Hello everybody. Welcome back. So today I want to do a podcast episode on shit I’m doing before I turn 50. So if you don’t know this July, I will be turning 50. And it’s quite a big thing for me. I am really looking forward to it. I’ve heard that some people, it really bothers them that they’re turning 50. I just feel like the first half of my life I struggled, I overcame, I got my shit together and I really feel like that version of me from zero to 50, she worked so hard to set me up to make 50 to a hundred the best half of my life and want to be ready for it. And I really, I don’t want to be one of those people that thinks, especially for women, I don’t want to sit around and think that turning 50 is like, hang it up.
The best years are over, you’re washed up, all that kind of shit. One of the things that drives me in life, and I’ll just be honest, is figuring out a way to not be like everybody else. Figuring out a way to stop believing all the shit women are told about themselves. I feel like the next 50 years of my life is going to be spent making sure that that next generation of women don’t feel like we’ve felt. By the time my niece turns 50, she’s graduating from college this year she’s turning 23. I won’t, by the time she turns 50, that she’s had a different role model that she has seen a strong ass woman that her generation has plenty of us in our fifties, sixties, seventies, and beyond, showing how strong and powerful women really are. And the only way that that’s ever going to change is some of us just have to fucking go first.
And I’m very willing to go first. That’s one of my superpowers. I was willing to change the narrative to lose a hundred pounds. I was willing to build two really successful online businesses, a weight loss business, and then that made another baby where I teach other people how to start their own fucking businesses. So today I’ve been thinking about what I want to share with y’all. And for me what’s really important is always telling you kind of things I’m doing, not just stuff that I’m learning or things that I’m teaching, but how I’m actually living my life. And I knew that turning 50, I wanted to give myself gifts, and I don’t mean it’s real easy to go out and buy yourself some fucking flowers. Last year I finally got a wedding ring. If you don’t know, I have horrible luck with wedding rings. Chris gave me a beautiful one.
When we first got married, it was stolen. I had my grandmother’s ring that she used. It also got stolen and for years I refused to wear one. And then last year we decided to finally get me a ring that symbolizes our love, something that I would love and I’m willing to break the curse on my rings going to the doer. So I wanted to give myself gifts this year that when I turn 50 I can be so proud of. So lemme tell you some of the things I’m doing. The first thing is a daily walk in sunshine. Y’all already know I love my walks. I try to walk every single day no matter what. That is something I started. That was the very first thing I started when I started losing weight at 250 pounds. I knew I wanted to be an exerciser and I also knew I didn’t know dick about exercising, but I knew how to walk and I knew I could find a treadmill where I could go and I could at least get in 15 minutes a day.
And so when I was thinking about this, number one, I want to continue it, but as many days as possible in the year, I want it to be outside where I can get sunshine first thing in the morning. There are so many studies about how it just makes for a better day. And because I work from home very often I wake up before the sun comes up, I get all started with coffee and working and I look up and it’s time for meetings. I got to get in the shower and often I’m just going to the gym so I don’t get a lot of outside time. So I have decided that I will be taking a dedicated break each day that the weather’s nice to go outside. And I’ll tell you, I already started thinking about that a few months ago. I walked outside more in the winter when I am.
Oh, I do not like cold. I am a titty fucking baby when it comes to it being cold, but I figured it out and I walked outside more this winter than ever. And now that our weather’s changing and it’s beautiful out, I am making myself have some sunshine every single day with a walk. I don’t care if it’s two minutes, 40 minutes, I don’t care how long it is, but I love walking and that is going to be something that I’m giving myself the gift of. By the time I turn 50, I want it to be really automatic that I shut things down for a little bit every morning and I get outside and I get some direct sunshine for my eyes, for my body, for everything. There’s a lot of studies about vitamin D. I take D because I run low in it anyway, but they say that the best vitamin D absolutely comes from the sun.
So I’m very dedicated to that. The next thing I’m doing is taking some type of greens product each day. Right now I’m drinking something called clean simple greens. We will put a link to it in the show notes. It’s a peach flavor. And let me just say this, of all the greens that I’ve drank, I’ve tried athletic greens in several kinds. This one is the most tolerable. Now, the person who told me to drink it, she was like, oh, it’s delicious in my mind when she said they have a peach flavor. I went all the way back to childhood when I used to drink peach knee highs. This is no peach kneehigh for all of you Southerners that love a peach. It’s not bad though, and I’ve tried it two ways so I can just drink it with water. And what I do is I just kind of sip on it all morning long.
That’s the first thing I start drinking when I wake up. I’ve replaced drinking coffee, first thing with sipping on this for a little bit with some water, and then moving into coffee. I’d like to get to about an hour, but I’m going to be real honest, it’s going to take mama a minute to get used to that. So I’m right now at about the 10 to 15 minute mark of delaying coffee when I wake up, but it’s not bad. And so with water I can drink it and I’m like, for all the ones I’ve tried, it’s pretty good and I definitely feel it. I feel like I’m feeling better. I’ve been drinking it for a little bit. The other way that I love the most, but I often just forget to do or I want to eat a real breakfast is I’ll make a smoothie with it.
And all I do is I put a scoop of the simple clean greens in a cup. I use a magic bullet. I put two containers of Greek yogurt. I like the Oko fat-free vanilla. I don’t think that they have one that’s not fat free. I’m not doing it because it’s fat free. It’s more of just, that’s the version. It’s 0%. And so I do two containers of that, the small containers, and that gives me, I think it’s right at 30 grams of protein, a good hit first thing in the morning, and then some ice and water. And I put a few strawberries in there and that right there is pretty good. Sometimes I’ll, even if I’m going to be running that day or if I feel like I’m going to have a really big time workout where I might sweat a lot, I’ll add some chia seeds to it.
Also, just for hydration, I tend to be somebody I pee a lot. I get dehydrated real easy. I have to actually drink a little bit more water than most people. So I’m always trying to gain my electrolyte stuff. And chia seeds are a really good way to get hydrated. So I like it in that smoothie and that smoothie happens to be quick and efficient. If I’m going into a meeting, I can sip on it, but most days I will say I don’t make the smoothie. I just drink the greens because I personally, I like to eat my breakfast. I like to eat my breakfast. I’ve got a couple of my favorite breakfasts. I love those Dave’s killer cinnamon bagels. That’s one of my favorite. I like to heat one of those up. I keep ’em in the freezer and then I heat one up and I’ll either drink a chocolate fairlife protein shake with it, or maybe I’ll eat a bagel and a couple of those yogurts.
So that’s kind of what I decide on. Do I want to eat my breakfast or do I want to drink my breakfast? The other thing that I’m doing also is if you don’t know, I have a lot of loose skin. I’m very conscious of aging. Crepey skin is a real deal. You take grapey skin on top of loose skin. I’m aging fast visually, and so I do a lot of things to try to make sure that I’m doing what I can for my skin. Collagen is really good for our skin, for our joints. It’s an easy way to get a little extra protein in. And the reason why I keep talking about protein is I started working with, and you probably listened to this podcast, a Menopause Coach several months ago. And I’ve researched a lot about menopause kind of in that window. And one of the things that I have learned is that as women get older, we lose our muscle mass real quick unless we are actively trying to protect it. And muscles are like the bubble wrap to your bones. I have watched too many of the women in my family have bone problems, joint problems and stuff where I am very particular about watching out for that. I want to be twerking and dancing and doing things in my eighties and nineties. Mama doesn’t pretend that she’s going to, I guess just start crocheting one day. I’m fine if you crochet, but I want to be listening to hip hop.
I want to be those that couple at the day club, wherever Chris and I are hanging out, if we go out to a nightclub or whatever, I want to be that old couple that people say that’s fucking goals where they’re like, oh my God, look at that couple over there. I want to stand out. I want to be enjoying my life. And that means I’m going to want to keep doing the things I do today. There’s no way that I’m ever going to be somebody who just wants to sit around and not have fun. And everybody’s definition of fun is different. Mine happens to be hip hop dancing. Chris and I love to go out to nightclubs. We like doing those things. And so I want to be able to that stuff for as long as I can. So I take collagen that I just put either in the smoothie or I put it in my coffee.
So it’s just one scoop. There’s all kinds of collagen. I think the clean, simple Greens people, I think they make a version of collagen. Organify is what I’ve got right now. I’m not married to any brand, but the Organify is unflavored and it melts really easy. So I’ll put a link to that also in case you just want to start with one that’s tried and tested, but just get a good quality collagen. That’s all I would really say about that. But I just put a scoop in my coffee and you cannot taste it. The next thing I’m doing is I like to lift the weights. I am very dedicated to having three to four lifts every single week, every week. And the only time I don’t get in three to four is about once out of every probably 10 to 12 weeks, I will take one week off from lifting weights just to give my muscles a chance to repair rest so I can come back stronger.
And usually I work with an online trainer. Her name’s Christine. She’s the arms coach if you want to look her up. I have been working with her privately for over a year now. She sends me workouts. We get on the phone once every three or four weeks. We kind of check in. She just makes sure that I’m lifting heavy and all the things. And she, I’ll ask her questions about certain exercises for substitutes if I’m traveling. And she’s so nice and she’s just a wonderful human being. I can’t say enough good things about Christine. It’s Christine Rucker, Christine with a K, and we can link her too in the show notes. But I’ve been working with her and right now I told her, I said, I want to go back to three weeks or three days a week for a while because I’m going to train for a 5K.
I have no time goal. I just want to get to where I can run five Ks again. I have a love hate relationship with running, and I’ve just decided I don’t care about a time goal anymore. My husband and I just want to run one together. So I am going to do three weight workouts a week. I’ll be doing one lower body, which is just all legs, and then I’m going to be doing chest, shoulders and triceps on one day and then back and biceps on another. But you can look like, I just think it’s important that as we age that we are lifting weights. I do not want to be that woman who one day falls down and things just break. She can’t even fall. So lifting weights is what helps with that. The next thing that I’m doing is I’ve been doing this for a while.
I take this product called Sleep Remedy. And if you’re one of my members, I talk about sleep, remedy the time. I’m like a baby seal. You got to club my ass to get me to go to sleep at night. And I’ve been taking Sleep Remedy for years. Years. It wasn’t even called Sleep Remedy when I first started taking it. It was called Doc Parsley’s. And then they decided to rename it Sleep. Remedy made by Doc Parsley. I swear by it, it gives you magnesium, gives you a little bit of melatonins. We lose melatonin the older that we get and all of our screens and stuff drain it out of our system. So I take three of those at night. Now when you first start, don’t take three or you’re going to shit your pants the next day. Start with one, take it for a little while, move to two, then move to three.
But I take it every night. And we’ll link that also in the show notes. I’ll give you all links to everything I mentioned in case you’re interested in them. But the big gift that I’m giving myself before I turn 50 is getting back into the habit of being asleep by nine o’clock. I do better in life, going to bed and being asleep by nine and starting my day between five and six, I get so much more done. I feel better. And I want to give myself the gift of good quality sleep. And that’s one of the things that I’m working on right now. I had traveled a little bit the first part of the year. I was on two different coasts. All my sleep patterns got all out of whack and I’ve been having a hard time falling asleep by nine. And I’m almost there now.
We have been rolling it back and rolling it back and I’m really close. The next thing that I’m doing is talking to my best friend every single day, like a non-negotiable. We use an app called Marco Polo. It’s very famous in the No BS weight loss world. We all use it to talk to our accountability groups, our partners. I use it to talk to my best friend. I’m Marco Polo, my mother. I mean, it is just a fun little app where you can just video each other. You can also just do audio if you want. But for me, it is important to have somebody to talk to every day. Every day. I want somebody that I can trust that I can bitch to. I don’t have to have my best mindset, anything. I can just literally unload. This is what’s bothering me. And I will tell you, if you ever listened in on our Marco Polos would be the most boring shit ever.
Four days out of the week, I’m not even bitching. I’m just telling her, here’s what I’m going to do today. And as I talk to her and I’m usually walking when I’m doing it, I’m working through my day, I’m talking about what I’m going to eat, what I’m going to be doing for the day. It just helps me say out loud, this is who I’m going to be today. And saying it to someone else just helps me. I love it. And then a lot of times if I’m not feeling good, I can bitch and then she can let me know I support you or what if you tried this? Or she’ll call me out on things. And then sometimes she’ll be listening to my plans and she’ll like, remember you said you were not going to be pressuring yourself. Why are you suddenly doing all these things?
You said you weren’t going to do these things anymore. It is such a good way to be held accountable, but also to feel like someone’s listening. And I’ll be honest, as much as I love my husband, he’s not the person that I want to sit around and tell my day to. I want to tell him about my day after, but planning my day and stuff, he is not interested in it. Not one ounce. And I know he is not interested in it, so I don’t want to be sitting there making him listen to some kind of gobbledygook of mine that I know he don’t give a shit about. There’s no shame in that game. I don’t care if he doesn’t care. It’s like, well, yeah, because I’m going to tell all of y’all right now. There is shit Chris Crabtree wants to talk to me about that.
I have told him, I don’t really understand what you’re talking about. It’s also not super interesting to me. So I’ll listen if it makes you feel better, but just need you to know not my favorite. And then that is one of the reasons why we have such a good marriage is we’re just real honest with each other about this stuff. And we also don’t set, I don’t put expectations on him of things I need. I go out and find people who can feel that or figure it out for myself. And I think that’s one of the best gifts I’m giving myself at 50 is having a best friend talk to each day and setting my life up to know that I don’t need a lot of people supporting me in my life, but I damn sure know how to support myself. And I know how to find people who will.
Because one day I’m going to tell you, this is the thing that also scares the shit out of me. But I know it’s going to happen. There may be a day where I don’t have Chris anymore and I want to know that I have the resiliency to build a circle of support for when he’s gone. I do not want, I’ve watched both of my grandmothers lose their life partners and they were just miserable. And especially my granny, she didn’t have a lot of friends. She had made my papa her life and her son, her life. And I think it was lonely for her. And I don’t want that for me. And so one of the best gifts I think my granny gave me was an example of go out and find a new life for you. Don’t do it like I did. The other thing is I have started taking creatine, and that is mainly to make sure that as I’m going into my fifties, that I’m just as much muscle as I can.
It’s just harder as you get older. And our body is naturally designed that unless we’re using it, we are going to lose it. So with the weights, with the collagen, making sure that I’m getting protein in the creatine. And take it if you want, don’t take it if you don’t want to, but it does help stave off some of that muscle loss. And there’s two last things that I’m doing to give myself gifts at 50. The first one is I’ve started not doubting myself. I doubt myself all the time, all the time. I’m really good at making things happen. But I do it in the most miserable fucking way. I push myself and I doubt all the way there. And I just, I’m like, there’s such a much easier way to get things done in this life. What if we just believe things are going to work out?
And either they won’t or they will, but doubting all the way there to figure out if it’s going to work or not makes you fucking miserable, makes the whole journey harder. So I have started paying attention to every time I’m saying things like, well, I doubt I’ll be able to do that. I doubt that’s going to work out. My brain loves to say I doubt that. I doubt that. I doubt that it is now the signal that when I say it, I say, you know what? I’m just going to believe the opposite until I’m proven wrong. And most of the time I’m not even proven wrong, which is the beautiful thing. So just giving myself the gift of ease and going through life without doubting so much. And then the last one is thinking that my body’s not good enough. I have spent 50 fucking years thinking that it breaks my heart to know how long I have spent not liking in my body, thinking it’s wrong, judging it, being ashamed of it, hiding it.
You name it. I’ve done it and still do to this day. I told my members the other day, we’re getting ready to have our big body image revolution camp. It’s a three day experience in Nashville. So if you become a no BS woman, you can sign up for this camp and you can come to Nashville or you can do it virtually online with all of us. There’ll be thousands of us there. My virtual experiences are not going to a Zoom meeting. They are a show and they are life-changing. And I just decided I will not spend the next 50 years doing that to my body. I will not treat her like shit. I’ll not talk to her like shit. And I’m going to learn how to quit thinking about her like shit. And that means that I’m going to have to hear every shady thing I say and replace it and really listen for it and not get mad at myself or wish I wasn’t thinking that I have wasted enough time in my life with a terrible body image. And I actually have a body now that I am pretty sure that if I sat down and had coffee with the 250 pound version of me and I told her half the shit I think about my body, she would throw punch my ass. She’d either do that or she’d bitch slap me so hard, I’d fall out the chair. She would be be fucking grateful.
So I am working on it now. I’m not waiting until I turn 50 because the day I turn 50, I want to feel good. I want to know I’m going into that second half of my life ready for it. And I’m going to be an example to my niece
And to women out there who are so tired of struggling with the bullshit, who are struggling to take care of themselves, who are struggling with how they talk to themselves. So I invite you, you don’t have to be turning 50 to have a moment where you just decide, the rest of my life will be spent like this, and I’m going to work really hard to stay in alignment with it. And when I’m not in alignment with it, I’m going to figure out how to get it in alignment. If you don’t know how and you need help, you can join me in no BS weight loss. We will help you. But even if you don’t, just know you can change these things. Nothing is set in stone for you in stone, nothing. Don’t allow yourself to believe that. Y’all have a good week. I’ll talk to you soon.
