there's, there's always a lot more that's going on. So it's always good to know. And if you could prevent it, it's so much better to prevent it. Just like it's so much easier to just not gain weight than it is to lose it.

Yeah, it's true.

Right?

But for some of us, it is a weight-losing journey ahead. So—

Well, let's figure out, John, where are you starting out? What do you need to improve? And what do you need to do it? And we can follow your journey.

Absolutely, and we will go on this journey together.

Yes.

This has been the Balanced Body Medical Podcast with Sherry Griggs, owner of Balanced Body Health and Wellness. If you're looking to find Sherry, go ahead and look for the website balancedbodymedical.com. If you're looking for the business and you want to find Sherry at her office. You can find her at—

10815 Elm Street in Rockbrook Plaza. Thank you.