#059: Simple, Sustainable Ways to Increase Your Energy & Enhance Your Physical Wellbeing


Josh: So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. Thanks so much for joining me. I am so excited to be with you today wherever we are coming to you from. Wherever you’re joining us, whether you’re at the gym, whether you’re out for a walk, whether you are, you know, in your car, you’re just, you know, investing in your own self development, investing in yourself, spending time to take your life and your health and your happiness, your entrepreneurship and your real estate investing to the next level. I’m excited to be a part of your journey.

Josh: Today I have a special guest that I’m really excited to interview. His name is Joey Atlas. We met through a mutual friend, uh, and through a mastermind group. And we were introduced not that long ago, just a few months ago, and we’ve been planning up this opportunity to talk and I am selfishly, really excited to talk to Joey about health and wellness, but specifically about energy and about longevity.

Josh: As a cancer survivor, I think about death every day. I think about how can I live a longer life a more fulfilling life, but have a life of longevity and energy without chronic disease, without things like cancer and diabetes. And many of you know, as a cancer survivor, I have a horrible, horrible family history of disease. My father and my grandfather, my grandparents all had some sort of dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Josh: And I’m constantly looking for the right way to treat myself, to have longevity, to have energy, to put the right foods in my body, to have the right habits and routines and get amazing exercise so I can be here for the long term, but also have a really healthy and exciting and fun, you know, way of living. I don’t want to live a long life, but I have chronic disease and aches and pains and dementia and cancer and diabetes.

Josh: And so for a big part of our audience are men over the age of 40. And so Joey and I are going to talk specifically to you man out there over the age of 40. Joey has two degrees, two advanced degrees in exercise physiology. He has private clients all over the United States. His programs have been translated into five different languages. He’s also the inventor of a home gym system called Sculptor Fit and he is also the founder and owner of the Sculptor Fit studio down in Florida. Joey Atlas. Welcome to Accelerated Investor.

Joey: Thank you very much, Josh. It’s a pleasure to be here and I was looking forward to this ever since we had that phone call a couple of months ago. So thanks for having me.

Josh: Yeah, you bet, Joey. So let’s jump in real quick and start to talk about energy, um, specifically for men over the age of 40. So I’d like to hear your thought from all of your experience and working with clients and working with entrepreneurs to help them be peak performers. So much of it comes from the way we feel and how much energy we have, which comes from really how we treat our bodies. So why is it so important specifically for men over the age of 40 to do things differently and really start paying attention?

Josh: Because for me, I don’t know about you, but when I was in my twenties in my thirties, I played college football. I thought I was indestructible. I really didn’t necessarily treat my body the way I probably should have. I had a ton of fun. But some of that fun was honestly probably damaging in a way. The alcohol that I drank and the party and that we did and stand up late. So why is it at age 40? Why is it so important?

Joey: Yeah, it’s huge. So let’s give our listeners some context. At the time of this recording, I’m late 49, I’m going to be 50 soon. And having been in this just about my whole life, you start to look at things, you look at the deeper layers of all this stuff and the impact of proper exercise and nutritional habits, not just for the aesthetic appeal, but really for the functional elements that we need in life, right? So when you speak about energy, we can put that into two types of energy.

Joey: One, we have short-term energy. Like I need to get through this day with full energy. I need to be able to go lift those boxes from this office into that office. You know, you name it, right? So that’s short term energy we need and we have longterm energy, energy that we need to keep performing at our best through the whole week, through the whole month, through the whole fiscal year and beyond,  right?

Joey: So it’s a constant, like we need both of these types of energy to fuel us through every aspect of our life, whether it’s lifting a box or picking up the kids or you know, playing your favorite hobby, whatever it is, might be golf, might be tennis, might be fishing. You need acute on the spot energy for that, but then you also need energy in the terms of longevity. We need energy to keep us going, right? So it’s a three pronged approach actually. It’s how you train your body and I’m not talking about anything extreme or hardcore or beast mode crap, none of that.

Josh: Everyone wants beast mode, but let’s talk about what we can actually do, right?

Joey: Right, right. Then you have, how are we fueling the body? What are we putting in the body to affect how the body functions? And then we have the mindset part. How are we thinking in all aspects of our life to make all this very natural and second nature so that it becomes a constant for us and we’re not always struggling to find how do we get energy again? How do we get energy and strength back again? How can we perform better again? What did I do last time that made it work? We look at making it a constant way of life so that those energy supplies are always there. Does that make sense?

Josh: Absolutely. I love those three. So let’s do a deeper dive on those.

Joey: Which one do you want to start with?

Josh: Well, well mindset for me, because I feel like that’s where it starts. One, when I wake up in the day, especially in this world of all the social media interaction and distraction, I think it really starts in a lot of people’s cases in the first five or 10 minutes of their day, right? The mindset of what they’re thinking about that propels them forward into the rest of their day. And if that becomes a habit, it propels them into next month and next year. So what are your thoughts around crafting the right mindset for energy?

Joey: I love that you started there because that’s where this all begins, okay. So let’s take a common, not so much worst case scenario, but let’s take a common scenario. Somebody comes to me and I said, look, I heard what you did from my friend Bobby. I’ve been having trouble. I don’t know what the heck to do. I need your help too. And we’ll sit down and we’ll have a talk. We’ll get the history, we’ll get to the core of things. Why are they coming to me in the first place? What is it they’re really after? And more importantly, why haven’t they been able to get there themselves yet? What’s stopping them?

Joey: And so eventually we come down to these common denominators and it sounds something like this, Mike, Bobby, Jim, Frank, you name it, they haven’t been able to get their mental paradigm in a place that allows them to place priority on proper exercise and nutrition as a way of life forever. Instead of just getting ready for a vacation or reunion.

Josh: Got to get my beach body ready. I got to get ready for the summertime. I’ve got my daughter’s getting married, you know, I’m going on a vacation, I’ve got to get in shape now.

Joey: Right. Or I have my big medical exam coming up and if I fail that it’s going to create problems, right? So I need to get ready for my medical exam. So we look at the mindset in terms of where is this person at and what happened in their history that is not allowing them to develop a mindset of complete stability and longterm consistency, right? And so things come out like, well, you know, I always thought you had to have 90 minutes to be able to spend in the gym and that’s unrealistic for me now. Because I got the business and I’m married with the kids and 90 minutes at the gym isn’t, I just can’t do it, right?

Josh: Can’t squeeze them in just takes too much commitment. I’ve got better things got to do with my 90 minutes.

Joey: Right. It’s not realistic. And that’s cool. It’s like, so when this comes out and then we start getting to the answers that we need to overcome those misperceptions, right? Then you have, well you know, I love my beer and I love eating my big steak and I can’t be on diets. And I tried the Keto and I tried, you know, no carbs. And then I tried Atkins and I even tried the HCG shots and you know, it worked for two weeks and then I went crazy. I couldn’t, you know, we went on vacation and I couldn’t stay on the diet.

Joey: And so there’s this mindset, of course, we all know this, that everybody thinks you need to be on a diet to be in decent weight range and body composition. So that’s the next myth we have to overcome. Because that’s another huge falsehood that you have to be on some diet to be getting results with your body, right?

Joey: So once we tackle those two things and we let this person know, number one, you don’t have to go to the gym and go kill it, bro. And you know, balls to the wall. None of that stuff. I mean, I haven’t lifted a heavy weight in over 10 years and I’ll have college kids come to me at the beach. Like, dude, you’re not young man. You got a gray goatee, but you’re jacked. Like how do you do it? And I’ll just tell them right there, pull up my videos on YouTube and you’ll see exactly what I do and they can’t believe it. Like you’re not even lifting any weights. Like what’s the story here? So most people think you got to do hit training and you know, you got to do Crossfit if you want to, you know, be serious and get real changes with your body.

Joey: Well, for some people that’s okay. Especially millennials. Like you can get your injuries, you have time to rehab them, maybe get surgery. But for us guys in middle age and beyond, like that stuff breaks us down. Like we end up in the orthopedist office, we end up at the physical therapy office, the chiropractor. And you’re lucky if you’re not permanently damaged. I mean if it could be rehab. But the whole point is once you get somebody to learn that, no you can whittle this down to like 20, 30, 40 minutes a day average. You could do it right at home or at your office if you want to, to make your life easy. You cut out the gym commute, you cut out the falsehood of the excess of time that you need and you boil it down to the most essential basics. You simplify everything, right?

Josh: So what does a very simple, again, we don’t have time to go through a whole exercise plan and everybody’s going to be different, but give us a general idea of what would you kind of prescribe for an average male, busy entrepreneur, married or divorced with kids and busy and you know, 20 minutes sounds great and no heavy lifting. I would think, I like to lift heavy weights, but it’s not for everybody. I think a lot of guys would say, hey, 20 minutes with no heavy weights and I can do it without, you know, the commute to the gym and maybe even squeeze it in at lunchtime at the office. Like what does that look like? That sounds really appealing.

Joey: Yeah. Well, so on that note, I, like I told you before, I literally did half an hour right here behind me on my home gym. It’s in the office area, the home office area. I did 30 minutes and I’m done. Like that’s it, right? So if I can do that, anybody can do it. And so what it breaks down to is, for the average male, we’re going to put together an initial routine that focuses on the, what would probably be the weak parts of their body, the weak links in the chain. So that’s your core. We need to strengthen the lower back, the core muscles to make sure that that back is going to be strong as we move forward and build on top of that foundation, we’ll go in and make sure their knees are functioning properly. We’re going to make sure their shoulders, their elbows, their wrists and their neck are functioning properly.

Joey: So it’s a lot of slow controlled, appropriate body weight movements, resistance band movements, floor work. And then some mild accessories like there might be some light dumbbell work. There might be some light medicine ball work. But the real key is knowing how to move the body in relation to gravity and using these accessories if we need them in somebody’s program to properly synergize a package of movements that bring about changes in the body that actually nurture it, strengthen it and progress it instead of breaking it down like a lot of the popular programs do.

Josh: Wow. Yeah. So Joey, what sticks out right away is you talking about everything that’s probably a middle aged man feels pain in right. You start with the lower back. Like how many guys don’t have like oh my God, my lower back. And it’s like my core, right? Like who doesn’t wish they had like a tighter core? Even if they have a little bit of quote unquote beer belly like everybody would like to have. Just the feeling of feeling like a nice fit, tight abs and be able to get up and get down and get up the stairs, stand up and sit down out of their chair and move around, chase their kids around, chase their wife around. It’s kind of starts with the middle of our body. Then interesting you went like right to the knees and shoulders. And like for me, when I have pains in my right shoulder, and talk about getting old.

Josh: I, you know like two years ago my son was at his sixth grade or six year old buddies, birthday party were playing battle ball and at the end it’s parents versus kids. And I’m trying to throw this ball and hit the, hit these little boys as hard as I can. And sure enough like I leave the gym, I’m like oh my God, my shoulder. That was two years ago and finally, just maybe six months ago, I went to the Cleveland Clinic and actually physically went through about six months of therapy. Now my shoulder feels normal but that would never happen when I was 27 but it happened when I was 41, right. So all those areas, that for me sticks out right away. Because those are the places that I’ve thought, man, if I had a stronger back, stronger core, stronger knees, stronger shoulders, the center of my body feeling good, I could do almost anything.

Joey: Exactly. So most people are in, what we call it a deconditioned state, right? If you’re sedentary, if you haven’t been doing anything, whatever the reasons were, you’re deconditioned. So the first phase of a program is called reconditioning. We recondition the body to be able to build on that foundation so that the shoulders stay strong, the back stays strong, the knees stay strong, the neck stays strong, everything, the elbows, the wrists, they stay strong so that when we’re training for health, wellness, longevity, we’ve got a foundation that we built with intent in the first place.

Joey: Most popular programs in the mass market. They don’t do any of that stuff. They just go right to training hard. And where does that leave most people leave? Most people burnt out feeling like they’re being tortured or they just flat out get injured and like, know what I need time off. I’m not ready for this. And they’re back at square one. So at minimum, somebody listening, let’s say they’re ready to go tonight or tomorrow, the weekend, whenever they’re listening to this, the easiest thing for them to do to get started.

Joey: And I’ll say, obviously if you feel you need doctor’s clearance, go get your doctor’s clearance for movement, proper exercise, get on the floor, get either a floor mat from, you know, your girlfriend, your wife, whoever, or the kids, or just get a thick towel, put it on the floor and just start doing some basic core and hip moves. So we got the regular static plank, right. You basically get on your forearms and toes, you pull your abdomen in as you’re facing down, your eyes are looking down at the ground and you pull yourself into a plank position.

Joey: It’s a simple static exercise with many different advanced variations, but that’s the one you want to start with. You pull the abs in, you tighten the core, and you see how long you can hold it while you’re breathing gently. All right. And you start building a baseline there. And if you see oh, I held that for 20 seconds. Awesome. We’ll try again tomorrow. See how far I get, right? Then you turn over, you face up, you put your heels up on the edge of the couch or an ottoman or a chair that’s around knee-high. And then you do a reverse plank. So your eyes are looking up at the ceiling you’re facing up and your heels around the couch or the chair or the ottoman, and now you lift your butt, your glutes, your low back, and your, your legs off the ground.

Joey: So now that you’re in a reverse plank position, you’ve got all the paravertebral muscles coming into play now. All the lower back muscles, all the muscles along the spine that are supposed to be doing that to strengthen all the back muscles so that we have a strong back. We don’t have backache, we don’t have these chronic issues, these spasms, back going out. We, we build those muscles from along the backside to even out the core, right? And then from there of course we build, we do the side muscles and from there we build outward on this center of gravity core foundation. Sound like it makes sense?

Josh: Love it. Yeah and I love it Jody, because what I’m actually imagining is even myself at my office, what you just described of you know, core, forearm plank, flat, reverse plank. I could do that with my office chair that I’m sitting in. I can do that on the carpet, the ground right here next to my desk. I could do that for 10 or 15 minutes and do that along with some stretching exercises and other things. I’m sure you’ll tell us about simple jumping jacks, simple setups, simple stretching, core, hips, like the stuff that you started with. Just those two or three things I could see myself doing right here. So if I don’t get my workout in in the morning, typically I drop my kids off at school, I go right to the gym today. I didn’t squeeze that in because I had an 8:00 AM interview so I didn’t have much time.

Josh: But now I can envision myself like as soon as we’re done recording here, I can still go, you know do that right here on the floor and actually get that, get that in. So now you’ve got, not only have you address some of the physical part of the three legged stool that you mentioned, but now psychologically my mindset is starting to convince myself, I can do that. I can’t do 90 minutes of, you know, Crossfit, right? But I could do 10 or 15 minutes of planks on the floor right here. Like the mindset starting to pull it in. I’m starting to believe in that as an opportunity for me to have better health.

Joey: Right. It’s bringing clarity to somebody’s, right. Most people, and rightfully so, there’s so much information out there and confusion, they really don’t know what to do, right. So when you clarify things and simplify it and give them specific direction that’s safe and appropriate, then they take those actions and they realize, oh wow, like I just doing that I’m feeling better. Like I can feel my core is actually awake now and alive and my back isn’t stiff. And I actually feel like I have more energy just from doing that and triggering, you know, the things that go on inside the body from a chemical perspective, right? So now there’s like, okay, now this is starting to make sense. So maybe a different gentler approach is beneficial and can do things for me if I know what to do and what to add into this, right?

Joey: So from there we can add slow partial movement squats. You don’t need a big bar on your back. You don’t have to be holding massive dumbbells or a kettle bell. You could do slow controlled body weight squats, and if you are sedentary and have been deconditioned, especially those slow body weight squats done properly will reawaken your low lower body muscles. We’ll train the muscles, we’ll start to strengthen the ligaments, tendons, the joints, everything involved, right? Without crushing your spine with a bar on your back, without having to get in a leg press machine and put six plates on. None of that, right?

Joey: It’s all, these are all misperceptions that people hold on to which clouds they’re thinking on what they should be doing, but when you simplify and you show what can be done with just body weight and removing momentum from the moves and letting the muscle fibers actually perform through the movement slowly, then you start to get the physiological responses that make good things happen that are actually tangible.

Joey: You can feel them. Then from there, for an example, if we want to do a some kind of upper body, you know we have regular quote unquote guy pushups, then you have female pushups from the knees. Well, truth is those female or women pushups on the knees are actually awesome for a lot of deconditioned men and are the safest step to take. Instead of trying to go for all out military style pushups, you start with the modified version. It’s only partial body weight, but that’s what your body’s capable of doing, right? And when you do those right, slow, controlled, focused, it doesn’t matter how many you get, it doesn’t matter how many you jam into a minutes time period. What matters is the control, the focus, and the quality of each repetition, instead of how many. When you focus on that, the muscle fibers actually have to perform through the whole movement.

Joey: And because you’re controlling the movement, the joints actually stay safe through that movement. You don’t end up hurting yourself, you actually end up making the joint stronger in the process, right? So we’ve got the core, we’ve got lower body with simple body weight, slow squats, we’ve got modified pushups to help start getting the upper body going, right? You start creating a routine that rotates these in the, especially in the first few weeks, you start waking somebody’s body up to recondition and in a safe way that’s sustainable and we can build on that foundation from there forward.

Josh: Right. Right. I love it. So the belief is coming mentally, mindset wise that I can do this. You’ve given us some real tips on some actual about four or five or half a dozen real different actions and movements we can do from planks to reverse planks to slow body weight squats, and even some modified pushups. Moving over to the third kind of stool, part of the stool there. The third pillar being right, what are we going to eat? What are we going to consume, right. So many of us are just, I get up and I eat like whatever’s convenient. I just, I pass the McDonald’s, I passed the convenience store. I buy protein bars or shakes from the gas station. I say that because I’m guilty of all those things. But so much of us would, the best food for us is usually the best tasting food also.

Josh: So when I get away from my routine and I’m making these hacks or shortcuts and just doing whatever’s convenient, not only am I not getting the nutrition that I want, which is probably taking away some of my energy, but I’m also not eating stuff that tastes nearly as good. So I’m sacrificing and two or three or four different ways. Yesterday I had some lunch with some friends at a popular Cleveland Vegan restaurant. I’m not Vegan at all, but they are, they wanted to meet there. So I met them there and this amazing kale, strawberry salad. I was like, oh my God, this tastes amazing. But the reason why I don’t typically do that is because of time. It’s not because I don’t want to, it’s not because I don’t want to make the strawberry salad. It’s because of time. So how do you help your clients incorporate what proper foods to eat and then the find the time to actually incorporate that and make that a habit?

Joey: Yeah. Awesome question. So there’s several parts to this. This is actually what most of the work I do with long distance clients focuses on. It’s this food and drink part. First we have to have a level of awareness that us see the culture and society we live in for what it really is, okay. 90 whatever, 80, 85, 90% of this country is out of shape, obese or partially or almost obese and ailing because of the food supply. We have an overabundance of all different kinds of foods. Most of it we don’t need in this country. And you look around and you go to any, you go out, you know, especially lunch hour Starbucks and which I love Starbucks. You can make good choices there, but you can also destroy yourself there, right? You go anywhere you could see people are clearly over eating and they’re not exercising.

Joey: All you got to do is look at them, right? So it’s a matter of reprogramming somebody’s paradigm in regards to our daily habits, where we go, what we do, what is normal, right? Because actually what is normal around us is not good. We have to be aware of that in order to rise above it. So we’re not supposed to eat as much as all the food companies would like us to eat. We’re not supposed to eat the things most of these food companies are putting in front of us, but we have to be wise to that. It’s up to us to be the responsible consumer who decides what it is we’re going to choose and how much of it we decide we’re going to need to properly nourish this body both for short term and long term.

Joey: Most people, it’s human nature. These food companies, these beverage companies, they take advantage of human nature. Humans want to consume, and if they can create some addictive properties to these foods and drinks, well, humans are just going to consume more because of human nature that their not even aware of. It’s not even in their conscious thought. They’re just eating becomes a drug, drinking become as a drug, right? So we have to be reprogrammed to know that we’re going to have to rise above the norm in terms of our eating and drinking habits, and they’re going to become abnormal as compared to the big crowds that are sick, overweight, and ailing. All right, so we’ve got to take care of ourselves now from there, once that reality sets in and you get a person to admit to, yeah, I actually see that truth. I get it.

Joey: I don’t want to be a mindless drifting moron. I want to be responsible for myself now that I know the truth, right? So you fess up to the truth. You become aware of reality and then you start realizing that it’s you that has to make your decisions for your health and your body, not the food companies that are surrounding us 24 seven, right? Then from there we put together the plan. Well, what is it? Well, miraculously when this earth was created and we were put here by whoever you want to say we were put here by, because there’s, you know, that’s another realm. However that happened. All the foods and nutrition and nourishment that we need to life properly was put on this earth with us by design.

Josh: Otherwise, I’ve been gone long died long ago.

Joey: By design. Like awesome. Everything has been here. We don’t need to go looking and creating and getting pre-packaged stuff. Everything is on the earth that we need. So if we look at it from that perspective, we’ve got, you know, if you’re an animal protein eater, you’ve got plenty of animal proteins, all the vegetables, the greens, the fruits there. I’ve been into this stuff my whole life. I’m still discovering new vegetables in new fruits that I never tried before.

Josh: Yeah. You have to tell us about some of the new ones, maybe the off popular stuff that you’ve tried that you really like. So Joey, is there kind of a matrix or some pillars of a healthy diet like greens or beans or nuts or you know, whole grain what does that look like for you? That is kind of the, you know, something that you just know, it doesn’t matter if you’re talking to somebody who’s old, young, middle age in shape, out of shape. It’s just a cornerstone of a healthy diet. What does that look like?

Joey: Right. Okay. So generally speaking, and again, everybody’s different and I approach each person differently. But generally speaking, you can bet on the average person consuming way too many carbohydrates in a given day. It’s like you could guess that and most times you will be right. So from there we look to reverse what their plates look like, right. So how should a plate look if you’re going to stand the chance of victory? The plate or plates need to have first at least one veggie or more, okay. When we say veggie, I don’t mean like steamed broccoli that tastes like just Broccoli and nothing else with water. I’m talking like I prepare my veggies so that people crave them and I teach people how to do it so that they want more and I want them again tomorrow. Like these are awesome, right?

Joey: So it’s at least one or more veggies on your plate, some kind of small to medium salad, at least chopped greens, cucumber, tomato, etc, etc. Then your protein, and it could be an animal protein, it could be a mixture of beans and nuts. It could be some kind of cheese, a lean cheese or any combination of those for that matter. Then after we have and of course we need with those veggies, that salad and that protein, we’re going to have our healthy fats in there somewhere, whether it’s olive oil or coconut oil or walnut oil. Any kind of healthy oil. We need healthy fats like our bodies do not function properly, short term and longterm without healthy fats. So once we have those, then can think about, okay, let’s fit some kind of carbohydrate in here.

Joey: Okay, so we have all the good stuff that we need to sustain life and promote health. Because all the things I listed first, those have all the disease fighters, those have all the energy makers, those have all the building blocks of our body that we need because we have cellular turnover at about every 11 or 12 months. The cells in our body are replaced by new ones. Where those new cells come from are the foods we put into our bodies that get broken down and re assimilated into new cellular structures. If you’re putting trash in your body, you will become trash and get diseased, whatever that disease might be.

Joey: If you put good things into your body that come from this earth. We have good healthy cells that will prolong life and keep us strong. It’s so simple it’s crazy. So we have the carbohydrate coming in at the end. What that shift has done is instead of us getting the majority of our calories and volume from carbohydrates, which destroy us when there’s too many, we’ve made carbohydrates last and now we’ve got all the other stuff coming into our bodies before that. Then we start to realize I feel awesome, I have more mental clarity. My energy is like from when I was younger, my strength, like I feel, I just feel strong all the time, right? So it’s not magic, it’s just that we’re giving the body what it’s designed to have in the first place.

Josh: Right. So Joey, what are some carbs that you see that are commonly over-consumed in the average American diet specifically for men over the age of 40 who are busy? What are some things that they’re throwing in their bodies? Just probably out of convenience that makes them feel full, but they’re really not giving us any of the energy and vitality that these, you know, the, the plate that you just described actually gives us, what are some of those carbs that people over consume?

Joey: Awesome question. So you’re fast food lunches, you know, whether it’s a sub or a wrap or pizza or some kind of rice dish or pasta dish. 9 times out of 10 you don’t, you haven’t earned the right to eat that that day. You didn’t go out and hustle and do laps in the morning, you know, you didn’t go burn it off with physical activity. You haven’t earned the right to put those energy calories into your body in the form of that many carbohydrates. On top of that, most food places give you way more than you actually need, okay. So it’s a double whammy there.

Joey: Now most people start their day with some kind of carbohydrate breakfast. It might be a muffin in or bagel or some kind of cereal, right. Along with probably some other carbohydrates coming in the form of a drink, whether it’s orange juice or some kind of coffee drink with like, you know, the sugars…

Josh: Sugars and creams and fillers and flavored this and that.

Joey: Right. So you take that kind of average American diet, 80% carbohydrates, most likely. Then you’re working for a few hours, then you’re going to put in this carbohydrate loaded lunch, right. You haven’t even burned off breakfast yet. That’s why you’ve got a belly hanging over your belt, right? And then dinner comes in, you know, wife or girlfriend has made stuff, or if you’re single, you’re going to go out and grab something easy to make your life easier. 70% of that meal guaranteed is going to be carbohydrates because it’s just like we’ve been trained as a society to have majority of carbohydrates first.


Josh: So Joey, are you seeing this with your clients, 80% carbs in the morning, 80% carbs for lunch and 70% carbs at dinner. Is that a regular routine you see in a lot of clients that you take on and they’re trying to break that habit?

Joey: Yeah, so absolutely. And then they look in the mirror like, I look like I just looked like so puffy and my energy is crap. Like why do I look this way and why do I feel this way, right? Well, when you’re piling too much processed carbohydrates into the body, along with the other stuff, like too much protein, you know, fats that are probably not healthy, you know, mixed in there. You’re going to look like crap by the way you’re feeding your body. It’s just an outward expression of what you’re doing to the inside of your body, right? That’s it. It’s supposed to be though. That’s supposed to be nature’s signal to you. Hey man, you’re killing me. Like I look like crap because you’re treating me like crap. We’ve got to change the game here, man.

Josh: We’re in this together. Me and my inner body and my outer body are all in the same team. Let’s do this.

Joey: So what’s confusing is that people don’t know that carbohydrate is an energy food. Well, how is it if I’m going to eat less carbohydrates, then I’m going to have more energy, right? It doesn’t make sense on the surface, but the reality is we don’t need that many carbohydrates to give us energy. What we need are the, the nutrient loaded foods, the trace minerals, the vitamins of fibrous, the fibers, elements of all the veggies, the salads, the building blocks of the proteins, the hormone improving elements of the healthy fats. Then we, when we put the carbohydrates in for the fuel, then it’s in the appropriate amounts that actually make us feel like, yes, now we have energy and those carbohydrates we put in, we can actually burn as energy in the form of muscle glycogen.

Josh: Love it, love it. So now that we know what that looks like, what the plate looks like, we know that we can do some of these exercises even during the day, even during a busy day. Again, the belief is coming, right. The mindset is telling me, wow, I could do that, but how do we find a way or what do you recommend to your clients to create the time to build the meals out so that they’re actually available when we are hungry, so we can schedule those in, make that happen instead of just going for what’s convenient.

Josh: I would bet most people know most of the things that we’re saying on this podcast. They know, wow, that makes a lot of sense. I need to do that. Wow, that makes a lot of sense. I need to do that. But now it comes down to time versus convenience and how do we work with our audience to say like, you can make this happen and just carve out a little bit of extra time. How do you recommend, do people make their meals like the day before? Do they make them in the morning? Do they make them on a Sunday and plan them out for the whole week? Like what are some easy hacks here to make this a reality?


Joey: Yeah, awesome questions. So yes to all of those, because everybody’s different, like they have different life situations or work scenarios or what have you. Some people travel more, so I do a different kind of coaching with heavy travelers, but the key is this. Once you start getting rid of the misperceptions and the stuff they’ve been misled about in the past, and you start to simplify, then they realize that the actual nutrition part can be way easier, right.

Joey: Now, especially in this day and age, when we have all these delivery services, we can send somebody to Costco via Task Rabbit, right? Here’s a list of things I need. They can go get it now. I mean, you can order stuff online with Instacart, right? And literally, even if you don’t do any of that in this day and age, just about in any town or city in this country, you can leave wherever you are, whether it’s home or the office or both, and within five minutes you could be at a decent place where you can choose the proper foods.

Joey: Literally, every supermarket has a prepared section where if you consciously go in there with the right intentions, you can make the right choices. Most people don’t go in though with the right mindset, intentions and preplanned choices that they’re going to make. So you can go, we have a chain down here, there’s Publix, we have Fresh Market. We have a new one coming around called Earth Fair. We’ve got Trader Joe’s, we have a Whole Foods. You can go into any of these places with a plan of what you are going to choose if you’re the type who needs to go out on the spot and get what you need at the mealtime because you didn’t do your prep work, you can go in and choose exactly what I am describing to the t. Without hassle, without having to, you know, prepare yourself.

Josh: Spontaneously just instead of pulling over to the gas station and grabbing a Red Bull, a coffee and a power bar, you know, you could pull off to the grocery store that might be another 200 feet down the road with an intention of buying a reasonable sized meal that has all the things that you described earlier.

Joey: Exactly. You go to the supermarket, go to the salad section. They’ve got fully prepared salads, you grab it and you go for five bucks, six bucks, and you’ve got everything you need all in there. They put it in there. Like even Starbucks, they have these protein boxes. It just loaded with salad and egg and like an ounce or half an ounce of cheese some cranberries and maybe a couple of apple slices.

Josh: That sounds delicious.

Joey: Let me tell you something. If you eat that for your lunch…

Josh: That sounds delicious, man.

Joey: You’re winning like, but you can’t go in there and get the big panini roll loaded, you know, with this stuff. And then you’re going to get the frappe coffee where that’s another 700 calories and then, oh, let me grab one of those muffins for 3:00 o’clock because I’ll probably get like boredom, hunger, right?

Josh: I just fell asleep in my chair thinking about that.

Joey: That is destroying yourself, right? So like I said before, Starbucks is our example. You can go in and eat awesomely if you preplan and know the choices you’re supposed to make or you can go in there and literally destroy yourself.

Josh: Wow. Joey, that sounds so awesome because all the things that we’re discussing today are so attainable. They’re so tangible that it’s just about being intentional for, hey, I’m going to do this workout. I’m going to find 15 minutes before I’m at the office while I’m at the office. Maybe even right during my quote unquote 3:00 o’clock crash. Instead of crashing and going and grabbing a coffee or a Frappuccino, I’m going to do my 15 minutes of exercise, my planks and some of that to actually reverse the rest of my day. Because the rest of my day can go to the real tired, oh my God, I’m so lethargic phase or I’ve got a whole other burst of, of energy. And Joey, one of the things I do, it’s a hack that I have during my kid’s school year. I love to coach, like my kids are sixth grade, fourth grade, and second grade.

Josh: They just started back to school this week, but one of the reasons why I coach so much, I’ll literally, if I don’t take a day off, I’ll coach out of the next nine weeks, I’ll coach every day, but four. Either a game or a practice every single night or during the day. Part of the reason though for that is intentional because I know if I’m on the court volleyball or on the field football with my son or volleyball with my other daughter, I’m getting in a second workout and if I miss my workout in the morning, I’m at least getting this in as a workout where I’m running around chasing them, at least I’m walking and I’m making the effort to run. But I do that because that it propels me into the evenings where I get the time with my wife, right.

Josh: Because I, you know, we’re so busy. My kids go to sleep about 8:30 the precious time that I have with my wife, between about 9 and 11 is huge for our relationship. And during the summer I found myself not having the energy to stay up late with her and not him being able to have the opportunity to engage with her. Just her and I, while the kids were sleeping because kids are staying up late and I was working and our whole schedule was all mucked up. Now in the last week or so, I’ve already seen this pivot back to normalcy to our habit because I’m back in the gym. It gives me a spike of energy. My wife usually prepares a great, very healthy dinner. We eat, my kids go to sleep and now I’ve got the energy and vitality to spend time with my wife at night, which is so critical to connecting with her.

Josh: It’s working versus you know the other times and where I’m like, well, I worked all day, honey, I just, I don’t have time right now. I’m too tired right now. How many of us men have done that? Like my wife wants to talk and she wants to talk about her life and she wants to talk about what’s happening with the kids, because that’s her life. For my wife, that’s what she does all day. So she wants to talk about it and how disrespectful of me to be like, oh yeah honey, here’s what happened at business and oh by the way, I’m tired. That’s exactly not what I want, right?

Josh: So incorporating a lot of these things is huge, but it comes down to routine. So Joey, as we kind of bring this to a head here, like how do we make it all work together, right. The mindset, the diet, the exercise, and then sticking with it long term. What are your thoughts? How do you coach people up to kind of pull it all together?

Joey: Right. So awesome question. It’s, you know, it’s like building a business. It’s a big goal, but, but we commit to building a business, right? It’s a priority for us, right? And when it’s a strong priority and we’re committing indefinitely to this goal, then it becomes a way of life. So if your health, wellness, and longevity is that important, where you want it for life, then you prioritize it and make a commitment to it so that your lifestyle becomes ingrained. These daily habits that point toward your big vision goals and your dreams and your intentions of health, wellness, and longevity, right? So it’s a subtle reprogramming, a mind shift that takes course over time.

Joey: Here’s the cool thing. When the average person realizes that number one, fitness training and quote unquote workouts can be much easier, gentler, and enjoyable, and that the nutrition part of the equation is not being about the latest fad, trendy diet. It’s about eating properly the way we’re supposed to be nourishing our bodies, that was designed here from the beginning. When we see the reality and the simplicity of that, then it becomes easier to have a mindset that focuses on making us all a priority and a permanent way of life because you’ve changed the paradigm and when somebody realizes, wow, it can be this simple, this easy, yeah, I can do this for life, so I’m going to do it for life.

Josh: Yes. What I love about that mindset right there in that summary is that it just feels so doable, right? It feels doable versus buying that latest machine, the next fad, the next Keto thing, the next Adkins thing, the next whatever. We know all of those are kind of hacks for short term. That’s American commerce really selling us something that’s new that they can make money from. It’s not really the longterm plan and ultimately not really something that we could sustain longterm versus what you described is something that’s very doable that we can commit to and stick with it a little bit every day. You know, and those workouts don’t have to be consuming an hour or two hours of our time. So Joey, the ideal plan, and I’m going to ask this for me, right? So here’s a little bit of my schedule.

Josh: I’m going to ask, I want to get some personal coaching from you before I let you go? So typical, typical routine for me, you know, in bed, usually around 11, usually up at about 5:45, 6:00 o’clock. So we get about six and a half to seven hours of sleep, which is ideal. Get up and get my kids going. I used to take my kids to school. Kids are at school by 7:30 and then I’ve got usually about a half hour to an hour of time before my day really starts cooking at 9:00 o’clock. And then, you know, I kind of work a normal day, usually kind of start to fade off a little bit around 3:00 o’clock. Not that I have like no energy, but I just, I don’t have the kind of mental clarity that I have at 10, 11, 12 in the morning.

Josh: And then I get home and I get usually get right into practicing or coaching something. Um, so when I, a couple of years, about 10 years ago, I started my entrepreneurial journey in real estate. I was actually working out at noon. I would go to the gym at noon. I worked out with a friend and then I had tons of energy and the second half of my day. Right. So is there, I know this is probably not for everybody, but is there an ideal time to work out, to have that second spike of energy? Is there an ideal time to eat your meals in general? Again, I know it’s not specific for everybody. Is there eating more meals throughout the day, smaller meals, five small meals a day? What are some general concepts that help people win when it comes to that?

Joey: Okay, so I’ll give you the general concepts that seem to be more of the ones that are working for people. So what, what time of day should we exercise? Like the real answer is when it fits your schedule the best okay, is when you should do it. And for some people it’s the same time every day. For other people it’s a little shifty depending on their life, the kids, the wife, the job, whatever. It’s a little shifty, but the best time is when it fits your schedule the best because that’s how you’re going to make it more permanent. The part about having energy in the early afternoon when a lot of people seem to feel that drop when you were doing your fitness training at noon and you had a lot of good energy through the afternoon there’s no surprise to that.

Joey: What was cool is that most people who feel that afternoon lull, all they have to do is like literally five to eight, maybe 10 minutes max of physical movement that will get the body reawakened and then the energy flowing again. For example, sometimes I’ll feel like that like 2 through 3, 3:30 and I’m going to pull up a little thing here in the background. I’ve got one of these exercise balls you see, okay. I don’t live without one of these. These are, these should be in everybody’s home and office period. No questions asked. One of the most valuable accessories anybody can ever have.

Josh: And inexpensive.

Joey: So I will lay down on that face up.

Josh: Yeah, that wasn’t a $700 piece of equipment. That was a $20 workout ball. That’s awesome.

Joey: Exactly. Exactly. So I’ll get on there and I’ll do my, some stretches for my back, you know, I’ll relax, I’ll open up my chest, I’ll do sideways stretches, you know, and that’s maybe three minutes. And then I have the luxury of being able to hang from the bars on the gym behind me, right. So I’ll just grab a hold. I’ll hang, you know, I’ll just let my spine open up. I’ll move my body a little bit, just let you know, let the blood start flowing and I’ll move my legs at the bottom a little bit. Then I’ll get down on the ground and I’ll get on, I have a special mat. I’ll get on the mat and I’ll just do literally maybe four or five, six stretches for my hips and my low back and my shoulders and I get up and I feel like a different person. Like literally in eight minutes. Just those stretches. I feel like I just turned on a switch and I am ready to go.

Josh: Nice. Nice. And this again, so doable. That’s awesome.

Joey: Exactly. But if you don’t, if you don’t know, you wouldn’t know to do it, right. But something that simple can turn the body’s energy right back on again as if you’re hitting a switch.

Josh: Love it. How about meals throughout the day? Like a weeding, lighter in the mornings, more in the evenings. What are your thoughts on just getting into that habit?

Joey: Great question. So if we’re after the pursuit of health, wellness, longevity, good energy, then the food habits have to be in sync with that. So most people, not everybody, but most people can actually eat a much lighter breakfast or eat later in the day. So it has a fancy name these days? It’s called fasting, right? So for some people that might mean instead of eating, you know, cereal at 6:30 or 7:00 o’clock with orange juice, they’re going to have tea and black coffee until about 10:30, 11, 11:30. And then they’ll have their first calories, you know, late mid morning or mid day even, right? And it’s going to be heavy veggies, heavy salad, good protein with healthy fat and some carbohydrate. Because your body has earned it, you’ve earned it, right. And from there might be a, a light mid afternoon snack, give or take or some kind of beverage that makes sense.

Joey: And then a good hearty dinner, that’s probably a larger version or variation of what lunch may have looked like, you know, good veggie meal, good salad put together. And again, we could do this at almost any modern restaurant. This doesn’t have to be done by us, although I love doing it because it’s easy and fast because I’ve gotten into these routines. But you could do it anywhere is what I’m saying. It doesn’t have to be at home. And then beyond that, you know, the myth of eating eight, maybe eight small meals a day to keep your metabolism up. And that’s old trainer mythology. Like nobody could really live like that except for like a tiny percentage of the population. It’s just is totally unrealistic and it makes you obsessive, right? And when you’re obsessing about eating every 90 minutes or you really can’t focus on life and the things you need to do.

Josh: It’s not life either.

Joey: Right.

Josh: That’s fantastic. So what about late night? Like cravings? A lot of guys are, I’m up late, my kids are sleeping. It’s 8:30 or 9:00 o’clock. I know I shouldn’t eat right before I go to bed, but I’m hungry. I want to be a little bit of ice cream, a little bit of something. There’s got to be a solution for that. And I’m kind of speaking from my own experience, if you will, but what are your thoughts on that time?

Joey: Okay. So two parts here. Let’s say you’re somebody who I’m coaching and you’re doing the things that I just described to you perfectly. Typically what happens, and this is male or female, but it happens with both these types of clients, they might find that, you know what, after dinner I don’t get hungry. Like I don’t even want like a dessert like I used to. I don’t have a craving for a sugar item and they’ll say, what’s up with that, right. Well, what’s up with that is that you’re giving your body what it needs during the day. It’s happy as satisfied. It’s well nourished is you’re not triggering cravings at night for something like that. Now again, everybody’s different. Some people do need a little something. It might not be every night. And so for me, if I feel I need something, which is rare now, it might be like two or three ounces of good quality dark chocolate and like a piece of melon or some strawberries.

Josh: Got it. Okay.

Joey: You know, it might be, I might throw a little, some coconut shavings in a little cup with some chocolate chips and I might throw a some raisins in there or some cranberry.

Josh: Sounds good. That sounds good.

Joey: And it’s small. It’s awesome. It’s small, it’s compact. And it gives you everything you might want to be craving for that little taste of something sweet and savory area at night. And then you’re done. And then with that, you wash that down with some high quality green tea for the, for the polyphenols and the cancer fighters. And you’re living like a champ.

Josh: Wow. It sure feels like it. I haven’t even incorporated all this yet. It just feels good. It feels good.

Joey: It’s awesome.

Josh: Oh my God, Joey. So listen, um, we, we really need to wrap up. I’ve just had an unbelievably fun time doing this with you. Like, you know, I think my clients, which are real estate entrepreneurs, guys that own massive, you know, huge apartment buildings and we’re doing rehab work and they’re, they’re fixing our properties and they’re recruiting private capital. Generally a lot of us are, we have office jobs, if you will, right. So I think incorporating a number of these things, getting up, even, even buying one of those bars that, you know, sits inside the doorway to hang or do some basic stretching during out the day. The exercise ball that we could incorporate and keep around the office.

Josh: You know, getting up and walking. Actually AB dude Raimi that’s here, we just walked to go get soup for lunch, you know, high quality vegetable soup walked back because that little 5 to 10 minute walk, I said, well why get it in the car? Like let’s walk there. It’s beautiful outside. You walk back, let’s eat something good. You know, and then we got ready for this interview with you, man. Amazing opportunities. So Joey, I know a lot of my clients and you know guys like me that want to be high-performers one of energy, vitality on chase, our kids around, chase our wives around, just do things that are fun and have to incorporate a lot of these things. So if they wanted to get in touch with you, get coached by you, learn more about you, you know, your books, your programs, your coaching, what’s a great place for them to reach out to you, to touch base with you and you know, maybe get interviewed, go through a strategy session, whatever that looks like. Right?

Joey: Yeah. Thank you for asking. I appreciate that. So best place would be to get some good freebies. If they go to FitnessTraining.Live FitnessTraining.Live, they could sign up for a series of videos that they could actually start doing today if they want to. You know, that’ll give a good taste and flavor of some of my methods more the mindset stuff, some specific programs they could do at home or the office. Then they can go to a TheJoeyAtlas.com. There’s a contact form page there and that gets carbon copy to me and my assistant. And if somebody is interested in wanting to learn more about per personal coaching, consulting, I even go out to people’s businesses and homes and they’ll have me set up their environment for success.

Joey: So I used to do that, you know, so they can get me through there. TheJoeyAtlas.com the contact form, they could find me on Facebook as well. If they’re not getting a response from me, sometimes he knows going into spam, uh, they go find me Joey Atlas Fitness on Facebook. But if they come to FitnessTraining.Live and they sign up, they’ll see they can also reach me through one of those email responders as well when they get the video sent to them.

Josh: Got it.

Joey: Yeah. Open to hearing from anybody. Also being that this is a business oriented show what most people don’t realize is that a lot of your fitness and wellness activities and expenses can actually be categorized under the corporate wellness category. They could be a business expense, tax deductible and you just got to make sure that you’re clear that with your accountant of course. But corporate wellness, workplace fitness, you know, it’s an expense for the business and it’s a great investment so it counts.

Joey: Yeah. Joey, that’s fantastic. Listen, I have really enjoyed this. This has been a ton of fun and not only do I enjoy your personality and the way that you make this seem so reasonable and doable. I hope my audience has felt the same way. Being able to say like, wow, like everything I just learned today from Josh and Joey, like I can do that. Like I don’t have to be successful and sabotage my health and wellness to have success. I can actually have success and probably have more success by actually the longevity and the vitality that we want. If I could just merge them together, this is probably the first time that I really thought, wow, I could bring something to my audience that is maybe off of the regular path of just success in real estate and money and private capital and this and that.

Josh: First thing I’ve really felt like I brought to them Joey that I feel really proud of. I’m really excited that you came on today.

Joey: Thank you. I appreciate the invite, the time and the questions you asked were awesome because those get to the crux of the matter of what people need to start realizing to be able to have a chance of making real change that counts for the rest of their life. So thank you.

Josh: You got it guys. Well there you have it, the Joey Atlas. I appreciate you being on.


Thanks so much for listening to another episode of Accelerated Investor. You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor Podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us some five star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, the Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.

For many of us, the days are long. Between our careers, family commitments, and taking care of errands and appointments, it can feel like we don’t have enough energy to get through the day. But, with some simple adjustments to our physical fitness – both exercise and diet – we can find the energy and clarity needed to accomplish our daily goals… and feel better while doing so.


To gain some insight on how our physical well-being has a direct impact on our overall success and happiness, Josh chats with Joey Atlas, an exercise physiologist, private wellness coach and fitness consultant, and host of “The Fitness Whisperer” podcast. Joey focuses on helping his clients make simple yet effective lifestyle changes so they can create attainable and sustainablefitness goals.


Whether you have a regular exercise routine already, or your workout consists of bringing the groceries in from the car, Joey has some insightful tips to help you improve your fitness routine with simple changes. He also discusses the importance of choosing the right foods to fuel your body, without relying on fad diets.


We all know that our physical well-being has a direct impact on our ability to succeed professionally. So whether you’re an entrepreneur, ecommerce business owner, corporate leader, stay-at-home parent, or anyone in between, this advice is for you!  

What’s Inside:

  • Joey’s 3-prong approach to help people (especially ages 40+) achieve more energy
  • The biggest exercise and diet myths that Joey works to dispel
  • How Joey’s effective fitness regimen differs from most others
  • How Joey helps his clients change their mindset when it comes to their eating habits
  • How to make smart choices at the grocery store

Mentioned in this episode​

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