Bear Grease - Ep. 494: Your Most Important Gear - Your Body

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

For men, taking care of your body can often slip down on the priority list, but your health is a savings account you can either make deposits or withdraws. On this episode, host Clay Newcomb is joined by Dr. Jason Lofton an Dr. Adam McCall as they discuss the most important things that we as men can do to remain healthy, fit, and provide maximum longevity of the bodies we have been given. It's the most important gear we have to be good husbands, fathers, friends, and outdoorsmen and it takes work to maintain. Tune in to hear helpful info, hot tips, and the truth about how to keep that bank account full and maintain the edge we need in a world that is trying to drag it down. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. I talk to the patients I have the men who maybe work at a plant. You know, they're busy all day.

They're walking. They're getting a lot of steps in. I just tell them walk faster. Try to get that cardio up while you're walking. as long as your boss don't care, the guys, you know, don't worry about the guys saying slow down. Get those steps in when you can. If you've got a type of job that you can get down and do some push-ups every hour, do that. You know, you can get 100 push-ups in in a day just by doing that every hour.

So don't get fired. You know, don't get in trouble, but take advantage at the time we have. Keep going. Like, if you have a bad day on your diet, that doesn't mean you ruined everything. I see that somebody, like, we have this failure mentality. If we fail once, we must have failed the entire thing. Like, no. Just do better tomorrow.

Every day, try to do better. It doesn't take a lot of time to see the true benefit of the deposit you're making. Many health influencers today, as inspirational as they can be, can be extreme, and it's hard to know where to start if you're just a normal person with a normal life. I'm looking for practical advice to live a balanced life that will keep me active and productive for the longest possible time on this earth. Today's episode is different. And we're going to talk with two medical doctors, both avid outdoorsmen,

searching for practical advice for health, longevity, and building a thriving life. Their words will surprise, challenge, and encourage you. And if you put what they say into practice, all of it will help us take care of the most important piece of gear that we'll ever own, which is our body. We're about to hear from Dr. Adam McCall and Dr. Jason Lofton. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. My name is Clay Newcomb and this is the Bear Grease podcast where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Brought to you by Tachovas boots. I'm a cowboy boot man and I've been wearing Tocovas for years.

the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. I'd like to read a quote from Theodore Roosevelt from 1890. He said, as a nation, we have many tremendous problems to work out, and we need to bring every ounce of vital power possible to their solution. No people has ever yet done great and lasting work if its physical type was infirm and weak. It's clear that Roosevelt viewed health and vitality as a matter of national security, and his words are as true today as they were then, maybe even more. Roosevelt's strenuous life doctrine became well known, and he espoused that true greatness is achieved through hard work, struggle, and overcoming

difficulties rather than seeking a lazy life of comfort. His doctrine wasn't all about physical fitness, but it was certainly a component of it. And I'd argue that your physical body, what the Bible calls the temple of the Holy Spirit, is the vehicle of your life, influencing the quality of your relationships, your work, your thoughts, your hunting, your enjoyment of life, your spiritual life, and how that we take care of our bodies reveals a lot about us. But not all of us are the same. We've got different starting places, different genetics, different health cultures, and we won't all get the same results, but too many of us can use that as an excuse for minimal effort. But I'm here today to say

and encourage us that we can all take better care of our bodies, and I want to find those practical things that anybody can do. Much of life we can't control, but we can control how active we are, how we exercise, and what we eat. And if you take away one thing from today, day is to get started now. No matter your age, if you're 20 or 70, little things done over long periods of time can have tremendous value. I'd like to start with Dr. Adam McCall, a 43-year-old family physician and obstetrician at Advanced Primary Care in Springdale, Arkansas. He's a hunter, he's dedicated to his family, and he's a good guy. He's got a good analogy to kick us off. The way that I would tell patients to look at this is when you're in your 40s, you're almost done depositing into your bank account when it comes to your health.

And that for every decade after that, you're pulling out its withdrawals. And so whatever you deposit into your account now, whether that is through exercise, whether that is through eating better, whether that is losing weight, whatever you deposit now, the dividends will pay off when you're 50, when you're 60. and onward. And so, man, the deposit idea is something that I've been, is really been trying to dive in on because it really makes sense that you don't wait till you're 50, you don't wait until you're 60 to go, okay, it's time to get in shape. Man, I can tell you the difference between 35 and 43 feels incredibly different, you know, and so I can't imagine what that's going to feel like at 55 and 65.

So, man, make those deposits now. Make those health deposits now. But what does that mean? Where do we start? I'd now like to meet our second doctor. He's in DeQueen, Arkansas at the Lofton Family Clinic. My name is Dr. Jason Lofton. I'm a family physician in DeQueen, Arkansas, which is a small community in southwest Arkansas. So I've been talking to my patients about this for really the past year. I grew up a cyclist and a runner. I ride gravel bikes and I've ran ever since high school. I'll be 50. this year. And I came across some data last year that really talked about the importance of strength training and what it does for you at the end of your life. And it's going to be a soapbox I'll retire or die on. And it's changed what I do. I've changed from just riding my bike or

just running to now I strength train just as much. And so I tell people our strength is what's going to keep us out of the wheelchair or keep us out of the nursing home. You know, we could have the perfect body and at the end of our life we don't have the strength to get out of bed and we're going to be dependent we're going to lose our independence so my goal is to help my patients maintain their independence and live a long you know fulfilling life not just a long life and so I would tell somebody they need to obviously be exercising and they need to be doing strength training if you want to be hauling a deer out of the woods or climbing up that tree stand or hiking you know chasing the elk you've got to be not only doing the cardio but you've got to be

and the strength training and just really doing what it takes. It's an investment in your future self is what I tell people. The more you put in an investment account now, the bigger that account is going to be in the future. And the same thing goes for your investment into your health. Don't be confused. This isn't a geriatrics podcast. The challenge of human perception is finding the motivation to plan for the future as if it were today. Whether you're 21 years old, 30 or 60, life is lived in the now.

cutting edge of time, but one day you're going to meet the sliver of time where the future you resides, and it'll be just like this moment right now. And you're banking on that yesterday's you capitalize on yesterday's now, which is today's now. Dr. Laughden spoke about a big buzzword in the health world today, which is strength training. And it's not just a buzzword, it's here to stay. The pathway to functional longevity and quality of life is building muscle, mass. The earlier you start in your life, the better, but any time is better than no time. But the challenge is that it gets harder, the older you get. So let's talk about building muscle, which is a major key to physical fitness. Getting started is the hardest part.

At what age do you have so much trouble building muscle mass? I really think it starts anywhere between 35 and 40. Whenever that testosterone level begins to drop, I think muscle mass is something that if you're not actively building that, if you're not actively eating your protein and really watching what you're eating, man, muscle mass is something that just begins to fall off. But when you're in your 40s, you still, I mean, like weight trainings could still be real important. Oh, absolutely. And I think that's not going to probably put on as much as you would. You know, and you're in your 30s and you are building that, you're still living, essentially, right?

But, man, when you hit that 40 and that midlife, dude, you start, starts going down. So what about somebody in their 50s? Should they just not work out? It's just done? Nope, not at all. I mean, I talk to men, even women all the time, get strong, stay strong. But when you're 50, it's going to be a little bit harder than what it was when you're 40. The reason I say that is we've just started to hear about how, you know, it's harder to put on muscle.

And I think there's probably some people that could just be like, well, it's just too late. Yeah. But it's, but it's not. You know, I mean, the one thing that was going to keep you from being in the woods at 70 or 80, in a heart attack, it's a broken hip, you know, is because you weren't actively maintaining your muscle mass. And people go, man, I do some, you know, resistance training. Like, no, you need to be doing some weight training. One of the things that you think about is you need to be able to carry your body weight split in two. So if you're 190 pounds, you need to be able to carry, I mean, at least, you know, 80, 90 pounds in each hand or each arm. And so that's one of the big things that if you're talking about, man, I'm going

to be packing into the woods, you know, camping or hunting or hauling out an animal. You know, I think a lot of people will quit doing their, their hobby. One, either they don't have anybody to do it with whenever they get that age, or they're so afraid of what happens if I actually harvest an animal and I can't, I don't have a side by side or a four-wheeler. I've actually had to pack an animal out. I think that probably initiates a lot of, a lot of fear in folks who would otherwise be out there doing it. Whatever age you are, start lifting weights now. Our conversation kind of focused on how it gets harder, the older you get. And that could sound discouraging. It really wasn't meant to be.

But all that means is the earlier you start, the easier it is. So 40 is easier than 50, 50 easier than 60, but 20 is the best time to start. Starting any time can be incredibly productive. Studies have shown that people lifting weights, even into their 70s, 80s, and 90s, extends their functional life and they actually increase pretty dramatically in strength. A recent study of over 30,000 participants showed that people over 65 who strength train had a 46% lower chance of death during that study window. Another study cited people whose strength train had dramatically lower risk of cardiovascular and cancer mortality.

Muscle is the organ and pathway to longevity. It's simple and I like it. But lifting weights can be intimidating. It has been for me most of my life. There's just so many options and so many people telling you what to do. But don't let all the information, the hype, the marketing dilute the simplicity of lifting weights. this is what has helped me. Just lift heavy stuff, move, and break a sweat.

You can do that in a gym. You can do that by doing push-ups and sit-ups and body weight workouts. You really can't go wrong if you're lifting heavy stuff and sweating. Here's Josh Landbridge spillmaker with a hard-hitting general question for Dr. Lofton that will shift the conversation to something as important as building muscle. Cardio. for an outdoorsman, is cardiovascular fitness actually more important than strength? Or do we need both?

We need both. Okay, they're one A and one B. They're just right there, neck and neck. So to be the bare minimum, if you want to barely pass grade, let's just say we're a teacher, you've got to get 150 minutes a week of cardio. And that's not just movement. That's actually getting your heart rate up and getting cardio, and that's going to vary to on your age. And then you need to be getting two to three days a week of strength training.

And those are just like if you're going to pass, just barely pass the class, that's the bare minimum. And if you're not doing that, I'm going to say you're failing. Okay, but it doesn't take much to pass. So 11 minutes twice a day of walking, as long as you're walking fast enough, it passes you for the cardio. Okay. That's 22 minutes a day. That's 154 minutes a week. So I try to break it down from my patience saying, what is doable? Like, let's get it down in bite-sized pieces. Same thing with strength training. Two to three days a week, 30 minutes, two to three to three, three days a week, you can get that done.

If you have to break it up into two 15-minute workouts, I have a busy schedule. There's days that I have to say, you know what, I'm just going to get my first set in in the morning, and I'm going to get my second set in the afternoon. And it's not ideal. I'd rather do it all in one, but we can do that if we break things down. I talk to the patients I have the men who maybe work at a plant, you know, they're busy all day. They're walking.

They're getting a lot of steps in. I just tell them walk faster. Try to get that cardio up while you're walking. As long as your boss don't care, the guys, you know, don't worry about the guys. and slow down. Get those steps in when you can. If you've got a type of job that's maybe monitoring a screen and you can get down and do some push-ups every hour, do that.

You know, you can get 100 push-ups in in a day just by doing that every hour. So don't get fired. You know, don't get in trouble. But I tell people, do take advantage at the time we have and we have to make it work for our schedule. For a long time, it felt like cardio was everything for health. And that really hasn't changed. We've just added some stuff to it.

It's just now that we see building. building muscle is as important. And what Dr. Lofden said was really practical. 150 minutes a week of cardio. That sounds intimidating until you break it down to 22 minutes of fast walking a day. But remember, that's the minimum that you need. So more is better and more intense cardio is probably better too, like jogging, stairmaster, other things.

But research has proven that as little as a 10 to 15 minute walk. Listen to this. As little as a 10 to 15 minute walk shortly after eating a meal lessens the blood sugar spike, burns calories, and dramatically alters how the body interacts with the food you just ate. So timing, though, is everything. If you rest after a meal, your body puts those calories into storage. But if you get up and move, it thinks, we better burn this energy right here and now. and it doesn't get stored as fat as easily.

Misty and I have become incessant walkers. It gives us time to talk, but also it's meaningful to our health. That's something that's pretty easy to do. It's one of those encouraging things with just a little effort goes a long way. Here's what Dr. McCall says about cardio versus strength training. I think that you can't really put the cart before the horse. If you don't have cardiovascular fitness, you can't have strength. specifically V-O-2 max is one of the biggest calculations that actually shows whether we're dying or living.

If your V-O-2 max is going down, you're dying. If your V-O-2 max is stable or you're improving, you're actually improving the quality of your life. So what is V-O-2 max kind of mean functionally? It is the amount of work that you can do before your body begins to enter an anaerobic state, meaning that your body is now functioning because there's not enough oxygen being dropped off. So just pushing you to the extreme. Like where's your limit for what you can do? Absolutely.

So they did a study, I think it was Cleveland Clinic, 120,000 patients. They looked at the relationship between fitness and mortality. And that not being fit should be considered a disease state. And that's really not hyperbole. Like it is if you're not fit, you're dying. And so it really should be one of the biggest things is going, okay, how do I do that? I mean, focus on cardiovascular first. because if you're not, if you don't have cardiovascular fitness,

you're not going to be able to have a ton of strength. That should be a wake-up call to all of us. If we aren't fit, we are functionally diseased. I've been alarmed at how casual and light-hearted people are about being bad out of shape. And I've been there myself. I'm not exactly the picture of health, but I am conscious of it and work hard to be fit and healthy.

But the good news is that we can improve our health and meaningful ways at any age, but today's the day to start and to ramp it up. Earlier, we spoke about health being like a savings account where we can make deposits into it, and later we make these withdrawals. But again, what does that mean? As I understand it in the most simplest form, it's really quite simple. Build muscle by lifting heavy stuff. build cardio by moving, sweating, and getting out of breath every day.

And do whatever it takes to crush your bad eating habits and eat a healthy diet. Those three things. Muscle, cardio, and diet. The challenge is that all these things can seem hard, almost like our culture, our carnal preference, even our DNA are fighting against us. Here's a hard-hitting question that's going to key us into another, big issue. What are the biggest health mistakes you see men making that that quietly shortened their lives? So my number one, and this is what I focus on my clinic, is blood pressure. It, it,

the cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and really worldwide. And your blood pressure is the silent killer. It's the thing that doesn't cause you to come into the office. So many of you right now are walking around with high blood pressure. You don't know it. It increases your risk for stroke and heart attack. If we can lower your top number, which is called your systolic blood pressure, you know, there's two numbers of top and the bottom. That top number, if I lower your blood pressure by 10 points on the top,

I'll decrease your heart attack and stroke risk by 13%. You know, if we lower it 20 to 30 points, we're talking about a 25 to almost 40% lowering of your stroke and heart attack risk. So blood pressure is absolute number one in my book. Getting your annual checkup done. You know, there's things that we can catch on labs that you just don't feel necessarily at first. You know, colonoscopies are obviously high on the list.

Nobody wants to get that done. I get it. You know, I got my done. You know, I encourage everybody. We start doing those at 45 now instead of 50. We're doing that because we're seeing colon cancers in younger and younger people. Wouldn't surprise me if that goes down in the future. But, you know, get that done.

Get your labs checked. We can catch things in labs. Had a patient that had a cancer that I caught just through a lab. They had no complaints at all. That doesn't happen that all. often, but we do catch those at times. High blood sugar, you know, your blood sugar is not necessarily going to make you feel bad. Your prostate levels, the PSA, there's thyroid.

There's lots of things that aren't necessarily going to make you feel bad that we can catch on lab tests. You know, other things like, you know, getting the exercise, getting the sleep, cutting back on your processed foods, you know, alcohol is another one that we used to say in moderation's okay. The dad is just coming out now saying that even in moderation, it's not okay and it's high risk for your heart disease, high risk for cancers, we're seeing lots of trouble now.

You know, do I have a drink every now and then? Sure. But I don't say daily drinking is okay. Your overall health is not something to ignore. And I think a lot of men, we work hard, we play hard, and we don't take time for ourselves. We provide for everybody else. So we've got to take a little time to take care of ourselves so we can take care of others.

We've got to take care of ourselves so we can take care of others. It's not selfish to take care of your body. It's actually selfish to not take care of your body. And your fitness pattern is exported directly to your kids and can be even a big influence on your spouse. Your family needs you. The world needs you. It's interesting what he said about alcohol. Even in moderation, it can be very negative to your health.

That's pretty new. And getting your lab work done is huge. It's hard to do sometimes, but we just got to do it. And as good news, there. There are non-invasive versions of colon exams where you just send in a stool sample. So don't be afraid of all these crazy things we've got to do. I've got a question for Dr. McCall. Are y'all enjoying this?

What are the biggest health mistakes that you see men making? I mean, just a really general question. Yeah. Waiting until something hurts or waiting until they notice a decline before actually looking to see what's going on. So, you know, you have men in their 50s that show up that haven't been to a doctor, haven't been doing anything for their health, and they go, I've been doing all right, but, you know, my dad had heart disease or my mom did, and they just chose to ignore that. And then all of a sudden they come in and they're like, man, I can't walk up a hill.

Well, now you've already done the damage. Like if we would have been proactive and taken care of whether that was really high cholesterol or whether that was your blood sugar, those kind of disease processes, are very insiduous. Like they just come on slowly, and whenever they're there for a long time, man, they just quietly do damage.

Then once the damage is done, it's hard to undo it. And so there's probably this fatalistic mentality in some people where it's just like, hey, if I've got heart disease, I've just got it. And when I'm 65, it's going to... It is what it is.

And so, but you're saying that with medicine we have today and care that we have today, that if you would have done, something earlier, the effects of that would be less. Absolutely. There is a mentality where we are afraid to go to the doctor or think. I mean, it's so dumb when you say it out loud, but like there's some tough factor in not going to the doctor.

You know, it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't. And it's a, I think men especially considered it a failure. Like if I have to go to the doctor, somehow I'm a failure because I'm now relying on someone else to tell me what. to do. If you remember one thing and do it, it's this. Don't wait to go to the doctor until something hurts. That advice could save your life. Get Bell, Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything.

Before we get back into it, I want to tell you about the new First Light, Bear Grease, bibs. I have collaborated with First Light to build the perfect backcountry utility bib overall. And these might be new to the world, but they're not new to me. In 2019, almost seven years ago, I sketched out the first drawing, and I wanted these bibs to have a chapped front, to make them briar-proof. I wanted them to be breathable. I wanted them to have kind of an athletic fit. I wanted them to have a weatherproof pocket on the front for your cell phone if you fell in the river. They've got lots of big pockets, lots of ventilation.

They're tough, they're durable. They're made for small game hunting. They're made for working on the farm. And they're the bear grease bibs, man. They're now for sale at the meat eater.com slash bibbs. I want to go back to this idea of being unfit as a disease. and as a disclaimer, if you're overweight, which I truly empathize with, it's a struggle. It can be so tough.

But if you are overweight and your feelings are easily hurt by the truth when spoken by people who love you, you might want to fast forward this part. Saying that being unfit is a disease, I'm amazed at our cultures just lackadaisicalness. Sure. With fitness. I mean, if you're 40 years old and way overweight, I mean, I empathize towards that person. Yeah. I truly do because, I mean, there's genetics at play.

There's a lot of things at play there. But you're in trouble, man. Yeah. You should do something. People take this, this idea of like, man, obesity just runs in my family. Like, the problem is, is that no one runs in your family. Like, that should have been something that you realize. Like, I look, you know, our family.

Man, my dad, he struggled with weight. Now he's doing awesome. And I looked at that and I said, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to let that, that generational, it's a curse almost. Yeah. Man, be passed down through my family and my kids. So like, I want to show them what it looks like to take care of myself, to do the right things. Because I'm trying to make those deposits.

Yeah. Them and their kids too. You know, human genetics vary so much. You kind of just have to get to a point where you just can't compare your genetics to someone else. We all know somebody that just was born, super strong, super trim, and they've stayed that way their entire life. Pretty rare. Yeah.

And we also all know people that were chubby when they were little kids. Yeah. And they've kind of been that way most of their life. You kind of just have to figure out your body type, your genetics, and work to get the absolute best version of you that you can have. I mean, that is powerful, and it's the best version of you. You know, I mean, that's kind of the way I think about it. Like, there's some people that are never going to have a six pack of abs,

no matter what they do, because that's not how they're made. In our culture, and, you know, when we're talking about women, you call it, like, beauty culture, but there's the exact same thing inside of men's culture in terms of thinking that to be fit means you look like that guy on the cover of men's fitness. most of the bad to the bone outdoorsmen that I've been around that could just absolutely stomp 90% of the world into the dirt in terms of actual stamina and climbing mountains and functional strength would not look good on the cover. Now, I'm not saying they're really overweight or something, but you wouldn't look at them

and pick them out of a crowd. You'd pick out the guy that was like chiseled. Yeah, you don't. My point is functional strength doesn't always. look like beauty strength. Correct. I've got to stop right here. I'm not dogging on guys that work incredibly hard, look incredible and are jacked.

Man, more power to you. I am so inspired by those people and most of those guys could outperform most people in the mountains. But my point is, is that overall good fitness doesn't always visually translate into a sick pack, popping veins and big biceps. Again, more power to the people that really, really work hard. Carry on, Dr. McCall. That's a great way to put that. Now, you don't have to, you don't have to look like a model to carry it to slack pouch of deer, right? You just got to be able to do it. I mean, look at our own Josh Lambridge spillmaker. I mean, I wasn't going to bring

him up earlier. He like, look, hey, speaking of that, what a, what a, what a, what a transformation, man. Like, Josh, I mean, yeah, for real. One of those guys that said, hey, it's time to start making deposits into my health. So, man, I applaud you, Josh, dude, just for saying, okay, time to do it. Are you recording? Actually, I am now. Yeah. Give us a elevator pitch on what Dr. McCall was talking about. So I was just not taking care of myself most of my life. It was not something that was tremendously valued in my home exercise fitness and just hadn't put any, emphasis or priority on that like I should have and I want to I want to be clear like that was a fault like I should have been more aware of that but came into Adam said hey I want to get a baseline and he called me and said he literally his words were there's half a dozen people I've called in this clinic and said I'm really worried about you and you're one of those guys and it was kind of a rude awakening and so he kind of we kind of put together a plan of of what would help and it includes You know, losing weight. It included, you know, working out and a strong emphasis on getting my heart in shape. And, man, the recipe that that we work together on has worked. I've dropped 50 pounds. I can run seven, eight miles. I can, you know, I feel better than I've felt in 20 plus years. And I think that, you know, what I hear people say is I didn't know how bad I felt until I felt good again. Yeah. Like that is something that if someone's listening to this and they're like, you know, man, I'm doing okay. If your baseline is what your, what your dad looked like or how your grandpa did, you're like, I mean, they quit.

I mean, I remember my grandpa, he quit going to deer camp, but probably 70. He just didn't want to get out of, he just didn't want to get up and go do it. It's too much work. And so I think one of the biggest things is go, man, that's not, that doesn't have to be your history. Yeah. Right? like you're the one who is in control of where you're going and there's going to be days that you start out and you go man this is awesome I feel good and you get up in the morning and it's going to hurt

keep going like if you have a bad day on your diet that doesn't mean you ruined everything I see that somebody like we have this this failure mentality if we fail once we must have failed the entire thing like no just do better tomorrow every day try to do better and you and you're you're you will see after it doesn't take a lot of time to see the true benefit of the deposit you make it. You can't look to your culture either. You kind of move to the norm of your culture and you may have a friend group that, I mean, I can be frank here on the Bear Grays podcast, right, Josh? If your friend group, if everyone in your group is 50 pounds overweight and you're 40 pounds overweight, you might feel like the king of the mountain. Yeah. But you are still 40.

pounds overweight. No. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. And so, you know, it's not just family history, but people kind of adapt to what's normal. If you go to most other countries other than this country, you will see much thinner people. You walk into Walmart, you walk into Target here in this country, anywhere. You're going to see heavy people.

And it's wild to me. I mean, I'm a part of it. I mean, at one time, I weighed 30 more pounds than I do now. And it was kind of like a wake-up call, you know, just like, wow, I can't, this is not normal. Nope. You know, I think, and you bring up a good point. I mean, I mentioned it earlier. You talk about what do you, if you're going to be 70 and in the woods, what do you need?

You need a buddy, right? And if all of your buddies are 40, 50 pounds overweight, man, talk to them, get one of them and say, hey, let's do it different. Man, it don't just change your life, change somebody else's. Yeah. Because you said, hey, it's time to take control of our health because I don't want to just do this for 10 more years or 20 more years. Like, I want to do this until I absolutely can't. So get a buddy and do it. Yeah.

That's some incredible advice. Grab a buddy or your spouse and let them know that you're taking your health to a new level and that they need to join you. I'm really proud of what Josh has done. Losing 50 pounds and getting in shape should be encouraging to us all. But what was most interesting was the paradigm shift regarding health and fitness that he had. That's probably the hardest part. But what he didn't have time to tell you is that he and Dr. McCall worked together to formulate a plan using GOP-1s, which is wildly interesting right now as well as controversial.

Josh is open to talking about all this because he credits it for helping him. And on the next render, he's going to talk about his experience. with GOP-1s and how a significant lifestyle change along with the drugs changed his life. Emphasis on significant lifestyle change. More to come. Here is Josh with a question for Dr. Lofton. What are some good goals or markers of fitness? Is the target always moving? So there's multiple different markers we can look at. But again, The VO2 max is kind of the ultimate target. Grip strengths one.

Looking at your just ability to carry a load, you know, whether it be a farmer's carry or putting on that, how far can you carry something? When I started doing, you know, my farmer's carries, I do, right now I'm doing 44-pound kettlebells. I can walk down and back, you know, one time. I'll rest it at the goal line and come back. I do it at a football field.

You know, I'm starting to look at how many times can I do that without having to set it down. You know, the simpler ones are just, you know, BMI. You can plug it into a calculator online, and it tells you're BMI. And, you know, if you're over 25, then you're overweight. If it's over 30, it's obese. If it's over 40, it's what they call morbid obesity. And so we can drop those numbers by losing weight and, you know, diet and exercise.

But those are some of the main markers. You know, you can look at what's a mile run, what's your speed in that. And you can improve those things. If you start off walking the mile and then get to where you're running the mile, You know, those are some markers of fitness that we can look at. Yeah, so the markers depending on your age, if you're fit. You know, you can, and we think some research suggests that our fitness capabilities can possibly extend up into even close to the 70s and what we can do.

And so I think that, again, that's arguable, but we're probably capable of doing a whole lot more. I've had, I'll use an example when I was running a training for a half marathon. I was doing decent for my age. And one day I had a high school kid that ran with me and was kind of pacing me. And he started off. We had to run, I think, nine miles that day. And he started off at a seven-minute mile pace. And I'm like, I can't do this.

He said, well, just keep doing what you can do. Mile one went by, mile two went by and so on. And we actually did it. And I would not have done that on my own. And so when we have people working with this, we're actually capable of doing more. But your fitness level, you know, let's say if you ran a seven-minute mile, when you're in high school, when you're not running anything now, you're not going to be able to do that right now. But, you know, you're possibly capable to get back to that with proper training.

But, you know, being able to, how quick can you do a mile? That's a good standard test. You can get online and look at the suggested capabilities for somebody your age. I think that's an easy one that we can start with. You know, looking at your, what can we do from a, whether it be a bench press or squat, you can look at some of your, you know, the numbers online and kind of suggest. for your age, what can you do? But overall fitness is looking at aerobic capacity. I like to look at starting off of something like a mile test and seeing what can you do that in and then start seeing

can you improve that? But the ultimate test is that V-O-2 max. You know, that's just your overall fitness level, but that's not as easy to obtain for most of us. It's relatively new information, but grip strength is also a unique fitness marker and indicative of overall health and mortality. Dr. Laughton says in some ways it's like blood pressure. You can tell a lot about someone's health by their grip strength. But it's probably not actually grip strength that makes you healthy, but a strong grip indicates a person that has lived a healthy, active life and is strong. I also like what Dr. Lofton said about how carrying heavy weights over distance is just really good for us. I like the simplicity of that. I can do that. I

I've started doing farmer's carries multiple times per week when you just pick up big weights and carry them. It's good. I asked Dr. McCall the same question about health markers, and here's what he said. I wrote these downsides, I wouldn't forget them. Rise from the floor without using your hands. I go from... Tough. Yeah, it's tough.

I'm not sure I can do that. Well, maybe you're not fit, Clay. I mean, it's true. Be able to stand on one leg for 10 seconds. with your eyes open. There was a Brazilian study that a failure to do that for at least 10 seconds result that like 84% of people had a higher mortality rate when they couldn't stand on one leg for 10 seconds.

Like that's a pretty simple thing that you think you would be able to do, but you'd be surprised if I have adults do that in the clinic, they're surprised when they can't do it. And so test it. Push-ups. If you can't do more than 10 push-ups, if you can do 40, your chances of having a cardiac event go down significantly. And we talked about being able to carry your body weight for at least 60 seconds. Being able to do that is a marker of fit.

Carry, okay, with like dumbbell, or, yeah. Yeah, it just makes a big difference. Deadlift, being able to deadlift your body weight. Like, that's a big thing. And do you have to do a ton of reps? No, but being able to do it more than once is a marker of fitness. So the deadlift would be to the chest? Delfts. Whenever you're bringing it up to your hips.

Just pick it up, like picking up a barbell off the ground. Yep. Okay. I do think that that's a big deal. And then waist, less than half your height. Okay, waist size. Yep. Less than half of your height.

Okay. So if you're six foot, you know, man, keeping a waist of 36 inches or less is your goal. 34 would be great too. But, you know, one time I tried on 36 or 34 is, and I thought, my gosh, These feel so good. I wonder what 36 would feel like. And then realize at that point, like, you know what? Maybe it's time for me to look at my own self and begin to address the health issues that were going to come if I didn't take care of that.

Those are really practical. Those are great. If you can do all these things, that's great. But don't be discouraged if you can't do them. Just let it push you to get started. And even just working on one of those is going to be really influential. And here's some more general fitness markers that are more guidelines than rules, but they might help. If you're 50 years old, you ought to be able to run a mile in 9 to 12 minutes.

If you're 40, you should be able to do it in 8 to 10 minutes. If you're 30, you ought to be able to run it in under 8 minutes. However, there are lots of 50-year-olds who can run under an 8-minute mile, but they'd be considered in really good shape for their 8. It's encouraging to hear that even later in life you can train and get back those speeds you had when you were much younger. It's more about finding the motivation to do it. And for me, that motivation is a holistic approach to life. I want to be the best father, husband, and friend that I can be to those around me.

And I'll do that best when I'm healthy and have energy. Secondly, I want to be able to climb a big mountain when I'm 75 years old and hunt. hopefully even when I'm 80. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Before we get back into it, I want to tell you about the new First Light, Bear Grease, Bibs.

I have collaborated with First Light to build the perfect backcountry utility bibs. overall. And these might be new to the world, but they're not new to me. In 2019, almost seven years ago, I sketched out the first drawing, and I wanted these bibs to have a chapped front, to make them briar-proof. I wanted them to be breathable. I wanted them to have kind of an athletic fit. I wanted them to have a weatherproof pocket on the front for your cell phone if you fell in the river. They've got lots of big pockets, lots of ventilation. They're tough, they're durable. They're made for small game hunting. They're made for working on the farm. And they're the bear grease bibs, man. They're now for sale at the meat eater.com slash bibbs. Now, let's talk about the third

component of your health savings account, your diet. This is a big one. What should men be paying attention to with their diet as they get older? Is there a simple way to think about protein, carbohydrates, fat, alcohol, and processed food without turning life into a diet program. Yeah, so I like to keep it simple as much as possible from a diet standpoint. But number one is protein. I don't think we get enough protein. And just a gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, it's just real easy. So it's probably 50 to 100 grams of protein a day.

So just depending on your weight. That protein is going to help us. They're the building blocks for our muscle. And so that's why we need protein. We want to minimize the processed food, you know, eat as much, eat as much natural food as possible. So a simple way is, you know, I just tell people, a meat and two greens. If you can do that for every meal, you're going to be doing pretty good. Try to limit your sugars, your sweet drinks, your cart, your, you know, your bread, your pasta, try to limit those things.

I don't, you know, like to count carbohydrates or count carbs or count calories. If you need to for, you know, there's benefit in it, but it gets complex unless you're committed to it. It's hard. So trying to keep it simple, your deer meat, your whole meat, your fruits and vegetables, trying to stick to those, it keeps it simple. But the one thing I think most of us miss is the protein. And I do a protein powder. I don't have a particular brand that I recommend, but I definitely think most of us need to be having some probably protein powder,

probably not get enough in our diet to help us build those muscles and keep that strength up. An emphasis on protein is huge in today's fitness and health studies. It's really pretty simple. Our muscles are made of protein. Muscles are the pathway to longevity. And so we need protein to build muscle to have longevity. And we know this is very important. Here's Dr. McCall on diet.

Diet is huge. And we live in a country that just the norm is processed foods and really unhealthy, indulgent diets. So what does it mean to have a good diet? I think that if you're eating more than 500 calories, a day of an ultra kind of processed food. So thinking about your fast food, food that is in a wrapper, man, try to avoid that as much as possible. But if you have to because of your job or time wise, man, 500 or less calories a day is

probably your biggest goal. If you can do that, you will make a meaningful change in your health. Protein first, then add on everything else after that. carbs and sugar need to be lower on that list for sure. But protein is one of the things that people, if you count your protein, a lot of people are not getting enough protein in their diet. What about sugar? Everybody loves sugar.

Yeah. But it's kind of poison to us, really, if you're eating too much of it. Yeah, no, there were some studies done, you know, back in whenever they're looking at cholesterol and realize that cholesterol was a big deal for heart disease. Call it a conspiracy, who knows? But they go back and the guy who produced the data on it, whenever he died, they opened his safe and found that the sugar companies had actually paid him off not to produce the data on sugar. And simple sugars are what you need. Fruit sugars, like, man, if you need something sweet, go for fruit.

Absolutely. Is it something, man, if I had to go with Thanksgiving without eating my mother-in-laws or my wife's chocolate pie, that would be a travesty. but does that mean I need it every week? Not at all. It's okay to have that on an occasion, man, but to make that a part of your daily routine, that's not healthy. People just need to cut way back on a sugar, period.

And when they do, they feel better. I mean, you ask people, you go through that kind of sugar withdrawal and then you get through it, you feel so much better. There's not as much swings in the day of your energy level. You're not searching. A lot of times people go to sugar for dopamine

because it releases so much dopamine. And so it's addictive. Your taste buds change as you as you change your diet too. If you've lived your life eating ultra-process foods that are full of salt, full of chemicals that are designed to make things taste good. And you say, oh, man, I could never like eat a whole food diet, you know. If you start to do it, if you actually enact the discipline to start to do that, your taste buds start to change.

Yeah. You know, and so like you're talking about fruit sugars, for instance. Yeah. If you start to really eat a lot of fruit and not eating these highly processed sugars, when you go back to sugar, it's like, wow, this is wild. And it's almost like you know you shouldn't have a ton of it. That's been my experience. Absolutely.

And my wife is inspirational to me with the way that she eats. And when she eats, like, rich, something really rich, she's very sensitive to it because of how good she eats in other places. You might say, well, I don't like that stuff. Well, your taste buds have been trained or your brain's been trained. Yeah. You can change that. Absolutely. You can change the way that you eat.

That may be the hardest thing that we talk about today. It's hard. It's been hard for me. And something we haven't talked about yet is simply the volume of food that we eat. As hard as it is to say, and at the risk of coming across as harsh, many of us just eat too much. It's just that simple. I've been there. And many of our health problems would simply be resolved with some discipline and some changes. Today, many people believe that obesity is as much about genetics as it is epigenetics, which means your environment and your

behavior actually affect how your genetics work. That is a big old, dirty horse pill to swallow right there, but reducing your portion sizes and the amount of rich caloric foods can quickly solve a lot of health problems, and it's hard. I heard somebody say something the other day that I'd like to repeat, and again, it's one of these statements that's kind of hard, but he said, if you say that you eat healthy, but you're 20 pounds overweight, you aren't eating healthy. But let's talk numbers. This is a little bit of a review, but it's succinct. are the health numbers a man should actually know blood pressure cholesterol blood sugar waist circumference of o2 max etc which ones matter the most maybe give us a a hierarchy of what

what's important and what we should should keep an eye on and maybe what good numbers look like yeah so the easiest number to think of first i think matters the most it would be our blood pressure okay because number one heart heart disease is number one killer in the united states and blood pressure is basically the root of heart disease. If we can, again, if we can lower our blood pressure, we can lower our mortality risk. For every, again, 10 points that we lower the top number, we're going to lower that mortality risk by 13%. Our goal would be to have the top number, your systalt number, under 120, and the bottom number

that's called diastolic under 80. So 120 over 80 would be the number you want to look at. If you're above that, then you're at increased risk for heart attack and stroke. Regardless of age. Regardless of age. Yeah, and we have a lot of people walking around that are clueless that they have high blood pressure because I call it the silent killer. A lot of us, we call it the silent killer in medicine because it doesn't make you sick necessarily. That's the number one marker. Our diabetes marker, that's something that you don't have to know, but a 6.5, if you're A1C, there's a, there's a test called a hemoglobin A1C that we measure when people's blood sugars are high. If that number gets to be 6.5 or more, you're considered diabetic. And it's arguable whether or not you can reverse that. People can drop it, but it's the question of whether it's that reversed or is just controlled.

Chlottoral levels, the new number are, there's different types of cholesterol, but LDL is the cholesterol that most of us focus on that can clog arteries and cause heart attacks. We want that number to be less than 100. And that's a recent, they've lowered that recently. It used to be around 120, but now we're saying 100. And, you know, again, the VO2 max is, that's not a number that most of us, even most physicians couldn't tell you what your VO2 max, but that is something you can get that measured and it helps you determine, again, where are you at? But that's not something that commonly we would know.

Even myself, I have to look those up and say, okay, for your age, where would that be? And then BMI, again, you can, BMI is a, it's a body mass index and it takes your height and your weight and gives you a number. ideally less than 25. Once you get above 25, there's different levels, 25, 30, and 40. Just keep those numbers in mind. You can look those up and that kind of helps you determine where you're at in a,

in some instances in a health standpoint. But, you know, you could have a guy that's a bodybuilder and his BMI would look high and it's not because he's just, he's just got a lot of muscle. But those are the main numbers we should look at. Now, we want to make sure we're getting labs checked and getting, you know, getting our prostate levels check, the PSA, that's not a number that we just have. You know, it depends on the lab, but we want to get those things checked regularly as well. So check your blood pressure, cholesterol, your PSA, which is your prostate test, BMI, which is your body mass index,

and have your blood work done to see if anything hidden is out of whack. And we've discussed it before, but you've got to get your colon checked starting at 45, even earlier. And for every couple of years after that, you need to keep doing it. And if you're a woman, there's a bunch of other stuff, but that's for a different podcast. Dr. Lofton has something else to mention that's become increasingly clear that it's very important for our health. It's kind of a sleeper. So sleep is probably one of those underrated things that people don't think about their health. And if you come to me and let's say you're feeling fatigued, my first question is going to be, how are you sleeping?

because if you're not sleeping good, I'm going to have a really hard time making you feel better. There are studies that show when you lose sleep, it can reduce your testosterone about up to 15% possibly. You know, a lot of us are hardworking men. We might have a couple jobs or maybe we, you know, or, you know, have one job, our kids are playing sports and we're going to all these events. And so you're going to get, you're going to lose some sleep at times. But we want to make sure when we get the opportunity to get sleep, we get good sleep. So seven to eight hours, you know, in general for, you know, 40, 50, 60-year-old man is, is good sleep. You can get too much. You know, if you get over nine hours, it's considered,

it can't actually start going downhill on the effects. You know, getting anything less than six, also, in fact, your blood pressure, you know, potentially depression, some of your, you know, some of your risk for diabetes, all these things, heart disease go up with less sleep. But yeah, that the sleep, sleep is definitely something that I think that most of us don't think of in our health. And the studies are out there more and more, our brain function, you know, how our cognitive function and all of that, a lot of that's tied to sleep and it's additive. You know, it's over time. The more sleep we don't get, it starts having the longer and longer impacts on us.

The experts are starting to view good sleep as important as workout and diet. That's pretty wild. I used to think that sleep was the enemy of productivity, but that has radically changed, and I now prioritize sleep so that I can be productive. I want to talk about one last thing. Kind of a pet peeve of mine. Nicotine. And if you feel the wheels of the bus thump over you,

I want you to know I don't think you're a bad person if you're zenning or using mouth tobacco or smoking. Surely nobody's smoking. But this is just what I think is true. And maybe it could help you. Because I love you. As we close here, Dr. McCall and we're going to talk about nicotine but even stuff probably more important than not

getting on nicotine. You talked about smoking today I know a ton of guys that use the nicotine patches. What do you think about those? I mean it's it's not doing the damage that the smoke is doing to your lungs but it is definitely playing havoc on your cardiovascular system. It's constricting those blood vessels. I have people come in and their blood pressure is crazy crazy hot, you know, 180, over 90 to 100. And the first question I ask is, did you have a Zen in right before you came in? Or did you smoke? And the answer is almost always yes.

Mm. You know what they say? Zen and sinning. Right, Josh? And one thing about, you know, we don't really talk about it enough. But nicotine in itself, if you look at anxiety levels, there are people like, oh, you know, I mean, it just helps me like calm down, helps me feel better.

But as soon as that nicotine's gone, you know what happens? Your anxiety typically will worsen. Yeah. Worse than it was before you started nicotine. It's a coping mechanism. You're talking to a guy who when I used to dip skull, you know, when I was young,

before I was 20 years old from like 16 to, you know, maybe 20. And so I, I, I, speak about nicotine and tobacco and it's uh it's it's no good man yeah i mean you're you're using a a crutch to get through something that you ought to be able to get through on your own that's my opinion and i yeah i realize that there's a lot of people that do it but i'm just it's it's not great no it's not and i think that if more people realize you know what what are we coping for like what are we trying to diminish what are we trying to to get away from from. And I think that, man, at some point,

I mean, talking about mental health, especially in men, people don't want to talk about that. They're not saying everybody needs a counselor, but man, if something that you're dealing with and you just kind of bury it, man, it's a dumb analogy, but I use it, that it's a weed growing in your garden. And if it's still in life from your garden and you just keep shoveling more dirt on top, man, it is going to show up in places that you don't even, aren't even prepared for it to show up. And if the wind blows it in,

if someone throws it in your garden or you put it in your garden, it doesn't matter, it's still your garden. So you got to deal with it. And the more that you use any substance to cope or to diminish or numb, man, it is going to play havoc in your life. And when you say a weed, I mean,

what's an example? I mean, I think that you look at, Just, you know, I own a business, you know, in the clinic. And, man, there are so many, there's so many hard things that come with that. And if I don't deal with those, if I just kind of let those or even like past things that have happened, if people, you know, didn't pay what they said they would, you know, would pay or they didn't show up when they said they would show up, not talking about missed appointments, but just in general,

man, if I don't deal with that, that, whether anger develops or bitterness or whatever, that's a weed. If you had something traumatic happened to you as a kid, that's a weed. If you had a friend who talked behind your back and you don't deal with it,

that becomes a weed. You know, if you miss, I mean, how many times you missed a deer with your bow and how does that affect you? So what do you do? You go and you practice more so you don't,

you do that less and less each, you know, with more practice, that it's dealing with it. In the same way, if you don't deal with those other things, it will come back to get it. And there's a consequence to that in terms of our physical health too. Absolutely.

Which I don't think we equate. Like if you're bitter about something, that is what over time is going to somehow. And you're not going to be able to draw a line from this physical element to, you know, you being bitter about the way your dad treated you. But it's there. Absolutely. So you're saying we just got to figure out a way to deal with it. You've got to deal with it.

And I think everybody deals with things. And, I mean, we all have to have resolution to some of this stuff. I would deal with that. I think you would deal with that through your faith, through the church. I mean, but also professional counseling. My brother is a professional, both of my brothers are professional counselors. They talk to people all day. That's their job.

And it's a really powerful thing that they do. Yeah. I mean, look, you see people who, if they are holding on to something and they will not let it go. I talk about forgiveness in the clinic a lot and whether you have faith or not, like, forgive. Because the bitterness that builds up with resentment, it will make you not want to go be in the woods anymore. Because you're so angry and you're so bitter, like you just lose the joy. And so I know we're getting a little bit off track, but man, just forgive them.

don't let them have control in your life anymore. Yeah. Well, I think that's functional to longevity and health because our mind, our spirit, our humanness is connected to this physical frame that, you know, we're talking about these real practical things. You bring that up and I was talking to someone the other day about the study they did back in the 50s or 60s that they told, they did all these colonoscopies and they told these patients that they all. colon cancer when they didn't and they went back and repeated the colonoscopy several months later the amount of inflammation that was in the gut from the ones who they told had a clean

colonoscopy compared to the ones that they told had colon cancer was incredible indicating that stress there is a brain bowel connection that stress plays havoc i mean it just it plays havoc in your body and if you're not dealing with that well Like, that is going to, that is affecting your longevity. That's affecting your life. You can do it. You can make meaningful changes in your life. Wherever you're at, whatever job you have, whatever age you are, however much money you've got, you can do it whether you're 60 or 20.

But today is the time to start, eating healthy, being more active, and building muscle. I really believe that you can do that. And something else important is finding a good doctor, which unfortunately can sometimes take a lot of work. Our health care system can be hard to navigate. But finding the right doctor is a huge win. I wish we could all find doctors like Dr. Lofton and Dr. McCall. These guys are incredible. And again, Dr. Lofton is in Queen, Arkansas, in southwest Arkansas.

And Dr. Adam McCall is in Springdale, Arkansas, in northwest Arkansas. So you might look into these guys. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece, to rinse this country life, and to Lakes, Backwoods, University. Really appreciate it. Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.