Episode 17: Built to Last: The "Big Three" for Midlife Healthspan
In this episode, Rob and Brent ask a simple but uncomfortable question: what would your future self want you to change today? Looking back 20 years—and ahead 20 more—they break down the “Big Three” that quietly shape healthspan: exercise, diet, and sleep, and why treating them as separate is the biggest mistake most people make. This isn’t about perfection or biohacking. It’s about the small, repeatable habits that compound into either freedom—or limitation—later in life. If you want to keep doing the things you love not just longer, but better, this conversation is a reminder that health isn’t a side project—it’s the foundation.
Links, resources, books mentioned:
Why We Sleep - Dr. Matthew Walker
Eat Right Now - Referenced as a tool focused on the psychology and habits of eating
ProLon - Referenced in the context of a planned 5-day fasting reset.
Oura Ring - Mentioned as a long-term sleep tracking tool used to improve sleep quality.
(This post includes affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we may earn a small commission if you purchase through these links—at no extra cost to you.)
Topics we are covering in this episode:
Health isn’t three separate goals—it’s one system. Exercise, diet, and sleep rise and fall together. Ignoring one eventually undermines the others.
Your future self is already paying the bill. The question isn’t if today’s choices matter—it’s what you’re willing to trade now for 10 good years later.
Diet debates miss the point. The “best” diet is the one you can sustain—and that actually makes you feel better, not just morally right.
Alcohol doesn’t just cost you the night—it borrows from tomorrow. Poor sleep quietly compounds into worse workouts, worse food choices, and lower energy.
Sleep is the multiplier. When sleep improves, everything else gets easier—from discipline to decision-making.
Transcript:
Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.
Lena: What would your future self beg you to change today? In this episode of Midlife Circus, Rob and Brent take a hard look at the habits that quietly shape our health span, exercise, diet, and sleep, and why treating them as separate is the biggest mistake we make in midlife. This isn't about perfection or biohacking. It's about simple, sustainable choices that help you stay active, capable, and doing what you love longer. Before we begin, remember to follow Midlife Circus on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, and join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack.
Let's dive into Built to Last, the big three for midlife health span.
Rob: Brent, looking back twenty years, what would you say to yourself about your health twenty years ago or what advice would you give yourself twenty years ago?
Brent: Twenty years ago. So that's an interesting timeframe for me, Rob, because that's when my first child was born. Okay. So I was in a bit of a fog for about a year of like, Oh my gosh, what is this? What do I need to do?
And it just disrupted so many things in my life. As I reflect back, one of the things that I would give myself advice is truly understanding the interconnectedness between, I call it the big three in health, diet, exercise, and sleep. And what I found is I would be good at one of them, but I wouldn't be good at all three. For me, was always exercise. I would try to do a lot more exercise to overcome my shortcomings in my diet and my sleep.
So I'd exercise to wake up, meaning I didn't sleep a whole lot. So it's like exercise to get blood flowing. And then I'd exercise if I would overeat. And so I never connected the dots really well between all three. And the same thing, if I would not exercise, then usually my diet would fall to the wayside as well.
And then I wouldn't sleep as well. So it's an interesting thing when I think back over the last fifteen, twenty years is exercise, diet and sleep, how connected they are. And I did not connect those dots for a very long time. It'd be fun to be able to go back and say, Hey, if you just knew this, you'd probably just be better. You'd just be a better version of yourself.
But easier said than done. Hindsight's really easy on that one.
Rob: I've told myself to take care of, take care of myself better in my youth. So I would have probably done more stuff. I either climbed more mountains. I would have taken more advantage maybe is a better phrase or way to say it. Just take more advantage of the health I had twenty years ago and do more things, do more activities, do more events, push myself even a little bit harder right now, maybe even take on a little more risks when I was a little healthier, little quite a bit younger.
And you talked about the three topics, Brent, the three areas you would have focused on and given yourself advice on. Those are really the three main things we're going to talk about today, exercise, diet, and sleep. But the bigger overall topic we're going to discuss today is health span. As I started asking you the question today, looking back twenty years, what would you said to yourself? Really, it's now about looking twenty years into the future and what does your twenty year future self tell you to do today?
And what do they wish you would have done today? How would they have treated the, you know, the health and health you have today? What would they have said different? And this is somewhat of a follow-up to an earlier episode that we released really about experiences having an expiration date. And for a lot of people, health will cause those experience they want to have in life to actually expire.
They're unable to do those things in the future. And so really today, Brent, you and I are going to spend a lot of time talking about what are some of the simple things you can do today and take action on today to improve your overall health span and really impact, you know, twenty, thirty years from now, what are some habits to build today that'll increase your health span? And I've shared this phrase before, what would you trade today for an extra healthy ten years of life? So what would you trade now for an extra healthy ten years at the end of your life? And you have to trade for it, you can't buy it.
You can't finance your way out of bad health decisions. You actually have to make choices on a daily and weekly and monthly and annual basis to improve your overall health. And so that's really the topic of today's discussion, and we're going to start this topic about exercise. Brett, what are your main exercise objectives as you look at right now? What are you trying to accomplish from an exercise standpoint?
Brent: Before we get in, we're not doctors, we're not professionals in this space. We're far from experts. But what we do is we read a lot about it and we follow a lot of people that their expertise lies in these areas. So we're just sharing some of our own personal learnings and experiences and probably more, Rob, some of the things that we've done very poorly too.
Rob: Absolutely. What we messed up on, what we're trying to do as trying to just make ourselves get better, absolutely.
Brent: So for exercise for me, this is an area that I probably am the most comfortable in because it's been something that's been ingrained in me at a really young age. My dad was very active. My mom was very active. So then we were very active kids. I was an active kid growing up.
I got into, you know, in high school, kind of the weight training, because I was very active in sports and I just saw the benefits of doing those things. So exercise to me has always been a very cornerstone of just my overall daily, weekly, monthly, your routines. And it's usually built around different events. One of the things that's shifted over for me over the last few years is the pivot from being very cardio heavy, because that's the go to for me. That's my easy button.
I love going out for a run. I love going out for a bike ride. I love just enjoying the outdoors. That to me was good for many years of my life, but then I started to learn that as I aged and got into midlife, the importance of strength training and the importance of flexibility. And so I've tried to integrate all of those into my weekly routine.
And I would say that it's challenging for me for sure, because I just want to go back to my go button, Like get on a Peloton and just go ride for an hour or go out for a trail run or go Nordic skiing depending on the season where we live. So that's one of the things that I'm trying to make more of an emphasis on is that strength and flexibility.
Rob: You said it was the easy button, and I agree with you. That is the easy button for me right now, which is probably why I avoid the other two. So it's easy for me to go out for a run because I'm somewhat in shape for running. I can actually go out and do a decent run right now, but to go and lift weights, I'm sore. I'm actually pretty decently sore after the end of a good strength training workout.
In fact, I did a full body strength training dumbbell workout just two days ago and I'm still having trouble walking around. And I thought my legs were in decent shape, but not strength training shape. And so it's easy just to go out and, I'm just going to go for a quick run or a really long hike, but the strength training and trying to be more well rounded. I like you, I got stuck with one. And so there was a period of time in my, you know, thirties where all I did was strength train, did no cardio at all.
And yes, I was bulking up and gaining size and I was strong, but my cardio was in the toilet. And I've never really done any flexibility training. I've taken a couple of yoga classes. I know they're good for me to do, but again, I get sore after them today, so I ended up avoiding them a little bit more and I don't take on that challenge. And so that's one of the big things I'm trying to do is to round out all those things.
My word for the year is balance. And so balancing out cardio strength and flexibility is important. So as you think about future proofing yourself, why are all three important to you as you think about future proofing yourself?
Brent: For me, a lot of it has to do with injury prevention. And I've mentioned this on past episodes is, you know, I have some lower back issues that I've been navigating and this has been going on for several years, so it's not something new to me. And a lot of it has to do with that flexibility, that mobility and truly understanding the importance of core strength. I like to do yoga a couple of times a week. I'm starting to do more core workouts.
You can't sacrifice those things. And I'm learning ten years ago, I could stop doing some of these strength workouts and I'd still go compete and I'd still feel pretty good. I like how you described it, tying it back to your word for the year, your theme for the year and balance, is if I don't have a balance of those three, I'll pay the price. And then it limits me in everything else I could do. And that's a real challenge for me.
I find one of the challenges I have is there's so many options of expertise out there and routines that you can follow and everybody's got their latest and greatest fad associated with exercise. How do you approach it? Because you said you recently have just started to do strength training again, what was your technique to pick up a routine?
Rob: So for me, I had to start simple and I had to start with making it as easy as possible to go and do something. As we're discussing these topics today, my challenge to our audience is to pick one thing to implement, pick one thing simple just to implement to increase your health span. And if you're an overachiever, you can pick one thing in each one of these categories, but really it's starting simple. And so I'm going to go back to the simple start I had from a strength training standpoint, Brent, is I got a set of dumbbells and it's easy entrance into lifting weights as I'm starting off and using lighter weights right now and trying not to get hurt. I've gone down the rabbit hole on YouTube trying to find videos to watch and trainers to follow.
And for me, the easy button is to do it in my home and not have to drive to a gym, not have to go someplace. Now reality, I'd probably get a much better workout if I was working out with a trainer and saw a professional and had a professional help working with me specifically. But I want to start off in the easy side. What's going to be the lowest barrier to entry for me is going into my garage using a set of dumbbells, and I put a small TV out there so I can watch YouTube videos. I'm now in the process of searching for a couple different ones to watch and to follow where I can get a quick twenty, thirty, forty minute workout in.
Those are the cup, some of them that I've been doing most recently, or like thirty minute hit videos where you're hitting high intensity and going for thirty minutes, and I leave sweaty and sore a little bit, but not so sore I can't do anything at all, which is the mistake I made in my thirties and early forties, is if I was lifting weights, I'd go big, and then I wouldn't be able to lift for, a week because I was way too sore. So I'm trying to start off a little bit lighter weight, easier barrier to entry, and doing it here at home with just a quick set of dumbbells and some of those exercise bands.
Brent: That's a cool way to approach it. It's funny. It's very humbling, Rob, because once you start doing the dumbbells, you're like, wow, I'm using 10 pound dumbbells right now. You're like, wait a minute. That seems silly.
But there's this buildup period. And what I find is if I'm smart about the buildup, it's just sustainable long term. If I just go heavy right out of the gates or I push myself really, really hard right out of the gates, meaning if I've taken a month off and I just go back into it, then I'm very, very hesitant to go back to it tomorrow or the next day because I just beat myself up too much. So there's a process of entering into the space. I like you, I have to figure out the absolute easy button.
My go to today is Apple Fitness. I have the Apple ecosystem with the iPad and the watch and the phone. And I use Apple Fitness because I can go in and I try to do a four week routine or a four week plan, and I sit down and they have this AI function within it that actually will help you plan out. So, hey, what do I want to do? Okay, I want to do total body workouts for forty minutes a day, four days a week is usually what I pick.
And then I'll add in core on top of that. And then I'll add in yoga on top of that, not all in the same days. So I spread it out over six days. And for me, turn on my phone, it's there. If I'm traveling, it's there.
And I just have to create this ultimate easy button, because if I don't, I can wander around. I remember when I used to, years ago, like having gym memberships, I'd walk in there and I'd almost be paralyzed because I'm like, what am I going to do? If I had a trainer, great. If I did a spin class, great. If I joined a circuit training, great.
Those worked really well. But for me, I didn't have the discipline to come in with a workout for that day, like a routine for that day. I just wander around. I do a little bit of bench press, do a little bit of curls, maybe do some squats and then go do a steam and then have a giant smoothie at the end. So that counterbalance, I would always think that 1,000 calorie smoothie was great for me, not really.
Now with the advent of some of these apps are so good. I like Apple Fitness just because of the ecosystem and there's professionals in there. There's great trainers. You start to get to know the trainers and their personalities. And so every four weeks I do a reset.
How did that go for me in that four week period of time? And it is an auto button. If it's Monday, I just go in, okay, what's my Monday workouts? It just starts to lay them out and I just do it. And that's been my routine.
And then for the difference, Rob, that's been helpful for me is I don't necessarily plan the cardio. I just know I always will do cardio. So I know I'll do cardio like two days a week and that just naturally happens. So I don't worry as much about the cardio. I do much more that strength and mobility is so important.
So I just want to make sure I have an easy button to do it and I stick with it. So that's been working for me, that's probably been a couple years of routine and I'm really happy with the outcome.
Rob: You said easy button. I also will call it the ego button and not going to the gym and using a 10 pound dumbbell and everybody else around me using 25, thirty, fifty pound dumbbells. My ego doesn't get hurt in my garage. That's actually kind of nice that I don't get, you know, comparison envy of other individuals. So it's a much easier barrier.
I don't get discouraged as much. So I'm only actually competing against myself anyway. We're all
Brent: doing that surf synergy, surf camp in middle part of 2026. Wait till you do the yoga class and you look around, that is humiliating.
Rob: Well, I'm going to do yoga before we get there. I'm not going to be humiliated. I'm going to try and hold my own when we get to that class.
Brent: It is one of those things where that is something that is really intimidating for me because I'm not overly flexible. I'm actually really inflexible. And so I see people doing these moves. I'm like, I don't even know how that's possible. And then I look so awkward.
I'm completely out of place. So yes, I like to do yoga. Yes, I do it by myself in my house. Not even around anybody in my house. I try to just do it without anybody seeing because I know I'll just be comedy of errors.
Rob: And grunting the whole time.
Brent: Yes.
Rob: Well, you do mention Apple Fitness is the place you go. I have a really good friend that works in the NFL and he uses his Peloton app as a fitness app. And rather than going into the gym at the facility, he actually does it in his in in the comfort of his home. He gets up super early and he pulls it up on his phone and the and the flexibility to do that versus going into a gym, he does it from his home off of Peloton. And again, we're in a day and age when there's so many options available to you that it there's really no excuse for starting something because it is accessible.
It's free. There's tons of free options out there. You don't have to sign up for anything and pay memberships to start exercising. You can get access to incredible people and professionals from a free standpoint today. Just have to be okay with commercials in the middle of your workout.
Brent: One of the things that I'll say, Rob, is, and I just want to encourage people to think about it the way you just described. This has to be an easy button and there's a lot of really good options. Even if you're paying $30 a month for one of these services, go do it. I did the Peloton for a couple of years. It was really good because they've expanded their catalog.
So it's beyond just the bike. They've got the yoga, they've got the strength training. These are all pros in there. They're giving you good advice. And so you going to figure out what works best for you, but the challenge is, is go do it.
And one output I want to share that worked really well, and I noticed it last year for me, is I did more strength training last year than I've done any other year in probably the last twenty years, let's say. And every event I did last year that was an endurance related event, I did better than I thought I would and better than prior years. So I did Cocodona 250, I paced you for about 50 miles of that. I felt incredible. I did very little running going into that because I was worried about the knees and just some of the impact.
I did different types of cardio training, like a StairMaster elliptical type stuff in a lot of strength training. I finished the year last year with a half marathon and I did better last year than I did when I did the exact same race four years ago. I just felt better. I relate it to the strength training and the mobility work that I've been doing is not overemphasizing just pure go for a run, factor those others in. I got the benefits.
So I think that's a proving point for me. It worked, and that's something I want to continue on with.
Rob: From an exercise and physical standpoint, this is really future proofing, as Brent said, future injuries. And I think there's a study out there that says fall injuries are the one of the biggest, if not the largest reason why baby boomers are in care facilities that's falling. And so what can you do today to future proof that injury from actually occurring? Alright. We're going to move on to the most controversial topic, Brent.
This might be the most controversial topic you and I have ever discussed on this podcast, diet. Why do you think diet is so controversial?
Brent: Diet's like politics and religion. People just stick with their point of view and they rarely budge. And it could be with friends, it can be with work colleagues, whatever it is, people love their diets.
Rob: They love what they eat.
Brent: Yeah, and let's not even call it a diet, it's just their intake, whatever they think is the flavor of the day. And I've been in conversations where people are arguing that butter's healthy and butter's not healthy. I've been in arguments where people are saying eggs are healthy and eggs are not healthy. And then you get into the actual quote unquote diets and everybody's going to argue, but it's amazing how quickly people shut down outside viewpoints. It's like, nope.
This is how I operate. Nope. This is this is the only way.
Rob: The only way. It's that absolute is this is the only way to do it.
Brent: Yeah. It's it and it's unfortunate that the open mindedness is going into the wayside because there's a lot of really good things and a lot of good literature out there, but then it also, there's a lot of really bad literature and bad advice. So it's a really tricky one as a human to really understand what is truly helping you and what is hurting you.
Rob: You can find a doctor that's going to emphasize any diet. Any diet. And there is actually scientific evidence that every diet is good for you and every diet is bad for you. It just depends upon who's doing the research, right?
Brent: Yeah, yeah, their credibility. And I think the age of introducing AI is elevating that and amplifying it because it's highlighting some of these articles that are written. And some of those articles are written by big food manufacturing companies, or they're trying to promote a new product. And it's just a really interesting thing, but people love what they eat.
Rob: Are there any absolute truths from a diet standpoint that we might be able to share here today that you can think of? Because I can think of a couple.
Brent: I was fortunate in my prior life, I worked at a private equity firm and our focus was on improving human health through nutrition. So I got to see about a thousand businesses over five years. So maybe two to 300 companies per year in the healthier food space. And what was interesting about being an investor is I got to see all the pitches and how they're positioning their product. Pretty much 99% of them would pitch it to me as like, this is the healthiest product.
And you know, it's not going to be true in all cases. But one of the things that we got to work with a lot of doctors, a lot of professionals in this space, there are some common truths. Sugar is not good. When you think about high fructose corn syrup, you think about all these different variations of sugar, there's so much sugar in the food we consume because it's an addiction and it just draws people to a product. It has been proven that that is not good.
It's very similar to the research around smoking. It's just not good. So that's one that always comes up. So that's sugar. And the other one that always comes up is overly processed food.
And that is generally considered not healthy for you. So that's tricky because if you go to your grocery store, we'd always refer to it as the center of the store. A lot of times the over processed food, if you look at the ingredient panel, you can't pronounce most of the stuff on it. And that's the trick there. Now, I'm not saying all processed food is bad, but they generally ultra processed foods aren't going to be healthy for you.
So those are the themes that come out. I don't do you have any other ones, Rob, that come to mind?
Rob: Those are the main two. And even the processed foods, the amount of added sugar into processed foods is crazy. Things you would never think needed sugar have added sugar in it. And in fact, one of the things you share with me, Brent, a few it's going back three or four years ago, I think about it every time I have one. But that your body, depending upon the types of ingredients in something, your body will process it different.
So the phrase you said was that bagel. Your body doesn't know the difference between that white bread bagel and a bag of Skittles. Now, I haven't stopped eating. I've reduced the amount of bagels I might eat from time to time, but your body doesn't process it any different even though it's a bread product versus a high sugar content piece of candy, which most people think are bad. Not saying you shouldn't eat bagels, please don't take that at all, but your body might process it differently than I had expected it to.
Brent: It's really interesting when you look at it the way you just described it, and you and I were talking about that years ago, it's almost the blind side of it. So your body is blind to what you're eating. It's just how is it responding to it? And so what was happening when you have a bagel is you get this big spike because of the sugars in the bagel and so forth. And the same thing happens with Skittles.
Now Skittles has a lot of other things that are going to really be a negative, the dyes and things like that, that come with it. But it's really fascinating when you get into the science of food and your body responds to two different categories food the same way. And you're like, what, how is that possible? I remember having a conversation with a good friend of mine and he outlined his breakfast every day. And he's like, I'm really trying to be healthy.
And we broke it down and his breakfast was basically just a giant bowl of sugar, but it was all sugar that he thought was fine to eat. Yes, a bowl of berries is great, but then he was adding honey and then he was taking oatmeal and he was adding all sorts of things to it that just created so much sugar to it, that he would get this energy bump like crazy. And then he would crash within an hour or two. So it's interesting as you think about the science of food and really challenging yourself, but this is where it becomes so controversial is somebody's going to argue with us right there. Somebody's going to say, Hey, I produce this product and we do our best to put the best ingredients and so forth.
Totally get it. I'm not here to debate you. I just want to look at the merits of it. And what I try to think about with diet is what's helping me promote my health span and what is pulling myself away from that? And it's hard.
And this is to me of all the things we're going to talk about is my absolute biggest challenge button is diet. Is the
Rob: thing you and I struggle with probably the most.
Brent: Absolutely. And for me, it comes down to, I've been a healthy eater my whole life. My mother was very adamant about lots of vegetables, salad every night at dinner, trying different types of food. The healthy eating has been a part of my upbringing and I've just carried it forward. My biggest crutch is quantity.
I can eat and eat and eat, and that is a challenge. Go back to your twenty years ago question. Well, twenty years ago, my metabolism was much different than it is today. I just find that the quantity piece is something that I've always struggled with and I'm working on it and I'm getting better, but I would say that there's a lot of going backwards in this one, maybe two steps forward, five steps backwards.
Rob: I have both a quantity and then I will call it quality, diet issues right now. That's probably the biggest thing. I shared this with you offline and I'll share it with our group. I'm the heaviest today that I've probably been in the last ten, maybe even fifteen years from a weight standpoint. And it is truly diet related, not exercise.
Because I am still active and still regularly doing things. Now we're just adding weight lifting to it, but mine is diet and it's quality and quantity of food. So way too much food. And then I've gotten off of the diet that actually helped me lose the most amount of weight and be at the healthiest weight and has reduced my cholesterol to where I wasn't needing medication. I got off that diet in the last eight months, completely off of it and increased the amount of not necessarily processed foods, but not food that works with me.
And I do think, Brent, that there is some validity to certain types of diets resonate with different people. I think any diet, if you stick to it, is probably better than no diet at all. Actually, you could you could say that, right? Whether it be keto, paleo, vegan, whatever it is, staying true to the diet will keep you clean in what you're eating and let your body process. That's the biggest thing is just eating clean foods.
But ten years ago, my wife and I went down the path of mostly plant based. So very plant forward. I'm not going to say we're vegan because we're definitely not, but we are very plant heavy. And that started ten years ago after a trip with you and your spouse and sharing some of the things that you were doing with your diet, and we started experimenting with it. And before I jump into the experiment that we did, why don't you go ahead and share kind of how your diet has evolved and what it is today, and then I'll go into my experiment with that diet.
Brent: For most of my life, would just be a flexitarian. I just eat whatever's in front of me, but I would try to eat it with the right type of quality of food. I was always leaned towards organic foods from a vegetables and fruit standpoint, and I felt like that was something good. Now I have gone through periods of time where if I go back in my twenties and thirties, I would just eat whatever's in front of me. And if it was inexpensive, I would just eat it.
So I'm guilty. My guilty pleasures back then were like macaroni and cheese, ramen, things like that.
Rob: Frozen pizzas.
Brent: I I took my college diet and I kept it for a solid ten years after college because it was just so good, but I've evolved since then. One thing that happened to our household, so my wife, Carolyn, this is over twenty years ago, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. So with MS and what she was experiencing was really challenging because as we met with a lot of neurologists, they came back and said, you know, get on the meds. At the time the meds were pretty aggressive. And it was from my recollection, this is a while ago, was an injectable that she would take every week.
And she'd have flu like symptoms possibly one to two days a week. That is not something she was willing to sign up for. This was back in her early thirties and it just did not make sense. So she did a ton of research and she came across some doctors, I believe they're out of Australia that were recommending a plant based diet. And she said, all right, I'm going to try this.
I don't want to go on meds at this stage of my life, I'm pretty young. We were just considering starting a family at that point in time. And she's like, I don't want to be this to be a big part of my life as the meds, but I also want to be healthy because the MS is debilitating. So she decided to go plant based. She was very, very disciplined with it and it worked.
And I saw her recovery and it was incredible. And so I started to follow along with that. Now, Carolyn is the predominant cook in the house. And when I say predominant, we're talking 99%.
Rob: That's even generous, Brad. She's a 100% the cook in the house.
Brent: Come on, Rob, give me some credit. What I've learned is from her through the plant based, it's naturally just bled into my eating habits as well. And here's what I've gotten out of it. So over the last ten to fifteen years, I'm predominantly plant based, is I just feel better. I feel healthier, I sleep better, all of the attributes that come with it.
And the moment I veer from that, you were describing where you're at today. The moment I go away from that, I just start to feel lethargic. I'm less interested in exercise. I'm sleeping much more irregular. And the diet for me is it just worked.
And so I'm not here to say everybody should be plant based. I'm not here to say everybody should be paleo. What I'm here to say is find out what works really well for you. And as you said, stick with it. I recently had my annual health check and all of my metrics were good.
I contribute that or that's connected to my diet. But I have to say similar to you, Robin, I want to get back on this is, I would say the last six months has probably been a weak moment for me. And I haven't figured out exactly what triggered that. The weight side of things and just how I all feel day to day has been in decline for just about six months. And I'm recommitted to it over the last couple of months saying, this has going to change because I want to do a lot of great things for the rest of my life.
And I know if I don't solve some of those today, then it's going to make the next, you know, in ten years from now, I look back and be like, why didn't I just stop eating so much?
Rob: The challenge I have is for not just personally, but for our listeners is to try something and that's maybe the biggest thing and to see what works for you and then stick with it. The diet that works for me is is very similar to yours, Brent, and it only came about because of experimenting with it. And I'd like to experiment on myself and see what am I capable of doing, how can I challenge myself, let me try something different? And it came from a conversation we had where we were asking Carolyn what she would have for her birthday. And this goes back ten years ago.
And her answer, I can tell you to this day, ten years removed, it was her answer was Hippie Loaf. And I'm like, what the heck is Hippie Loaf? And she explained it to us. It has rice and quinoa and black beans and tomatoes and garlic, and you bake it like meatloaf. And my wife and I got home from hanging out with you guys, and we tried to make it that next weekend.
And it was really good. I was surprised at how good it was. And I was the guy that was actually really negative of a vegan diet or a plant based diet. I poo pooed, like, the protein conversation that you and I get to have all the time now, or I just love eating meat, especially steak and chicken and chicken wings and all of those things. But I tried it, and it tasted really good.
And it was really just replaced that meatloaf consistency and flavor for me. And that was one experience with it. Right? And it felt good the next day. Felt pretty good the next couple of days, in fact.
And so then we started actually doing it a day a week. Alright. We're going to plan one meal, it's just going to be plant based meal, and we're going to have to go research and look up options and try new things, and we're going to go research this. And I unlike you, I actually like to cook. And so there was a lot of ingredients and a lot of different spices and things I've never tried.
It was all an experiment. And one day a week turned into two days a week, and I felt better. Actually, I felt much lighter. My joints weren't bothering me as much, and I could eat as much as I wanted and not really watch my weight change. That was the other thing.
It was so fiber heavy. I didn't have a problem with gaining weight, so my volume could actually be really high from an overall intake standpoint. But a day a week became two days a week, became three days a week, became four days a week, then became the predominant of my diet. And I was training for pretty big events during this time, and a lot of my inflammation and joint issues were going down. And the biggest impact it had on me was my cholesterol level went down and it dropped pretty significantly.
And I've never been medicated before, but I've always been on the borderline of needing medications from doctors prescribing a statin for me. And it kept it down in a elevated state, but not a medicated state of needing medication. When I deviate from that, I can feel it in my joints. My cholesterol actually is at an all time high right now at the most recent blood work I've had because I haven't been on this plant forward diet for me that has that typically works really well. My cholesterol is high.
My weight is high. My joints are inflamed, and I really need to get back into that. It's just a habit that fell off really after the big race that I did. I did a big race. I felt I was justified that, I'm healthy.
I could eat whatever I want because I've been so active and been so such high cardio. I got so far removed sugars back in the diet, unfortunately, at a at a much higher level than it should be right now. So that's one of the areas that I'm really committed to focusing on over the next couple of months to fix.
Brent: We started our conversation today talking about exercise and you and I figured out there's different easy buttons that we can introduce with exercise. And we both experienced it about the same time, the diet. And we started to see, I didn't veer as much away from the diet. Yeah, I'm a little bit guilty. So it wasn't perfect over the last six to eight months, but I still have that conscious around it.
One of the things that I've been trying and it actually has been really healthy and helpful for me is I did a lot of research on this and I use this app and I'm just going to make sure I get it right. The app is called Eat Right Now, and it talks about the psychology of eating. And it's about mindfulness eating in the sense of when you sit down and have a meal, simple things, take a bite, put your fork down, think about what you just ate, just explore it and then take another bite. For me, that's helpful because what it's doing is not allowing me to just go to my normal course of shoveling it as fast as possible and not worry about what I'm eating, just eat, eat, eat. And so it's teaching me how the psychology of the eating habit works.
I've never been a stress eater per se. I'm just a afternoon snacker. My energy gets low and I'll just kind of graze throughout the house and I'll just find things. I'll just eat, if there's a bag of nuts there, like pistachios, I'll just eat handful after handful. If there's a bowl of fruit, I'll eat a bunch of fruit.
If there's a sandwich that's half eaten in the fridge, I'll just eat the sandwich. And that's all before dinner. So now I'm trying to understand the behavior associated with it. This ties back to the episode that we did right at the tail end of last year around habits. And I'm trying to understand the habits of my food and the intake.
And I find it really fascinating because I'm trying to find the easy button. I'm trying to find a coach to do it. Now there's a lot of coaches out there. There's so many options here. I just wanted to pick an app that was relatively easy for me to follow.
And it was not a calorie counter app, and it wasn't specific to a diet app. It's more around the habits of eating, and then it will ask questions. So you could have chosen eating an apple, but instead you ate three handfuls of potato chips. So why is that? Well, it's a reward system.
And so I'm understanding that, and it's been really helpful for me, Rob, but I will say, I think it's important in this part of our conversation to say, what are we doing about it? Because we both came into saying, we're not exactly where we want to be. So my commitment is I'm sticking to this app. I signed up for six months of it. Every day has like ten to fifteen minutes of mini kind of tutorials, like videos, things that you go through.
It's really easy to follow. It's got a couple other tools in the app. I'm not here to promote the app. I don't know anybody who's created the app. It was through my research.
It seems to be working for me because I'm a scientific type person, engineering background. I like to understand the data behind it and the emotions and so forth. So I'm enjoying that. So I'm going to commit to that for the next six months or through the middle part of the year. And I'll report back at one point in time.
So that's one of my big steps, because I'm trying to address the lifelong challenge of overeating. That's my big one that I'm trying to address.
Rob: And while this app is new for you to use, right? You don't have significant experience with it. It's definitely going to be And we'll come back and talk about this in a future episode, Brent. And this this is something you and I talk about quite a bit, so I know it'll we'll hit a future episode kind of where we're at with this process now. The thing that I'm doing, and I know you've done this before, we're not going to get the details on this today, but I'm going to go on a Prolong fast.
And there's a bunch of science behind that. I have the kit ordered because I'm going to start a five day fast as kind of a system reset. And I typically work well when it's a dramatic change. It's not just a subtle thing. It's like go big or go home is my, you know, that's my mindset on a lot of areas of my life.
And so rather than just kind of trickle into this, I'm going to use this fast over five days to really try and do a reset of my system and do a full on gut reset, a mindset, a stomach size, an eating approach, and just kind of blow the thing up as a reset moving forward and then get back to what I know works well, which is a plant forward diet for me. I've already gotten rid of all the sugar, extra sugar in the house from the holidays. That's already been all expunged. Unfortunately, I ate too much of it before I threw it away. But I can't say that anything that was left as of this morning is gone.
And so that's my commitment is to start this fast. And we'll talk about the fast at a future episode that I'm doing and some of the science behind it. I know you've done it before as well, but really a system reset.
Brent: So for our audience, our listeners, here's my challenge to you. If you've got any good ideas for Rob and I or other listeners around diet specifically or exercise or sleep as we'll get into sleep here in a minute, head over to Substack and share some of your ideas. Just go to the episode page for this episode and just share some of your learnings. We're not looking to make this controversial whatsoever, but if there's been a reset program or more importantly, something that you've incorporated into your daily life that is sustainable over a long period of time. To me, you and I, I think that GILTI component is we often tie our diet to our exercise or a big event.
So we just start to get really healthy leading up to it. We're exercising more, but I think our challenge is how do we actually manage the in between state? Because there's going to be in between states, it's going to be three months, six months, nine months a year. And how do we have good habits throughout that period of time so we don't go through this roller coaster up and down ride with our diet. Super excited about that.
If you have any ideas, head over to Midlife Circus within Substack and share it. I would greatly appreciate it.
Rob: Brent, you've talked about sleep I think way too often on this podcast. I'm surprised you haven't taken a nap already today. I know we're recording at 08:30 in the morning and you haven't gotten a nap in just yet, but I know you're probably going to take one this afternoon. Why does sleep hit this as a topic for us? Not a lot of people have sleep in HealthSpan, it's diet, exercise, and a number of other things, but why did sleep hit this as we were preparing for this episode?
Brent: I think we're in a period of time over the last five to seven years where sleep has become a broader topic of a lot of health experts and the benefits that are associated with sleep. And I can go back to my early days of my career and the motto at the time was sleep for when you're dead. And I find that I lived it really well. I was a pro at it. I would sleep four to five hours a night, weekend, week out.
And I felt like I was more productive. I could do anything. If I go back in time, I don't know if I was more productive. I think the work that I would do from 10PM to 2AM was usually shoddy work and I'd have to redo it in the next morning. Really for me is when I was growing up, my mom and I used to chuckle, Brett, you're just not a good sleeper.
And so I always just had that in the back of my mind. So I just built my routine around four to five hours a night. And if I got six, wow, that's a big deal. But then I learned that I had a few health scares along the way, and it kept coming back to sleep. My cardiologist, I had a heart issue seventeen years ago.
My cardiologist is like, you can't, this eighty hour work week thing is not working for your body. You're so proud of just sleeping so little. Let's see if we can change that and what would the outcome? Well, sure helped me out a lot. I started with learning more about my own sleep routines.
I got an aura ring. I think I'm now five years in. So I've got all this data over five years and I've made a lot of improvements. And one book that I read that was really helpful for me was Doctor. Matthew Walker's book on Why We Sleep.
I think that came out in somewhere around like 2017 or 2018. And it just helped me understand sleep, but also some of the things that are negatively impacting my sleep. But what I find is sleep is the catalyst for all the other things. If I get a good night's sleep, I'm better with my exercise, I'm better with my diet, I'm better with my relationships, I just show up as a better person. And that's typically for me, if I get more than six hours a night of sleep And I target seven and usually I'm somewhere in that range between six and eight.
Rob: I'm happy to say that in the last, I would say, ten years, I've gotten really good at sleeping. Now I'm at a place where I've been pretty consistent getting eight hours of sleep every night, really focused on sleep hygiene. So I think there's two pieces to it. One is that there's a joke in the conversation around midlifers look forward to sleep. I then go would say go one step further, and what is the quality of that sleep, which is what you're tracking, Brent.
It's not just the quantity of hours, what time did you go to bed, but how effective were those hours at restoring your mental function. And so what is a sleep hygiene that gets involved? And I know what negatively impacts me are really just a couple of things. And we've talked about them earlier today. One of the big things that impacts the quality of my sleep is my diet.
And so if I'm having sugar late in the afternoon at all, it impacts my sleep. The worst thing on my sleep is alcohol. Period. Any bit of alcohol at any point during the day, my sleep is messed up and I can see that through my scores. But I know that difference between having alcohol or sugar before going to bed or even caffeine late in the afternoon, all three of those things will give me a really poor quality sleep.
And so I've been very mindful of that over the last couple of years.
Brent: For me, similar to you, my big three that impact my sleep is number one is what I consume from a food perspective and when. So if I have a meal really late, I just sleep very poorly. But within that meal, if there's a lot of sugar, forget about it. It just spikes in and it usually hits me a few hours into my sleep and then all of sudden I wake up. So the food intake is really important for me.
The exercise, if I'm exercising regularly, I generally sleep better. And the last one, which is really challenging for me to manage, but I'm getting better at is what kind of information am I consuming in the hours leading up to sleep? So if I'm on my phone or my computer doing anything work related late into the evening, it will just carry into my sleep. It's just part of that, I'm digesting whatever I was working on and I'm trying to solve it throughout sleep. I just don't sleep a sound.
So I have to make adjustments to certain things. I like to shut the digital side of my world down. The one thing that I did eliminate my life for the most part, many times throughout the last twenty years is alcohol. And I heard this awesome quote years ago is alcohol steals happiness from tomorrow. If I have two beers, as an example, in the evening, I will not sleep.
Like I will wake up at two in the morning and I will be like wide awake. And my guess it's something to do with processing the sugars. So I just stopped. I mean, I may have a beer here and there, but it's so rare these days that beer is sacrificing a good night's sleep, which then could lead into tomorrow. And then as we age, might lead into a couple of beers might lead into multiple days of recovery.
I don't want that. I want the best version of myself every day. And so alcohol has been something I've eliminated for the most part. It's worked for me. The benefit I have today is there's a lot of great non alcoholic beers as an example.
Rob: A really good non alcoholic beers out there right now.
Brent: So I might have one of those. You going to be careful of the sugar content in some of them, but I may have that. And I've also gotten past, and I think this is just part of aging, not giving a darn of what other people think if I'm at a party and I'm drinking a glass of water. Like, I just don't care. I used to be so self conscious about that.
I'm the only guy I went on these guys' trips and I'd be the only person that wouldn't drink, but then I realized I can be as goofy as the other ones, but I can stop being goofy when I need to. When it just becomes too far, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I'm like, okay, let's move on. Let's move on. But that is something I'm proud of because I just want to sleep better, but I actually want to go back to this whole health span. I just want to wake up every day and just have the best version of myself for that day.
And alcohol was one of those, but back to the bigger category, sleep. Sleep is a leading indicator in so many ways for me. And if I can promote healthy sleep, I try to figure out all the things that I can do to make a better night's sleep.
Rob: Well, know your abstaining from alcohol has had a pretty positive impact on me and my overall health because I know when you and I do go out for dinner or go out for an afternoon or even you and I did a couple day trip And I had nonalcoholic beer the entire time or I don't drink when you and I go out to dinner that evening and actually even healthier that night. So just being around you has caused me to be healthier in my overall lifestyle and avoid things that are just habitual that, you know, you go out, you grab a couple beers. Well, I know if I'm going out with Brent, I might be having a glass of water or a couple non alcoholic beers, which are better for my overall health.
Brent: Well, you can thank my wife for the eating side of it Cause she's the bigger influence on that. The alcohol, I'll take the win on that one. But it is surrounding yourself with people that have similar interests. And that's one of the things, if you're really trying to own your health, sometimes it is the crew you run with might be the ones that are causing negativity in your health. That's a look in the mirror activity and say, is this the right group?
I don't want to get into the relationship side and that aspect of it, because I can get pretty deep. We'll talk about that at another time, but it is something that I think about.
Rob: Any closing thoughts today? I like how
Brent: you said about mid episode today or mid conversation is, let's all try one thing and let's stick with it. So if you know your Achilles heel, your really tricky one is exercise, and maybe it's that cardio stuff for you, try walking thirty minutes a day. That's a great start. If you've got a pet, just take your dog for a walk. You know, if you have a dog.
I find that picking something simple, you know, we're past now the new year's resolutions that was a little bit ago for everybody. One of the things why new year's resolutions fail is because people try to do everything all at once. And when you introduce so much complexity, it's so easy to just give up on all of it. So we've talked about a few apps, Apple Fitness, Rob is doing stuff on YouTube videos. Rob is doing a Prolon intermittent fast.
I'm using the app to really help on the psychology of eating. If you find that you're really struggling to sleep, I recommend following Doctor. Matthew Walker. He's got really good information on sleep and on a lot of podcasts, he's got his books. So pick something and challenge yourself, whether it's for the next thirty days or the next six months, try it and report back.
Rob: Brent and I, as we stood this conversation, we're not advocating for one thing versus another. And so but we do know there are some areas that we do all need to focus on as we enter midlife. It's getting a really good healthy night's sleep. It is being mindful of the diet and being conscious of what you're ingesting into your body and physically moving your body on a regular basis. All of those things, if you're improving them, will improve your health span, which is really what the topic of this conversation was today.
As I said, this was a follow-up to our episode on experiences and adventures have expiration dates. And so as you think about those expiration dates coming, is health one of those things that's going to make one of those experiences go away?
And if there's somebody in your life that you actually want to have these experiences with and want to go on adventures with, please share this episode and even that prior episode with them as something that they might be able to get better at doing themselves so you can have those experiences on an ongoing basis with that individual. You can't tell this is something that Brent and I talk about quite often. It's a topic of runs that we go on. We read books about it. We listen to podcasts about it.
This is kind of a world we spend time on and in trying to optimize and become better versions of ourselves, not just today, but in the future. We're not perfect, and you heard a lot of today talk about the mistakes that we make. I did not talk about the donuts that I still sneak every once in a while, which I need to stop by making this public now. I'm probably going to stop eating donuts. But hopefully, this sparks a little thought in all of you in thinking about health span a little bit different and starting to make some changes today and treating your health as one of your greatest midlife assets.
So if I if you get to be 80 years old and you think about what at 80 would do you wish you would have told your 50 and 60 year old self to do, start to make some of those decisions today. As the director of your next great act, let your health take center stage and begin to take action to increase your health span.
Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder, the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice.
This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the big top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.