27. Two Million Steps in 30 Days????

Meet Kwame Terra who did the 2 million steps and why.

He has a Masters Public Health and Nutrition.  Young guy that developed a bad- ass app that tracks your health progress in real time.

Follow him @behrhealth on Instagram

Go to the app store and download for free using access code: DYSFUNCTIONALFOODIES his app called:  Dacadoo

Search BeHR health on the web to learn more.

Great interview and not long.

Enjoy

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hey people, my next interview is with this guy named Kwame Terra. He um he runs a company, he's the CEO of Bear Health. And in April, he made headlines after walking over two million steps in just 30 days. And um his focus was to put a spotlight on health in the black community. And so he launched a an app called Bear Health App. And uh I'm I'm inspired by what I'm about to find out about this guy and what his focus is. I believe that the app gives you a single health score for your daily habits, and that is right in line with what I think about every single day. So here we go with Kwame Terra. Kwame, hello, how are you? I'm doing well. Great. Nice to meet you. I'm Jesse Kaufman, and I for some reason call myself the dysfunctional foodie, and we'll talk about that some other time. But I um I'm really happy to have you on. Uh what I know about you, and uh I'm gonna give you lots of time to talk about what you're doing, is that you are the CEO of is it Bear Health?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Bear. It's spelled B-E-H-R. So Bear Health. And you um I guess you may you got some notoriety or some attention from uh walking two million steps or something like that. Yeah. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yeah, so you know the idea was connected to raising awareness uh for for my company, Bear Health. And you know, I wasn't sure exactly how I was gonna raise awareness at first, but I wanted to make sure I was doing something that aligned with our work, right? So we are a health company, and you know, to get attention in this day, you have to do kind of dramatic, um, exciting things. But I didn't want to do anything that would, you know, make me look dumb or uh anything like that. So like, well, I wonder what the world record is for the most steps in a month. Because our entire Bear Health community, we have about 2,000 users on our app currently. Walking has become a central theme of our community. Last year uh we started off when we officially launched our app, we did the Mardi Gras Steps Challenge, where whoever took the most steps on our app during the five days leading up to Mardi Gras won $5,000.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

So the person who ended up winning it 100,000 steps on the first day.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Oh my god. On the first day.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

On the first day.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

That's 10 times normal.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

And so that that kind of set the tone, and and you know, all of the benefits that people shared with me that they they got from walking beyond like the opportunity to make some money through the challenge, like the mental health benefits, learning about the walkability of the city, and um, you know, just it it it it really stuck with me. And then a couple months later I had the idea to do a campaign where I wanted to raise one million dollars by taking one million steps in 30 days. So this was last year, last April, I had this idea. Um, and I was connected with a local community health doctor, his name's Dr. Eric Griggs, and he told me he'd prep help me prepare for it, right? So he and I in May start kind of as you could say training to take one million steps in 30 days. And I got distracted by different things happening in the business, but he stayed on it and he ended up he ended up walking or taking one million steps in 30 days in May last year.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

He did or you did?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

He did. He did one million steps in 30 days uh last year. He lost 20 pounds and got taken off his blood pressure medication.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

And so it was it became this big story that I did it, I did one million steps the next month, another user did one million steps in July in 28 days, he lost 28 pounds. Uh two users did it in August, and so it just kind of became this trend. And again, walking became this central theme. And so all of us who had done the one million steps last year got to talking about, you know, hey, what what do you think, or what is the world record, and then do you think any of us can can go after it? And so that was kind of the seat of it last fall. And I was looking at my schedule this year in March, and I was like, well, I really want to raise some awareness for the company as we prepare for our official launch, and I want to be busy traveling throughout the summer. April seems like it's gonna be the month that I go for it. And so uh April 1st, I took 67,000 steps, walked probably about 14 hours that day altogether. And I I it was funny, I you know, I started walking in the morning, did like an hour and a half, then I had to go to the track uh because I coached some of the people in my run club, and I was just walking around the track as I'm as I'm coaching them. Uh and because again, I just I didn't have time to do anything else except for walk. I mean, I think I could take a break for maybe three hours a day outside of sleeping.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Like to eat?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah, yes, yes, to eat.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

But you can also walk and eat.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Right, yeah, that didn't do that, but which but I just also wasn't great about walking. I was just so or uh eating, I was so focused on just making sure that I got all the steps in because there was no margin for error. Yeah, 60,000 steps a day. If I missed 20,000 one day, now I'm having to do you know 70 plus thousand steps per day to make it throughout the rest of the month, and I just didn't really want to come close to getting behind at all. And uh yeah, I didn't feel properly for the first five days, and I started to have some symptoms like sharp pains in my head, so I wasn't uh you know hydrating properly or eating properly, and so people just started bringing me food, and so that was great, and I started eating much better. Um, but yeah, that that was that was me for 30 days, man. It was it was nonstop.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And that was two months ago.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah, that was April.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Wow. Really cool. And so once again, all of that was to focus on your your health app, right? Health nutrition. So why don't you tell us more about the health app itself?

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Yeah, so you know, I've always been into health and wellness. You know, I ran cross-country and track in high school and college. My dad was really strict with us about what we ate. And so, you know, I've always kind of had a a you know a lean toward, you know, being being health conscious. And it wasn't until the COVID-19 pandemic that I wanted to do something that uh was designed to help other people, not just like maximize my own potential, right? And my aunt had actually texted me uh like at the peak of the pandemic, she's a physician's assistant uh in Dallas, and she was just you know treating patients, and she noticed that everybody that came in you know had comorbidities and many of them were black people, and she reached out, she's like, Hey, I think this would be a great time for you to spin up your um healthy eating initiative because I'm I'm the resident vegan in the family. And she just like went on about how like the disparities are clear and what the majority of these conditions are preventable or reversible in many cases, and I just think that it would be a great time for you to kick that off. And so it was it was that message that was the seed of what is now bare health. And my first thought was I don't think we know how bad we're doing as it relates to our overall health. I think we know we're not doing great. We know that we should be eating better, and we know that we should be exercising more, but I don't think many of us know that if we don't get it together, we can have a heart attack at age 45, and that'd be and that'd be the end of it. Um, I don't think many of us recognize that. Um and so that was my first goal, communicate clearly to people our current health status, and with that status, the risk, and we do that through through our health score algorithm, which is basically a score between zero and one thousand that represents your overall health, um, communicating the likelihood of you having a significant health event on any given day. So any anything below 550 as a score, you're at elevated risk. Um you can say that your your body is aging faster. And based on your score, we'll make recommendations for what you should do to help reduce that risk and improve your overall health and maximize your longevity, as well as connect people to resources, curate challenges, connect people to community, wellness, um, and fitness organizations to again, you know, ultimately make the healthy choice the easy choice for people. We don't want it to feel like it's this extra thing that you have to do and you have to track every aspect of your life to be healthy. That all of that is honestly like I'm kind of wary of that trend, uh kind of the the overanalyzing of of yourself, especially if you if you aren't medically literate. Right? So I mean I think most people that are in this space that are tracking and stuff, they're they're literate, but I don't think they're necessarily health literate, and you can start making assumptions and coming up with, you know, or just you know, developing anxiety around things that you know you just don't know any better, you know, because your heart rate is elevated one day, you're like, oh my god, am I gonna have a heart attack? Or you know, you're you didn't get the proper sleep that night, so oh no, my sleep score is down now, I'm not gonna be able to do this, that you know it's just like your body is gonna be fluctuating so much day-to-day basis for a variety of reasons that you aren't even thinking about. And so I just think that as much as we can, just focus on the experience as what we uh want to bring to people, and then let like the app track in the background.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

And if something is trending in the wrong direction, we'll reach out and and then uh I told you that uh I would tell you why I'm called the dysfunctional foodies because I'm that guy. I'm that guy that overthinks every ache and pain in the body and overanalyzes. Um, you know, you talked about sleep scores and whatnot, and BMI and blood pressure numbers and cholesterol numbers, and but I'm also like you know, a gourmet cook. So I have these two things going on where I just want beautiful, delicious food. Um, I have tried vegan a little bit. Um, I have tried vegetarian, um right now in Mediterranean. So I'm I'm trying it all. Um so tell me a little bit more about your your experience with being vegan and how it's worked for your body and how long you've been doing it. Because, you know, there's a some people can do it, and some people their their GI just doesn't work. Uh the gut reacts negatively, they have trouble with it, they give up, and most everyone else who is not interested, vegan's almost a bad word.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

So yeah, no, it's a very bad word at I read I read an Instagram post just a second ago before I hopped on here. Uh there's like this uh this influencer in the city who creates the uh animated graphics to like communicate different like stories of themes in the city. It's kind of like a meme page. And on the it was a post about gumbo, and that one of the quotes from the characters was like, You're making vegan gumbo? What you gonna put raisins instead of beans? It's like first of all, like beans are vegan. But it's just like that you're right, it's like a bad word. People don't like vegans for different reasons.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Um now if you said I'm gluten-free and I want you to make me a gumbo, it might be a little bit more of a challenge.

unknown 11:09

Fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Um but I think, you know, I mean, to to to that point, you know, I think one thing that people make the mistake of is complaining veganism with healthy. And and um veganism is more of a philosophy around our relationship to animals and the earth.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Um I would like to jump in here, Kwame, just to make sure that you know, we can differ on on things, but um I think that it's a two-part thing because I do think it is the path to being healthier than otherwise. I don't know if you have to be vegan to be a centenarian, but you have to be a near vegan, perhaps, like in the blue zone folks, eating animal products seldomly. So it's it's a path to health, and it's also you were talking you were about to talk about the philosophy. So keep going on that because it's important too.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah, yeah. No, so so there's there's veganism and then there's the plant-based diet. Right. And the plant-based diet is the diet of a vegan.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Got it. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

And but again, veg vegan is veganism is a philosophy around minimizing your contribution to undue suffering in the world of all things capable of suffering. Got it. And that is what it's rooted in it. And and you know, and the reason that that people don't like vegans, I think, in particular, is because vegans actually do feel like this is as deep as like a religion. Right. It is a right thing, it's a moral, I think it's an ethic. Um, and so when people don't subscribe to certain ethics, then then that that disturbs your soul. And that's really what that's about. But most people view veganism or vegans as people are just kind of making personal choices, right? This is just kind of what you know they decided to do, and they shouldn't impose their beliefs or anything on anyone else. And so anyway, that's kind of the that that that tipped for me, that happened for me 10 years ago, uh, right around my senior year of college. I watched a documentary, um, just learn started learning about everything and made that commitment. It didn't become about health for me really until about three years after uh I became vegan uh when I started going to um several conferences related to science and health. Um I hosted a screening of the documentary What the Health in 2017. Um again, many of the folks that are in this space around social justice are also you know vegan, plant-based people. Um, because again, it it all it all attracts, right? It's all connected to like how do we we all become the best versions of ourselves. Um but yeah, my my journey's been great. I've never I never had to come back from anything health-wise. Right. So I ran college or ran cross-country and track in college, and I and I went vegan at the end of my college journey. And so, you know, to to like identify significant benefits, you know, it has always been a challenge for me. I do like 100% my bowel movements are that's the only thing that I really notice, and and that is significant. Very able to move that daily um and smoothly is important, and and there are many people who want to who go days on a regular basis without making a bowel movement and and and and aren't aware that that is problematic.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

And as you age, speaking from experience, it gets harder and harder. Yeah, no pun intended.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Uh no, it's been it's been a great journey. Well, one, just to know that how significant of an impact my lifestyle is having on reducing, you know, you know, environmental, you know, problems and stuff like that. Um but I don't deal with any of the problems that many of my friends are starting to deal with, hyper, you know, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and it's not even close. You know.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

You uh I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you uh you you went to grad school. What was your major? What would you focus on there?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Yeah, I went to uh Xavier for undergrad and graduate school. So in undergrad I was a biology major, pre-med, and then in graduate school I studied public health with a concentration in health equity.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

And what does MPH stand for?

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Uh Masters of Public Health.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Nice. Okay. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So public health is uh the art and science of prolonging life.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Beautiful. So you were talking about your app, and um that is available, and it's subscription-based.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Right now the app is free. So it's it's our beta app. You can go to the app store and download the Dacadoo app. So DAC-ADU is our technology partner that's spelled D-A-C-A-D-O-O. And you can use access code dysfunctional foodie to create your account.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

And and once you get in there, you're you'll be first prompted to complete your initial health score assessment. You'll answer about 12 questions, uh, all within the seven categories of health that we track. So physical activity, mindfulness, sleep, nutrition, mental well-being, physical or medical health, as well as you know, self-control or overindulgence. Um, and then you'll get your initial score. Um, again, it'll be a number between zero and one thousand. Uh, and it'll show you know if you're in the low range, fair range, good, very good, or excellent. However, there's also comprehensive assessments within each category. So the initial one is just a snapshot, one or two questions from each category. But I encourage people to go through and answer the questions in each category, and you'll see your score change as you're going through all of these assessments. And so you really get an understanding of how the app works. And then, you know, you'll the answers that you gave are the answers that you gave, and then over the next several weeks, the app will adjust based on how you actually live your life and whether you you you know erred on the side of caution with your answers or you were lying about your answers, the app's gonna know and kind of get to know or kind of change.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

How does the app know you and you input data?

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Yeah, so so it will connect with your Fitbit, your Garmin, your Apple Health, Google Fit, Samsung Health, whatever it is that you're you're you're you know tracking your your health with, it integrates with it. And and so your score will update in real time. So if you go on a run or a walk one day, your score is gonna go up a few points. If you get three hours of sleep one night, your score is gonna go down. And again, based on those changes, we make recommendations for how you can improve.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

That's very cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Very cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Wow. You know, as as uh as we get more and more into uh continuous monitors, uh like continuous glucose monitors, continuous blood pressure monitors, people are gonna be able to see that, you know, when you eat when they eat a certain way, so let's say they eat bad for a week or so, and then so that's gonna elevate their their fasting glucose levels, right? Their fasting sugar levels, and then they'll see the impact that that has on their score. So the idea here is that we really want people to see how their lifestyle affects their overall health, because most of us don't make that connection strong strong enough.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

You know, I've spoken uh several several times, and I'm gonna I'm gonna speak about it in my next uh episode, one that I'm doing alone on the uh you talked about glucose monitors, and that is the only way that I can think of where you get that direct response from something you put in your mouth, right? There's no other way to have immediate feedback on your choice. And I think that's part of the problem with making bad choices, right? You can smoke a cigarette and you're only gonna get cancer 10 years or 15 years from now, you know. You can eat a donut and you won't see the weight pile on your body right now. So, but if you go to the doctor and the doctor says you're gonna get you have cancer, and the only way to beat it is to become a vegan, you would probably become a vegan because you need that smack in the face or the immediate response. So wouldn't it be great if they there were other well, your app sort of helps address some of those issues, but until we have something that gives people immediate feedback on their daily choices, it's still very difficult for many people sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Absolutely, you know, and and especially in in this country where you know we our environments are disease promoting.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Right? That that is the default setting of of the the environment here whereby you you almost have to become some sort of health expert, right, in order just to to be healthy.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

And we're food, we're food spoiled, and it's too accessible, it's too easy.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

We have food swamps here in the U.S. That's what we call them. So you're you heard of a food desert, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

So food deserts are where there aren't grocery stores nearby. Food swamps are where there are grocery stores, but the ratio of you know full service grocery stores to, you know, fast food restaurants is like four or five to one, to where people in in food swamps actually are end up more unhealthy than folks in food deserts.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

And I think I read that you were um you know, you were gonna focus on the black community, um, not exclusively, of course, but um because you identify with that community and you understand, and there are certain commonalities in the black community, just like they are in any other ethnic community. There's a way that you were brought up and there's foods that you ate that your grandmother made for you, and that's part of the problem. Is it's hard for us to unidentify with, for example, oh I'm a I'm a carnivore, I'm from, you know, from Texas or whatever, and I wear cowboy boots. So I eat my meat, right? We are people that like to be connected to tribe, and it's hard to change from tribe sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah. I mean it it's it's the hardest thing for us to do right now as it relates to food in in the black community. You know, so much of of our set celebrations are centered around food that is killing us.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

One liner that should be written hard somewhere.

unknown 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Because it applies to other cultures as well, but wow, for for real.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

And and and even and you to dig even deeper there, um you know, during during slavery, we were fed we were fed the scraps, right? Pigs feed, you know, you know, and we made and we made the most of it because that was all we had. And and many of those things, especially here in the south, I'm in New Orleans, have become cultural staples. We we don't have to continue eating the scraps. You know, and and and I in fact we need to stop because it's killing us.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

And when you say it that way, it makes people think. Because nobody here in Georgia, where I am, thinks they're eating scraps when they're frying everything and putting too much butter in everything, etc. You know? Yeah. But yeah, well said.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

But you know, I think what what is gonna happen, in part of why I believe this is truly an emergency, and um white people are gonna start changing quicker, especially if I you know do enough to raise awareness, um, is that we're developing these diseases earlier in life. Right? So what typically might have developed in the 50s and 60s, like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, they're starting to develop in like late 20s, early 30s. And our bodies can only live with these conditions for so long, and so ultimately it's taking our lives sooner. And because basically, if you think about our bodies, there's a system that um you know, work is being done, and when work is being done, there's wear and tear and and you know, degradation over time, and and that and that's fine. Um but right now the rate of of work being done in the black body is accelerated because of our lifestyle choices, because of the stresses that we experience in the US. And um if just think about like a car, if you're grabbing the engine the whole time, it's gonna wear down quicker.

unknown 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

As opposed to if uh you're just kind of coasting.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

I like I like the car analogy. Excuse me. When you get a brand new car, you take really good care of it, you know. And if it was the only car you were ever gonna have ever in your life, you would put premium gas, premium oil in that thing, you would top off the fluids, you know, there's all these analogies, you know. Um yeah, you gotta take care of your your car, your vessel.

unknown 23:03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Very cool. So you have this um you have uh another marathon coming up. Right?

SPEAKER_00 23:09

It's not a marathon, it's a um it's a it's a walk-athon, but we're calling it the barathon.

unknown 23:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Uh so uh yeah, I just don't want people to think that they're gonna that we're gonna have them do a marathon. Right. I'm I'm probably not gonna do a marathon.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

How can people get involved in your marathon?

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Yeah, so so you can only register via our app or our email channels or a personal invitation. And so uh make sure you download the app. You'll see information about it in an article within the app. But we're we're going after another world record, so just completed two million steps, breaking international book of records for the most steps in 30 days. And you know, at on the last day of that challenge, several people came up to me. It's like, oh, what's next? What's next? And I'm like, what do you mean what's next? It's I just did two million steps in 30 days. That was that was that was enough. What's next is I'm gonna lay down, right? Um, but it got me thinking, you know, it got me thinking about like marketing in general and and how how much of awareness this raised for a company. And so just to keep in, you know, the the theme of world records, uh, I was like, well, we're gonna go after another world record, but this time I'm gonna need everybody's tell. So learn more about it in the app.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Very cool. So uh if people um I'll leave meeting notes in the uh in the episode, but so I'll I'll leave the um the Decado app. And what what else should I put in the meeting notes? Your email address?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

You can put our our social media handles. So we're we're at Bear Health, B-E-H-R-Health, pretty much everywhere. Okay. Um primarily post on Instagram, where we're doing some more posting on TikTok and LinkedIn and and Facebook as well. Um, and then my personal profile on Instagram is Kwame Terra. So at Kwame Terra.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Great. Very cool. Well, listen, um, it's really been great talking to you. You you're you come across to me as a little bit of like a guru of some sorts. You're super brilliant and calm and cool, collected. I don't know why I thought of Wayne Dyer, you know, who's who was the guru in the health industry, but I think people are gonna follow you in your barathon and in your work. Um, I'm certainly inspired by by talking to you today.

unknown 25:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

All right, so thank you very much, and um, I look forward to following you on Instagram at BearHealth. Sounds good. All right, buddy, thanks a lot. See you. All right. All right, people. I really enjoyed talking to Kwame. And uh the app sounds super cool, how it tracks in real time. So I can't wait to get on there and um check it out. There will be a uh discount code or an access code, I should say, which is dysfunctional foodies, and you'll be able to uh check it out. If it uh if it if you go to the app store and and you type in decado app, d-a-c-a-do, decado, and ask for an access code, dysfunctional foodies is the answer. And you can get on there and check this thing out for free. All right, people. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.