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Welcome to The Figuring It Out Podcast.
At 22, I took the plunge to go on the entrepreneurial journey and start a fitness business, 7 years later I’d been the nutritionist for 2 elite sports clubs and private coach to some of the worlds best sportsmen and women.
Now it’s my mission to show fitness coaches how you can put yourself in a league of their own, become the go to coach, and finally eliminate the self-doubt and imposter syndrome that's holding you back from building the business of your dreams.
This podcast will help you figure out how to thrive and conquer the fear that comes with the lonely entrepreneurial journey.
If fear is the only thing stopping us from achieving our dreams, and we only fear what we don't understand, then the antidote to fear is knowledge. All we have to do is find out who has the knowledge that we need to conquer our fears and achieve our entrepreneurial dreams. My name is Callum Walker, and welcome to the podcast that will help you figure it out and conquer this lonely entrepreneurial journey.
Callum Walker:Hello, everyone, and welcome to the podcast, and welcome to day five, day five of the Carb Free Marathon Diaries. If this is your first time tuning in, I am at day five of training for a ketogenic marathon. So I believe we have eight weeks and three days until the marathon. I realized I also didn't do a day four episode, but today we'll explain to you why I didn't do a day four episode. But I'm gonna be almost kind of talking to you about my recovery and also a couple of mistakes that I more recently made when it came to my recovery and, something that happens when you are in the kind of mainly first week of a ketogenic diet that I don't think anyone really kind of talks about.
Callum Walker:Now, as well as kind of talking about a couple of recovery mistakes that I've made, I'm also gonna share with you a couple of successful things that I've incorporated into my recovery and also reasonings behind them. So in terms of your own training, in terms of your own physical fitness, but then if you're a coach or an entrepreneur, the things I'm going to go through in this episode will really, really help you with your own mental and emotional performance to be able to ride the crazily difficult and emotionally turmoil roller coaster that is entrepreneurship and is life. So do we start off with the mistakes or do we start off with the positives? No. I tell you what, we're gonna start off with positives.
Callum Walker:So, yeah, if I almost kind of look at the first three days, I was training quite heavily, and yesterday was, more of a recovery day for me. So, I was talking to Alex yesterday and I know this might not sound particularly mind blowing, but, I almost kind of see it with my body, but more importantly, my nervous system. That we have, almost like two modes. We have a go mode and we have slow mode. And the problem is that the way that society and culture is set up, it pushes us to constantly be in go mode.
Callum Walker:Like we're always in go mode and we're pushed to be in go mode. And the problem is that we burn out. And it's the same from a training point of view that, you know, there's this thought that, you know, if we're gonna be doing a marathon or we're gonna be going through some physical endeavor, we've really got to ramp up our training and train like a lunatic. Now don't get me wrong, there is absolutely a time and a place to send it and to push yourself, but it's not about consistent volume. It's about making sure that when your body and your nervous system is primed to go, then you can put it in the go mode.
Callum Walker:But when it's saying to you like, hey, I need to slow down. I need to like, I need a bit of recuperation here. I need some rejuvenation. It's really important that we listen to that. And I mentioned that, on one of the episodes, I got rid of my aura ring.
Callum Walker:I was using an Oura Ring and if you don't know what an Oura Ring is, it's it's kind of like a fitness tracker so to speak and it tracks your heart rate variability, quality of your sleep and I just found it I just found it really like, un user friendly. I just found like, you know, again, I've used the Whoop for many years and maybe I was comparing it to the Whoop a lot, but the it was just really kind of like, I don't know, I just didn't enjoy looking at the data. It didn't really kind of give me much. Didn't really kind of like allow me to see what was actually happening. So I've been off the Oura Ring and I've actually gone back to a Whoop.
Callum Walker:Now, one thing I like about a WOOP is that it gives you a good idea of life, you know, how well recovered your nervous system is, but I'm not solely reliant on that. Know, me and I were talking about just intuitively like knowing where you're at. For me, I know that my nervous system is kind of like more fatigued. My body is more fatigued when I get a little bit kind of more negative, when I'm almost kind of seeing the hole in the donut as opposed to the donut, slightly more irritable and I just feel almost kind of like a fried sort of sensation. It's really hard to articulate but it's almost kind of like a fuzzy head.
Callum Walker:Not necessarily a full on ringing in the ears but it definitely almost kind of feel like a fizzing sort of tingling sensation in the body. That's when I know that I'm fatigued And basically me and Alice were kind of talking about it by saying like, you know, just kind of have like a traffic light system in terms of like where your nervous system is at. And effectively like, you know, the way that I've really looked at my own training and my own lifestyle has been, right, am I in the red? Oh, I'm sorry. That's one of the mistakes I made yesterday.
Callum Walker:Am I in the red? Am I in the amber? Or am I in the green? Now fortunately the whoop can help kind of direct me towards that, but I always kind of trust my intuition. Like, you know, I've been very kind of mindful for a very long time and I've got a good idea when I'm like, no, I'm primed to go here.
Callum Walker:And so, yeah, so if I must kind of look at yesterday, I was definitely kind of more orangey ready. You know, I've I don't wanna say I pushed myself a lot, but you know, I kind of pushed myself Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. And yesterday I was like, right. Okay. I'm gonna have a a break.
Callum Walker:And one thing that I'm gonna kind of talk to you about here in terms of, like, from a recovery point of view that can be really beneficial is walking. And I'm not talking about walking in the sense of walking for steps, calories, all that sort stuff. It's absolutely nothing to do with that. But effectively, when we look at recovery, the way that I see recovery truthfully is it's all a nervous system recovery because if you're doing things that recover the nervous system naturally you will then recover your muscles. And if I almost kind of look at like our nervous system we have two systems and again I'm going to refer to these as go and slow mode.
Callum Walker:We have our sympathetic nervous system which is our go mode. So that's really kind of centered around chemicals like adrenaline, dopamine, cortisol will be higher during those sorts of times. That's when I've almost kind of send it. But then I've also got my slow mode and my slow mode is actually the nervous system that you refer to as the parasympathetic nervous system. So that's about slowing ourselves down.
Callum Walker:Now when you activate the parasympathetic nervous system that will help slow the body down, replenish, recover and you're putting juice in the battery. When you're activating the sympathetic nervous system that's when you're draining the juice in the battery. So this is like a constant yo yo and a constant cycle between putting juice in the battery, using that juice, putting more juice back into the battery, using that juice and going again like so. And when we look at a couple of things that I did yesterday, my sole focus was not just, Oh, I'm gonna recover. My focus was, I'm going to activate my parasympathetic nervous system today.
Callum Walker:I'm going to make sure that I can be parasympathetic dominant. I'm going to put myself into slow mode. And there's multiple activities by which I can do that. And one of them is specifically walking in a more mindful state. So me and I just went for a walk.
Callum Walker:I went for a walk without any form of headphones. So again, like, you know, I was kind of connected to the world, connected to nature. I can hear my footsteps. I can hear the birds singing. That level of mindfulness in itself naturally will activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Callum Walker:It will calm you down and it will put you in a well recovered state. It also makes you realize that if you're ever kind of anxious, nervous, stressed or whatever, getting out in nature and going for a walk without any headphones and actually immersing yourself in the world, it will, make you realize how insignificant your problems and worries actually are. They're all completely mind made, and in reality they mean absolutely nothing because they're not real. So that is one thing I would say. But there is also something that I was talking to the guys on the elite program about a few weeks ago, and it is a very unique thing that happens when you are walking specifically.
Callum Walker:And effectively what happens is that when you're walking forward, that you experience something called forward ambulation. Now, is forward ambulation? Forward ambulation is when you are moving forward, but in terms of your vision, things are passing you. So things are going past you. So as an example, I'm driving right now.
Callum Walker:I'm looking forward and I can see cars going past me. I can see trees going past me. I can see the street lamps going past me. So have you ever noticed that when you, when you're driving, a lot of your best ideas can come to you when you're not stimulated? But part of that is because you're experiencing this thing with forward ambulation.
Callum Walker:Now, when you're walking, you're experiencing that forward ambulation. So you're moving forward and things will go past you and that signals to the body we are safe. We are safe and we can relax. And effectively, specifically, what actually happens is that we have a center in the body, sorry, in the brain that is known as the amygdala. And the amygdala is the fear based center of the brain.
Callum Walker:And effectively what happens is that when our amygdala is activated, we're in that fight or flight mode. We're scared, we're fearful. The sympathetic nervous system will be activated. But on a day where I want to activate my parasympathetic nervous system, what I can do is I can go for a walk. By going for a walk naturally anyway, I'm doing it in a more mindful state, which will activate the parasympathetic nervous system of puppy boys slow mo.
Callum Walker:Secondly, I'm going through that forward ambulation. When I'm going through that forward ambulation moving forward, what happens is I'm decreasing the activity of the amygdala. I'm calming the fear center of the brain, which then allows the body to actually relax and go into parasympathetic mood. So we refer to this in the elite coaches take a walk. So we almost kind of say that whenever you're in your own head, whenever you're stressed, you're anxious, fearful, you've got like bills to pay, clients drop you off, you've got bad messages from clients, you're panicking, you don't know where your next client's coming from.
Callum Walker:When all of these things come, your fear center is activated, it's in charge and we need to shut it up. And one of the best ways to shut it up is to take a walk. So take a walk. So this is your sign this week to take a walk. So yeah, so I went and did a walk yesterday.
Callum Walker:I also did my yoga flow as well. Again, naturally, yoga in itself activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Also, I did a lower body resistance exercise session on Tuesday. So I was definitely experiencing DOMS yesterday. So just stretching all that out felt very nice.
Callum Walker:And the other thing that I was doing, and I've done an episode of it. Sorry. I keep doing it. It's because I'm so parasympathetically activated. But I did an episode on this on the podcast.
Callum Walker:It's called the science of dopamine. But the other thing that I was focusing on was exhale dominated breathing throughout the day. So Alice is kind of sick of it really. She'd be talking to me and I'd be standing there like this. But now she knows what I'm doing and she also does it herself now.
Callum Walker:So that's quite cool. But So yesterday was a parasympathetic dominated day. Now what were the recovery mistakes that I made? Well, one was a mistake and one was just something that I thought I would be immune to considering I've been so fat adapted for a long time. If I look at the last, two months, and this one isn't the mistake.
Callum Walker:The mistake I'm gonna kind of share with you will, come about in a second. But if I look at the last few months, the last month specifically, I've been sleeping really, really, really well. And maybe that's because I've been getting up at half five, so I'm really tired by the time I get to sleep and I've got a lot of adenosine built up. Maybe that's that. But I have been sleeping really, really, really well.
Callum Walker:And also the last, month specifically, I've been on a low carb diet. So before I made transition to a ketogenic diet, I've been more low carb. And specifically when I look at the difference, ketogenic diet has no stereotypical carbohydrates included within it. No rice, no pasta, no potatoes, no lentils, no bread, none of those things. Whereas a low carb diet, I typically have like a portion of those things maybe three times a week.
Callum Walker:So maybe every other day. I'd maybe have like a little bit of sweet potato, a little bit of whole grain rice, a little bit of like whole wheat pasta. Have a only a little bit. And you might be like, well what's the difference between the two? There is a profound difference between the two trust me.
Callum Walker:If you've been ketogenic before and experienced the ketogenic diet, you will definitely understand what I'm talking about. Now the problem that comes with the initial adaptation phase is, and I personally thought that I wouldn't experience this because I've been so low carb for a long time but obviously my ego was wrong. So last night, I woke up about 02:15 in the morning and I was wide awake. And it wasn't just that I was wide awake, like I kept needing to go for a wee. And that, diuresis, fancy word for needing to go for a wee all the time, is a natural side effect of the initial keto adaptation phase.
Callum Walker:But I was wide, wide, wide awake. And if you've been a long term listener to this podcast, I used to refer to this as the ketogenic vampire sleep, where you wake up at like two in the morning and then it takes you about two hours to get back to sleep. And what happens is, now there's two reasons why this happened. One was the keto adaptation phase, but the second one was the mistake that I made. So in terms of the keto adaptation phase, which is just a natural part of going through what I'm going through at the moment, you get a significant increase in adrenaline.
Callum Walker:It's why like, you ever talk to someone who's gone ketogenic, one of the first things that they'll say to you is the cognitive clarity is amazing. Like I feel so sharp, alert, aware on the ball. I can focus, think. And yeah, you are. And that's partly because you have a heightened level of adrenaline which will increase your level of activity.
Callum Walker:And that's great during the day, but it ain't great fun during the evening. So again, if you've maybe been inspired by what I've kind of been talking about to maybe go do a ketogenic diet, a natural element of sleep kind of fragmentation. I don't want to call it insomnia because you do sleep but I find that you know, especially in the early stage, there's certain nights where I'm wide awake and my mind is just like like just racing. Now here comes the mistake that I made yesterday, which is a huge thing that I'm going to say to you. One of the other reasons why I would have woken up in the middle of the night was because I, well, I woke up in the middle of the night, and one thing that happened was that one, I my mind was going mental, and that was partly because of being in a ketogenic state.
Callum Walker:But also my feet were so hot and my hands were so, so, so hot. They're like radiators. And the reason for why that happened was because I ate my dinner a lot later than I normally would. So, Alex came in later last night, so I cooked his dinner and I ate about 08:30 and I went to sleep at nine. And naturally when you are eating your dinner later, the body is naturally like you're going through that thermogenesis.
Callum Walker:Like, you know, you're generating heat when you're digesting food. And also that your heart rate is more elevated, which then elevates your body temperature. So, you know, why would your feet and your hands be hot? Well, effectively, and this is quite cool. When you look at your hands and your feet, there is a very, very, very, very unique thing about the soles of your feet, the palms of your hand and your forehead.
Callum Walker:And the unique thing is that there is no hair on the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, or your forehead. Why is that? Well, it's actually known as something called glabrous skin. Now what is glamorous skin? Well glamorous skin is actually where the body is at its highest level and it has the greatest ability to accept or dump heat.
Callum Walker:So because there's no hair, and also because of the nature of the veins and the arteries, in that area of the body, the soles of your feet, the palms of your hands and your forehead, what happens is that they almost kind of act like radiators. So to cool the body down, the main way the body will cool the body down is by dumping heat out of the soles of your feet, dumping heat out of your part of your hands, and dumping heat out of your forehead. Which is also why if you want to heat yourself up, the most important thing that you can do is wear a woolly hat because it will ensure that the heat stays within the body instead of being dumped out the forehead. Wear some thick socks and wear some gloves. But conversely, if you want to cool down, you want to cool your feet down.
Callum Walker:You want to cool your hands down and you want to cool your forehead down. So naturally what happened was that my body was in overload and it was working and it was dumping heat and it was dumping heat through my feet. And my feet were so hot. And normally what I would do is I would go downstairs and go and run a really cold bath and cool my feet down, but I don't know why I didn't do that. I thought that I'd drift off to sleep, but I didn't.
Callum Walker:So yeah. So this morning, I woke up I don't wanna say sleep deprived, but I woke up a bit more groggy and fatigued. I definitely felt a little bit off balance this morning, but I kinda rally around. Unfortunately, I've structured my week, and this is the beauty of running a business. I've structured my week where I only actually had two calls, like two client calls.
Callum Walker:And when I say two client calls, one was actually a sales call, and we have a brand new member on the Next Level Coach. It's amazing. And then the other was a client call. So this week, I've only actually had two client calls, and I set that up specifically because I needed a I needed a red week. I needed just, you know, a week where I could really kinda make sure that I could get myself in the best physical and mental state possible because, you know, the the first six weeks of the year, I've been very much in go mode, send it mode, and I just needed a little bit of time and space.
Callum Walker:So unfortunately, I've created my business to allow me to do them. And that is one thing I want to say to you is make sure that you create your business to be able to do that as well. So there we go. Today's day five. Tips of recovery mistakes.
Callum Walker:Never forget, for every one of your clients, every one new client, you've doubled the business test.
Callum Walker:Have you got a client who isn't losing weight right now and you have absolutely no idea why? Maybe you're worrying that if nothing changes, they could drop off at any moment. Well, I've got a free nutrition masterclass for you where I reveal the secret nutrition strategy that guarantees that that stuck client loses two to four pounds in the next seven days without lowering their calories, upping their cardio, or even tracking macros. Click the link in the description to get access to the free elite nutrition secrets masterclass and get your client moving in the right direction, stopping them dropping off today.