#28 - Kenny Crowell

Kenny Crowell is an everyday person just like you who shares a story of a husband and father who, like many of us, woke up one day and realized life had taken over and he needed to lose weight. Kenny shares how he changed his diet and his workouts in order to lose weight and insure a healthy and active lifestyle. 

Kenny was  born and raised in upstate NY. As a latch key kid he spent most of his time outdoors and playing sports. After college he started a sales job in the legal space out of NYC. Once burnt out and tired of the snow, he and his wife decided to trade the mountains for the ocean. He now lives in Flagler Beach, FL with his wife and two sons. He is an avid runner and golfer, but most importantly, a husband and father. 

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Transcript

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This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It's all possible! It’s time to wake up. Here we go. Hello, everyone. This is Angela Grayson coming at you from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast, where I talk to professionals and everyday people about health and fitness to try to give you inspiration to live your best life. And today we have on the show Kenny Crowell and he's going to share with us some facts about his life and how he's gotten to where he is today in health and fitness and maybe even share more. So Hi, Kenny. How are you today? Hi, Angela. I'm great. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you saying yes. Kenny, let's go. Let's go back to when you were a kid, born and raised in upstate New York. I come from a long Island, so we have something in common there. Tell us about your life in sports, maybe, or what got you going in the direction to be able to be outside and be with your friends. Go ahead. Sure. So it's funny. So my life and mostly my fitness journey is ebbs and flows. So as most kids kind of growing up in the eighties as a latchkey kid, so I'd come home from school, get my bike, need my friends, we'd play every sport under the sun from hockey to basketball to football to baseball. So I was always very active growing up. I was always in great shape. I loved sports. I played sports all through high school, mostly in track, in baseball. And then when I went to college, to a community college local, to where I lived and there was no sports program there. So I kind of just stayed active with my friends, playing pickup games and and whatnot. And then from there is where I kind of after college, I took a job in the city where, you know, everyone who lives upstate New York likes to bike, to go to the ends of the city to work where the money is. And that's where I found that when you don't stay active and when you keep your food lifestyle on it, it catches up to you. So I'll go I'll touch on that a little later. But growing up, I think the benefits of being a latchkey kid, which I found now having two kids of my own, we're a little more controlling. Where I was always out. I was always, like I said, playing every sport you could think of. So I had the ability to be around my friends all the time, even after school, socialize. And I think that was really important part of just me growing up and and getting back into the fitness space where I kind of put out a bunch of weight and lost it all again. Yeah. So that was kind of my childhood latchkey kid playing sports my entire life, being around friends and just and having really enjoyment of the outdoors as well. So especially upstate New York. I mean, I lived next to the mountains, so it was it was outstanding. Absolutely. So you had said something about your lifestyle when you started working in the city that you were going down maybe the wrong path as far as your health and fitness was concerned. Let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah, sure. So I was in the legal space, so we would help law firms kind of work like manage their documents for for lawsuits. So it's a lot of rushing around, especially lawyers in New York City don't like to wait. So a lot of running around all day. So you're eating on the run. You're grabbing what you can for the morning. New York City, the morning was a bagel, as, of course, or an egg sandwich because they're delicious. So I'd have one of those and some coffee and then you'd be snacking through the day to stay. Stay full on and for lunch you're having sandwiches and for dinner you're entertaining clients. So you're out drinking and you're eating bar food. And it was kind of like the frog in the water, like you didn't I didn't know I was putting all that weight until one day because my passport, I look at the picture and I was like, Who is this? And it was just having to be a bad, bad picture. Had a bad day. So that was around 2008, I think is when I was probably at my heaviest. I think I got up to around £215 and it was not in the £215 of muscle. It was the opposite direction. So being a kid who had always been active and playing sports and then seeing what I know my lack of doing had done to myself, I decided I was like, It's time for a change. So I kind of slowly I started exercising again. Nothing crazy. It was more like just adjusting my food. I think that's what it was. And this, instead of taking the van to go see clients in the city, I would walk something over. So it was little started with the little steps. And then eventually I got married and then the wedding was coming. So my wife was doing the whole like, I'm she's going to exercise every day for until the wedding so she can fit into that dress. And I was like, okay, I'll, I'll join you. And then I lost some weight. I was looking great. I still look at the wedding pictures and I'm kind of like, I wish I had, you know, done a little more again, taking steps in the right direction. And then we had our first kids and the the first time you have a kids to eat for to mentality for both the husband and the wife because she was craving, you know, ice cream or, you know, pizza forever, baby. And, you know, living in New York, it's very easy to eat those delicious things because everything is delicious. So I got, you know, put on weight again. And then finally my wife was having problems taking the weight off. So and for me, when I started just walking and adjusting my diet, I had an easy time taking weight off. So she said, let's do the carnivore diet. No, it wasn't hard. I'm sorry, the Caveman caveman diet. And that's where I found my love of black coffee. Because you can't have any sugar or milk dairy products in the beginning. So we started doing that diet. It worked fantastic for me. I shed a bunch of weight. She was having problems with that. But that kind of kick started to me going, Oh, it really is the food I'm eating. It's doing a lot of what's going on in my body. So I really got my diet in check, probably right after my first kid was born in 2014 ish to 2015. That's when I really stepped up my game when it came to fitness. And then one of my good friends was doing a Spartan race. So I know you and Heather are trained on, and I met her when I first moved down to go to Fitness one. She was when we signed up and I saw the Spartan T-shirt and we chatted about that. But that's where did I first born, raced and I fell in love with it. Lucky for me, where I lived in New York, the majority of the races, the you know, the three of them ones they do were all 20 minutes in my house and I so I didn't have to travel hours to go to these things, which some people do. And I knew that I was going to really enjoy these races and challenged myself. I needed to really start training for it. So that's where my life really took the one day return to back on to the like, get my life in gear. I now have one kid want to have more. I don't want to be the dad who's you see at the ballgame, who looks at you and have a heart attack. I was like, I don't need that. I want to be around for my kids as long as possible. So I started started running and that's where I kind of fell back into my love for running because I ran cross-country in high school and know running's most things where you stop. Yeah, I was eating so much running because I'm running in high school and I'm running, you know, 15 miles, 20 miles. And then you start running and you keep eating, you know, all the garbage. So I got back into running, running hills, running mountains. And then the way was falling off, and I was just that's when I said to myself, it can be done. It's not an impossible journey. It's just dedication. It's just doing something a little bit every day. And when I first started running again, I didn't run. I didn't run half a marathon. I ran a mile and it was mostly walking. I would jog a little, I would walk a little jog, little walker. Well, and like I said before, baby steps, it kind of got me to where I am now. And and, you know, I run almost every day. My morning runs, get my coffee and come home. So. Absolutely. That's great. How far do you run? So now that my I've been noticing, getting a little older and breaking down a little more because now I'm really trying to also implement more strength training, which I did in the gate for a while because I was running so much. I've been trying to cut it back from where I was, probably running 5 to 6 miles, 5 to 6 days a week. It's now I'll run through about three miles or so, five days a week. So I try to hit 15 miles a week is kind of my goal. Now. I want to run this 6 to 700 miles a year is what I want to hit. I tried out, I try to do 2001 year and my body told me to stop both. And that's another thing that's important. Listen to your body. It's some people want to push through it, but in the long run, I especially for me get, like you said, getting back into strength. Training in my late thirties is when I started getting back into it. It's better to list your body and rest than push it get hurt. And now you're set back three weeks because you can't, you can't do anything. So yeah, a lot, a lot of lessons learned through that, through this, this journey, a lot of possible to get back into these things. Absolutely. And do you find that the strength training is helping you with your running? I mean, not as far as, you know, going farther, but strength wise. So I've found oddly enough as well I shouldn't say that enough actually makes total sense. I have lower back issues. I've had them for my kids. Like I said before, my career was documents in New York City and before everything became electronic, electronic based, I was I would picking up boxes every day, hundreds of them. And when you're young, you're young, you think you're invincible and you don't think to bend at the knees. So I've had lower back issues as ever, you know, ever since, really. So that's also why also straight away from a lot of the strength training, I was always afraid to hurt myself. But once I kind of said to myself, you know, you read the studies and you hear everybody talk about how once you had even over 30, your bone density starts to starts to go down. And I said, I don't need to. I've watched family members get older and haven't done anything and they can barely walk. And there are 80 years old. That's not me, believe me. Yeah. So I really got back into strength training and it's actually it's if anything, it's helped my back. So it started with just doing bodyweight squats and I had of a kettlebell. So I just do like kettlebell deadlifts and I would just make sure that I was focusing on proper movements and really strengthening like that core part of my back and it's been in my difference. Now I'm, I can go on longer runs now if I do longer runs and my back doesn't hurt, where if I was doing longer runs while I small was great, I can run because I was, you know, maybe I was £6 lighter. I could run longer, I was leaner, but I my back would hurt. Right now. I could do these things and doesn't hurt anymore. So that sounds like you did it the right way. Yeah. I try to get people with different kinds of injuries to work their muscles in a way to where it'll help strengthen the joint. That's an issue. And in the long run it's going to help. Yeah, especially if you use proper form or if you don't know the proper form, get someone to help you who can show you and make sure you do it right. Sometimes we think we're doing it right, that somebody else is watching you and it's like, No, no, you know, or look in the mirror. Yeah. And that's the one good thing about at least my personality. I've never been afraid here to ask people things. So when I first the gym can be extremely intimidating for people, especially if they'd never been there before. I get it. Because especially as a as a young kid being at the gym, like I was in high school in the weight room and you, like, have to put a lot of weight on here. I have to look like I'm strong and people have the mentality going to the public gyms like they think they have to look like they're not weak, so they want to hurt themselves or they'll go, Oh, I've never deadlifting before, but let me. I feel like I'm strong, strongly put on £250 and see if I can do it. And then something cracks and they go look. So I've never been afraid to ask somebody and like, Am I doing this right? Like I'll go to a trainer and say this Look right to you. I just want to make sure I'm not going to hurt myself. I'll go and I'll put all the on £10 plates and bumper plates on the thing and to practice my form to make sure I'm doing a right, because I don't care if I'm getting too old to her, by her by myself and be out of commission for a month. And this is something I need to do every day. And my wife knows, but I haven't worked out. We just go do something. I'm like, okay, well, so you had said that you met Heather Tran at the gym, the fitness one where I used to work also. That's great. And she was into Spartan racing. I think she still is. As a matter of fact. Did you ever do any of the races with her? So I have not. But no, we originally had we had talked about it once cause I was talking to the Spartan training on the back field area and I was going to try to join the team, but there was so many things going on with our new side and I was brooding what the things were. If I was doing the race, I was literally getting up just enough times. Get there, do the race, get in the car. Well, as you know, I never I never really did any of the races with anyone except my one buddy who got me into it. And a funny story on that. It was the my first race ever was the sprint, which was the short one. It's like a5k, I think it's like 15 obstacles or something like that. What were the obstacles? So the obstacles a lot. So people don't realize the obstacles in this are a little very strange. Their forearm and grip strength. So while the walls you jump over those six foot walls, they're fun. You pick up, you carry the bucket full of gravel, you know it hurts, but you put it down, you pick it up. But the monkey bars I found were one of those things where I had a deficit. I didn't know. I was like, Oh, I do monkey bars, The kid is easy. And then when you don't realize when you just run two miles, you have really exercised it forever and everything's kind of achy. You're sweating wet shots. But the first motivator, Elliott Kid in the movie, I was like, this slicked back and just let it sit on my back. That was a lot of fun. We have, you know, there's the A-frame wall you got to climb over. But I mean, it's like I said, a lot of monkey bar stuff, a lot of rope swings, the rings. You gotta do the ring swings. Those are fun. The most challenging part of it is for someone who is a runner who wants to these races. They think that I run, I can do this barn races. Oh, I'm like I and my buddy who used to run a lot, he wanted to do the assurance with me. One day and he's like, I can I can run a seven minute mile pace, four or five K and like, that's great when you're doing this race, just know it's going to take you at least 40 minutes to do the three miles. He's like, No way. Okay. Then right around 40, 45 minutes is when we want to finish the race because it's like, you know, realize like you're you're tired yourself out, like you're doing burpees. You miss something. You're, you're sitting an obstacle in your, you know, you're swinging. It takes up time. All these things take time and then you're tired. So you're like, I need a minute to rest. And so they're a lot of fun. They're more fun to do with people. I've only done a few with Phelps, and the rest were all just by myself. But it's a great way to challenge yourself. It's a great way to push yourself. People think they can't do it. I've seen people run those races where you wish you the best and I hope you can complete this and then you see them come down the finish line and they cross and you're like, Good for you. I mean, people, they can do it. You can push the body. The body can do so much more than people think it can do. The reason most people quit is because their brain quits on them. And it happens to me. There are times I'm running and like, I'll just go back to the car and I'm like, What are you doing? Just keep going, just keep going and you keep going and you're fine. You get through it. But I mean, the mental mentally is the hardest thing to push yourself when you're uncomfortable, but you're also the only way to get better, which teaches us also in everyday life. If we apply those rules in sport to everyday life, you can go a lot, lot farther in life. Just keep on pushing through. It's going to happen. Absolutely. And a good example that was after my first initial Spartan race, one of my who was a he's a friend, but he was also at time was a client and he was a good client. And he said, Oh, you do a Spartan race. I'm I do Spartan races. You're going to run the ultra Spartan race with me. And I'm like, What is that? You know what? That is a dumb one. He goes, It's a 50 K Spartan race with like 70 something obstacles as through the ski down. I was like, You're out of your mind. I'm not doing that. He's like, Well, then I'm not going to give you business. And I said, Well, looks like we're running a race. So. So that was actually and I do I do give him a lot of credit for he kickstarted also my running beside for me getting back into Spartan races. That was a good kick start I needed because I said if I'm going to run 31 point whatever, miles up and down a ski mountain, I'd better be ready. Like, this is one of those things where I can kind of like I can fake it till I make it like that. So benefits of living upstate New York. I like I said, I lived next to a mountain. So the mountain community by me, it was from the bottom of the mountain all the way to the top house when I was from just over a mile. And I would run that back and forth, I mean, for an hour. And then I'm go to the new I'd go to the park and I would do lunges for like a soccer field line. I worked my leg strength and then I would do forearm exercises and I'll do pull ups tasks. I was like, I need to know that I can run the mountain and I can do the monkey bars. So the most important, they said, I'll we start the race. We fired up, ready to go. He gets to Mile six. He's like, I can't do it anymore. And I was like, Well, looks like I'm finishing the race alone inside of the rest of the race by myself and gradually some thank you. But I took again back to a mentally being tough about it. I took everything for me not to go all good on the now if you like. Oh, yeah, we're done. Let's go. I said, You know what? I'm going to keep trudging along by. See you down there. Great. If you want to go all miles, I'll see you. See you next week. Yeah. Just the race so behind you. I know my listeners can't see, but behind you, you have all kinds of ribbons and all kinds of stuff going on back there. It is one of the best from your Spartan race. You're all true. So this is some of the ultra right here. It's also almost belt buckle. Nice. And then I did one more ultra over here that no one can see. I know what it's like. Gerbil want nice. Very nice. And then that one was the last Spartan race I had done. Yeah. So, Kenny, you're very proud of your accomplishments, and you should be. And it was. It's a long journey to get there. It was a lot of physical and mental anguish during some of those times. So the last one I had done was the Thanksgiving before COVID hit. It was in South Carolina, and it was, I'm sorry, North Carolina. I moved to North Carolina. I was at a horse, a horse ranch through again, through the mountains in the Carolinas, same client slash friend. It was like, let's do this one. I'll do with you will fly over and we'll go right. He backed out the day before. So yeah, he's over two when it comes to, but oh my gosh, was he a great motivator for you even though in complete the races? That's incredible. I hope he listens to this podcast. Maybe next time he'll complete his race. But what I'll say, but again, but that was another one where it was I woke up in the morning and when human on I got there was kind of wasn't cold, but it was a warm it was in November in North Carolina. Next morning I wake up, it's dark, it's raining, it's 40 degrees. And I'm I'm saying to someone like, what am I doing? So the way they had it set up was it was two loops of their their like next their longest normal race, which is just the regular beast. And you get when you're finished the first loop, you go to the station where you can refuel, you're starving, you feel the water, you can take a break. And they had a fire going and I was already wet and cold and I was there and was like you to stay here. I could get warm and it's lead to go back in the race. It wasn't like you just go. They had it was like a hundred foot. They had a it was a drainage tube and those big plastic ones and you had to crawl under that 100 feet to get back into the race. And I'm like, Why would I do this to myself? But I've always had and I don't know if this will help some people, but whenever I'm doing something is extremely difficult and I know there's an end to it. Like one of these races, I always say to myself, How are you going to feel when you wake up tomorrow knowing that at that same time you could have done the race like you're going to feel great the day you went home and you didn't complete it. Are you going to feel amazing? You wake up even they're going to be sore and you're going to be achy. Retired to the race when you wake up in the morning. That feeling of accomplishment for something that's so difficult. It was I mean, it's it is it's it's like that that runner's high. You feel euphoric when you're done. And it was I mean, the amount of food aid afterwards was probably record breaking. But but but well that's okay. You earned it. Yeah. Your body needed it. 100% did. Yeah. Well, that's great. Just so you know. And so the listeners know, I also did a recording with Heather, the alteration for you to do some Spartan racing. So if you get a chance, go ahead and listen to the recording with her. You'll enjoy that. She talked a little bit about the Spartan races besides many other things. She's as a great trainer and a good friend and a good one to listen to. Yeah. All right. So besides your client, who was a great inspiration to you because she was going to pull out on you and not be your client anymore, what what other people in your life were inspirations to you at different points to not only help you with your health and fitness, but motivators in life in general? Obviously, I would be remiss not to say my mother is my biggest motivator. Growing up, she was a single mom, three kids, you know, she worked three, four job sometimes, hence being a latchkey kid. She was always working. But we understood and it's funny now, having kids in my own and you going out to eat a couple times a week and they complain, I don't want to hear our under there. I'm like, You don't understand. When I was a kid, I don't I couldn't tell you what. I went out once to dinner as a family, albeit at home every night. We had to have we couldn't afford to go out ever. So watching my mom and all the work she put in and how hard she struggled just to kind of to keep a roof over our heads and to make sure we always had food and we never really wanted for much was a huge inspiration for me, for like for my hard work and my work ethic. So that's that's number one. Number two would probably be my two cousins and my uncle, their father growing up, my mom and dad divorced. I was young, so my my dad worked a job that was a second shift job. So he was never around. So I'm on the weekends, like ever. And she's director, you know, one of their other parents in divorce. But mostly it was my mom, and I'd see my dad once in a while. So my, my father figures in life were my older cousins and my uncle and they really kept me on a really good path in life because it's easy when you're young in your father to kind of fall into the wrong group of friends or the wrong path and walked out. And I was always so afraid to disappoint them that I never, I, I to this day I pride myself on never having once smoked a cigaret in my entire life because they always told me they never did, which I'm they might have. They might've just told me they never did. I was like, I'm never disappointed. They really did kind of keep me keep me motivated to not disappoint. So that was that was good. And then to this day, I my uncle had passed probably when I was I think by 2005. And it was that was tough. That was like losing my father. But he instilled such great values in me that even to this day when you when you see the cardinal, you think of someone you love, and I see a cardinal fly by, I think of him. And it's funny. So my littlest one, my wife loves Elton John. When my little son says Uncle John instead of Elton John, and he is my Uncle John, so I don't correct him why I keep saying, Michael, John, buddy, it makes me happy. The most for my four main motivators. And then obviously my wife keeps me, keeps me in check, keeps the household in order. I tend to, as most men do, I tend to go off and things are like like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. She's really me. And says, Steak breath, Think about it first. And if you still in the next week, you still want to do this. Let's talk about like, okay, cool, I like men. And then for kind of the rest of the backfill, everything, my two kids, so they keep me, they can be motivated to stay in shape that keep you motivated, stay healthy. I want to be able to continue to, you know, carry them to bed when they fall asleep on me. And it's getting harder for my biggest one now, who's going to be ten next month? So I'll be studying later. So fast, don't they? I know right before your eyes. It's like how did that happened? Oh, yeah, I feel like yesterday we we, we had our first kid and now he's like I said, he's be ten. We had couture. We moved down here six years ago, so time flies. Absolutely. So now that you're living in Florida instead of New York state, of course, are terrain is a lot different here than there. Do you ever wish you had those mountains to run up, or are you just happy with flat land now? You're good. So it's funny, I do love elevation and it's the one we move down here. The one thing I did miss, I didn't miss anything else. Obviously. Non-family firm related. I miss the mountains. I love the mountains. Love running the mountains. I love hiking the mountains, but I also like running along the ocean every day. And when I'm done, especially in the summers, I'm done running. I can jump in the water, I can cool off. I mean, it's you can you can't beat that. But when I go back to New York and I go see family, I still have my running shoes and I'll go run the mountain the same as my trained on and every last summer when I was funny, I used to pass this one guy during my Spartan training, and every day he would come out. He seemed to run and he's like, You're still running? Like, I'm still running. And then he saw me last time was there about I think was over the summer. And he's like, Hey, wait a minute. He's like, I remember you, you know, all Yes. Not many people can say that. They usually just lose interest or have injuries. You've been okay with that. You haven't had any injuries or setbacks. I'm knocking on wood right now. Oh, I good. I have not as I've gone to the back and then the flare up once in a while. But now I've got to the point now right? I kind of know when I'm feeling a little uneasy on my back and I can know what not to do or what to do to let it kind of go away. So yeah, it's my sciatica. So whenever I move the wrong way, I get that, well, that pain, where am I going to fall to the ground? Well, but I've been very good at figuring out how to keep it stretched, keep it loose. I'd say the hardest part right now that I've found, and it's because I'm doing my stuff, I my flexibility and I'm really trying to work on my flexibility. I'm probably going to start taking yoga classes because I think the one that will benefit my back also because I'll be able to stretch. But to I, I can tell like I'm in the shower trying to get my back and make sure you still reach back in the day. Oh, good. So also, strength training has an effect on our flexibility. So there has to be make sure there's a balance. You know, you're not only working one side of the muscle, but you're working the other side of the muscle, too. You're keeping that healthy balance with strength, strength, training and also I found working with my clients that stretching is important for flexibility. But I think that stretching through motion. Yeah, is also better. Like let's say you're doing yoga instead of just holding the poses, going through the poses. Yeah, you know, instead of holding them. Flexibility stretching with motion really helps to loosen up the joints and make the muscles stretch in different ways. So you might want to try it out. Yeah, not. That's great. I love that. I mean, again, being someone who was getting back into this world so late in the game, I'm like a, like a sponge for information then. And I think it's funny, if you go through my Instagram feed, it's all it's like all fitness setting. It's all that's what you're into. That's great. So you had mentioned in your bio to me that you play golf. You're an avid golfer. I am, yeah. So how often do you get to play? Probably not as often as you want to, but not as often as I want. So I always say, like I have those people who are like, when I retire, I'm going, I don't want to retire because I'm going to I'm not going to do myself like I want to retire now because I go golfing every day. You know, I guess I always say that I want to retire when I'm young and then when I get older and I'm bored and my body can't do all the things that I want to do, then I'll work and I'll pay back everything. But yeah, exactly. You know, so I find that I probably try to get out once a week, which having no remote job, I have the flexibility. I'm in sales. So if my phone's army, I'm I'm still able to do my job though. And luckily I have some clients like to golf so but it works out where I get to go once a week, which is more than most people get to do. But it's it's one of those things also where it keeps me outside. My oldest son is getting into it. He loves it. So now I get to see him out of the house for 4 hours and makes my wife out because now there's one less maniac in the house causing trouble. And here it's great. So does your golf swing affect your back issues? So it doesn't it does not affect my back As you live. My back is hurting. I just I can't. So it's like I'll my back hurts. I'll push everything off to the right because I'm not not turning my turning as fast or he's getting pushed wide. I've also found back to the strength training and it's helped my golf game tremendously because the back is now stronger. But not only that, my entire body strong. So I'm hitting the ball farther at 41, almost 42 than I did in my twenties and thirties. Yeah, by far. And I had the same driver for the past 15 years. I know it's not the drive notes of the driver. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. I recently, well, not recently. I've been working with a client for quite a few years now and he's an avid golfer and his game has just done so well since he started strength training. And today he made a comment that him and his buddies for the first time went and played golf after being off for a few weeks. And he was the only one that could last Everybody else was dropping out because they hadn't played for you, you know. So he was really happy about himself, that he was able to continue and keep playing. Yeah, everybody else was dropping out and complaining. But that's the thing to people to realize when you when you keep your body in motion, it's going to keep working. When you stop, you know, it's like you equates everything. If you stop like a gears, they're going to eventually going to rust, you know, just as obsessively as we get older, you know, as we get older, it's inevitable. You know, you've got to keep moving. Got to. Yeah. And there are times where if I'm not feeling well from sick, I used to have the mentality of like pushed through it. But now I know I'm like, this is not going to benefit me in the long run. Take one day. Take a day If you feel better, great. But I'll find if I take a couple of days and I go back into it, it's yeah, I'm tired or it's not as good of a workout or a run as it was when I was in my stride of, you know, staying on top of it every day. So again, as I said, as I get older, it's it's harder and harder where my old one used to be the mile that was like, all right, shake the rust off and get out there. Now it's after mile three where I'm kind of like, Oh, now I'm in a group comeback. Yeah. So tell us, what's your morning routine like? So again, with the benefits of having both kids going to the same school on the bus and having a remote job, I get to enjoy getting my kids right in the morning, getting them on the bus, and then go straight to the beach. I'll do my morning run, which is like I said, usually now it's in the range of like 3 to 5 miles. I try to at least do a short walk on the beach, shoes off, kind of get my, you know, ground myself a little bit, put my feet in the sand. But one also it's a good a good cool down is about beach walk, especially after a run. You still kind of work in different muscles and your leg at the same time while cooling or my cooling down. If it's the summer, I'll jump in the water, do a swim for a little bit. Nothing crazy because I'm terrified of sharks, but but, but I'll I'll wade in the water and kind of slow around a little bit. But then after that I'll get my my morning coffee, which I, like I said earlier, I now have a love for black coffee. So and now living in Florida, I can't drink hot coffee anymore for some reason. So hydrate a cold brew in black. Let me have that feel great. Go home and start my day for work. Yeah. As you know, I've got the the home gym. See, when I leave, my garage door opens. Yes. I'm very envious. You have a very nice home gym. Thank you. It was a a long process of kind of building everything that I want. But again, I get to get up after, you know, doing some work and I can go for 10 minutes and and do pullups or do body squats or whatever it is. I have that fan bike. I do that. I can't do a call afterwards. I'll be out of breath for the next 10 minutes. But no, but that's another benefit of, you know, having. Yeah, I'll have one more job and having a home gym. Even if I didn't have the home gym, just it's people think you need all this stuff to stay in shape and you don't do the amazing workout you can get from just doing bodyweight exercises. Yeah, I mean, that's how I got back into getting my back. Still, it started me just doing body squats. Yeah. And then I'd put that I had bought a weight vest and I got it. I put that out that I do body squats with that. And then I said, okay, now I'll go back and also doing light bar squats and then I'll do, I'll do like dumbbell squats. But I didn't need it. It was great to have it. And you can do so much to try to try to do 100 body squats. Zero until you're not sore, tired or out of breath or yeah, you don't need a lot of equipment. The equipment I have in my garage is not much, but I get great workouts for my clients, for myself. Really works out really good. Yeah. You don't need a big, huge gym with every single piece of equipment in there. So like I said, it's nice. Yeah, I need to have it. Because then if I something, I'm like, Oh, you know what? I haven't done this work and I'll get this piece of equipment and do this alone. It's awesome to have. I mean, I will say the one thing that I do love and I don't use it as much as I used to is I have the bike talk, makes it it's a push sled, it's has a resistance motor in it. So it's on wheels. You know, we live in a nature way, so you can just have a regular push sled and grind it up and down the street. People I go to, like you said, I said to myself, they sell one, it's on wheels, it's got a resistance motor in it. Try that. And I love it as much as I should, but I love it. Yeah. And I also think that helped helped with my back also, because when I couldn't do the heavy squats or squatting, I would bring that to to the park and I would push that up and down the football field and do a lot of reverse walking with it, because I was luckily I've never had again, knock on wood, haven't had any issues. So everything I can do to strengthen my knees, I do also because I know as a runner it just takes one wrong move. Yeah. And also never point out wrong move. Uneven ground, bad shoes, all that stuff. Yeah. That's another thing you talk about is the amount of shoes I go through as a runner. Well, let's see. So be worse. It could be a lot worse. I told her, I said, Listen, my habit is running and I have some sort of money, which is like gambling drugs, like. Yeah, and you're not buying a new golf club every week. Are. You know, I'm not I'm not saying that the same driver for the past 15 years and say, Oh, that's not so bad, then I'll get. So you talked a little bit earlier about nutrition. Yeah. So what does your day look like as far as nutrition goes? People seem to get into the habit of mostly eating the same thing or just about the same thing every day to make it easier. Yeah. So tell us about your your diet. So again, and every everybody is different. But I found what works best for me is I will do a fast so I fat I don't eat until around noon. I try to stop eating as latest. I'll eat is a I'll sometimes stop eating like

six 7: 38:18

00. And I feel that for me because when I do eat, I eat. So it helps me stay in my caloric window that I It's a weird because if I start eating three meals a day, I wouldn't would 100% be over that? It does consist of every day. My staples are like you said, people eat the same thing and I'm a feature habit, so I'll have 4 to 6 eggs with that avocado, sometimes a protein. For me, the proteins, no matter if it's lean or if it's not, it could be a few steps back and it could be turkey, it could be salami, it doesn't matter. But I try to stay away from the bread because that is the one thing that gets me every time my wife can have bread and it doesn't affect her like it affects me. I have a slice of bread, I feel like garbage. And an hour later and I'm like, I can't. I'm sluggish. So for me it's more I try to stay lower on the carb and I don't do any akito stuff just because I can, because I do love salads and I love vegetables and fruits. And that would collapse. That would definitely put me over. So but I do try. Like I said, I try to have those that amount of eggs every day with an avocado, with a protein at other times. And then dinner is usually a protein or some sort of vegetable in the salad. I'll snack on fruit throughout the day. I love apples, love bananas. I love the I know I want to hear the little blue epic will start to chicken bars. These things are delicious. Yeah, I wish they were a little cheaper, but they're quality, that's all. So it's for me. I'm also a like a a nervous snacker. So it's hard because it's like I used to be 215, £220. So for me, it's very easy to fall back in that rut. Yeah, so a lot of it is just making sure that if I am snacking on something, it's something that's it's healthy. Like I'll, I'll have, like I said, one of these chicken bars or I'll have some, some almonds or I'll eat an apple, a spoon, spoonfuls of peanut butter sometimes. But again you have to be careful of the peanut butter you by now. You should also I sit back and watch How much sugar is this? Why they going all butter out? Absolutely. Yeah. You got to read everything you do and it's and you know, again, like I said, I, I, I run a lot so it's a lot of podcasts and I listen a lot of health podcasts and there's things you hear and it scares you. You're like, wait a minute, what about when we have a big playstyle? What's in this? What's going on with our GMOs? Not so now everything I look at, I'm like staring at the label, especially for my kids, because we want bad habits. It's super easy. Yeah. And there's so much added sugar to everything now. Things that you wouldn't expect it to be in sauces and gravies and jarred spaghetti sauce, you know, it's like. So anything can make from scratch. You're so much better off. And people also need to watch recipes. You know, you look up recipes online to make things. And I'm noticing that there is sugar as an ingredient on almost every single recipe. Add sugar to stews and soups. And you know what? I know. When did this start? You know, so it's hard for young people who are trying to teach themselves to cook. They look up recipes and all this added stuff. So you really got to be careful with the ingredients to do it. And I was fortunate where my wife heard her dad was a chef and she grew up around like making food and she can put together. She'll go in the fridge just once about and she'll make a soup at a shoot out of hail and other vegetables she found, and she'll no sugar in it, but there's no lentils in it. And you're like, This is delicious and there's nothing terrible in it. Yeah, it's like that, but. But it tastes great. Yeah. Well, this is the benefit of being a rough food role. F and knowing, like, the different things where you can add and what you can make out of it. And you're right, it's tough. I read again, my Instagram is good as people and there's food because we all like to have this food stuff and it is a lot of the soup is it's just sugars and everything. Yeah. Goodness. Yeah. There's definitely other ways to cook with seasonings and herbs. Yeah, definitely. Our New Year's goal in the house is we used to have the swing set the back. The last hurricane we had blew it to pieces. So we're making a garden back there and we're going to grow a vegetable garden. So that's our everything. Our youngest could live on cucumbers, so we're making sure we stock and full of cucumbers because for cucumbers today. Oh, that's great. You said that because one of my later questions was going to be what? What what's your one of your new lifestyle changes for 2024? So glad you mentioned that. And let me tell you a little something about my experience in gardening. Yeah, I've always had a compost bin and in that compost bin, you know, I throw cuttings of whatever vegetables that I'm not using, you know, the skins of everything, the seeds of everything that all goes in the compost bin, banana skins, everything from the kitchen, from vegetables that you're, that you're not going to use teabags even, you know, go through your tea bags, your coffee grounds in there. And I have an the nicest bin that you just throw it in there, you close the latch and it gets spun. And along with that, you throw in greenery from the yard. Could be leaves, could be cut grass that you have caught in a bag, wrapped up, leaves anything, no weeds that open, no weeds, and you just let it go. And as time goes by, usually about 4 to 6 months of putting scraps in there and turning it, you have a nice, nice compost material that you can mix in your in your garden, in your flowerbeds. If you have a raised bed in your raised bed. And I take that compost and I spread it in my backyard, in my flowerbeds, I also have a raised bed. I put it in there. I never have to buy seeds because up will pop tomato plants. I've had butternut squash. I have a pepper plant that won't stop producing bell peppers. It's just going crazy. I have a box full of sweet potatoes that my granddaughters help me pick back in November. As long as you don't wash them, they'll stay nice. I don't know. Yeah, don't wash them and they'll sets. They'll stay forever. So I'm still eating out of my box of sweet potatoes. I have two eggplants growing, and I'm telling you, this is all out of the compost. Never have to buy a plant, never have to buy seeds. And another thing you can do in your garden is pineapples. Every time you buy a pineapple cut off the top and just set it in the dirt outside and leave it alone. Within 2 to 3 years you'll have a pineapple, which I know is a long time. But if every time you buy a pineapple, you plant the top anywhere, anywhere in your yard, they're pretty. Yeah. And you'll have pineapples every June, July. I usually have so many. I can't eat them all. I share them with people. Yeah, I love. That's one of my things I buy all the time is pineapples. It's inside and it's all you see in the videos are people putting them in like it takes a lot from pineapple, but 0.77 of them, they're so juicy. Yeah. Anything that you will pick out of your yard to eat is going to taste so much better than anything you grow in the grocery store. Absolutely. And we used to have in New York, we had our little half an acre. It was to the base of the mountain and we had a beautiful vegetable garden. And so you're pointing everything from like the green beans to the cabbage, everything to the tomatoes and it's unbelievable. And I was never a big raw tomato guy, but I could just put salt on the tomato to eat. Oh, yeah. A nice fresh tomato, no doubt. Yeah. And cucumbers. I even had some cucumbers. But those plants I did buy, I wasn't having any cucumbers. Grew up out of my compost, so I bought a couple different kinds, but the plants only produced a couple of cucumbers each. So I guess I have to have a lot more cucumber plants if I want to have a bushel of cucumbers. But here's an interesting cucumber story. So we had a good friend in New York who was loved gardening and had a beautiful vegetable garden, and she planted her cucumber plant next to her Al Pinos, and they crossbred and she had spicy cucumbers. Oh, my gosh. What was that like? Took a bite of the chicken. What is a whopper? It's this spicy. I bet that was delicious. It was. So she pickled them and she had spicy pickled cucumber, so I guess spicy pickles. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's what I ended up doing with all my cucumbers they produced at the same time. And you know, how many cucumbers can you be? I should have shared in my son. Now. I know, but. Oh, okay. That's great. Okay, Kenny, would you like to share your biggest failure in life and what you might have learned from the experience? Sure. So belly steak, my biggest failure is I'd say my biggest failure wound up probably being one of the biggest benefits in my life. And being a kid with the single mom. I was always working. I always had a job when I got older because I had to like my mom couldn't afford to buy certain things for me. So if I wanted a car or I want a car insurance, I was buying it. So when I had eventually went to college, I eventually I didn't finish college. I left early. So I was like, I don't I can't keep doing this, having jobs and going to school. And I wasn't doing well because I wasn't paying attention because I was so tired from working. So finally after four years of being in community colleges, got nine credits to my name. My cousin called me, was again one of my idols, and he was, You're coming to work with me in the city. You're going to start as a customer service rep, and that's that's what you're going to do. No ifs, ands or buts. I said, okay, fine. So that's when I started that job in this industry that I've been in since. Yeah, I'm 24, so I've been doing it now about 20 years. So yeah, me not having the motivation to how I say motivation, that's the wrong word. Not being able to juggle both having a job and doing school, which is mostly my fault because I interested in school, I would go there, I would go through the motions and then it would come time. I've, as you can tell, I have like ADHD and super energy and it comes along with I have Tourette's also, which is very mild, luckily. But with that comes all those sex. And I just didn't have the attention span to sit there in a classroom and learn things I knew that I wasn't going to use in my life I didn't really care about. So when I kind of I got pulled out of that and brought into the world of working and was this real job, and I said to myself, This is your opportunity. Don't blow it. I worked customer service for I think I did it about two months, and they were like, You're not in customer service more. You're a sales guy, you're working the this account loves you. You're going to work with them as a great. So yeah, there you go. It's a big turnaround. Yeah. And you don't need a college degree to succeed all the time. Do you know you don't. Yeah. Just think of all the student loans you would have had. Oh, my God. What luckily, was only a few thousand dollars in, like, community college colleges. I own. Okay, one other question. If you could go back to your 18 year old self to give yourself some advice, what would that be? This is a very easy one. It would be to start my strength training then, because that would be I was at such a deficit when I started in my thirties at that age, my 18 year old age. Like I have the ability at that point to put on the muscle, to build the muscle. And and it's so much harder now to do it. I know once I hit 50, it's going to be exponentially harder than it is now. And I'm at 40, almost 42. So I'm just I'm that's the one thing I would've told myself because it's what they figure out, that somebody talk about it. They said it's like you want it's a reserve. You want to have that because eventually you can fill the reserve anymore and now you're just maintaining what you have. Absolutely. So yes, I wish I had done that. I wish I had really stayed from out of high school and continued my strength training. But with that being said, also people should realize that it's never too late to start strength training. Absolutely. I was a great example of that. I started doing it in my mid to late thirties, so And that's young. That's young in a lot of people's eyes. I've known people that didn't start straight, especially women. A lot of women didn't strength train way back when, but starting in their forties, even their fifties, you know, it's something strengthening the muscles, strengthening the bones, you know, to where it doesn't. Things don't get worse than what they already are. And keep you healthy and help those joints stay healthy. Absolutely. I think that is actually probably one of the bigger benefits I've seen out of social media is getting women more comfortable in the gym. Yeah. And into fitness because, I mean, when I would go, I would go to the gyms and I was younger when I was in high school, you wouldn't see a lot of women in the gym and now they're packed with women. I'd probably more women at the gym now than there is men in some of the gyms I go to, and I've got my buddy to one of the planet Fitness is over there and more women in other men, which is great. That is great. Absolutely. Yeah. Look, if if you could be remembered for one thing, what would that be? I've answered this one before. This is an easy one for me. It would be to be remembered as a great husband and father. Mm. Very nice. So the. The one thing I shouldn't say never had. I didn't have a father growing up. It was then being divorced. It was kind of like not having one. So I, I could in two ways. I see you either be like your father or you can go the opposite. I want the opposite. I'm in. I'm an over Dad, Dad. But, yeah, like I go to the extreme of being a father. Well, I love this new generation of dads, those thirties, forties, year olds. They are so much more hands on the majority of them than dads were years ago. Yeah, it's so nice to see from the time their children are born, you know, and growing up, it's. It's really nice. I love it. I love seeing that my son is one of the best fathers I've ever seen. And I'm so darn proud of him. Yeah, that's why I said, you want to get a job. We're all of us. I'll be say it on that. I've got no problem with the kids all day. I love. That's awesome. You like to read a lot of books on tape. Okay. So do you have any books or podcast apps or anything that you would like to share with the audience that you would recommend to help them with their health and fitness? So I think the best podcasts to listen to when it comes to health of fitness for informational purposes is Dr. Peter Attia as a fantastic podcast and not only is it about, you know, obviously there's there's some parts of it are most of it is fitness and strength training. And it is it's not even more so not geared towards the younger level. It's geared towards people who are older who can think again, it's gonna be impossible to do this. Being a doctor. Everything he does is based off his background, so he's not knocking out some crazy ideas. It's everything is backed by science and it's really, really good podcast. He lays it out clearly. Sometimes there's things he talks about where I'm like, I have no idea what that is, but you know, it makes me get it's my juice. I'll Google things and figure things out. But a some of the studies he talks about feel are very motivated people who think that it's too late. And like, like you said, me being starting my thirties is young. He talks about a study they had done where it was people over the age of 80 and walkers and they got them into strength training. And one of the one of the women who was 82, I think at the time was then able to start. She was able to deadlift her own body weight by the end. Wow. Yes. So very good. Well, I'll have to listen to that one. What was his name again, Doctor? Dr. Peter Attia. Attia. Okay. All right. And Andrew Huberman is a good food. Best one. Yeah. Oh, nice. Okay. Goals for others. How would you like to present the audience with a goal to reach and how could they get there? I think a good goal to reach for the audience would be to run a five day. I think it's the most attainable. It's one you can you can start with just walking. It's something that's not going to put someone in the hospital because they're trying to run a marathon who've never run before. It's you can do it with friends, you can do with family. I do them with my oldest son. He loves doing. We don't run the whole thing. We walk a lot of it, but it's a great community and it's going to give you something to push towards that's attainable because goals are great. I love goals, but if a goal is unattainable, it's not going to do you any good to set yourself unattainable goals. So something that's within reach that's going to get people off the couch, get people moving and have a good time. And when you're done, you put a medal on the wall. So go tell your accomplishments and involve your If you have children, why not get them into those healthy lifestyle habits? Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. That you involve your son. That's awesome. He likes it too. So then he pushes me, which is even better. All right, Kenny, you did an awesome job. Thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate it. Thank you. No problem. All right. Well, you take care and have a great 2024. Get that garden growing come springtime. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It’s all possible. It’s time to wake up. Okay, here we go.