Episode 2 - The SECRET WEAPON (The power of the step count)

business athletes, what is going on, Fraser Bailey here, and bringing you another episode on the Business Athlete Podcast. This is a good one. This is one of my favorites, actually. It's one of those topics that is often overlooked and very frequently underestimated. And I've seen the positive effect that this have in my life, the ROI is tremendous. And it is walking, aka your step count, aka neat or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. It's a mouthful, isn't it? But today, I'm going to talk to you about how walking is so potent for that, not only fat loss, but for digestion, insulin sensitivity, bone health. It's literally an anti-aging lever to pull. And I found that it helps me with clarity of thought, it helps me with sustained energy levels. Like I would tell you that the biggest lever I pull on a daily basis to make sure that I produce at a high level and go all day without crashing, all day without needing to take naps or needing to have some afternoon caffeine, I do none of that. And that was not always the case. There was a time back in my old life where I did all of those things. And I found that slow intensity movement walking is a massive lever to pull. Now the first thing that I'll tell you is that you might be listening and go, yeah, well, that's great phrase. I'm on the road all day or you know, you might be in an environment where you can't just get out and walk out a natural day, right? It's lucky for you to live in the smokey mountains. You just get to go out and walk a natural day. And the first thing that I'll tell you is that that's also why I have a standing desk and a walking pad. So all my high level operators, all my guys and gals that come to me that get those tactics and really want to maximize what they're doing, they will get a standing desk and a walking pad. Yeah, it's great to have a nice fancy desk to sit at in your office. But would you rather have abs and be sustained 8% body fat all year? Would you rather be fat and sit at a nice fancy desk? You get to decide. You call the shots. I know what I'm choosing. And so the first thing that I'll tell you is that low intensity walking on your walking pad while you are working while you're producing, while you're at your computer, while you're at any conference calls, while you're having sales conversations on the phone, is such a potent tactic for pushing up your total step count and helping you enhance your energy as you go. So the way that I do this, so I'm going to break down the way that I do this first. So you feel like it's possible for you. And then I'm going to talk about the different pillars of why this is so potent and what it actually does. Because if you have insulin resistance, like if you're pre-diabetic or you have digestive issues or your sleep's not very good, or you have aching joints, or you just can't get rid of that belly fat, this is absolutely the episode that you must listen to. So the first thing that I'll say is that every day my goal personally is to hit between 15 and 20,000 steps a day. Now at this point, I don't have to struggle and strive to hit that. It's just a natural byproduct of the way that I structure my day. So I don't intentionally have to go outside and walk for an hour or jump on a piece of cardio equipment and do an hour of cardio because literally just that slow intensity walking that I'm literally doing right now in the background while I'm doing this episode for you. That's what racks up the step count. So the first thing that I'll say is that if you engineer your life where this is your default mode, it's really hard to not hit 15,000 steps a day. What I would say for most people, the common thing is 10,000 steps a day. I don't even really think that came from any particular data or science. What I find tends to be a good target to strive towards is 12 to 15,000, but it's split up intermittently through the day. And I'll explain why that's important in the second. So the first thing I do is I have a standing desk and a walking pad. I have my computer set up. I have all my like producing office video camera set up on here ready to go. So I'm just operating like normal. And I will walk on here while I'm doing social media content. I'll walk on here while I'm doing mastermind calls or while I'm attending a mastermind call while I walk on here while I'm doing some consulting or if I'm doing a blood work review for a client, I'll be walking on here. If I'm doing any programming or anything that pertains to nutritional consulting, any of that stuff, I'm slow walking on this. That clocks up like I said a lot of steps. Now I do think there's value to getting outside as well. Think of a human a bit like a cross between a solar panel and a windmill in terms of energy production. So you have a windmill on the hill and if that windmill is not, if those turbines are not spinning, the windmill doesn't produce any energy. Humans are very much the same. You move your body with a low intensity effort and it generates energy. It essentially pumps your lymphatic system and pumps your mitochondrial load. And I find for so many people, when you're just slow walking, it actually stabilizes your energy. You don't have that lunch meal and then that mid afternoon crash like so many people experience. And that obviously has an effect on how you perform, how you produce the way you interact with your family, your team, your clients, everything. So this is a big ROI. Now outside of the walking pad and standing list, like I mentioned, I will get outside multiple times per day. I call it priming the pump. So we have a nice sort of cold sack here in the smoking mountains in this rural rental property that we are in while we are building our house in the valley. And this loop is about a quarter of a mile. I will walk this loop almost every hour at least once. So every hour, as I'm getting towards the end of that hour, I will get out and I will quote unquote prime the pump. Part of this is act like a patent interrupt to allow myself to get outside, get sun on the skin, sun in the eyes, reset my system and get ready for the next block of work that I'm about to do to freshen up your brain essentially. The other part is that not only are you like a windmill, but you're like a solar panel and you will respond better in terms of neural chemistry and energy levels when you get light exposure. Did you know that natural light exposure actually helps with your circadian timing? So circadian timing is your sleep cycles. When you get out in the morning at some point for five to 20 minutes and then at some point late in the afternoon for five to 20 minutes at the very least, that helps time your melatonin release. I notice that students who follow this closely with me, their sleep scores improve, their deep sleep improves, their REM sleep improves because they're getting that natural light exposure. And no sitting next to our window in a house doesn't do the same thing because those windows have UV filters and different types of filters that filter out a lot of the red light and the near infrared light that you would want to get when you're outside in the sun. So what I tell people is that if you want to walk to your mailbox and back, if you're in a private place and you have a longer driveway walk to the top and back, you know, if you're in an environment where you feel comfortable and it's private enough, take your shirt off if you're a guy for the gals, just wear a tank top, get some sun on the skin, take your sunglasses off and prime the pump. So I will prime the pump, like I said, almost every hour just for a few minutes. And I find that between that and the slow intensity walking on my walking pad while I'm producing, energy is literally high all day long. I wake up at two to three a.m. I usually wake up at two a.m. And I go all, it's 336 p.m. right now. And I haven't stopped and I feel great. And I haven't even eaten. And I tell you guys there is so much that you can learn from the things I'm going to share with you in these episodes. See, people think the low energy is a stimulant problem or a caffeine problem or a calorie problem. Very often it's not a calorie problem. If you've got extra body fat, it's not a calorie problem typically. It's a mitochondrial function problem. It's a cellular function problem. It's a lymphatic system problem. And when you can leverage these tactics, your ability to produce goes up exponentially. Think about how much more effective you could be if you were had high energy all day long without stopping. If you get to the end of the day and rather than giving your family the burned out leftovers because you're so wrecked and exhausted, you're still high energy, patient, present, happy. I mean, you cannot put a price on that man. I mean, that to me is like very, very valuable. And I don't care how much people think their energy is good. If you're carrying 20 plus pounds of body fat over your weight, your energy is impaired. I don't care if you say, I know my energy is good, it's not. You just don't know. You can't read the label when you're inside the jar. You don't have a yardstick of comparison. You don't realize how how much you're underperforming until you actually optimize yourself. And then you look back and you'll be like, he was right. And I'll say, yeah, I know I am because I've done this for a long time. And I can read someone's physiology. So when it comes to actually implementing, getting yourself that setup is really important, especially in winter. In winter in the US, if you're in a place where it starts to snow and get cold, you must get a walking pad. Because when you get up in the morning, one of the first things that I want you to do is walk for about 20 to 30 minutes. It will change your psychology for the whole day. But if you're snowed in and you can't move and go walk outside, that's a big issue. So you must be proactive. One of the other things that I have in my office is I have an air bike. I also prime the pump using an air bike for a couple of minutes. That's another discussion. We'll say that for another show, but there are other tools that I use to really enhance energy. And while I'm walking, you might think, well, I don't have time to do all that stuff. First of all, you've got to recognize that you are the one who structures your day. If you want to get to the next levels, if you want a different life, then you have to be okay with restructuring things. And you've got to stop acting like a victim and saying that you can't change stuff. So what I do is I leverage and habit stack on that time I'm outside walking. So while I'm out walking, I'll listen to podcasts, I'll listen to YouTube content to educate myself. I'll send students little voice messages with my one-on-one students that I collaborate with in voice notes. I'll send them quick voice messages. I'll do voice to text for certain people. I even have a chat GPT channel on my phone that cleans up my voice to text, puts it together, structures it nice and grammatically, makes sure it removes all the filler words. And I can send out emails. I can even do posts for social media. I can have sales conversations. And I do all of the above while I'm walking. I'm literally making sales and creating deals. While I'm out walking, while I'm on my airbike, while I'm out of nature, by using AI and voice to text, stuff like that. It's absolutely effective. And if you leverage this, it will absolutely change the game for you. So I do this all day and it doesn't feel like I'm having to stop my work because the work is part of it. See, that's a thing. When you feel like you have to stop what you're doing and go do the cardio, it's because you're trying to force that into your existing routine. Now, I will say, if you're someone that is working through the day, you know, you have a blue collar job and you actually have to be in a static position, like, you know, you might be painting. You can't be walking around the room while you're painting. Or you're someone that's traveling a lot. You're commuting to different areas. You just got to be a little bit more creative. You just have to make sure that you get up early enough and you get your walking pad time in early. You make sure that when you get home, you get some time at the end of the day and you just make sure that when you are getting to a location, you walk for a couple of minutes before you even start what you're doing. Now, I can help people one on one with that. Like this, that type of problem would be is absolutely solvable to me, but it would require a higher level of contact and a higher level of support. So I can help you with all of these challenges. But obviously, if you want to do it yourself, go for it. Knock yourself out. But if you want help on a higher level, let me know. Now, why is walking so effective and how, what is it, specifically, that is so useful with this? So most people are overstimulated, they're undermoved, they're over trained relative to the recovery capacity. And so their resting heart rate is elevated, their heart rate variability sucks, it impairs their sleep scores, everything deoptimizes. And what they don't realize is that walking is really one of the calorie burning mechanisms that's actually therapeutic and aids recovery. Lifting weights, you need to recover from lifting weights, doing high intensity interval training, you have to recover from that. That's one of the reasons why people that do a lot of crossfit don't get very lean because they're doing so much high intensity stressful stuff that it drives up their hunger response. It stresses out their nervous system. The nervous system is so strained, they're under, they're under recovering, their sleep's not as good and because their sleep's not as good and they're overstrained, their cravings increase and their appetite increases and they struggle to stick to their diet because they're so hungry all the time. By walking, it's very calming and therapeutic on the nervous system. And what I find is that it actually helps control your hunger. It helps you recover from your training. It helps bring down your blood pressure. That's another thing for a lot of people in their 40s and 50s and beyond. Blood pressure, massively, it's silent killer. You don't lock that in and it's bad news. Walking helps with all of these things. One of the things that I love to talk about is this idea of neat, so non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Most people don't realize that neat is contributes to the most of your calorie burn for the day. When you look at how many calories your body burns each day, did you know that your workout is actually quite a small amount? That's why the whole thing of you can't out train a bad diet applies. I see people who train for two hours a day and they do a bunch of cardio. They try and diet but they struggle to get lean because they're so stressed and then they're super sedentary outside that workout. If you train really hard first thing in the morning and then you sit on your butt all day, that's part of your problem. But equally, that's where the solution is to. So what I find is that walking in terms of neat in terms of a recovery process to help with pumping the lymphatic system, pushing blood and oxygen through your body for recovery, helping with bone and literally like when you walk that impact signals to your body to remineralize and sustain bone health. Walking with a weighted vest is very, very good for elderly people, specifically women, as they start to face osteoporosis after menopause. So by the way, as a bonus, get a weighted vest, very, very good for fat loss. It's like the frosting on the fat loss cake. One of the things that I love about walking is that you don't burn out from it. You know, if you do a lot of high intensity interval training, you will burn out from it. You won't be able to sustain it. Walking especially when you leverage your workload and conjunction with walking is such a sustainable approach. And I actually find it's nice. Like if you're walking and you want to listen to a nice podcast or you want to have a nice conversation with someone, it really does add a nice therapeutic mental component to this equation as well. Because you know, to think about it, high intensity interval training, hard weight training, it elevates cortisol. It triggers and turns on sympathetic nervous system dominance. All of these things guys affect aging. It affects metabolism. Whereas with walking, it's very what's called parasympathetic nervous system dominant, aka the rest and digest aspect of your nervous system. It improves HRV, heart rate variability. It lowers baseline cortisol. It improves recovery from training. And that obviously matters a lot once you get into your 40s and 50s and beyond. One of the things that I really love about walking is that it's very, very good at improving insulin sensitivity and blood glucose management. See, maybe you didn't know this, but if you are diabetic, type 2 diabetic, you statistically lose 10 years of your life on average. 10 years off your life because of the blood glucose mismanagement. I've seen people become very, very insulin sensitive by walking more and getting 12 to 15,000 steps a day. And especially if you walk before and after meals, especially after meals. Here's a tip for you to maximize blood glucose response to food. To do 20 body weight squats before you eat, 20 body weight squats after you eat, and then take a 5 or 10 minute walk. Absolutely profound for blood glucose management. You don't have to do the squats. You can just walk and still get a massive effect. But think of blood glucose management and insulin resistance a bit like when you eat food, that food breaks down in your body into sugars. That sugar enters your bloodstream. Now your body releases insulin from your pancreas. And that insulin's job is to shuttle the sugar out of your bloodstream and allocate it to a certain part of your body. If you weight train and you have enough muscle mass, that insulin will shunt the sugar into muscle cells as stored muscle glycogen, which is what you want. That's why I'm such a big proponent of weight training because you have bigger fuel tanks to hold all their sugar in. Now, if you don't have as much muscle or you're not active, you're sitting on your butt while you're eating, it's going to push that blood sugar into your fat cells. And that's why people get fat. That's all this stored sugar from surplus calories and a lack of movement. Now, over time, if you do that enough, like if you snack over and over and over again, you keep doing this, you develop what's called insulin resistance, where your body just stops responding to the signal completely. You've got so much fat stores and it's so tapped out that the blood just sits, the sugar just sits in your bloodstream. That's dangerous. People that get brain fog, people that get struggle with energy levels and focus insulin resistance. Blood glucose instability. So if you eat and you get tired after meals or if you feel like you're getting a lot of brain fog and you think it's like ADHD, it's more than likely that you're insulin resistant. So I'm going to do a topic on insulin resistance in and of itself because it's such an important concept to understand. But walking is such a good way to maximize all of that. So walk around the times that you eat, especially after your meals. So important to understand that. And then obviously consistent resistance training to build bigger fuel tanks. And then there's lots of different things as it pertains to diet, the types of foods you eat, the types of supplements you can use, the types of peptides you can use to maximize insulin sensitivity and to better channel glycogen to muscle cells. So in summary, the walking is just really, really good for insulin sensitivity. And that obviously helps with extending lifespan. It helps with energy levels, mood, focus, everything. So if you want to improve your productivity each day and your output, you need to become more insulin sensitive. And think of the ROI of that. Think of the ROI of that to your team, your people, your co-workers. When everyone has better energy and they're not crashing and like de-optimizing the way that they think and function. Another thing that I love about walking, this has been a big one for me, was digestive health. So early in my journey, I did struggle with a lot of digestive issues. I would say that my physiology is very sensitive, which is in part why I've become so obsessed with human health. Because early on, I had a lot of issues. My brain was completely wrecked. My digestion wasn't good. My skin was bad. I was fat and then thin. I was all the things, very sensitive. And I had to really, really problem solve this process. And what people don't realize is that your lymphatic system, it's like the sewer of your body. When people have a puffy face and they look like they've got a lot of water attention and their immune system is not great, very often it's a paul lymphatic drainage. Outside of lymphatic system, your digestive system requires movement to pump. That's why very often you might notice this, where people are when they're flying or they're traveling and they're seated for an extended period of time. It can really make you constipated and slow down your digestion because you're not getting any motility, any movement to pump the system. And so sometimes your digestive issues, and again, we're going to be talking about a whole podcast on digestion. Sometimes the digestive issues are not from a food sensitivity or junk food or it might be from those things. It might be from your gut that's wrecked with antibiotics, alcohol and all these different things. But very often it's because it's got poor motility. So rebounding, skipping, we have a rebound in our house. My wife Lauren loves it. Zia, my daughter, she bounces on it every day, a little one. But I love walking for that digestive, I find that in the morning, when I walk, it absolutely helps stimulate a bowel movement for me. And that straightaway tells me it's a good thing for mobilizing digestive system. I would say most people are constipated and they're irregular and it has a real effect on your energy and your mood. Digestion is such an important concept to understand because it's intimately connected to brain chemistry and brain health and psychology. Most people that have mental health issues have digestive issues. You improve the digestive issues more, you improve how your brain operates and that's a massive, massive win. Now, one other component that I love about this idea is that mitochondrial function is elevated and optimized with walking. So think of the mitochondria in your cells a bit like a little power pack in a cell phone. So like your phone has a little battery pack that charges the phone and helps it function. If that battery is not working, the phone doesn't work. As we age and think about how over time, if you have a device for a long time, you might find that the battery stops holding its charge as easily. It drains faster. It doesn't keep that high level of battery time. It decreases, right? Our body is the same. Over time, as you age, your body loses its ability to charge these batteries and maintain charge. And that's also why as you age, you typically get more tired and you burn out easier. Think of a kid and how active and hyperactive kids are versus an adult. There's a reason for that. And think about the ROI of you having and maximizing your energy again from the mitochondrial level, like reclaiming some of that youthful energy. That's actually possible. I know it's true because I literally do it every day. I literally do it at 41 years old. I feel it. I would say that I run rings around people even in their teens and 20s. And that's not to brag. That's to say that this works and I'm not special and anyone can do this. I truly mean that. Now, I think that when the reason why it helps with mitochondrial health is because you're pumping oxygen and blood through your body, you're getting light exposure, all these different systems in the body are working on a therapeutic recovery level. And that really does help mitochondria function, produce ATP, which drives all kinds of basic cellular positive aspects. And like I mentioned, just from a bone health and a longevity perspective, there's been research and data that's come out to show that literally people that walk more. It's quite literally a life extension tool. So if you value health span and lifespan, walking, it's an absolute game changer. And I would say in general, I find that walking really just helps with brain chemistry, ADHD and mood and focus. Like for me, I literally, I will weave this into my process so I can produce at a higher level more accurately. And I think walking with your family, taking a walk with your spouse, often taking a walk with your kids, most days I will take a walk with Zia and Xander to give Lauren a 10 minute break. I'll carry Zander around and I'll walk and I'll get her outside in the sun too. And we'll all walk for just a little bit. Sometimes Lauren will join us. I think doing that and taking a walk with your with a friend, schedule that into your routine. Maybe you take a walk with your team. You know, if you're an operator, if you're a business owner, maybe you take a walk with your manager or your team and you guys talk about the battle plan, you talk about the goals for the day. Rather than just sitting in a meeting room, when you are doing Zoom calls or sales calls, get up and move. You'll have a better energy about yourself. And people sometimes say, "Oh, well, people, they're going to think I'm weird, like where I'm in a Zoom meeting and everyone else is sitting there in the office and I'm walking." Let them think that. I actually say frame it from a positive perspective. Be a weirdo. Embrace being the weirdo and make it fun. Make it funny and make it fun. I've heard people say, "Dude, are you out walking?" And I'm like, "Yeah, man, you should join me. Next time we do a call, get out and walk with me." And I just explain a couple of the points that I've said to you today. And I can see the light bulb turned on in the head. People are so conditioned to behave in a way that they think is acceptable and socially normal. Socially normal people don't get phenomenally abnormal results. Do you want to be a normal human with a normal human results? Or do you want to be abnormal? Do you want to be an outlier? Do you want to be an anomaly? Do you want to be a business athlete? So I would tell you that 12 to 15,000 steps, intermittently spurts throughout the day, one walk outside for five to 20 minutes in the morning, one late afternoon for five to 20 minutes, pep it through the day, walking after meals, getting on a walking pad with a standing disc, leveraging that time to send voice to text and sales calls and chat GPT threads. All of that stuff to make sure you produce at a high level, it will change the game for you. I've had people and throw away to vest on. I've had people and all they did was add in 15 to 20,000 steps a day and they lost 50 pounds. They didn't change anything else. That was at 50 pounds and more. This is how I get to 8% body fat all year round without counting calories. And I keep going every day. I see so many fitness people do these cuts and they push and push and push and push and get to like 8% body fat, 6% body fat and they burn out. They can't sustain it and they crash and they burn and they start sleeping in and they start overeating because their nervous system is so strained. They've redlined so much. That's not a business athlete. That's not how a high performer truly operates. They operate like what I'm saying here. They repat and recondition their entire process, leverage it, get this in a therapeutic recovery and so they can sustain those early mornings every single day without fail. I've woken up between 2 and 3 a.m. every day for years now and all my blood work is perfect. All my metrics are perfect and I don't burn out and I genuinely mean that again like not from a place of bragging. I genuinely believe that if you have the desire to do what I have done and you model what I do you can replicate it to. My physiology is very sensitive. It's actually kind of crappy to be honest. It's actually kind of crappy. So I know that if I can get this type of result with what I'm doing you absolutely can too. So there is your strategy, neat, walking, business athletes are the ones that understand these levers and they add them into the equation. There's no peptide or stem cell or fat burning supplement or diet hack that's going to get you to that lean six to eight to nine percent body fat and sustain it long term when you can do something like this and you just have to embrace being an outlier. Like if someone says you look down I know you're like your big fancy desk. I know you're like your big comfy chair. You've got your big nice office but do you want to get to eight percent body fat long term and sustain it? Because the answers right in front of you you just have to get out of your own way and make the decision. Part of this is just getting out of your own way. You know it's true. You know there's things that you could be doing and you just don't do them and that's part of the problem. It's why you need to kick in the butt sometimes. It's why you need to be accountable to something. If you're not accountable to something or someone when push comes to shove and things get challenging you just flake out. So many people operate that way. I do and I know that's true. It's why I have mentors. So guys get out there with the walking. It can be a bit more challenging and winter obviously but we make it work. That's why we use the walking pads inside. It's why we got the air bike. We have to be adaptive and I promise you just start imperfectly even if you're not like me and hitting 15 to 20,000 get to 10 first. You know if you're at 5,000 steps a day get to 8. If you're at 8, get to 10. Fail forward and just do it imperfectly. Front load your day with steps. Don't let yourself get to the end of the day where you've been sedentary all day and then you have to walk for an hour in the dark just to hit your step count. Don't do that to yourself. Log jamming your day like that just becomes stressful. Prioritize. Front load it. Think like a business athlete. Leverage that time. Do the sales calls. Have the team meetings. It's such a beautiful thing. I'm so glad that I stumbled across all this and I realized the value of it and I just got used to loving it. At this point honestly I just love it now. I really enjoy the walking. It's changed my life and it's absolutely in my opinion. One of the most potent levers for optimal body composition change and optimal health that there is. That's a guy's guy today. Be that lighthouse. Be that example of what's possible.