Why Health is Wealth with Justin David Carl

28:29So this is why keto and time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting works is because behind the scenes, they're reducing the total number of calories you're eating. right and this is the same thing that happens with a whole food plant-based diet if you're only eating whole foods it is so hard 100 whole foods it is so hard to overeat because you're eating so much fiber which is making you feel full which then by definition you're not you're eating less calories and you're in a calorie deficit and you start losing weight right and it's the same thing back in 80s 90s these ultra low fat or no fat diets they've just removed another food group and by default you're in a calorie deficit so you start losing weight so one of the beautiful things about tracking your nutrition is you don't have to remove fat or remove carbs or anything else you can have everything and still be in a calorie deficit and still have dessert.

29:42But on the note of intermittent fasting, when I started playing pickleball seven days a week for two to five hours a day, I realized I could no longer train fasted because I would go work out at the gym, strength train, then I go on the courts and I would have no energy. And if you play pickleball like I do, I am running all over the place, explosive of energy, sprinting from one side to the next, never letting anything that I could maybe get to go. And so I started having breakfast again for the first time in probably 10 years back in April of last year, 2025. I realized I had to start fueling up in order to do these long two to five hour pickleball sessions, especially if I'm doing a double day where I'm strength training for 40, to 60 minutes and then going and playing two to five hours of pickleball.

30:45So depending on your physical output, I obviously, you can tell, spend a lot of energy doing physical things. Now, a normal person, there may be strength training three or four times a week, and they don't have to be as strategic about fueling up as someone who's cycling for two hours a day or running super huge amounts of mileage, those people just have to fuel more because their body's consuming more energy. And if you want to not get sick, get injured or completely bonk where you just like have no energy, you're going to have to strategically fuel up. So if your strength training, say three times a week or four times a week, totally get away with fasted training.

31:36No problem. if you are training in the evening probably going to need to fuel up for lunch or a snack before and really what i would recommend everybody is look at your ideal training split and when you want to work out is it in the morning is it at lunch is it in the evening and how much are you actually doing? Because I think if you can get away with intermittent fasting and training in the morning, it's going to be really easy for you to shed unwanted weight without even tracking calories. Now, I'll pause it in case you had any questions. No, I think that is a great thing to know because the timing of when you eat and the thought process there is obviously the reason why we're eating is so that we can have energy and we can have energy to expend.

32:38And so that is more so why should be structured in different ways for each and every single person. And I agree with you. I mean, especially if you are doing a lot of physical activity in the morning and, or, you know, you like to get your workouts done in the morning, I go through seasons where I do that. That's where like the fueling in the morning could be something that is really important, especially if you're doing as high volume as Justin is, that is an area where probably make sure that you're eating something. Otherwise you're going to bonk or you're going to crash. Whereas folks who, you know, are exercising later in the day, they may be able to do intermittent fasting if they're doing their exercise in the evening or the afternoons.

33:09That is going to be another area where you can look at that. So how do you kind of think about or structure this? So like, do you think through strength training? You said, you know, you strength train on a bunch of different days. So how do you kind of choose how many days you're going to strength train? And in addition, if you're playing pickleball every day, I'm assuming that's kind of your main source of cardio. Is there any other cardio that you think about too? Great question. So one note, If you were training less than one and a half to two hours of training in the morning, whether it's a combination of cardio and strength or all cardio or all strength, I think you can totally get away with intermittent fasting.

33:45If you're starting to go above two hours of training in a single day, you're probably going to need the fuel up before or during that training session if you want to not crash. So I think even if you're training in the morning, you can totally intermittent fast if you're doing traditional 45 to 60 minute workout combination of strength training and cardio or one or the other, totally fine. For me, I recommend to people strength train three times a week. And if you want to strengthen the most important muscle in your body, your heart, either combine a little bit of cardio into those three days or take another day and have a dedicated cardio day.

34:33But all the longevity research is now showing how important strength training is for health span, meaning the quality of your years as you age and get older and older. So I'm a firm believer that everyone should strength train at least two times a week, if not three times a week. So I recommend three. And I think you can be in incredible shape working out three times a week, strength training and adding in 10 to 20 minutes of cardio on one or two of those days. And you can be in amazing shape. You don't need to work out six times a week, seven times a week. You can literally work out three days a week, be in amazing shape.

35:13And each one of those workouts is 45 to 60 minutes. So we're talking two and a half to three hours of exercise per week and you can be incredible shape. Now, some people like me, I love to work out. I want to work out every single day. So for me, I strength train and this is going to be a little confusing, but I'll explain it. So I follow a six day split for strength and it's upper body push on one day, next day, upper body pull, next day, leg day. And then day four is upper body two push. Fifth day is upper body pull and sixth day is leg day two for the week. Now, here's what I do. I unattach it from having to happen in a seven-day period.

36:11So this is where I'm at a level of deep relationship with my body. So if my body's like, whoa, we're cooked, we can either strength train today or do pickleball, but we can't do both, I just choose one of them. Or it's like, hey, we're exhausted. Today is just walking and foam rolling and active recovery. So that six-day split may take me eight days or 10 days or even 12 days or even 14 days, depending on how hard I'm pushing myself on the courts, the pickleball courts. because on a given week, I might be super well-rested, low workload, not much going on with my family, no stress, and I'm like, great.

37:03Six days of strength training this week, seven days of pickleball this week. And then the next week, family shit's going on, work shit's going on, and I do three strength days in seven days and four pickleball days in seven days. And I just listen intuitively to my body and look and see what my whoop is saying about my recovery. So I'm at a level where I've been so diligent, I've been so obsessed with fitness and training that I can intuitively listen to my body. For my clients, I put them on a three-day, four-day, or five-day split. And then the crazy ones who love to work out as much as me, I'll give them a six-day split, but tell them, hey, if your body says you need to skip one of these and have two rest days, do that.

37:57I think that is a great way to think about this because I do something similar now. I have been lifting weights since I was 18 years old or even some in high school for sports, things like that. and forever for the longest time i would do like the bro bodybuilding split like for the longest time then all of a sudden i switched it up and when i switched it up from doing a split it's it's similar to yours it's kind of a push pull split but i do kind of um full body push full body pull back and forth and what i did was i tested it in a bunch of different ways i've tested literally every single split that is out there but i figured out what my body responds to best is more frequency throughout the week, but lower volume in terms of like in one single session.

38:39And so what I ended up doing was I will hit each body part for that push session, which push being, you know, quads and then any other push, you know, exercises that happen on the upper body. And I will look at that push session and I will go and do one exercise per body part. And then on the pole session, I'll do one exercise per body part, but I'm hitting it three times every single week. And I've noticed my body just responds better to that. I feel better. I'm less achy. I'm less sore. It's less pounding on my joints, those types of things. And then adding in cardio and running, like run, I've been doing a lot more running as of late.

39:11And so usually running 20 to 30 plus miles a week is kind of where I range, which is just kind of like a standard, you know, mileage per week for any, any given runner. So that's been the area that has been feeling really good. And I felt better than I ever have before. My resting heart rates of 42, my every single time I go to the doctor, they freak out. But it's been one of those areas where I like to consistently work out. I feel better when I am working out and the more I can, the more I will. I wish I could run every day. My joints won't let me, but if I could, I would. And so it's one of those areas that I think is super, super important for most people to kind of figure this out.

39:43And even like Justin said, when you get started, reducing the amount of time that you're working at, maybe you're just doing, you know, lifting three days a week. And I think everybody should strength train because health span is 90 % of the reason why I shifted everything. Justin and I are both fans of Dr. Peter Atiyah. He's absolutely amazing in terms of talking about this kind of stuff. And it is one of those things where if you look at and focus on your health span, meaning how important or how amazing is the quality of life when you are in your 70s, 80s, and 90s, are you going to be walking around with a walker?

40:14Are you going to be in a wheelchair? Or are you going to be able to do the stuff that you actually want to do? And that is really what I'm trying to focus on is being able to do that kind of stuff. In addition to being really fit right now. You can do both and both are going to help equip you for that time frame. So that's the way I structured mine as well. And so that is one of those areas where I love to just think through and kind of test over and over again to see what works and also what keeps you motivated, what keeps you going to the gym even when you don't want to. Those types of things are really, really important.

40:42Yeah. A couple things that I want to illustrate. Strength training can be calisthenics, body weight movements. Or it could be lifting weights like dumbbells, barbells. It could be kettlebells. It could be batons and clubs. It could be pushing a sled, which you and I both love pushing and pulling the sled. And so what I always encourage anyone is to follow the fun when it comes to your fitness. So do the things that are fun and enjoyable for you. And there's types of strength training, dozens if not hundreds of different types, and you can find one that's fun for you. Like some of my clients love kettlebells and hate dumbbells and barbells.

41:37Some of my clients don't even wanna look at a kettlebell because it seems too far out there for them. So for me, I consider myself a hybrid athlete. So I do a combination of gymnastics rings, calisthenics, traditional bodybuilding, kettlebells, batons, clubs, and the sled, sandbags, battle ropes. and these are just different skill sets, strength training skill sets that I've picked up over the years because I get bored with bodybuilding, weightlifting. So I got into gymnastics rings during COVID. When everything was shut down, I set up gymnastics rings in my garage and I got super into it and I got so shredded and felt like a gymnast and looked like a gymnast.

42:34And now that's a staple is I might take 12 weeks off and do a pure bodybuilding weightlifting and then go back to doing predominantly gymnastics rings plus a weightlifting leg day. Right now I'm in a hybrid where I'm doing some gymnastics rings, some traditional weightlifting, along with the kettlebells and sandbags and sled. But the point I'm trying to make is there's so many different ways to strength train and just keep exploring and have fun. Because I see a gym or any outdoor facility as a playground. and I want to learn how to use every toy in that playground, every swing set, every thing.

43:28I want to understand how to play with it and play with it. And so I've picked up all these different skill sets around strength training over the years. And each one has been its own journey in itself, just learning the skill, how to use it, how to not hurt myself, especially with things like clubs when you're swinging clubs around. And I've definitely almost knocked myself out or given myself a concussion with that. But it's made my journey so fun and exciting. And when I get bored of one thing, I just go to something either new or something that I haven't done in a long time. And the thing about following the fun is fun taps into your spirit and your spirit is an infinitely renewable energy source.

44:14Whereas willpower is finite. You might be good. I don't know when this episode's coming out. January of the new year, you're super into your workouts. And then the willpower by the end of January is all used up and you're no longer training anymore. But if you follow the fun, and that's one of the reasons I'm so into pickleball, is pickleball is my main source of cardio. I do do some running and some riding of a Peloton bike for VO2 max training. And we can talk about that if you want. But I can play five hours of pickleball and it's like two seconds went by. I'm like, what? Five hours went by?

44:58I want to keep playing. Because I feel like a kid when I'm playing the sport of pickleball. And I think everyone can find different physical fitness endeavors that feel like pure play, whether it's Zumba, dancing, trampolining, rollerblading, cycling, running, horse riding. I don't know. There's so many different types. And just follow the fun. And then fitness becomes this beautiful journey of enjoyment instead of just struggling through a workout that doesn't even excite you. And I think that's such a wonderful tip, especially when it comes to just any of the workouts you're doing. And one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was cardio, which we're talking about here already is, you know, you said your, your main source of cardio is pickleball.

45:44And if anybody hasn't played pickleball before, that was something that really kind of got me more interested back into cardio again. For a couple of years, I was just lifting and I wasn't doing much cardio and pickleball is a great like integral, you know, zone two activity, unless you play like Justin does, we were flying all over the place. But for the most part, it can be a zone two activity if you're playing doubles, where you are, you know, doing something that's interesting, that's fun, that you enjoy. Now, if you are someone out there that's like, hey, I don't really want to play pickleball, but you like to hang out with your friends and talk to your friends, just go on a walk together every single day.

46:15Or if you are someone out there who is really interested in, you know, running or increasing, you know, your VO2 max, and we'll talk about that in a second, that is something that you should, you know, you can look at running, you can look at rowing, you can look at, you know, riding a stationary bike or cycling. There's so many different things that you could do out there that I think is super interesting. join your local basketball you know league join your local you know volleyball league whatever it is there's so many activities that you could do just get out there and get active because that's the most important thing overall is to find those things that you enjoy so i cycle through this stuff like just like you do justin where i'm thinking through like right now i'm looking at doing a high rocks and so i have friends who are asking me to do an ultra i don't know if i want to do an ultra yet but i'm interested in kind of doing a high rocks and kind of test that out so i went and bought a rower i have a rower in the house i'm testing out if i really want to go do this.

47:02I got the sandbags and everything else. And so we're looking at this as something I want to test and see if I like it. I've gone through seasons where I've done marathons before. I've done all the New York marathon, for example, and I did the New York marathon. I think I told you this with in college. I did it for the first time and didn't train at all. The next couple of days after when I finished the marathon, I finished it. But when the next couple of days, I couldn't walk for a few days in a row. So it was one of those things where I have like tried everything from triathlons all the way across the board.

47:30And it's really just going through these cycles and enjoying those cycles and having fun. So I really like that tip. I think that's one that's really, really important for most people. So lately, I've been noticing how fast things are changing at home. The kids are growing like crazy. Clothes don't fit anymore and routines are changing and it just hits you. Life is expanding. And when your life grows, your responsibility grows with it. That's something I've been thinking about more this spring, making sure the safety net we have in place actually matches the life that we're building. And that's where Policy Genius comes in.

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51:59Sign up for your$1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash pfp. Go to shopify.com slash pfp. That's shopify.com slash pfp. Now, let's talk about some of the longevity metrics that we are thinking through here. So VO2 max is one of the big ones. How do you train your VO2 max and why is it so important to you to make sure that your VO2 max is something that is strong? Because if you look at Peter Atiyah's research or some of the folks out there or the research that he studies, he talks about VO2 max as a longevity metric. So, you know, how do you track yours and what workouts do you do to kind of help increase your VO2 max?

52:39Great question. I'm going to back into it because you mentioned something that is so critical to healthspan and sticking with your fitness, and that's community. So all the research for longevity shows that deep connections with people is actually the number one predictor of how long you're going to live, or at least one of the top ones. and one of the easiest ways to make fitness so fun is to get involved with a community that is built around a certain sport or physical activity so you mentioned high rocks there's a huge high rocks is like in my opinion the new crossfit not in the sense that it's the same but in the sense of the hype around it everyone's super into high rocks right now one of my clients is literally training for a doubles high rocks event.

53:37And he's so excited. He joined the gym that has specific high rocks training. And it doesn't matter. One of the reasons I love pickleball so much is because of the community aspect. I have literally created 70 new friendships over the last eight months just because of pickleball. And I see these people three, four, five, six, seven times a week. And I have all these friends that play pickleball, whether it's basketball, our mutual friend, Chad Carson, small and mighty real estate investor, Chad Carson. He plays basketball with his local basketball group of friends, and he's jazzed about it. He loves to use his strength training to support his basketball performance.

54:30and I see this glimmer in his eye when I talk to him and he's he tells me Justin people hate playing basketball against me because I just like never stop hustling I'm always hustling hustling hustling and I just see the joy in his eyes when he talks about his basketball playing with his his local club that he does two or three times a week and so whether it's pickleball cycling, there's cycling groups, there's run clubs, join a community. It's so empowering. And there's gyms, CrossFit gyms, High Rocks gyms, all sorts of things. Just join a community around whatever sport endeavor or physical activity that you're in, and you will have so much more fun.

55:18So let's segue into VO2 max training, why that's important. Quick definition, hopefully my memory serves me correct. So essentially, VO2 max is how efficiently your lungs, muscles, and body all work together to process oxygen. So a higher VO2 max means that you're more efficient and your body works in better synchrony together so that you can run longer, faster, work out harder for longer, cycle for longer, up more mountains, more miles, etc. So one of the things that Peter Atiyah talks about in his book, I believe it's Outlive. Outlive, yep. Is that VO2 max, what your actual score is, is another one of the huge factors in your health span and your lifespan.

56:32And you can strategically increase and build your VO2 max fairly easily without a whole lot of training, to be honest. So I got into this in March of 2025 because Whoop, which is a health tracker, they released this new feature called Whoop Age, where they give you a biological age score. And one of the metrics that influences that score is your VO2 max. And I realized if I could increase my VO2 max, my whoop age would decrease even more. So my whoop age, I'll pull it up in a minute here as I'm talking, is over 11 years younger than my chronological age. And this is because my VO2 max, resting heart rate, HRV, which is heart rate variability, these are all really high.

57:38and they're actually at the level of someone who is 11 years younger than me. So training your VO2 max is very easy to do with running and cycling, in my opinion. There's other ways to train it, but you can swim, you could row, you could do other things. but vo2 max is really easy to train with interval training while running or interval training while cycling and this is how i do it so basically what i will do is i'll warm up let's say i'm doing a run i will just jog five minutes get my body warm after my body's warm i will run hard if i'm outside, I'm usually trying to find a hill. Or if I'm on the treadmill, I'm running uphill on the treadmill.

58:37And I will run hard for a minute. And I will try to push my heart rate into zone four and hold it in zone four for a minute. And then I will go back to jogging and maybe lower the incline on the treadmill and do an active recovery for one to two minutes before I do another one of those hard intervals. And I'll try to do three to six of those hard intervals all in the time span of 10 to 15 minutes. So if I do three intervals, I can bang it out in maybe 10 minutes. If I'm doing six intervals, it can take me 15 to 20 minutes to do it all. And I'll do the same thing on my Peloton, my stationary bike, where I'll warm up and then I'll do a minute of going as hard as I can on the bike, cranking up the resistance like I'm climbing a hill on the bike, get my heart rate up into that zone four, hold it there for a minute, and then go slower and easier for one to two minutes while my heart rate recovers, and then doing three to six of those intervals.

59:50And when When I started doing this, I went from a VO2 max of 47 to 58 in about a month, which 58 for someone my age who's 43 is at the elite level for my age group. Now, a marathon, ultra marathon runner, they're going to have a VO2 max of 60, 70 if they're a professional athlete. So I'm not a professional athlete, but I'm in the top 5 % of my age group for a non-professional athlete. Does that make sense? It does. And 58 is very high in comparison to what most of the population has. It's an unbelievable VO2 max, which I think for most people out there, you start tracking your VO2 max. My guess is for the majority of people, depending on if you've kind of been working out for some period of time, you're probably going to start off in the 40s at some range in the 40s unless you really fit and then kind of work your way up from there.

1:00:52And I think that is one of those areas where, you know, a lot of people, it takes some time to get it built up. And it's amazing the way that you did it. Because for me, even specifically, I've tested out like the Norwegian four by four method where you're kind of doing four minutes on really hard, four minutes off really hard. I like your methodology better where it's one on one off, but you can kind of get more reps in through that timeframe and you can do it faster. So I think that's something I'm going to implement and see how the, you know, the one minute on one minute off or two minutes off is going to be because I think that is something where a lot of times the Norwegian four by four, you're trying to get four minutes in that higher heart rate zone in that zone four.

1:01:26But the problem with that is that it's pretty hard to maintain for four minutes straight, especially early on for a lot of folks. So I think this is a great point where you can kind of start, you know, doing it this way first. And really, if you want to build it up, or you really are, you know, focused on maxing out that VO2 max, then you can kind of build it up from there. But I really, really like the way that you do it because that's a much easier path for most people to get started with. Yeah, I can give some advanced tips and then also to explain how I'm tracking this. So I am a tracking maniac.

1:01:58So not only do I wear a Whoop fitness tracker, I also wear a Garmin. And Garmin, if you do a 15 or 20 minute run, it will recalibrate what your VO2 max is. And so that's how I'm tracking my VO2 max is through my Garmin. The best test is one of those facilities where you get this oxygen mask put on you and you're on a treadmill, but I'm way too lazy and I'm not going to spend the money to do that. So I just go by what my whoop is or by what my Garmin says. I'm from my understanding, the Garmin VO2 max tracking is fairly accurate. It's not the gold standard of putting the oxygen mask on and going to a facility, but Garmin is really built for endurance athletes where VO2 max is really important.

1:02:54I've also learned some techniques to increase your VO2 max that I learned through this app and it involves breath work while you're on a treadmill or running outside. I do it on a treadmill. So I'm just going to put a huge disclaimer up. Try this at your own risk. Because if you pass out and injure yourself, me and Andrew are not responsible. So basically what it is, is you're doing carbon dioxide training from my understanding. So your body's ability to process carbon dioxide. So what I do on the treadmill is I will walk uphill on an incline anywhere between 15 and 20 percent grade. Fortunately, in my gym, the treadmill goes up all the way to 20 percent, which is higher than most treadmills.

1:03:54Most treadmills only go to about 15 percent. And I will walk around a two mile per hour pace. And then I will breathe in, out, in, out for maybe five to six times. And then all the way out. So big breaths in.

1:04:17And then six to eight times of that. And then all the way out. So big breath out. And then I will hold for a count of eight to ten seconds. And you will feel like you're going to pass out. And then you breathe all the way in. And this crazy sensation goes through your body, especially for me. It goes through my lower legs. And I'm not totally sure how to explain it. It's like they get super heavy and almost pins and needles a little bit, but not uncomfortable. And during this time, after the 8 to 10 seconds, you go back to normal breathing. and I will do four, three to six sets of that on a non-interval training day.

1:05:08And this is breath work from my understanding, scientifically shown to improve your VO2 max. Now again, strong, strong warning. Try this at your own risk. You literally might pass out. I haven't passed out. You feel like you're gonna pass out, but I haven't passed out. So I hold the side of the treadmill when I'm doing this. So I, in case I do pass out, I don't clonk my head on something, but this is a new technique that I learned maybe two months ago, two and a half months ago that I do one to three times a week on the treadmill. I haven't tried it outside running cause that just seems too dangerous to me, but on a treadmill, I've tried it.

1:05:52So Andrew, I'll let you decide if you want to cut that piece out because it's too dangerous to put in this, but it is one kind of unique trick to using breath work to actually improve your VO2 max. I think it's an interesting concept because overall there's a lot of, I've seen some other hacks and tricks just like that that people have been doing where they use masks or whatever else. And I think it's one of those areas that probably can overall just help the oxygen expenditure that your body has and the way that it can actually process that oxygen I think it's a really interesting way to look at this.

1:06:29Are there any other things when it comes to health span that you think about? I know grip strength is a big one that a lot of people talk about. And I, you know, there's things like I do, like farmers carries, for example, I don't do them enough. Honestly, I need to grip strength, train a lot more. I know there's balance things that people do. Is there anything else that you think is important for folks before we kind of get into my just some of the thoughts we have on the health and wealth connection before we close this out? the older you get the more time you need to spend on recovery so i do recovery protocols every single day and i talked about this i forget if this was during your interview on my show or my interview on your show but i basically every morning i do three to ten minutes of percussive therapy.

1:07:19So I have a Theragun, which is a percussion. It's basically like a power tool. And I give myself a self-massage with that. Then I foam roll for another three to 10 minutes. Then I get in a hot shower followed by two minutes of cold. And then I do, and I'm a nut. So let me finish and you'll see why. Then I put Arnica, which is a homeopathic cream that you can get off Amazon that helps with sore muscles. And then I'll put on some essential oils. And then I give myself a stone massage where I'm scraping. This is a gua sha and it's made out of jade. You can get them made out of all sorts of things.

1:08:15And so I will scrape my neck. I will scrape my chest, my biceps, my triceps, my legs. And then I have massage tools like this where I'll dig into sore muscles. And so I do this at that whole routine every freaking morning. Now I'm early retired, so it might take me, if I'm rushing, I can get it all done in 10 minutes. If I'm taking my sweet time, it'll take me 20 to 30 minutes, but I train a lot. So I play pickleball, if I can, seven days a week, and I'm strength training four to six days a week on top of that pickleball. So I have to be hyper vigilant about my recovery if I want to keep going at that pace and intensity of physical output.

1:09:09So I think cold plunges, massages, foam rolling, self massage like I do with the Theragun and the stone massage, all that is amazing. I also do a little bit of yoga stretching in the shower. Again, I'm a crazy person. So I do three to five minutes of stretching in the shower because my body's super hot. So I do that before I turn on the cold. And before pickleball and before strength training, I will do some mobility slash active stretching to get my body warmed up for the exercise. So I'm 43. I'm not 21. I can't just go right into lifting weights or running around concrete courts. Otherwise, I'm going to injure myself.

1:10:02So I think that recovery protocol, the older you get, the more that should be a part of your weekly routine. so for me i've just found doing some every day makes me limber mobile and injury free but the easiest way i tell people to do if you're strength training three times a week cool take two to seven minutes do some foam rolling do some active stretching and incorporate it into those three workouts a week. So I think mobility and active recovery is super important. Grip strength, I do agree, is really important. For me, I don't proactively do it because I do so much kettlebell work, so much gymnastics rings work and batons and clubs.

1:10:56I'm working on that grip strength all the time. And I think that is a really important note is that for, you know, when it comes to recovery, I think that is one thing as much as we are all training, it is something you definitely have to prioritize overall, like a big thing that I do is a lot of cold, I have a cold plunge. So it's a, one of those areas where, you know, I definitely use that I'm looking at buying a sauna within the next couple of months here. And so those are two big areas that I want to do, like hot, cold exposure. Right now, I only have the cold exposure, but those are things that I'm looking at, too.

1:11:26And I know every single time my joints feel better when I'm getting out of the cold plunge, and there's a lot of things that are really important there, too. So before we wrap this up, I want to kind of tie this in. How do you kind of see health and wealth? How do you see those intertwined? Now, we could do a whole episode on this, obviously. This is a big subject, and overall, this is a subject that I think there's a lot of correlations between health and wealth. But why is it so important for us as wealth builders, as people who are pursuing financial independence or FI, or people who are already financially independent?

1:11:56Why is it so important to make sure that health is prioritized? Why is that one of the big keys overall? Yeah, so two notes, sauna. There's research that shows doing sauna does incredible things for your lifespan, health spans, and even your testosterone. So I go through periods where I'm super into sauna. during spring and summer, I cold plunge in the Pacific ocean. I'm too much of a wuss to do it during the winter. So I just cold shower at home. And the incredible thing about a cold plunge is the speed of recovery for my body. If I cold plunge after say a day of pickleball or strength training or a double day, the next day, I just feel so much better.

1:12:42And sauna is amazing. So much research on it, but on to health is wealth. There's so many parallels. And this is one of the reasons why my brand is Fit Rich Life is I've been obsessed with fitness and money and wealth my whole life, as well as building a life that I absolutely love and really empowering others to build a life they absolutely love. So right off the bat, at the beginning of this conversation, we talked about tracking macros. So whether it's your finances or your fitness, what gets measured gets optimized. And I found this first in my fitness, but then I applied it to my finances.

1:13:23And it was amazing how fast, when I started tracking my macros and calories and body fat percentage, literally lost 30 pounds of body fat and dropped 10 % body fat. So it went from 18 to eight. Like, that's insane. Same thing with my finances. I was in debt for a long time,$80 ,000 in debt. Then I started tracking my money, got out of debt, and then went on to become a millionaire. And I literally, everyone asked me, what's the number one thing you did for your money to get out of debt and become a millionaire? And it's tracking, tracking my money, my income, my expenses, my savings rate. So the fact that that principle of tracking what gets measured gets optimized works in your fitness and your finances.

1:14:13Now, I don't believe you need to track your nutrition for 10 years, but take two months, track your nutrition and optimize it. And then you now have a blueprint of how to eat to have the physique that you want. And you can go back to intuitively eating. Same thing with your money. If your money is not where you want it to be, the number one thing you need to do is start tracking all aspects of your money. This is super easy to do now with apps like Monarch, Money, and Empower Personal Dashboard, which I think has been rebranded again. And that is such a fundamental that I think everyone, whether it's your fitness journey or your financial journey, you need to start with tracking whatever the key metrics are.

1:15:00And I like to think about what is the golden metric, right? So for me, on my journey to financial independence, the golden metric was my savings rate. And we talked about this, I believe, in my original interviews on your show, so they can go back and deep dive on savings rate. You talked about it on my show, so they can come listening to your interview on my show. So I won't go into that. And then I think for the golden metric for fitness, I think there's a few. In terms of looks, it's your body fat percentage because it doesn't matter how much muscles you have if you have a layer of fat covering it.

1:15:37I think body fat percentage and muscle mass is really important. And then for health span, vo2 max and resting heart rate is really important and those are very easy to track with say a whoop a garmin and then i use a body scale at home you can include the link that tracks my body fat so i've been tracking my body fat every single day for over 11 years i just step on the scale it sends like a current through my body i can't feel it and it tells me what my body fat percentage is So my goal now is just to stay at 10 % or lower body fat year round, intuitively eating, and I've done that for two years.

1:16:20And I think that's perfect. I think that's kind of the overall thing that most people need to understand is there's so much correlation and they work together so seamlessly. And if you look at this in a way where, you know, like tracking, what gets measured, you know, is going to be the thing that you're really going to focus your time and energy on. That's where that correlation really does fall into play. Yeah. Yeah, the other thing that I try to encourage every single one of my coaching clients to do, and really anybody, is you want to make fitness a lifestyle. Because if your lifestyle is a fit lifestyle, by default, you're going to do things that keep you fit and healthy.

1:17:01And I also think financial independence or fi is a lifestyle they are a set of core values habits practices in both fitness and fi that if that is a part of your lifestyle you can't help but be fit and become rich and financially free yeah so i think lifestyle is it's kind of like the foundation and then mindset goes on top of that. So mindset is psychology and habits. So if your psychology around money, your psychology around fitness, your habits around fitness, your habits around money are good, again, you can't help but get fit and rich. And so if you're living a lifestyle that has those as core values, fitness and financial independence, and then your mindset is built around fitness and financial independence and you're living those values, living those habits and embodying the mindset of financial independence and being fit, by default, you're gonna become very fit and very rich.

1:18:18Absolutely. Well, Justin, this has been incredible thus far. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll definitely have you back on here on the show very soon. Can you tell people more about where they can find out about you, your show, everything else you have going on, your coaching and everything else. Yeah, absolutely. So the other thing we didn't talk about that I kind of mentioned in passing at the very beginning, and I see this all the time, is people just show up to the gym and they do whatever. You need to follow a structured, a well-structured workout program. Otherwise, this is why you see people who go to the gym every week and a year later, they look exactly the same or worse.

1:18:57and you need to follow a structured workout program. So I have a free four-day workout at fitrichlifecoaching.com slash workout that you can follow, or you can find one on ChatGPT, but follow it for at least eight weeks and then track every workout or every exercise, log every rep, every set, and try to improve every set and rep, like increase the weight, do more reps. And this is what is called progressive overload. This is how you build muscle. And that's the other big problem I see with people in their fitness is they're just haphazardly working out. And yes, any workout's great, but if you really wanna shape your body and build certain muscles, you need to follow a structured workout program.

1:19:46My podcast is Fit Rich Life. It's available everywhere. 80 % of the episodes are the financial independence journey or the entrepreneurial journey. The other ones are the fitness journey or the relationship journey. Really what I'm trying to capture is the hero's journey. If you're familiar with Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, every human goes through this. Back in the day, it was like the Odyssey. Now the modern version of the hero's journey, I think comes in the form of building your own business or achieving financial independence or having a massive fitness transformation or a massive transformation in, say, your relationship with another person.

1:20:28It's available everywhere. I write a weekly newsletter, Fit Rich Life newsletter. It goes out every week. It's tips, tools, and strategies for fitness, money, and life. You can read in less than five minutes, level up your fitness, money, and life. And my coaching, I only work with eight to 10 clients at a time. if you're interested you can just go to my instagram or fitrichlifecoaching.com and you can set up a free consultation with me i have two spots open at the time this recording they may be filled by the time but there's always a wait list so you can check it out and yeah as i sort of mentioned i'm semi-retired so i play a lot of pickleball i release a podcast every other week.

1:21:15And I release a weekly newsletter and I'm really just enjoying my semi-retirement. Well, awesome. We'll link all that up in the show notes down below. Thank you so much again for coming on. We truly, truly appreciate it. Yeah. Last thing, I'm at Justin David Carl everywhere, most active on threads and Instagram, but X, Twitter, LinkedIn, everywhere at Justin David Carl. And I'm always happy to connect with people on social media. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again. And to everyone listening, we will link those up down in the show notes and we're going to have Justin back. So thank you again.

1:21:50Thanks for having me on the show, brother. Two kinds of fishing out here. One for fish, one for your data. Hackers try to hook you, but Cisco Duo keeps every user and device protected. Cisco Duo. Fishing season is over. Learn more at duo.com.