00:00 You’re listening to the live happier, longer podcast, episode 22.
00:15 Welcome to the live happier, longer podcast. We’re your hosts. Molly Watts and Angela McDade. We are here to help you build the habits of a happier, longer life. Starting now.
00:28 This episode is brought to you by the five for life planner, or if it makes you feel better, the five for life planner slash Journal. Right. So you can go right now to fiveforlifeplanner.com and download a full PDF version of the five for life planner slash journal. Yeah, and the Five for life planner is a great tool to get you going and check off everyday, these daily actions, one, move, two learn, three, share, four give, and five, let go. Five daily actions, all proven to increase longevity and improve overall quality of life and happiness. Yeah. So you can live happier longer. Yeah. Check it out. Fiveforlifeplanner.Com for your free PDF of the five for life planner.
01:18 Hey Angela. Hey Molly. How’s it going? Not too bad. Okay, excellent. Well we are still in January our month of talking about the eating healthy eating. Yeah. So I have a question for you.
01:30 Do you like hot dogs? No. Really? Oh really? Yeah. No, I didn’t grow up with hot dogs. It’s a very American thing. So it wasn’t like a staple. Yeah, definitely nothing like a good like hot dog at a baseball game. Like it’s loaded with ketchup and mustard onions. You’ll, that’s controversial apparently. Oh yeah. I don’t, I’m not a huge ketchup person. But onions, relish the green stuff. And mustard. Oh my gosh. So good. So today on the podcast we’re talking to health and aging trainer, Tina Tuszynski from Chicago and she’s a Chicago girl, so she grew up eating hot dogs and now she is a 90 percent plant based diet. Yep. And so we wanted to have her on to talk about that, kind of that vegetarian plant based approach to healthy eating because we know it’s, it’s, I mean like in blue zones, it’s, it’s something that’s just a lot of uh, in terms of longevity, there’s a lot of science behind it and just how it affects her and changed her really changed her whole life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was very, it’s very interesting. So here’s Tina Tuszynski.
02:42 Hey Tina. Hi Tina. Hi there.
02:45 How are you?
02:46 Oh, we’re awesome. Thank you. We’re so excited to talk with you today.
02:49 I’m so excited to talk with you guys. Thank you so much for having me as a guest.
02:53 Absolutely. We just gave you a little intro in our intro and talked a little bit about your work, helping other people with their fitness and their lifestyle goals and how you help people kind of age well and your website perennial aging and what that’s all about. But one of the reasons that we wanted to talk with you today. As you know, we’ve been focusing this month on healthy eating choices and healthy lifestyle or healthier, healthier eating. We don’t like to say the word Diet, right? I agree. Yeah. Because there’s a lot of different. Our focus is mainly on longevity and living happier longer. There’s a lot of different ways to approach a healthier diet and so we never want to come down, you know, we didn’t want to pick one basically because different things work for different people. So yeah.
03:47 Plus diets are short term.
03:48 Yeah, exactly. And so one of the reasons that I love your, you and I connected via Instagram and I love your Instagram feed because you always have the beautiful pictures of food, which is awesome. But, and one of those, the things that I got from that is that you are, you basically live about a 90 percent plant based diet. That’s really what I wanted to talk about was that decision to kind of lead a more, you know, not I mean more vegetarian or plant based Diet and how you are helping people, you know, how you’re seeing that work for other people as well. Yeah, definitely. So what, because you’re a Chicago girl. I know, I know you used to eat hot dogs. I love a good Chicago hot dogs so I can appreciate that. My, my sister lives in and outside of Chicago, so I totally get that.
04:47 Okay, great. Where does she live?
04:49 Le Grange familiar.
04:51 I’m a western suburban girl myself, so.
04:53 Okay, awesome. I grew up in the city, but yeah.
04:56 Now you’re in the suburbs. Yeah. So when did you decide, or how long ago was this that you decided to kind of, you know, focus more on a healthier plant based diet or, or, or just a healthier lifestyle in general.
05:11 Okay. Well it’s going to be a little bit of a long. Can I tell you like kind of the whole chronological thing?
05:15 Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
05:19 My life has been phases, if that makes sense. So I’ve always been kind of a healthy eater. Um, I was lucky enough to grow up in an Italian and Polish family and both of my grandmothers love to cook from scratch. That was great. That was a really great background for me as my mother and father’s. But actually my dad was real love to cook as well and experiment.
05:40 So that’s probably why you like to cook. Like to cook now. You always have such nice.
05:46 Oh always, always. I grew up watching my grandma cook and we lived about three blocks from my grandmother’s house. And so after school sometimes I would go there straight from school or I’d meet my mom. My mom and I would go there. We had dinner there probably three, four times a week and my grandmother always had something going like Mondays were chicken soup day so you could run and you know, it was a typical Chicago bungalow with like, you know, the top floor and then the basement. My grandpa had fixed up for her to be another kitchen, you know, Italians always entertain quite a bit. So you never really knew how many people were going to be sitting there at the table that evening. She’d always make huge pots of chicken soup on Mondays with fresh veggies. So I look forward to coming in on a cold day and having a big bowl of chicken soup. I’d be like, grandma’s, it’s soup yet. And she’d be like, not just, you know, but all the veggies were in there and she made her own Italian beef and her own pastas and her own salads. And then I had another aunt because, um, I always joke about it. Hopefully no one from my family, you know, the Italian family. And we only had one person out of all, what was it? Five of them got married. My mom, my two aunts, my two uncles always lived at home with my grandma, you know, the typical, so it’s always a party over there. And um, my one aunt, she was kind of into um, health and yoga kind of before it was really popular, so she was really a huge influence because she would always make me Romaine salads when I, as a kid. So I was probably as weird kid in the sixties that was eating, you know, chunks of Romaine with salt and vinegar on it, you know, other kids and uh, yeah. So I mean that kind of was like the basis for my eating.
07:27 So I would say that I probably always had a healthy appreciation for veggies because I think I’ve seen them being cooked in different ways. They weren’t just the typical, you know, corn or green giant, you know, whatever I’ve seen cooked and a lot of different ways. So that gave me a healthy appreciation. So, you know, one thing for me is that I always grew up having vegetables in some way or form and so it wasn’t difficult. I always, you know, always ate them. So I think that as I was in my twenties thing is that I wasn’t blessed with the same that my mom and dad were because when I started to hit puberty I started to gain weight and I was, you know, probably at my heaviest in high school and I wouldn’t say I was anything huge or anything, but I was definitely about five or six sizes heavier than I am now.
08:20 Wow. And so I knew that. I wasn’t happy, you know, and uh, we moved in my freshman year of high school from Chicago out to the suburbs and I think, I know it was probably, I don’t want to say depressed, but I was definitely shy at that point and I didn’t really know anybody. So I think eating also became something of, you know, happiness for me that first year when I struggled a little bit with being out in the burbs. So anyway, to make a long story short, when I got to college I just decided, you know, this is not how I want to live my life. I wasn’t happy. And that kind of started my whole health and fitness journey. I’ve always had a preference for eating fish and healthier meat and things that I’ve always cooked from scratch. So as I started getting older, I think the shift has changed more from just thinking about food is a way to be thin, which of course in my twenties was my huge.
09:16 And if you had asked me what my inspiration was, it was definitely that I want it to be really thin, you know? And I knew that I had to watch what I, what I ate. So it wasn’t even so much about the quality of the food, although I still eating a lot of vegetables. Yeah. But it was more about like, okay, you know, I want to really be thin as they started aging a little bit and as they started having, you know, a child of my own and a family, you know, I started getting more into, okay, what am I serving them? So there’s kind of several pivotal points of my life. I think that, number one, as you get older you have to reassess what you’re doing in your life. Things that may have worked for me, I could have maybe had two hot dogs week when I was in my twenties and now I can’t if I inhale when I feel like I can see it automatically, you know.
10:08 And um, so definitely just maintaining my weight at this age is a lot more difficult even though I’m working out every day. So that’s one thing. But also it’s how I feel too so there’s been different changes in my life that have led me to this path. And I think probably the pivotal thing. So I’ve always kind of believed in the Mediterranean Diet. I think that I’m eating fish and a lot of vegetables and wine and things like that are really good for you. Love the Mediterranean lifestyle. I did cook a lot that we had a lot of salmon and a Veggie Salmon, veggies, you know, fish, chicken, things like that. But then I started noticing there was two things that happened. I started noticing, number one, that I was feeling really bloated and exhausted after I ate. So I’d eat a dinner or that wasn’t anything unhealthy.
10:58 It might’ve just been grilled salmon. And sweet potato and Broccoli, but I still felt like my digestive system just wasn’t working really well with it. So that was happening. And um, then my husband had started having, and he was always, he was never really into the whole like exercise or fitness thing until we met in our early thirties, but you know, I’ve kind of pushed them along and now he works out all the time and he’s really into health and fitness too. But I think that he started having some medical issues with his digestive system as well that were fairly serious and we had gone to doctors and things and had had some tests done and stuff. And they’re like, well you need to eliminate gluten. You need to do this, you need to do that. Right. And then if it doesn’t work, we can try some medication.
11:51 And so I just want to kind of put this out there. I think modern medicine is absolutely wonderful. I mean, we die without it, right? It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened. But I also think that we can’t rely too much on just taking drugs for every single little thing. We also have to advocate for our own health and that is making sure that we’re doing a healthy diet and exercising and things like that because there are side effects, there are costs and risks and benefits to every single thing that we do out there. So we wanted to try everything possible to make sure that he was doing what he needed to do to be healthy. At the same time I felt that I was also feeling Yucky a little bit, like not as good as I used to feel. So, you know, it was like December and I thought to myself, you know, so many people are completely vegan and they love it. You know, you see all these people have gone Vegan and they’ve lost all this weight. They feel fabulous. I’m like, maybe we should try it. So I knew my husband is like a huge carnivore. He loves ribs, he loves brisket. And I’m like, okay, I got co, I have to couch.
13:00 It was exactly what he said. He’s like, what are you talking about? I’m like, let’s just try it in the new year, and so what I did, again, kind of like the whole hot dog things. I thought, you know what? When people go cold Turkey over something, it’s always really difficult to do. Right? You hear people in January, oh, I’m going to do this challenge, I’m going to do this diet and to do all this, and then you see him in March and they’ve gained back maybe the five pounds that they lost and they’re back to try and figure out what to do because it’s really difficult to change your life completely. You have to allow. I think we’ve all talked about moderation, Instagram. You also have to find something that works for you and your day to day life. So what I said to him as I said, you know what? Monday through Thursday, Monday through Friday, let’s do all vegetarian. Mostly Vegan. I mean because we’re not 100 percent Vegan. We do allow eggs, but let’s try and really push for doing mostly vegetarian vegan meals during the week and on Saturday and Sunday you can do whatever you want. If you want to have, you know, full slab of ribs and brisket and whatever, that’s great. But then come Monday we’ll go back to our vegetarian thing and it kind of thought about and he’s like, okay, I can live with that. So initially it was going to be a short term. We were just going to try it for maybe a month or two and see how he felt. Well, you know what, it just. I also knew that in order for this to really work, because I do love to cook and even when I was cooking with fish or chicken, I would try different recipes and things.
14:27 I knew that the only way I was going to work as if I did something else, I couldn’t just from salads, right. It gets really boring and that’s hard to maintain. So I started buying some vegetarian and Vegan cookbooks and I basically started trying to come up with creative ways to take favorite dishes that people eat. What do people eat all the time now, how can I make them mostly plant based or Vegan and that’s what I started doing and you know what it turned out that the food we were eating was really so tasty and we felt so good. And then when Saturday and Sunday came, we could still go out to eat and we could still get fish or chicken or whatever we want it. So it was great. You know, holidays come around and you allow yourself, you allow yourself to treat yourself with something. I mean, I’m not gonna say I’m not going to have Turkey on Thanksgiving, but I would say that even when we do something that might have meat, I would say 90 percent of our plate is still plant based. Does that make sense?
15:32 Yeah. That’s fantastic. We talk about blue zones quite a bit. We’ve talked about it on the podcast. We talked about it, our website and a lot of those areas, they, they are known for their Mediterranean Mediterranean style diet or their plant based. No entirely, kinna what you’re saying is not entirely vegetating, you know, like they eat cheese, cheese and eggs is some deviation from purely plant based.
15:57 Exactly. They do little meat. Mostly fish cheeses. Yeah. And I feel like that’s a really good recipe for life.
16:06 Well, the tried that, the seventh day Adventist who they Loma Linda. Yeah. Who just who just passed away recently passed away at the age of 100. 100. That’s fabulous. And that’s the blue zones. They are known for their high rate of centenarians. People that live to a hundred. Yeah. But he was. He was the, one of the leading, one of the most influential people with the blue zones guy. The reason I’m bringing it up is that he was a surgeon, a vascular surgeon, and he switched to a, being to a plant based to a vegetarian diet. Okay. And cast her. He felt the arteries of vegetarians in surgery much more flexible and pliable than the media like he physically could see peoples insides. So he decided then to, to switch to vegetarian, to a vegetarian based diet.
17:09 That’s great evidence to make you a great reason. Right? To make you consider it.
17:14 Tell us. I know, like I said, you always have great, um, you know, recipes and great stuff on, uh, your social and on your blog. What was one of the things. Tell me about one of your very first attempts in one of your very first dishes, like trying to convert it from, you know, a meat based recipe to a plant based recipe.
17:37 Okay. So one thing I always tell clients when I’m working with them or anybody who asks me about it is that find yourself a good cookbook at first because I, again, growing up in a family that cooked, I don’t use recipes really in real life when I’m working with something. Of course not. Yeah, right. My grandmother never really use recipes, but I knew I was baking. Okay, if I’m going to start baking or if I’m going to. If I want to cook a cuisine that I don’t really know much about. Let’s say I want to start cooking Indian food for example. I can’t just start, I need to have a background of some science behind it and what are the popular spices and what do you do? So that’s, I’m like, okay, I have to go, I have to go to the bookstore and I have to get a couple of cookbooks to kind of give me some hacks, what do people use? Because there’s different things. Like for example, I recently started doing some Vegan baking and one of the things I learned, although we do use eggs in her household, one of the things I learned is that a substitute for eggs is a flax seed eggs, which is just simply taking flax seed and mixing it with water and that’s kind of gelatinous and it helps to bind things. So I knew that I needed to get some hacks because I know there’s a lot of different things eventually
18:51 is applesauce and other substitute.
18:55 Yes. Apple sauce as well. Yeah. So you kind of have to know those things. And so, um, I bought a, I bought the kitchen, which is a very popular cookbook for vegans and they’re really funny and I just, I thought they were snarky, they have a little bit of a snarky attitude and I just thought, you know what, there’s, there’s really fun recipes in here. There are things that I can make for a party. So that’s why I bought. And I think one of the first things I ever tried as they had a squash and black bean enchilada and it sounded simply fabulous. And Oh my God, it was so good. And my husband when he had it, was like, wow, this is really good because he loves Mexican food, you know. But he would typically come home with a big, you know, ground beef, steak burrito that was like the size of a football. And he was like, gosh, this really good. I could eat this all the time. And it was. And you know what I would say, the one thing I do remember after having that was that I felt so good after I ate. There was no bloat, there was no, I’m feeling sluggish. I felt like it was fuel for my body, like I could just like the next day I went and worked out. I felt fabulous, you know, it just, it was like the whole thing where your body is an engine and you’re treating it with premium gasoline, you know. So I was hooked and uh, yeah.
20:18 So do you do, do you do dairy, do you do cheese?
20:21 Um, well I do a little bit of cheese and so here’s the thing, I also have ibs. I’m not a really bad case is some people do, but I do have irritable bowel syndrome and dairy is one of my triggers. So concurrently I’ve had to kind of work around some of my food allergies because I also have, I also have respiratory allergies. So dairy has always been something that has been very limited in life because of my food and respiratory allergies. Dairy is very mucous producing and so it causes me to wheeze a little bit, so I get really bad stomach aches. And so as a kid I used to love ice cream, but now that I’m older I can kind of remember always having stomach, really bad stomach aches immediately after having ice cream. Now I can make that association. So anyway, yeah, I, I don’t really do dairy except for hard cheeses and butter because hard cheeses are um, the older, the cheese, the more age, the cheese, the less too little or to no lactose that they actually contain. So I have like blue cheeses, age blue cheeses or Brie, things that have veins in it so I can do something like a moldy cheese like that because it doesn’t bother my stomach. Right.
21:41 So do those enchiladas didn’t have cheese? No? Then those really. Okay. So I’m now gonna have to look up that recipe.
21:50 I’ll send it to you Molly , they do not have cheese.
21:53 My whole thought processes. It’s like, well no, like I like, I could do vegetarian but I would want to put cheese all over everything.
22:01 And you know what molly, you’re exactly like my husband because that’s what he said the second time. It’s like, well can you sprinkle the cheese on there? And like, yeah, I can’t, so again, I try to make things very approachable. I’m not going to say and, and to be honest, that’s one thing that I have several friends who also are plant based mostly and one of the things we’ve talked about is how people could be very a really into like labels, you know, it’s like if you’re a vegetarian but then you put something on your Instagram posts that might be, have bison it or cheese. I mean there are people who will like go all after you like, well how can you say your plant base when you’re eating that? And it’s like, I feel like in our country and our world right now, we’re so into like divisiveness that if people would just accept each other, why can’t you be mostly plant based?
22:50 If we were more like forgiving and allowing people to try things without committing, we’d probably see a lot more healthy people. That’s kind of what my thought is as you know, what if you really love cheese, that’s great. Do Cheese. But if 90 percent of your plate is plants and those plants are mostly veggies, Geez, you’re still eating a lot healthier than most people.
23:12 It’s plant based the base of your diet is plants.
23:16 Exactly, exactly. By the way, I love your accent.
23:21 Thanks! Isn’t it fun!I said, I know. I know. Thank you for bringing it up. It’s been. I, you know, honestly I used to like tease her about it pretty much every episode I have to bring it up. But I, I, I’m used to. I mean I’ve known her for a longer, much longer than just that, the podcast, but I’m just, you know, I used to bring it up in our podcasts all the time. I don’t know, I don’t pick it up all the time.
23:44 So I’m assuming it’s an Irish brogue, right?
23:47 Scottish.
23:48 Scottish, okay. I did that. Love Irish and Scottish brogue so much. I feel like there’s part of me that might’ve had some Irish blood or something.
23:58 If it’s Chicago, there’s a good chance!
24:01 That there’s actually one of my best friends growing up in Chicago was Irish and her family was from Ireland. So they all had the Scottish Irish brogue. And yeah, so anyway, I love your accent.
24:14 I love this and I love that. I mean, I love your enthusiasm for it and I think you’re absolutely right. I mean look at you, you’re like squarely right in the heart of the Midwest and that is, you know, Angus beef country. I know this. I grew up in, I grew up in Iowa. I’m a farm girl, you know, we’re talking, you know, meat and potatoes, right? The corn belt. Um, so it’s great that you’re, you know, you’re approaching the idea of incorporating a plant based diet. I love the idea, love the thought of having it, you know, just trying it for the Monday through Thursday, you know, everybody can commit to, to attempting to do something and just like you said, even if you, if you’re working at 90 percent of your plate being plant based, you’re still going to be better off even if you’re still gotta, you know, even if you still have some kind of meat with you as well. Well,
25:11 and you think of some of the Asian cuisines. I mean, you look at some of the Chinese dishes, for example, they still have a little bit of pork or chicken or beef, but it’s, you know, 95 percent of it is vegetarian is vegetarian and then they have small little slivers of maybe a chicken or a beef allowed their dishes, which is such a healthy way to eat and that is the thing that. So we’ve kind of struggled with that a little bit because it is. I will say that the cons of it are that it can be difficult to get your protein. Being that I have some digestive issues, there’s been somewhat of a struggle because there’s a lot of beans I cannot do. Do Chickpeas find they could do black beans, but there are certain types of beans and that just do not react well with my body nor my husband’s. So that’s tough. He can’t do tofu because again, he has. It can be gas producing and stuff. So he has issues with that so I can’t.
26:11 I can’t do tofu either. Exactly. I just don’t like it. Neither one of us.
26:15 I’m actually, I do like Tofu, but I understand his thing. So that’s been the struggle and I had a chiropractor that I actually, um, did some marketing for and he was like, if, if you come in my office and you tell me that you don’t eat, you know that you’re the Veggie or you don’t like eating a lot of protein, I’m not going to work with you because your bones aren’t going to heal if you’re not getting enough of the amino acids. And while it is true that you can get that as a vegetarian, you certainly can, you do have to be mindful of it and you do have to be eating a lot. So you know, that’s something that we have to be mindful of. We have to make sure that we have enough nuts around the house and then I’m throwing something like that.
26:55 So that’s why I feel also doing it like a Thursday, a Friday through Sunday kind of thing. We’re getting some protein because our bodies aren’t really. Like I had this explained to me by a doctor once. It’s not like your body is telling. I mean ours are kind of a construct of humans, right? Your body doesn’t really think in terms of 24 hours or whatever, so when you’re thinking about calories or weight loss, it’s kind of like not a massive things but it’s over a couple of days. So that’s what I try to think of is make sure. I mean we think of our days is like I have to drink eight glasses of water and I got to have this many calories, but that’s kind of a guideline because really what is, what is 24 hours? That’s something that we made up by the sun. Right.
27:43 So that’s why I try to do is I just try to look at as a weekly basis. So if I’m getting enough protein over the week and all that, then I feel feeling doing good. There are some people I’ve worked with, some clients that really have trouble not eating meat or they have trouble with getting other sources of protein. So what they’ve done and what’s worked for them as I’m like, you know, do it at dinner. Then have your whole day from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, be completely plant based and then it’s your nighttime meal. Just have a little bit of protein. Can you. Can you commit to that? Well, the thing is it’s really about trying to find what works for your psychology and your life. I feel
28:26 and and is back to you are seeing like the. Some beans don’t work for you. I know that my oldest daughter is vegetating and anything I make that has meat in it. I’d make the whole dish the same but instead of putting meat in hers, I would use like two different types of beans, but everything else, the seasoning, everything else is the same and I would use a veggie stock or something so you know for that, for you that wouldn’t work. But for her it, that’s, that’s what I do. I just replace the meat with, with two different beans.
29:01 Don’t say on my Instagram post, I put an Asian sell at a Thai salad and it was something that I made over the weekend and my husband wanted beef because it was the weekend and I wanted tuna. So everything else was exactly the same in terms of, you know, the veggies and the way it was being prepared. It’s just I had no, I did his, I seared his beef first took that off and seared my tuna. But the assemblage, everything else, all the veggies were exactly the same. So it is possible and it’s really not that much extra work if you have to accommodate a Vegan or vegetarian or, or pro different proteins. But you know, again, it’s about finding what’s best for you, but make sure that 90 percent of your plate is filled with veggies. And when I also say that, I also like to insist that I think another pitfall a lot of people get into when they’re vegetarian or Vegan is they substitute a lot of their, um, meat with carbohydrates such as potatoes and starches because you do get hungry.
30:01 And that will was something that. So we, this was probably about four years ago that we started this vegetarian thing and so for the first six months I actually had signed up through weight watchers online because I want to kind of track to see what I was doing in terms of calories points or whatever. But then I, you know, after I kinda got the hang of what I was doing and how many grams of this and that and my macros, were in stuff. I let that go. And what I did notice is that sometimes we would use potatoes and rice a lot more in our. I would because I’m the one cooking less to fill us up and to, to make the meal more varied. So it wasn’t just to salad. And I also, I feel that sometimes we do fall into their trap and that can be a source of belly fat and bloating and weight gain as well. So this, the last probably six months we’ve been doing more carb cycling in addition to doing the mostly vegetarian because, you know, I, I’m trying to be more creative and come up with different ways of making our meals without relying on just carbohydrates as the base.
31:13 Oh, absolutely. We’ve been, you know, in the various conversations, like I said we’ve had this month, um, I think that the carbohydrate conversation then really on the forefront with, with just about everybody, whether it’s the processed foods and the take, you know, because that’s the sugar content, carbohydrate situation. But I can see as in a vegetarian a world where rice and potatoes would, you know, would be an easy way. Could make up a big part of your plate. And you don’t want to fall into that either because that isn’t, you know, those are not, those are basically carbohydrate, you know, they’re basically sugar inside the body so they’re just going to convert into. And so that would be, I could see that not being something you would want to rely on either. But that’s interesting that, you know, you’ve, it’s so great to hear. I mean, that’s four years. I didn’t really know that it had been that long that you guys have been doing this, but that, that that’s. Yeah. So that’s really awesome..
32:16 Yeah. And one thing I did, I wanted to circle back to a melody. You brought that good point is that I think too, when people try to go vegetarian, um, know another principle that we try to live with here is, is to eat real food and mostly plant based. I mean it’s like what, you know, I’m Michael Pollan kind of goes by. That was one of the books I read years ago that was pivotal for me and that was grown from the ground, right. So there are people who will go vegetarian but then they’ll buy a box, processed vegetarian or Vegan food, which isn’t good for you. So I don’t care if it’s vegetarian, if all you’re doing is eating box, you know, vegetarian food and you’re eating cheese all day. Yeah, it’s vegetarian but it’s still not plant based. So that’s why I like that word. Plant based. You should eat a lot of different plants, leafy Greens, cauliflower, things like that because mother nature provides it with all these different colors and antioxidants and that’s what really is going to promote your health and make you strong from the inside out.
33:19 Right. And that’s what it’s all about. Getting strong on the inside, on the outside of that. You know, I think that the more and more we’ve heard this month, I mean, it’s just crystal clear that. And I think that’s, you know, people, our bodies are amazingly resilient. They’re amazing, really amazingly resilient. They can overcome a lot. And so there’s a lot of people walking around thinking, you know, I’m doing okay. I’m, you know, I’m, I’m not desperate to lose weight. They’re not. Whatever. Sure. Are they, are you really taking care of your body? I think it’s more that. Are you at your optimal level? So are you a Caterpillar, or are you a butterfly? Caterpillars are okay. It’s not like it’s a bad life as a caterpillar, but you may, you may be a butterfly and you just don’t know it. You’re, you’re walking around, you know what I mean? Not if you’re not fueling yourself with a really healthy diet and in terms of longevity, yet, you know, there’s just no two ways about it. People that, you know, take care of themselves, uh, tend to live longer. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
34:26 No, I think that it’s also kind of goes with, um, sometimes we, you know, humans are really good at, you know, wanting, we want equilibrium, right? We want homeostasis, in our bodies, so we may be accustomed to feeling a certain way, but we don’t really realize that we’re not feeling good. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, we may be accustomed to not being energetic or not being able to reach up and grab something, you know, but we think that that’s okay, but then usually what happens is that something happens in their life. We either feeling bad or we have an illness, so we go to the doctor and they’re like, okay, you need, you’ve got diabetes or prediabetes. Something is kind of that pivotal factor and that’s when you start to see people either fade or they get resilient, right? They changed their life or they fade and they start taking drugs. And side effects, I mean I remember training a couple of people that were probably younger than I am right now, and they didn’t exercise ever. They were overweight and they were on 10 to 20 different prescription drugs and it started out as just one or two, but then they had a side effect from one of the drugs. So the doctor put them on this and then something to control their water and they’re just walking chemicals who, you know, their balances off. It’s just really difficult when you get to that stage and life to rebound.
35:53 Yeah. And people just accept it. That’s one of the things that we, um, we have found that people as the age that just accept that this is what happens when it doesn’t. You don’t have to just accept that these things happen. If you actively take part in your life, then I wouldn’t have to have all the issues that come with aging. I mean, those, you’ll certainly have issues. You don’t have to just sit back and let it happen to you.
36:21 My both of my Italian grandparents, my mother’s parents, my grandpa lived till he was 99 years old and he was, you know, they had a force him to leave his construction job at like 78 because he didn’t want to retire and he always was walking around. I mean he was healthy. He was mowing his lawn at 90, you know, and my grandmother, his wife lived till she was 95, 96 and was pretty much cooking and cleaning and doing all that stuff until the last couple of years. So you know, people, I’ll have some people who are very resistant to the idea. They’re like, well, we’re all going to get old and we’re all gonna die. And I’m like, yeah, we are all going to die. You know, maybe something will happen in the future where we won’t but we are going to die. But number one, what’s that quality of life in between going to be? Do you want to just be laying around and unable to participate in life or do you want to be vibrant and be able to walk around and be happy and laugh? You know, I mean I want to be that person.
37:19 Yeah, absolutely. We’ve set ourselves up in that. You guys definitely all about trying to live happier longer. So Tina,
37:30 Not everybody is. But yeah.
37:32 Good. Well I hope they, I hope they are because I mean honestly that’s the thing that we talk about it a lot of the time is that, you know, you mentioned it, medicine is most likely gonna get to, you’re going to see, you know, if you reach the age of 65, you’re most likely going to see 85. So wouldn’t it be nice if you’re actually happy about. But you know, you got to take action now. You don’t, you don’t get there just because you want to be. You gotta, you gotta take action. So Tina, it has been so much fun talking with you today.
38:02 Yeah, it’s been fabulous talking with you guys.
38:04 Appreciate and awesome.
38:08 And I love what you guys do. I love that you’re evangelists for health and healthy living.
38:11 Yeah. So the website that our listeners can connect with you on is.
38:18 Okay. Perennial P E r e double n I a l aging a G I N G.com.
38:29 Perennialaging.com and they can find you on Instagram under the same name, correct?
38:30 Yes. Um, well there’s a, you know, the underscore between perennial and aging on Instagram. Got It. Yeah. And then just if I could also throw something else in there, I’m going to be launching probably in the next 60 to 90 days a series of healthy living courses and there’ll be available on the teachable platform I have and they’re going to be kind of multifaceted talking about different. Basically the biggest thing I found out when I was training people is that you can train people until hey’re blue in the face, you can tell them what to do, but they need to think. You need to be able to help them throughout the other 23 and a half hours every day that you’re not seeing them and so it’s kind of going to be a guide to planning, establishing and finding little habits to make your life a little bit healthier by the end of those 30 days.
39:18 Awesome. Fantastic. If you have a link for that, we will put it in our show notes or if there’s a. If it’s just through your website still, that’s fine too.
39:26 It’ll be on my website and Instagram too. We’ll be promoting it. Instagram. So yeah, I’d love to love to have help people without.
39:33 Awesome. Great. Well we appreciate it and it’s only a, it’s only Tuesday, so I guess we’re still in the middle of the plant based week, so I don’t know. What are you making for dinner tonight?
39:46 Tonight? We’re doing mushrooms. Stroganoff. Oh yes. My husband had some dental surgery so he wasn’t able to really eat very much um, hard and stuff. So I asked them to say what do you want? And he’s like, I’m like, you know, coming up with these ideas and yeah. So I’ve done it once before with beans and so tonight I just got like a couple of different types of mushrooms. It’s gonna be delicious.
40:13 Awesome. Right. Thanks. Thanks again, Tina.
40:17 And thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Was lovely talking to you guys.
40:21 Right. See ya. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to the live happier, longer podcast. Now it’s time to move, learn, share, give and let go. Five daily actions to make the rest of your life the best of your life. See you next week.
