Retired L.A. Sheriff Sergeant : How to reset after Patrol

Welcome to the Lionheart of Blue Police Podcast! Join Cliff Yates, a retired L.A. County Sheriff Sergeant, as he shares insights from his 30 years in law enforcement. This episode, 'Post Patrol Health and Strength Reset,' focuses on mental health and wellness for officers. 💪

Transcript

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Hey everybody, welcome to the Lionhearted Blue Police Podcast. I'm Cliff Yates. I'm your host, retired LA County Sheriff Sergeant. I was lucky to have served on the LA County Sheriff's Department for 30 years and over 10 years as a sergeant. And today's podcast is titled Post Patrol Health and Strength Reset. Post Patrol Health and Strength Reset. Why do we need a Post Patrol Health and Strength Reset? And believe me, we do. I know I did. This could actually be titled Post Retirement Health and Strength Reset because that's going to make the biggest difference when we are retired and the ability to take control of our health and strength. This really could apply to any occupation that you have retired from. Post-retirement health and strength reset. It could apply to a lot of different professions that just by their very nature degraded our health and strength. And that certainly is the case with police work. The reason why we need a post-patrol, post-retirement, health and strength reset is because the inherent negativity that affects our health and strength because of the necessity of our job requirements. When in police work specifically, as applied to my experience, we are constantly dealing with disrupted sleep, disrupted work hours, disrupted eating patterns, and inability to have a regular exercise or strength training program because of the variations in shift work, uh, going to court, uh overtime, forced overtime, volunteer overtime, those kinds of things. But here's the exciting part the power of our bodies to heal themselves and to recover and to reset to health and strength is amazing, and we can take back that power when we retire. Why? Because now we can be in total control of our sleep, eating, health, mentally, and physically. Now, when I was working on the job, I actually, without even knowing I was doing it, I was trying to mitigate the negative effects of patrol work the best way that I knew how. Now, I purposely chose to work the night shift. I love working the night shift. Before I joined the LA County Sheriff's Department, I worked in upstate New York for the Livingston County Sheriff's Department, and I loved working midnight to eight. I worked midnight to eight for five straight years for Livingston County, and I loved it. And for the LA County Sheriff's Department, I probably worked the night shift for at least 15 plus years of my 30 years on the job. And what I tried to do when I was working, first of all, throughout my whole career, I maintained a weight training program just because I had habituated a workout routine where if I didn't work out for three, four days, right, anxiety built up in me. So I maintained a regular workout uh habit throughout my whole career. But I did find as I hit age fifty, fifty-five, right, between my twenty-fifth and thirtieth year, I noticed the negative effects of the job on my health and strength. All of a sudden I had a you know 36, 37 inch waist. Uh, the numbers, my blood work numbers were going in the wrong direction, pre-diabetic, high cholesterol, uh, blood pressure too high. Even though I was continuing a weight training regiment. Now, my nutrition regiment was not as good. And control over my sleep, and of course the stress hormone cortisol that is inevitable in our system as we work in police work and a lot of other careers and occupations also. But I did when I did shift work, I little did I know I was really doing what was best to mitigate sleeping on the other side of the clock. So I worked the night shift, so when I got home in the morning, I I always tried to keep my room dark as possible, which is something we should try to do now, post-retirement. Try to keep your room dark as possible for ultimate sleep. Now, what I did was, and I remember a lot of people put foil in the windows. I thought that looked like crap. People didn't like it in the neighborhood, or you know, if you were part of an HOA, they didn't like foil on the windows that I guess reflected the light and kept it dark. Now, I painted my windows in my bedroom with a flat black paint on the inside. I painted my windows black. And from the outside, it it looks just like a dark room. You have no idea that your windows are painted black. And then when I left, it was the type of paint, I don't know, it peeled right off. No damage to the windows whatsoever. But that really did the trick. My my bedroom was pitch black. Of course, it was pitch black all the time because I had painted the windows black, and then I kept it very, very cool, which is something we should do now. We can do this now. Keep our bedrooms dark, keep them cool. Now, another thing that we can do, now I did this uh working shift work by necessity, in other words, driving home. Usually my drive home was a 20 to 45 minute drive after working the night shift. So automatically I was not looking at screens. And at the time, of course, we didn't have screens to really look at. We were we weren't even on cell phones back in the day. But uh that's something we can do now is limit our screen time, the amount of that light uh that we're getting in our face from screens, uh not just television, but maybe even our cell phones or or our laptops. If we can limit that time an hour or so before we go to bed, that is really good. And reading can help us really wind down. And even if it's on a device like a Kindle, you can use the paper white, which is different than a bright light in your screen, even though even though it's back lit, it looks like paper. But also, uh, I haven't tried this, but using amber colored glasses, you know, why does that yellow tint? Why does that help us go to sleep? We've been programmed over centuries of time with going to bed after we've been around a campfire, right? Back in the days, the hunter-gatherer days, we were around a fire at night, and so that yellow glow we would have prior to sleep, and that helps us stimulate uh is it melanoma, melatonin, melatonin, that's what helps us sleep, right? Serotonin is getting that morning sunlight that stimulates energy to help us in our day get going if we can get that morning sunrise, but at night we could use either a yellow tint or yellow tinted glasses, and that's going to stimulate the melatonin. Or I guess we could take melatonin as a supplement. I know a lot of people do, and uh so we can do that prior to sleep. So we do what? To help us sleep, we keep our room dark, we limit how much we eat or drink prior to going to bed, limit our screen time, and then we keep our room cool and quiet. That's one thing I had to do when I worked the night shift for the LA County Sheriff's Department. I had to mitigate the sounds that would wake me up. You know, the leaf blowers, the lawn mowers, those kinds of things, right? I kept the light out, I kept it cool, but to keep that noise out, I had to put on headphones and I put relaxing, soft music. Now, if you're watching on YouTube, you see my backdrop here. This is actually the St. Lawrence River. I'm on my private island in the Thousand Islands region of New York. So behind me, it's not a green screen, that is actual water rushing by the window behind me. So I don't know if you can hear the waters flapping up against the rocks, but that's what I hear right now. As the wind kicks up and the waves start to get a little bigger. And earlier today it was nice and calm. But life on the water in my own private island, sometimes the weather will kick up really, really fast, and we get devastating winds and rain and thunderstorms here, and we have a rainstorm on the way. But I wanted to do this podcast for quite a while, and I've wanted to do this post-patrol health and strength reset because I noticed in my own life. Now I told you how I was getting between my 25th and 30th year, a little pudgy, a little soft, even though I was still weight training, but my true nutrition wasn't dialed in. And then I watched my dad, he died of heart disease, and then I got studying heart disease and how we can actually prevent or reverse heart disease. And I watched that documentary, Forks Over Knives, by those heart surgeons who were really promoting a vegan uh lifestyle and diet, and really not a diet, they say a lifestyle. And I did adopt the vegan lifestyle for a while, but by necessity, the vegan uh diet or lifestyle is going to leave you lacking in certain nutrients and B vitamins, B complex, and you have to really supplement your diet. Now I've since moved after going through Primal Health Coaching Institute out of Miami, Florida. I have now switched to really just focusing on nutrient-dense foods and staying away from ultra-processed foods, staying away from sugars, and definitely chemically altered oils, cooking and using olive oil, avocado oil, and healthy fats, avocados, eggs. And this has really helped me in my numbers. Now, when I was going vegan, I really had great numbers. I really, but I don't think I looked as healthy uh with the vegan diet, but my numbers were really great. My fasting glucose was well below 100, where right now it's hovering around 100, which is kind of the tipping point. My A1C was down to 5.2, where now it's a little higher, it's 5.7, which is kind of the line between pre-diabetic and not. Uh so I'm really watching that today, but I believe the secret really is nutrient-dense foods, right? High protein, high healthy fats. Lower on the carbohydrates. Before I was having a lot of carbohydrates, and what I didn't realize was carbohydrates get converted to glucose and causes an up spike in insulin in our systems, and a chronic input of insulin in our system is going to cause us to be insulin resistant. That's going to lead to diabetes because insulin is what holds the key to the cells and allows nutrients to come into the cells. And so when it's chronically being barraged with glucose, insulin, it shuts the doors on the insulin, which really is there not to not only to bring glucose down in our system, but also to allow nutrients into the cells. So becoming insulin sensitive is key. And if you lower your carbohydrates, you can actually convert your body to be fat burning. So you start burning body fat for energy and you start producing ketones from your liver for your brain to work on. Yeah, your brain loves to operate on sugar glucose, but it really operates most efficiently with ketones. And that's why you get the name ketogenic diet, because you get you get into what they call ketosis, where your body says, okay, I'm not going to have any more glucose. I've gone so long without it, I need to start producing ketones for the brain to operate on, and it operates efficiently on ketones. And I have to start burning body fat for energy. I know that carbohydrates aren't coming in. If your body knows every couple hours you're throwing carbohydrates into your system, it will wait for you to do it. And if you don't do it, it tries to punish you. That's how you get hangry. You get those dips, those dives, you get those crashes. Now that I've got myself metabolically flexible, where my body efficiently burns body fat and it also burns carbohydrates. Now, if I skip a meal or I miss a meal, I don't have the crash. Frequently, I work out fasted. I've been really utilizing a 16-8 intermittent fasting rhythm. In other words, I stopped eating after 8 o'clock at night, and I normally don't have my first meal until noon or later. Now I do have coffee in the morning, and I do put a little bit of heavy cream in the coffee, which is mostly fat. I know people send me messages, you know, there are carbohydrates in, there is sugar in, you know, the the heavy cream. I have such little heavy cream, I have basically not even a shot glass full of heavy cream in my coffee, but it satiates your stomach. You don't have any cravings. You're not craving food, you don't feel like you haven't eaten yet. And I think the coffee also helps with that. And by going 16 hours, now you're going long enough where your body says, Well, I don't have enough carbohydrates in my system. Now, and also when you work out fasted, your body takes glycan out of your muscle, glycogen out of your muscle tissues that it has stored for energy and it burns that. And now that that's gone, your body converts to burning body fat. Next thing you know, your waistline is going to shrink, your energy is going to go up, and you can start doing that now that you're post-patrol. Post-retirement, you have total control over your sleep, your nutrition, your exercise, your weight training. You can do it now. Get back into a reset of health and strength. Now that you're post-retirement, you can do it. On patrol, it was tough. Eating was tough. Now you could, and a lot of people did who were weightlifters and bodybuilders. And I mean, they they did meal prep and they brought food to work with them, and that really was a smart thing to do because you never know when you were going to get caught on a murder scene, you know, a death scene, or you know, somewhere on a containment where you know you might be there four, five, six, seven hours longer, you're at the Malibu fires, 12-hour shifts. And if you didn't bring food with you, uh, you were hard pressed to have anything to eat. Uh, and a lot of times, if you were on those 12-hour jobs and these fires, you know, they would bring food into you, but they were bringing in sugar-filled carbohydrate meals that were fast food items because they just wanted to keep you going. They weren't really interested uh in it going to the efforts of giving you a nutrient-dense, uh, healthy meal. They wanted to keep you going. And you just get in the habit because fast food is so fast and available and convenient. And so you really have to spend extra time if you wanted to meal prep on the job out in patrol and have your cooler or you know, little playmate igloo with you, and so that you could bring your meal to work. It was the smartest thing to do, you know, bring a healthy snack with you, have a healthy meal with you, something to drink, and then you never had to panic where you were, I'm not going to get to a meal. I'm getting stuck guarding a prisoner at a uh at a hospital. You know, if you were stuck somewhere, if you had your, you know, your rolling office was your patrol car, if you had your meals with you, then you were prepared, and it kept you from being too unhealthy. And so even if you weren't getting your proper workouts or exercise in, or you're you had a lot of disrupted sleep, hey, at least you were taking a little bit of control of your meals and what you're eating. But of course, it was work-intensive, requires a lot. You know, the meal prep for the week takes a lot, and and so, you know, and when you work in patrol, man, uh not only do you have all this going on, disrupted sleep, disrupted meals, uh, you know, and uh, you know, no schedule to work out regularly, you also, your system was almost chronically, had a lot of a high degree of cortisol, stress hormone in it, just because of the job. So now a lack of sleep, disruptive sleep, will cause a rising cortisol. The stress of the job, high stress, emergent situations, a flush of adrenaline, chronically being exposed to stress and the unknown raises your cortisol even more. So now that we are post-patrol, post-retirement, we can bring down the cortisol level, which is going to keep us healthy and active and strong for the rest of our lives, and we're gonna be keep keep that pension for many, many years. I'm retired over 13 years now. I've never had as much energy, health, and strength as I do today. Age 68, everybody. If you're watching on YouTube, you can tell I have the energy, I have the strength, I am lean and mean and ready to roll. Now it's not by accident. I was going in the night right direction, but post-patrol, post-retirement, I turn that around by taking my power in choosing how I sleep, eat, and exercise. And so you can do the same thing. And I want to encourage you, post-patrol, post-retirement, take back, reset your health, your strength. You can do it. Take control of your sleep, your eating, and your exercise. Keep your body and mind healthy. Be always learning new things. Don't do things that could hurt or kill you. Don't text and drive, don't drink and drive. Be very careful. Always be learning new things to stimulate your mind. Keep yourself young, growing. You're not going to be stagnant. Get plenty of sunlight. Play at something. It doesn't have to be something competitive, something you just enjoy doing for the fun of it. Lift heavy things every once in a while. Do that farmer's carry at the gym with two heavy dumbbells. Do some deadlifting. I sprint once a week. I think sprinting once a week played a big rule role in increasing my testosterone levels. Last March my testosterone total was 709, but my free testosterone was 40. And my doctor said the free is really the important stuff. You know, for sexual energy and prowess, the free needs to be higher. Mine was low, even though my total was way above average, 709. And he said, you can free up more testosterone for your free testosterone by raising your protein. So then I started focusing on getting 180 to 200 grams of protein a day. And it was, I had to focus my attention. I had to kind of work at it. But eventually, as you realize certain meals and how much protein and fat they have, you can pretty much start to tell how much protein you're getting. So I combined getting more protein grams per day with sprinting once a week, deadlifting once a week, regular exercise, getting plenty of sun, getting plenty of sleep, and in December, my testosterone total was 1,089. My free testosterone went from 40 to 80.4 or something like that. It doubled. To the point where I had people, a close friend in California, he didn't believe me, because there's no way. You do not have these numbers unless you're on TRT. You are taking something. No, I'm not taking anything. And so I started doing a little my own research, my own survey, and I uh checked with some of the personal trainers that I work closely around at My gym, and they said it was probably a combination that raised my not only my free testosterone but my total. Probably raising the protein grams had a big input. Deaf deadlifting definitely stimulates the uh production of testosterone, and definitely sprinting affects your testosterone. It goes back to the hunter-gatherer days when we had to sprint, right, to get food. Every once in a while we had to sprint. Our hunter-gatherers, they didn't go on long, arduous runs. They weren't doing an hour and a half of cardio. No, every once in a while they were sprinting to gather food. Every once in a while they got their meal, and then a tiger showed up and they dropped it and they ran. They sprinted. And then they had to go without their meal. And so we can kind of take on that lifestyle. That's a healthy body is made to do that. Our body is made for intermittent fasting. It was made knowing that we were going to have to go without a meal. There wasn't a constant ability to consume carbohydrates and sugars like we do today. We have so much food available on a constant basis that we get in the habit of feeding our body too much too often. But we can turn that around right now, post-patrol, post-retirement, so that we can reset our health and strength. And as cops, we deserve that. Year after year of a disrupted sleep pattern, disrupted eating patterns, disrupted workout routines. Not being able to spend time with our family during holidays also causes a rise in cortisol. But now we are post-retirement, post-stressful job. Now we are in control and we can do a post-patrol, post-retirement reset of our health and strength. And that's what this was episode was all about. And those are the keys that we can do right now. You're going to be surprised at how your body is going to transform itself very quickly because all of a sudden you're getting plenty of sleep. All of a sudden, there's less cortisol in your system. All of a sudden, it's getting all the nutrients it needs through your nutrient-dense meals. All of a sudden, you're moving a lot throughout the day. You're lifting heavy things every once in a while. You're deadlifting. You are sprinting, playing at something, and you're reading, studying, learning something new. You have a compelling future image of yourself that is pulling you towards your goals. And that's exciting. And when you are looking forward to things in your future, it tells your body you are young, energetic, full of life, and you're ready to roll. Man, I'm so happy that you joined me in the Lionheart of Blue police podcast. Glad I was able to do this episode. I have it in my mind for the longest time because I've been talking to my brothers and sisters in blue about this for several months. I have a new cadre of friends who have retired, some for many years, and some recently retired. And that's what we've been talking about our health and strength reset. Post-patrol, post-retirement reset. We got this. You know what to do. All right, everybody, if you're listening on one of the audio podcast platforms, please give me a rating. Leave me a comment. It helps tell the computer that this episode had some value and they'll show it to more people. And if you haven't, get on over to the YouTube channel, please. We are growing a community of progress there at the YouTube channel. And that's where I host the video format of the Lionhearted Blue Police Podcast. And if you haven't already, subscribe, like, leave a comment. I will answer you. I will connect with you. You know I love you. I will see you in the next episode.