How to navigate a healthy retirement strategy/Q&A Nutrition

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This is the first real podcast that I've done in some time. It hasn't been just exclusively a coaching call. I guess I did one last week that was half and half. This is gonna be exclusive podcasting material. All right. And it's gonna be the greatest show ever, in case you didn't know the greatest show ever. What did I have last week? I had spider ham This week I have Weapon X. Yeah yeah. All okay here's one tap. Not a ton for today. We'll see how long it goes. It might go 10 minutes, it might go an hour, probably not an hour, cuz it's super freaking hot. My air went out, so now I'm suffering through in the heat of Midwestern summer, sweating with my dogs. All right yeah. I had an interesting conversation today. I think it's worth discussing and bringing up for everyone. And then I've got a couple q and As and then that might be it. So we'll see where this goes. Alright, so conversation I had with do to work today about having. A life. A life, get a life loser. Having a life outside the job. We talk about like interests outside law enforcement. That's something they talked about in the academy way back there. It's yeah, of course. Like you need to have interest outside the job. And I remember thinking like that's. Fucking stupid. Like what who wouldn't have hobbies or an interest outside the job. And then I got into it and I was like, this is like the coolest job ever. And it consumes your entire identity. Figuring out like What you do on your off time, that's not just thinking about work is it really happens. And then it implodes your life and then you figure out like, oh, that doesn't work. So I need to have some interests that are not related to this job. Believe it or not, as cool as it is, like people around you really don't give a shit that much. They think your stories are cool. But that's about it. So what are you your work is like free entertainment. So instead of watching cops, cuz it's been taken off the air or so watching it in syndication, but yeah your stories are, I don't know, just pre entertainment. They're water cooler stuff. Stuff you can tell at dinner parties. You're a you're a clown, more or less like you're entertainment. So just treat that for what it is and understand hey, you need to have something more to bring to the table than just goofy work stories about drunks you arrested. Like those kinda lose their luster after a while too. And you really can't be like super honest with people that aren't in. Like the realm of first responders at the very least, first responders, if not cops directly. Cuz I've said some things to like medics where they were like, I can't believe you just said that. And so really you can't be like totally open and honest with the people that aren't in this world because they will think you are a psychopath. So just words to the wise don't maybe, talk about the murder scene. The same way you would, and that's difficult. Or just have other interests that you can discuss with people, like a normal freaking human being. Yeah. And what that does too is having interests outside the job. Is it, It's really cool when you're new, it's really consuming. You don't have a lot of other stuff going on. And as you progress through this career path, then what happens is like your life just gets busier. Maybe you get married maybe you have kids, maybe you know you pick up side hustle. Maybe you start a part-time business. Like. All kinds of stuff. Maybe you start like doing a sport or, starting a band, like whatever man, like our lives get busier as we age. We fill up our time with more stuff. And like that means that as far as like a hundred percent of the available pie, like the job doesn't get a hundred percent anymore and it shouldn't. So you've got other stuff that you're doing. You've got other people that might be counting on you, so they're gonna pull your time and attention and they should. And if they don't, that's an error on your part. So what all that kinda leads to right? As you progress through. Like why is this important? It's important to be well balanced for one but it's also important for transitioning out of the job. And this is a big thing that you watch all these. These cop pages on Instagram and, workout like law enforcement, first responder fit responders, like whatever, blue line beasts, like whatever man they're all talking about like fitness for the job, right? But what nobody really talks about is the fact that the lifespan after retirement is only five years. So on average, Cops are dead within five years of retirement. That is a stat. I talk about it all the time, and it is very critical to understand. Like you understand, the more stress that you put in on the front end, if you don't buffer that and you don't figure out how to manage your stress throughout the life of your career, you will cash your chips in early. And that's just how nature works. That's how your body works. That's how stress works. That's how stress accumulation, chronic stress over 20, 30 years. That's how it works. So you have to understand that. So what does what does having, again, let's go back to what does having interest outside the job like? What does that do for you when you're ready to be done with this? So say you get your 20 on or whatever your department is, that you can retire at this specific arbitrary marker, right? Let's say it's 20. Okay? So you've got other stuff going on, you've got kids, you've got business, you've got hobbies, maybe like camping, whatever the fuck you like to do, right? You have a different part of yourself. That you can move into and then that gets a bigger chunk of the pie and then you transition into that because that's peaking your interest more. Or that's, it's time to do that, man. You can't do this job forever, nor should you it's really cool. You have a lot of cool adventures, but at some point, like you need to go have different adventures. You have to go have a different story, and you have to transition into a different part of your life, and that's really hard to do. For everybody, it's a hard thing to do, think back to high school. How many people did you graduate with that had a hard time transitioning out of high school? Maybe they're still living in your high school town and you're like, remember Joe? Yeah. Joe's a freaking loser. He just hangs out at the local bar. He just does like whatever. He never left. He's a townie. Never did anything. Okay. And maybe that's what he wanted, but maybe he just couldn't transition. Same thing is true of college, right? And the same thing is very true of athletes. Athletes. I saw this in high school and in college, where your whole identity is wrapped up in being especially a football player. And it's I'm not anymore. So now what am I? And cops do this horribly bad, right? Horribly bad. Where it's I've been this thing for 20, 30 years and it's been such a consuming part of what I am and who I am that now it's gone. And I don't have anything to move to if I don't have another mission to move to. If I don't have another interest to move to, to move into, that's why we die. That's why we die. Five years. That's why we die. Viktor Frankl talked about it, like what is the purpose of life? The purpose of the purpose and meaning of life is to give life meaning. And if you can't give life, meaning, if you can't give this place meaning it like, It ain't gonna last. It's not gonna stick around. You're going to, so all of that stress and all of the sacrifice that you made on the job for 20, 30 years, and then you have nothing to move to because you invested all of your time, like a hundred percent of it. Like you sacrificed everything outside of work, outside of your shift, outside of your specialty units, like all of it. You sacrifice all of it for that. I think that's an error, especially as you get into the later years of your career. I hate to say taper down, but like you, maybe it's not, taper down is maybe not the right way to put it. Because like I said, This job has a great opportunity to see life for what it truly is, and to have daily adventures that most people will never even get to experience one, let alone every shift, right? So you don't wanna waste that and, not experience those things because that's an error in and of itself as well. But as you progress, you have to start looking at exit strategies. That's probably a better way to look at it. Maybe not tapering down but exit strategies. And and that's something that I've been looking into. I've got, like over 15 years on now, and sometimes you wonder like, how in the hell did this happen? And but now it's okay, so how long am I gonna stick around here? What am I gonna do after how am I gonna transition into something else? Yeah. So these are conversations that you need to have and you need to understand. And I would say these, this is a concept that really needs to get brought into the academy setting into the early years of new cops. Cause if we did that, And you could have two, two to five years of brainstorming, like two to five years of implementation, and then two to five years of like getting ready to, to transition. And so it's a whole process. It's like this thing in the back burner. It's almost like a thesis, it's like this thing in the back burner that's going on the whole time while you're going through this stuff. You really have to do that. And on top of that, like you wanna talk about business opportunities. This is another thing that, that we discussed today. This job has is one of the worst places to, to make money, right? In, in the sense of you are literally trading every minute of your day. For money. You can't make money not giving your time. You can't do it. So how do you make more money on this job? You just have to work more. You have to work more. You have to be in a parking lot working part-time. You have to pick up extra sh extra shifts. You have to put yourself back in the uniform, back in the squad and then get out and do it. And and it's, it is miserable. It is absolutely God miserable. Figure out a way to create an another alternate revenue stream. That is the way to do it, right? And in this job, we create and learn many marketable skills. And you see some people do it and some people do it well, and then they exit with a good business plan. Or they get hired on with the company in the private sector and doing whatever, right? Maybe it's computers, maybe it's security, maybe it's whatever. And they do really well, right? You gotta understand how to use the skills that we have developed and how to market them and how to create another revenue stream while we're working while we're working. The trick with that is making sure that you don't do it on the clock. So that would be my suggestion anyway, wrapping that up, the big point to take away is learning to be able to transition into another part of your life. And to do that, you have to have things that you are interested in that are outside the job, right? Or that are related to the job, but not exactly that, yeah, transition. If you don't if you don't have another mission to move to it's just not gonna go well at all. Okay. There we go. Yeah. Some, somebody's not happy. Okay, let's go to questions. All right, so little tactical nutrition stuff. All right. Got a question from one of the heroic 28. Participants to row 28 athletes, like whatever we're calling them. All of those things are true athletes and participants. All right, so go out of town for work a lot for a night or two, and in places like fairs, career events, military bases, et cetera, where I can't bring meals. And the available food options are very limited. What should I do in situations like that? All right, so you're talking about a short period of time. Okay. So you gotta look at number one, what is the, what's the big picture? So that's a small picture. What's the big picture? How often are we doing that? How often are we going out of town? How o is it like every weekend or is it like once a year? So looking at that, you go out for work. So it looks like it's semi-regularly. So that, that's number one. All right. So if it wasn't regularly, if it was like just once in a while, then, I wouldn't stress about it. Maybe have a little fun, go out and get maybe a lower quality like local meal. Experience, experience the sites, see the sites. But if it's a regular or semi-regular thing, if you do that, You'll derail yourself, right? You'll end up eating too much or you'll end up eating too low quality food. And it's just gonna be, it's gonna compound because it's all the time. So you just have to go to the basics. You gotta get your protein number in, you have to get your protein number in. That is always a non-negotiable. if you get your protein in, then the rest will work itself out. I can promise that. Okay? I have not seen anybody who hits their protein number and then continues to screw things up, okay? It's very difficult to do. All right? And if you, along with that, if you get your water in, if you get water in protein, The rest of those things will totally work itself out, and then you don't have to really stress about it at all. Another option is to take the, because you're not gonna be working for 24 hours, right? Career events sounds like recruiting stuff. You're working like eight hours and it is not gonna be fun, but you can always. Just not eat, if there's no options and you're not prepared and you're like, dude, all they got are crappy bar granola bars and I don't know, pick something like whatever donuts, right? Donuts probably Donuts and pastries and like junk food, right? Just hanging out. Okay. Don't eat anything like that is acceptable. We're been talking a lot about. Time restricted feeding, right? Talking a lot about time restricted feeding, and I'm a big proponent of. 12 and 12, right? So 16 eight. As far as like intermittent fasting, I think that is, you look, start looking into, in some of the studies that they developed that 16 eight like fasted window, like fast for 16 hours, eight hour feeding window. And a lot of that was just based on arbitrary decisions of like, how are we gonna do this? It's easier for the lab to do that at shift change and to have this be the feeding window of eight hours. So it's arbitrary. A 12 hour fasted window followed by a 12 hour eating window like that is a pretty good, successful schedule for most people, especially with the shift work, right? So say you work twelves, right? You fast for your shift and then you eat for the rest of it, or you fast for half of your shift, and then you eat for the second half of your shift, and then six hours when you're done. Or you just basically you look at these blocks and you just slide'em around. So that's really all you have to do here. You just look at your fasting window and you just look at, and you just use that eight hours as part of that window so you can just extend your e your feeding window later into the evening. And there's some downfalls to that too. It might do some a few things that aren't optimal, but that's not the end of the world and it's just for, once in a while. That's what I would do. If it's, especially if it's an event and it's event that you're working you, you can also do stuff like. Just bring bring a protein shake, do a protein shake, do some some, the vital proteins, collagens, just do a smoothie. Like those are options too. If fasting is not an option, if you're like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go crazy. If I don't, if I, if I. Can't eat or what? Honestly, this is like a me problem, but if I get overwhelmingly hungry, right? And then, like stress stacks up or whatever, it's oh man, I've got, three hours left in my, my, my fasting window. But man, those donuts, I can only say no to those donuts so many times and then they are all being destroyed. Okay, that's a me problem. Okay. But. If that's gonna happen, and it's man, we really gotta take the edge off, or we gotta get, a couple hundred calories in. We gotta get two to 400 calories in, get some protein in, so that we continue to stack. Wins, right? Stacking wins is important too. So if you are trying to stack winds and you want to get some protein in, get to, get get, 30 50 grams of protein with some collagen powder. With a protein shake, with some jerky or with a smoothie with all of these things in it. Maybe not the jerky, but all of these things, right? So stack some wins. Take the edge off and get through the day. And it's gonna keep you, because it's liquid, it's gonna keep you in. What's considered a fasted like state? So it's not exactly fasted because you're gonna get some insulin response, right? But it's not a ton. And and it's not gonna take you too far out of this fasting window. Again, there's pros and cons to all this stuff, but these are just options for that. Okay. What you don't want to do is just say it's too hard. I can't figure out how to do it. You just have to figure out how it fits into the schedule that you're working right. And it will work. If you put the plan in place and it's really plan, fail to plan to fail, right? That's true. And any plan is more successful than no plan. So if you go into these scenarios with no plan, then get ready to be really disappointed with yourself. Develop a plan. Come up with a plan. All right. The thing is, tomorrow the recruiting thing, the job fair is tomorrow, I'm gonna be here from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM All right? So now we know we're either fasting in that window, we've, or we've got food to bring for that. Like what? Whatever, right? You've developed the plan. Stick with the plan. And and it'll go okay, it might not always go perfect. You're on the road, like traveling sucks as far as trying to be consistent and it does, but I've seen people succeed really well and I've seen people f fail. So and honestly there's some of both. If you're gonna do this stuff regularly, you're gonna have some trips you. Fucking knock it outta the park and you're gonna have other trips where you're like, that did not go the way I wanted. And and try to mitigate those as much as you can. How much is your progress worth? Weigh that out. What do I want to get out of the next month? I've got three trips. San Diego, San Antonio and Dallas. I don't know. What's your progress worth? You can't quit your job to just train full-time, so you've gotta figure out how to navigate life if your progress is worth it, if your goals are worth it, like you'll figure out a way to make this plan work. Don't discount that either. Just want it more than you want to stay where you're at. That is a huge factor in all this stuff. Like you've gotta, you've gotta want. You've gotta want the results more than you want the excuses. You've gotta want the results and the changes more than you want to stay where you're at. You have to. If you don't, then you won't change. It's the same thing with alcoholics when you talk about drunks. And if you want to like, you look at Like drunks and junkies that we see on the street. Some of them stop. Some of them recover, like how they recover. They didn't want to be in this pit anymore, and it was gonna kill'em, and they figured it out I'm at the bottom of this pit and I gotta get out. A lot of people don't get out. A lot of people don't figure it out. It doesn't hurt bad enough for them to get out. And more and more little societal soapbox here, more and more that that, society allows these pits that we get in to be comfortable. We're in a pit. I'm overweight, I eat like crap. I don't want to be here, but it's comfortable. Because everything is accessible, everything is convenient and the more and more people that join us in that pit, the more we think it's normal. It's not fucking normal. It's not okay. Like you are not okay where you're at if this is you. So you have to understand and you have to wake up and you have to look and say, just because there are a lot of people that are, I just as shitty as a position as I am, does not mean that I'm okay. It does not right? You are not okay there, and you need to get out of this pit, but everything is so convenient in the pit. So why do I need to move? And that's what society's doing. That is what you know. It you have to understand that life is hard and if there's no challenges to life, this is a universal truth if your life is so convenient. That you don't have any problems that need to be fixed, you will create problems in your life. You will derail things. You'll derail relationships. You'll create these micro dramas and you'll create problems because you're avoiding dealing with the real ones. Because it's convenient. Everyone's down in this pit with me, so I'm gonna create all these little micro dramas like that don't really matter. Yeah. I know you're probably thinking of somebody right now, maybe it's you where it's like they always got some bullshit, they always got some drama, they always got some beef. There's always something stupid going on with them. And and it's it's man, what, why? Why are they always doing this? It's It's ridiculous and they got all these other issues that need to be dealt with, but they're dealing with all this minor crap. It's cuz they're being avoidant. They're being avoidant and they're not they're being avoidant with taking action with what they maybe know they need to take a action up or they just don't wanna look because they know there's something there. Maybe they don't know what it is. Maybe you don't know what it is, there's something that needs that you don't like and you need to change. But again, like if everything's so convenient that you don't have any problems, then like you'll create them somehow. Like you'll create them and your life will be chaotic because of it. Or you can do a really good assessment and take a really good look at yourself and say, Nope, I think that I need to get in shape. I think that's probably a number one issue here, or a number two, right? As we come up with three. All right, so hopefully that wraps that up. And next question. Next question. All right. What are things you do to spice up rice or plain foods like that to make them less bland? And what are your go-tos for food, meals on the go? All right. Kinda talked about it already. Let's say, answer that last part first. Food. Food and meals on the go. All right, so squad car food. I posted a video about it a little bit ago. Hard boiled eggs, tuna packets, salt sometimes I'll do applesauce packets, like some easy stuff like that. It's not. Super fun. It's not super exciting. It's not like the greatest meal ever made, but it gets the job done and it keeps the wheels turning. And it's that's how that is, right? Your meals on the go are not gonna be, they're gonna be utilitarian, right? They're going to be for the purpose of getting your numbers in the purpose of fueling you for what you're doing throughout the day, right? That's what they're for. And you gotta remember that, like that is what they're for. And if you get, like work lunches will end people's progress. You have to understand like work lunches are unnecessary. And if you gotta go, because everybody's in the office is going to, like Applebee's and getting lunch like number one bar Applebee's. But but two, you're gonna end up blowing your calories out of the water at lunchtime, and you probably won't work out after work. And then you're probably going to eat too much after the food finally digests for dinner. You're gonna be eating dinner late, you're gonna be eating too many calories because you didn't train. So you're gonna have all these really high calorie, super palatable foods and it you're gonna, you're gonna wreck yourself. It's gotta be utilitarian. You have to understand that food has several purposes, like fueling and utility is one of them. But what I like doing is really looking at my meals and saying, what's the point of the meal? Is it utility or is it like social connection? Those are the two that I really. That I really look at. And then stress is another one which can be super negative and can create like really disordered patterns of eating. But that is something that needs to be looked at too. Am I eating because I'm stressed? But the staying with the two big ones to not get too far off, am I eating for utility or am I eating for social connection? And you can do both, but you have to understand like where, what's the primary here? So work, lunch, work, dinner, like whatever you're there. Or family dinner. Like that's a little bit different here, but let's say with the work thing, that makes more sense. What's his meal for? All right. This meal is for networking. Okay. So it's for social connection. Is it all right? How many of those have you had? What did the rest of your day look like? Is it a lunch, is it a dinner? Can you afford to spend that money there, right? That budget, that nutritional budget. Can you afford that there if you can. Cool. If you can, that's fine. Then label it as a social connection and understand what you're doing. Okay. And then have a lower quality meal. Have a higher calorie meal, but understand that's gonna come back at some other time throughout that day or that week, where you're gonna have to give one up. Cuz you can't have everything. You can't unless you wanna have no results. Let's say that you look at it and you're like, all right, this is. A meal for social connection, but primarily I need this for utility. So you get to order something bland off the menu, you get to order something, maybe not bland, bland's, a bedroom, something basic, something high protein, something lower, lower fat, maybe something like less than what everyone else is getting. And most of the time you can get away with that. If you just don't like scarf down the breads and do all the extra stuff while people are just sitting around like shooting the shit. Doing the networking. So drink water, be firm, know what your meal's for, right? So that's like a little tangent, but I think that's worth discussing. All right. All right, so let's go to the first part of that question. What things do you use to spice up rice and plain foods? You literally use spices. Spices are, like a kind of a freebie. There are some that have a bunch of sugar and that'll throw your carbs off and, all that kind of stuff. But overall, just go to Costco, go to Kroger, go to Meyer, go to your grocery stores and start looking at the spice racks. Just start looking at'em like you can take beef and you can season it 20 different ways. Changes the meal, right? Even with just Ground beef, white rice, carrots. Okay. Like those three things. Now you make taco seasoning. All right, we got a little taco. We got a little taco like night going on. Okay. You can add a little bit of cheese, maybe a little bit of plain yogurt or sour cream that's gonna throw that same consistency in. You can make some tacos, right? Make some, and throw some salsa on it. Boom. Done right? If you like, Thai food, you had Thai spices or whatever it is, right? It's just beef. And the rice will basically take the form of whatever the meat is, right? So if the beef gets seasoned, like Thai food or Mexican food or like whatever, man, like that's what the rice will do. It just is there. It that's your main carbohydrate. For the meal. And then you garnish that out with your micronutrients, with your veggies. And the red meat's got a ton of micronutrients in it as well. And then you're done. So again, are you eating for taste? Yes. We all do. So you can't like totally negate that. But you also have to understand like, Am I eating this because it tastes good, or am I eating this because it is utilitarian for what I need my goals to be? And then you also gotta look at like, all right, are you gonna have any dessert afterwards? Are you, do you need to save macros? Do you need to save some numbers like that? That needs to be looked at too? What's your overall plan? All right. Hopefully those short answers give you like a little bit of tactical help with it, but it's hard to really answer'em, without looking at the strategic plan, which is gonna be slightly different for everyone based on what individually you have going on and what your big picture looks like. All I think that about wraps it up and yeah, there you go. All right. All right. Hopefully you enjoyed that and I think that we're gonna get some more guests on, at least I'm gonna start pushing to get some more guests on soon. And then yeah, hit me up if you got any questions. I'm trying to think what email to send to Just hit me up on social media, heroic industries on Instagram and Facebook. So those two as well as YouTube follow our social media. And you can hit me up there, right? That'll probably be easiest. That's the stuff I check the most. Until next time, live heroic.