Different Life | 012 | Are You Afraid of Getting Old? The Truth About Aging, Health, and Control

Episode Summary
Aging is something everyone experiences, but very few people truly think about how to approach it. In this episode, Gary and Peter explore the difference between simply accepting aging and actively shaping how you experience it.

They dive into the concept of healthspan versus lifespan and discuss why focusing on quality of life is far more impactful than obsessing over longevity. From strength training and nutrition to mental fitness and daily habits, this conversation highlights how small, consistent actions can significantly influence how you feel as you get older.

The episode also tackles common mindsets around deprivation, comfort, and long-term health, offering a practical perspective on how to balance enjoying life now while setting yourself up for a better future.

Key Topics Discussed

Passive aging vs intentional aging
The difference between lifespan and healthspan
How strength training impacts aging
Mental fitness and cognitive health
Nutrition and the “deprivation vs enjoyment” mindset
Daily habits that influence long-term health
The role of consistency in slowing decline

Chapters with Timestamps

00:00 – Intro and entrepreneurship discussion
02:00 – Pain points and business ideas
09:00 – Are you afraid of getting old?
11:30 – Physical vs mental aging
14:00 – Cognitive health and lifelong learning
16:00 – Passive vs intentional aging
18:30 – Lifespan vs healthspan explained
20:00 – Nutrition and “living for today vs future”
23:30 – Habits, digestion, and behavior change
26:00 – Balancing enjoyment and health
30:00 – Final thoughts on intentional aging

Notable Quotes

“You don’t control how long you live, but you do control how well you live.”
“Aging is inevitable, but the rate of decline isn’t.”
“Be intentional about aging instead of being a passenger.”
“If you ignore your health today, you’re just accelerating the decline.”

Resources Mentioned

ChatGPT – https://chat.openai.com
Slack – https://slack.com

Connect With Us Here:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WholeHealthSolutions
Website: https://wholehealthsolutions.life/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wholehealthsolutions.life
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholehealthsolutions.life
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/whole-health-solutions-sports-performance

Creators and Guests

Host

Gary Donia

Gary Donia, MSPT is a physical therapist and Chief Operations Officer at Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. With more than 20 years of experience, he helps individuals and athletes recover from injury, build strength, and improve long-term physical capability. Gary focuses on identifying root causes, creating practical plans, and guiding people toward sustainable health and performance. In addition to his clinical work, he coaches high school and Legion baseball, applying movement principles to develop resilient, confident athletes. He lives in Townsend, Massachusetts, with his wife Jessica and their two sons, and is passionate about helping people build healthier, more capable lives both on and off the field.

Host

Peter Brouillard

Peter Brouillard, DPT is the Founder and CEO of Whole Health Solutions and Sports Performance. As a physical therapist and strength coach, he works with individuals and athletes to recover from injury, build strength, and develop long-term resilience. Peter takes a whole-body approach to health, integrating exercise, lifestyle habits, and performance principles to help people exceed their goals and unlock their potential. His focus is on practical strategies that create lasting change, not quick fixes. He is passionate about empowering people to take ownership of their health and build lives defined by capability, confidence, and meaningful progress.

What is Different Life?

Most people don’t need more motivation. They need a different approach. Hosted by Gary Donia and Peter Brouillard, Different Life draws on years of experience helping people navigate pain, movement, recovery, and performance — but the conversation goes far beyond health alone.

We talk about:
• Strength training as a life skill
• Back pain, mobility, and injury recovery
• Pelvic floor health and durability
• Sleep, stress, hormones, and energy
• Performance and longevity over 40
• Discipline, habits, and identity shifts
• Parenting and modeling health
• Relationship-based healthcare

We discuss these not as isolated topics, but as part of a bigger question: What does it look like to live differently, not just try to live better?
If you feel stuck in patterns that no longer fit who you want to become, this show is for you. Because better often keeps you in the same cycles. Different changes your trajectory.

Gary Donia (00:01.132)
Peter, welcome back to different life. What's up, buddy? I'm trying all types of interest. Eventually, I'm going to get to the best one is the greatest. Yeah, but shouldn't it change all the time? I feel like that's like a road in. Yeah, just try. Maybe one time I just open up different

Gary Donia (00:18.328)
Anyway, you're an entrepreneur. I guess. Yeah, sure. Fine. Businesses can come from anywhere. Where do think most businesses come from? Passion, ideas. People like do a thing, they have a skill and they're like, well people can pay me for the skill and then they make a business. Yeah. I think that's certainly probably maybe the number one. Yeah. Right. think one of the big ones is people find a pain point.

And then they're like, well, can, how do I solve for that pain point? If they are thinking like, I want to be an entrepreneur, meaning like, or they just happen to notice something that's like a problem for most people that doesn't have a solution. That's thinking like an entrepreneur. It's thinking like an entrepreneur, but like maybe they weren't just walking around. They like there, or maybe they're having that the problem themselves. And as they were solving it, solve the problem themselves and other people notice like, wait a minute, that's a really cool thing. Let me buy that from you. Can you please do that for me or whatever?

It ran across one of those today and I was fascinated and I was like, this is maybe the greatest business that I think has ever been created. Do this in real life or online? No, Christina told me about it. All right. So hold on. I'm going to open my phone. Excuse me, everybody. I need to look up the exact name. Okay. Okay. Hold on. Everyone just wait, wait for me. Okay. The name of this business is called Doodoo Extinguisher.

Doodoo extinguisher. So like poop is on fire and they extinguish it? Apparently. So the person who runs it is like, maybe that would give them a plug here, you know, all of our millions of listeners can go to doodooextinguishers.com. I believe the person who runs it is a currently a firefighter or was a firefighter. many firefighters often have like side jobs because they work these schedules of like two days a week. The greatest shift ever. Yeah, they have like a couple of like really long hard

great shifts because they're firefighters and they protect us. But they often have many days off during the week because they get all their hours in in like two days. And many of them will work as like electricians or builders or whatever they find. I'm guessing, and I don't know this person, maybe we'll reach out to him and find out his story. It's probably on this website. I actually didn't go through it. I'm guessing this is how this came to be. So what this person does basically is you hire them, their company, and they come and they clean up your dog's doo-doo. Like anytime?

Gary Donia (02:42.378)
So mean, how lazy do you have to be to not pick up your dog's crap every day? So first of all, how dare you? What the hell? Everybody don't be offended by Peter. He's a loser. they do have weekly service. So I would say yes, probably for those people. like it's not what I don't want to judge. I'm not going to judge. I'll let you be the judge. However, what I find this great for is for anyone who owns a dog, you want a dog. I don't know how your dog is in the winter.

But my dog, yeah, it's My dog refuses to walk across like normally in the normal weather, especially when she was younger, getting a little old now. She has like a spot. say, go to your spot. She goes to the spot. She goes to the bathroom. It's in the woods basically. We don't have to worry about it, right? There's nothing, none of that. We're lucky enough to live essentially in the woods. have a yard and woods. So we can do that, right? In the winter time, she refuses to walk across the yard cause it's,

It's a pile of snow and whatever. So she goes to the bottom of our deck stairs. Sometimes she doesn't even make it there. Sometimes it's just on the deck. the deck. On the deck. If there's enough snow, because she doesn't really. Poops on the. It's just snow. To her it's just snow. not like. And then so when spring comes, it's beautiful spring at the bottom of our stairs. There's just a pile of dude. Like,

I mean think of how many times she went out to the back. She goes out multiple times today for the last many months as we're all Buried under snow like four months and she picked in crap and I'm not going out there in the middle of the winter to like dig through I did not either for sure and then of course when this is like the worst conversation ever to like start a crap but like when when spring comes it also thaws, yeah, not just the snow but like the poo. Yeah, the doo-doo. Yeah, so now it's kind of

gross, like it's slimy and it's like it's not easy to pick up. Like it's not when it's frozen, it's actually kind of easy. Anyway, my point is this person has discovered a pain point for most people. Like I don't really want to go out there. And like I was talking to Jess about my plan the other day. You want to pick up the 200 poops? There's so many of them and it's gross and I'm like, and it doesn't go easily. It's like hard to get it out of the grass sometimes. And like I was like, okay, I'm going to get a bucket. I'm going to fill the bucket with some dirt so that it can go into the dirt and I'm going to

Gary Donia (04:49.804)
dump it into the woods. had this whole like plan and then Christina told me she goes, the doo doo extinguishers are at my house today. What the hell is that? told me I was like, my God, this might be the greatest business ever created. I'm going to I would been at work all day. I wouldn't want to do that company time. I see a company man. I wouldn't use your I wouldn't use your dollars to do. You should do you should buy this for me. It should be a gift.

So, yeah, so I just found this like amazing. So I'm going to call them. They're gonna come. So Christina said they were at her house for about an hour today. And I assume she'll give us a report tomorrow about how well it went. But they basically go around your entire yard. They find every poop and they put it in a bag. They double bag it. They lock it up. They throw it in your trash can and you're done. Did you say what this cost? So she said that her neighbor.

Did it and they have two giant dogs like Great Danes or something like some massive huge dogs that have you she said they filled up like of the bags that they use like five of those bags and it was just a little over a hundred dollars Wow hundred and twenty nine dollars This is kind of goes back to the podcast that we talked about buying back your time. Yes That's exactly what I thought I go the amount of hours I would spend out there because I would have to you know, we have a nice yard

We often will have people into our yard. I like to take care of my lawn like we talked about. And so I will literally go around and try to find every single one because I don't want someone coming over and stepping. That's awful. Like that's a horrible way. Yeah. And then of course our, you know, when our kids were younger, they play in the grass and we have lots of nieces and nephews that will come up, you know, whatever. So I don't want anyone getting into that. And so I, I love this idea. So for me, it would be a one-off. they, do like one session.

And then that's it for something. They do offer the service of weekly every week or, gotta imagine they get a big business boom this time of year when everything falls. I would double the prices. If I was this guy, I would be like, totally take advantage. But anyway, I think that, but what I really loved about it is like we both like entrepreneurship. think we both like, we like to study other people and like what they do and how they do it. And even just like, you know, look at his, like, I have his website up right now. Right. Like,

Gary Donia (07:04.266)
It's just, it's like a cool, it's well, it has a nice logo. Wait, hold on. Let me go to this one. Like you can see right there. Everyone's looking at my text messages, probably too. Ignore my text messages. But you know, that's a cool logo, right? Look at that, it's like a Dalmatian, like a firefighter Dalmatian with the thing. Anyway, I think he does a good job with his business. It's a good brand, it has a good name. It's a good business idea and hopefully this person is super successful. You gotta let me know how it goes.

do do extinguish maybe I'll send them to your house. already picked all of mine up. Oh, That mean Evan. Poor Evan. We went out there with rakes and raked it all up and filled up to five gallon buckets. It's gross. A lot of buckets. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna have the duty to come to my house. You do your thing. I'll do mine. How long did it take? 20 minutes. Because we use rakes.

My friend told me to use a rake and I was using one of those like claw, like plastic things. That was a thousand years, like that'll take forever. He's like, why don't you just use a rake? I never thought about that. Got it all up? Okay. Well, I apologize to everybody who's listening to this. get to listen to Doodoo, but about Doodoo, but I thought it was interesting and I love good ideas. So, okay. Today's episode. We had somebody in the clinic today and a lot of people.

And just for the record, it's not like me. I had nothing to do with this. That's true. But again, she feels free to shit on I'm around. Yeah. Because you're around. I'm just an innocent bystander. Yeah, okay. Whatever. I am sick of being accused all the These are lies. But she says to you as she's like looking at me basically. Like Pete, I forget exactly what she was talking. I think maybe we're talking about peptide or whatever. We were talking about peptides and hormones. We were talking about like lifting weights and how she struggles. And you know, maybe I don't. Or she was talking about

the last time you felt sick. Oh, right. You know, work out and how long did it take you to come back from and so on and so forth. In the end, said never in the end, she basically accused you of like being afraid to get old. Yeah, she was like, said you're just afraid to get you have a mental illness and she yeah, she said we need to get you like help and you know, it's because you're afraid to get old. And then she looked at me like she's like, right. And I was like, and of course, I had to, I had to poke a little bit. I was like, well, yeah, I mean,

Gary Donia (09:24.98)
more so than what he'll admit to. was like, he probably, there's some of that, right? And so anyway, so I thought that was, so I actually deviated from what was gonna be today's show to this one, because I actually thought that that's a great conversation to have because, so I wonder like in your case or in my case, how much do you actually think about that? Because I can tell you, I think about it a lot about the idea of getting old. Like for instance, when I get up from the couch,

And like everything hurts. I'm like, oh my God, like I am like not even 50 yet. What does that feel like? At 60, 70, at 80. I was like, this is awful. Like how do people survive? I was like, why are they still going? They walk around very slowly. Yeah, then I start to watch other people that are older than me and I'm like, oh man. I'm like, oh Jesus, like whatever. I know, and many of these people are super active.

pretty, like, you know, active people who generally take care of themselves. At least I think. I don't know what it looked like when they were 50, but anyway. So then I'm like, okay, I know I think about this a lot. I'm not afraid of it. Maybe, maybe a smidge. But I wonder how many people are. You know what I mean? And I wonder how much aging is just something we accept versus what we can, I mean, we talk about it all the time. you could do something, could do something, you could do something. But like, can you, can you really?

Do you know, is there just an inevitability of this that we're all just gonna like, you know, hurt more? Yes. And yes. So I would love for you to answer the first, Peter. Am I afraid of aging? Yeah. Are you afraid of getting old? No, not at all. You're lying. I actually never, I never think about it negatively, like in terms of my overall performance. I know what you're talking about though. Like I do, like I, it does feel like things take longer to recover. Yeah.

Like I feel aging. I look back five years, I'm like, yeah, I definitely recover slower than I used to. Um, but do I think about it? Like, this sucks. No, I just continue to work on the things that I can work on. I get that's genuine. Do you understand why this person might think that you are afraid of getting older? Yeah, because I'm like Superman and she doesn't like that. She's jealous. That's your perception. I hope she listens to it too. She's like, you're so unrelatable. But you also, you've also done things like

Gary Donia (11:48.792)
you started a hair routine, like a hair care Like you don't wanna lose your hair. You started a recent skin care routine, because you want your skin to look a certain way. You've done some stuff to your teeth. Some of the things that are like, guess, natural aging in the sense that it's not a muscle joint thing. These are just things that- It's vanity stuff. It's vanity Yeah, for sure.

And so you've taken steps to keep that from happening. So then the perception could certainly be, he just doesn't want to get old. And so he's doing all of these things. so you would disagree with that? You know why? Because I never, I mean. Cause that's part of getting older. It's not just physically what can you do physically. You're taking care of those things, right? Like that's one of your goals every day is like, want to move and be strong.

Because when I get older, I want to be able to still do all of these things. That's physical. Like physical from like a movement physical perspective. But then there's vanity physical. Right? Yeah, that's certainly different. And then there's there's other things like your mental state. And like, for instance, one of the reasons I read all the time is because, you know, one of the things I fear the most is is is what you see with people when they start having things like dementia. The mind, the mind losing the mind. That's tough. Like Jessica has very clear instruction.

I won't name what those are right now. Stacey has the same. But if I get to that place, for me, I get it. I'm not interested. This is just my own thing. I'm not interested in that. But I also don't want that just to be an inevitability. If I can do something about it, and I don't know if reading will help with that. I don't know if it's just a genetic thing. I don't know if it's an environmental thing. I don't know enough about it. I do know that the one thing I can do, much like you lifting weights or whatever for my mind, is to keep it active. Totally. It's like exercise.

You must. I think. New things too. it's not just like be busy. You have new connections. learn, learn, learn. Yeah, learn, learn, learn. So I dedicate myself to like a lifetime of learning because I want to. So I fear that. I know for sure I fear that. I Do you feel it sometimes? me afraid of that more than anything is because I don't think I'll even know it happened. Yeah. You know, maybe there's a little, there's a step in there somewhere. Because it happened so slowly. It's not like this thing. Maybe. Like, you know, that's why I would hope that I can recognize it when it's happening, but it's almost like once it's happened.

Gary Donia (14:09.848)
you don't even know what's happened. And that scares me. It's like, oh my God. Like, that's why the instructions have to be clear. It would just be far more low functioning. Yeah. And that's a big part of your identity is like being able to sell problems. Yeah. And if you can't sell problems, So for me, reading is one of the reasons I restarted reading when I did and stick with it and whatever. In the back of my head, it's like, okay, this thing, like,

I got to keep my mind. think in my mind to me is more important to me than my, my physical stuff. And so for me, that's why it's so easy to read all the time where I struggle with like the working out and I struggle with the whatever. But whenever I do struggle with that, look at reading as an exercise. didn't know that. I know that you like learning, but I didn't realize you tied it to some type of like mind health. All of that. Yeah. All that learning, reading, you know, to me it's a version of exercise, but it's just for my mind.

I want to make sure I keep that as long because I've met a lot of older people who physically don't do great, but mentally they do great and they seem a lot happier. Yeah, I agree with that. In general. Yeah, because you can deal with, you can work around like your pain points. Yeah. But if you don't have your mind, you're kind of screwed. Right. So, yeah, I agree with that. So I don't know. So I, I definitely like just speaking on my own behalf, there is some fear of aging for me or

Maybe fear. This is where I'm getting hung up on the fear. Maybe just concern or thought. I notice that I am I'm thinking about it. There's things that I don't want to happen to me. Okay, fine. I'll fully admit to thinking about aging. Sure. So for the person who was there this morning, please pay close attention. fear it. Because you know why you know the differences. I look at my aging and that's why like the skin routine.

the topical hair thing, absolutely has like, I noticed my hair was thinning and okay, I'm aware, however, it's fine. Tip your head to the, Oh yeah. See that? See everybody. It's like, you can see right through it. I'm aware. I'm aware. You need that spray paint. What spray? They have like that hair. It's almost like a magnetic. Yeah. It's like hair spray paint. Yeah. like fuzzy stuff comes out. Dude, if you start doing that, I'm going to be all over you.

Gary Donia (16:27.478)
I'll never do it. You're going to like sit down, like put your head against the wall. You're get up and there's going to be a big black mark. Like Peter, you left your hair on the wall. That's not good. I wouldn't want that. Okay. So I noticed the effects of aging and my response, much like anything else, is like, I wonder what I could do about that. Yeah. As opposed to just like accept it and like hate it. Right. It's like, wonder. I don't know. And then if there isn't, full acceptance. Like that's the only opportunity. It has to be full acceptance. Yeah.

because otherwise I hate myself and that's unacceptable. So I think what you're alluding to is this idea there's passive aging where we just sort of our passengers on the train. That you can do it is what it is dude. And it's just happening to you and then there's active, you know, active aging or engage. What can I do about it? can I do about it? For many things, there is something you can do about it. For a lot of things. For some of them, maybe not. I mean, I can't think off the top of my head what those things might be or whatever, but I know for many of the ones that we're thinking of that we're alluding to right now.

about, we talked about the mind. talked about like, you know, the your ability to move or to be functional or to whatever, like there are things we can do about that. so you'll still decline, like, look, let's be clear, the passive aging that you're talking about is like with biological age, the systems in your body will slowly be worse than what they were like a couple of years ago, right? Yeah, that's like, except that because that is what it is. If you fight it, like in terms of like you you you hate it, then

I'm sorry, but that's just going to cause you mental health, right? Problems. However, you can absolutely say, I'm noticing as I get older, I starting to lose muscle mass. What can I do about it? Well, you can do something about that, right? You can slow the decline in 10 years from now. Will I be fitter and stronger and healthier than I am now? No, but I can certainly slow the rate of decline by doing things about it now, which I choose to do. There's like an intentionality about it. Like you're trying to be intentional about the way that you go, you know, that

to slow that process down so that you can maintain some level of your current state for as long as possible. And I think to boil this down, I care deeply about my health span. I care about how I feel every day as I get older. I don't ever think about my lifespan. I don't think that I actually have much effect. How you think of those two terms, because you just said two different terms and they sound the same. So lifespan is how long I live, when will I die? I don't know.

Gary Donia (18:52.472)
but we don't have as much control over how long we live as we do about how well we live. Meaning like, if I didn't take care of my body for the last 25 years and I did a lot of the wrong behaviors, drank too often, smoked, didn't get enough sleep, high stressful job at the same age that I am today, I'm a very different human being. Very different. And my life experience is very different. My quality of life is probably way worse. And so then what I do is I extrapolate that and I go, okay, well I'm 45 now. When I'm 65,

If I still continue to work on the behaviors that are like beneficial for my health, I know that I'll be in a better place at 65 than I would if I didn't. So I'm obligated to do that because I'm going to be 65 someday and I want to have a good experience then too. So I might as well do all of the things that I can to make that life experience as good and fulfilling as possible. Well, what about the argument that say for some people, like that approach is depriving themselves in this moment.

for a moment that may or may not take place 20 years from now. Did you ever think of it that way? like you make, I know for you at this point, maybe they're not viewed as sacrifices, but for most people, eating healthy can often feel like a sacrifice, right? You're giving up some things that you enjoy, right? So I, for instance, love anything that has the word bread in it. Any dough of any kind, yes. if it's a carbohydrate, you know, whatever, like sugar candy, I love those things. So I'm well aware.

that maybe if I have less of those things, I manage my weight better, I manage my blood sugar better, manage, you know, whatever, like in general, it's probably better for me. I don't have to it all up, if I do better with that. But for me, there's a little bit of deprivation in that, right? There's a little bit of, I like those things. Like, I want to have those things. Like, that's enjoyable for me right now. And so, should I give up this moment for that moment?

Right? Like, how do you get around that? Like that idea of that? Cause I think there's a lot of people like me who would think of it that way. And it's like, well, I don't even know if I'm going to be alive 20 years from now. How often do you eat bread every week? Like, like on purpose? try to eat it every day. It's in the food pyramid. talked about this. The government told me to Peter. And again, bread's not bad, but like the type of bread that you know, that if you didn't eat and you would deprive yourself. Yeah. Right. Like how often do you do that? instance, Friday night, pizza night, pizza dough, Saturday morning, breakfast sandwiches.

Gary Donia (21:16.79)
with like with with the Shoba everything bagel bread so delicious like eggs and whatever. Jessica makes them. My wife. Sunday morning most often breakfast. The same. It's really good. You would like it. Throughout the week not as much bread but there's definitely other you know other things right. So there's like rice with like you know chicken. And again I'm just speaking of like the carbs. Never mind my nightly take fives.

that I have with you. It's like a ritual with your wife. So anyway, so a lot of those things are like, I don't know, could I give them up? Yes, I could give, I could probably give them up or at least reduce them. But it's like this idea of like, well, in this moment, doesn't this moment count as much as the moment 20 years from now? I'm not saying it does or doesn't. I'm just like, do you ever think of it that way? Or do you understand why some people the sacrifice the future for the now. YOLO. Or sacrifice the now for the future. do I think about it?

I think this is maybe so I only have my own lived experience. I'm at a point where like doing those things like so eating ice cream once is great. If I did all the time, I feel worse. Yeah. Yeah. Like in this moment, you feel worse. Correct. Yeah. Like I physically feel worse, right? You just got to train it better. So yeah, I could do more often. Yeah, just I'll teach you how to stick with alcohol. You just got to lean into it. got to into the ice cream. The I would say the same thing too with exercise like so

So does it suck in the now? But like it sucks worse if I don't. Like I require exercise as like a tool for my own like mental health and energy levels. And so like objectively like exercise is good for my future, but it's also good for my now. And if I didn't do it, I feel like I'd personally be way worse now. Yeah, I don't know. I don't feel deprivation at all when I do that. Do you understand how some people do that? Yes, I guess, but I don't relate to it because I don't feel it.

Yeah, I think that's hard. think it's hard for some people, but I think they can probably learn what you just talked about, right? You can learn that the exercise makes you feel better. so you actually in the now too. that's what I mean in the now. It's not just a future thing. You know, the eating thing, I think for some people you can learn better digestion, like right away, like as soon as you start eating cleaner, generally speaking, I think for some, mean, I've known you a while that you went through a stage of pretty bad digestion. No, know. But that's like an outlier thing because my body was like, my body was like allergic to the thing.

Gary Donia (23:38.936)
Yeah, whatever. I'm just saying you couldn't even eat broccoli. That's pretty healthy. Yeah, not for me at the time though. I know you're talking about. Don't forget, I remember everything. I'm aware. know, yeah. Yes, there was a stage where my, so my eating now is probably, I'd say it's probably about 75 % pretty good. know, not quite at 80. Or not quite at 80 or you're 90 that you like to get people to.

But I'd say it's pretty good. There was a time where it was probably like flip flop, where it was like 25%. How long ago? Like when I was heavier. Oh yeah, sure. when I was like right out of grad school and working at a hospital. remember it was like in the Earth. So probably like the mid to late 2000s. It was just mostly trash food. 2000, I graduated in 2001, so probably 2005 to 2010. Awful food. To the point where I had like the worst like digestion ever. Like the kind that like, you know, the commercials talk about like, are you afraid to like...

go out in public because you might have to like run to the bathroom. You know, there's one of those. That's what it was like. It was awful. You were young. It was awful. That's actually one of the reasons. One of the reasons I started to make some changes was because like I said to Jess, I was like, this is awful. Like I can't even go anywhere. Like it would like think it would come on immediately. I feel like it's like awful stomach cramps, you know, and all of a sudden I'd be like, oh my God, like I got to get. And that was directly related to the food that you eat. Yeah. Once I started changing that, like, cause was all basically like fry, you know, fried food, chicken fingers and french fries and like all of that stuff. And my body was just being like, yeah.

like you got to get so so I can relate a little bit to that right so once I started making changes to like you know eating better getting more like fiber and vegetable you know all those things that like that part of it just went away I didn't take any medication I didn't do any of that stuff I just simply said like clearly what I'm putting into me it's not coming out the way I want it to and so I need to change what's going into me versus like go seek out like some kind of medication for that and so but so I think I think people can get there

Right? Where in a sense that they don't view it as separate deprivation, but I think for a lot of people, it's cause we tie a lot of our emotional, you know, happiness. Yeah. To food. Like, know, it's, it's everywhere. It's out of vans. It's when you feel bad, you do, you know, you take the food. Right. so I get in the beginning, you know, you're depriving yourself of like, you're essentially your pacifier, right. Which can be food at times. Like it's amazing. Like for instance, Jessica and I are going down to Nebraska this weekend, to watch our son play hockey. He's playing.

Gary Donia (25:59.84)
junior hockey down there. The first thing we talk about when we talk about going to Nebraska is getting a soft pretzel. It's the food from the German place. Like there's a German bar with amazing soft pretzel. It's the first thing we talk about. You know, in addition to like, I can't wait to go watch Kaden play hockey or whatever. the last thing I think about, but like, I'm not alone. People who go on vacations, especially to the same place every time. So we go to Folly beach every year as a family on the agenda.

is all of the spots where we go to eat. Specifically one and we don't talk a lot about the beach. We don't talk a lot. It's very strange. think. But probably not though. probably, more people probably relate to you than I guess to my perspective. Maybe. I think so. I think so. That's why people think you're unrelatable and I'm a relatable one around here. I also really play into that. into it hard. I make sure everybody knows that I'm like the normal one.

But okay, so going back to like the overall theme, in general, you don't fear getting old. You wouldn't say that's how to answer this person's question today. You're not afraid of it, but you're also not willing to just accept it. I'm not just going to accept what's happening. Yeah. If something I can do, I'm going to do it. I'm not, I'm not allowed to get plastic surgery. I was going to say, is there a line? Yes. Is there a line? I'm curious to know. Cause you've been getting pretty close to the line. Well, I mean, when you came back with those pearly whites, I was thinking like, where

pretty close, we're getting close. I told you, said, if you start looking like Tom Brady. Yeah, yeah, because he clearly did something. He's gone over the top. like as do many people in that situation, they're trying to hold on to like this, this look, like what he looked like, or what they looked like when they're like a certain age and they don't want to allow. Yeah, it's tough. Like for instance, you're you're whitening hair on the side, turn your head sideways. Right? Would you ever do anything about that? Or do you like that? I'm not gonna dye my hair.

So there's a line there. My hair stays the color it is. I mean, I started to bald, so I just shaved my head. You shave and keep your hats on. there we go. It's just gone. It's been like that for a long time. That's it. This is why they made hats, Peter. The first guy who made a hat, definitely bald. It actually, it keeps, you look more youthful with a hat on. I agree. I told somebody how old I was the other day.

Gary Donia (28:22.68)
They said I would have no idea. And I said, and I'm aware. you, you dress like a young person. I dress like a teenager. Yeah. And your face looks great. The maturity of a teenager. Yeah. I don't do any skincare routine. Yeah. You don't put anything on. I barely even wash my face. I literally don't have a washing of my face ritual. Like at night, you know, people like go to their sink and they do this whole thing. Like my face gets washed as part of a shower. Yeah, me too. No, I don't have a face washing ritual. But like, I can't remember the last time I actually like scrubbed my face.

I think the soap just kind of runs over my face. don't actually do like a little with that little scrunchie thing called like a loofah. I have one of those and I do like, actually do like my facial hair. the thing that like women keep in the shower. Yeah. I don't know what it have one of those too. Yeah, but that's cause it's Jess. Yeah. But like men can have it. Yeah, they can. So I do that. But like I don't, yeah, there's no routine. There's no, I do do use moisturizer. Yeah. So I do too. It's mostly moisturizer. My skincare routine is just moisturized dude. It's not like a.

Ah, there's like six steps. No, it's not. Wasn't there like a serum? So it is, but so it's, so it's, I wash my face while in the shower. Yeah. And then it's hyaluronic acid. So first of all, it's not just a moisturizer. I mean, already it's, it's a skin plumper in hydrator. And then it's just a moisturizer and that's it. it's two steps. Skin plumper. I should get that.

Okay, so there is a line no plastic surgery. We're not coloring the hair. Yeah, but we're okay. So we know you're okay with peptides. Yeah. Injecting things into my body. Okay, perfect. I think my line is probably a little bit less than yours. Okay, probably I don't envision teeth whitening. I don't envision some of those other things. But I certainly will am willing to and want to do the things like and I try to.

make sure, you know, like recently I've noticed I felt less, a little bit less mobile, a little more tight through my spine in particular, like just rotation. And so I've been trying to do a little bit more of that stuff. what my clients are doing, like they're like rotational stuff. do it with them more so than I do some of the other stuff with them. because I want to regain some of that or make sure I don't lose more that. I feel like that becomes really just like driving a car becomes harder, right? Trying to turn and look over your shoulder and so yeah, just trying to stay ahead of that stuff and certainly nutritionally trying to be better.

Gary Donia (30:46.936)
Don't be afraid people, but absolutely do something about it if you Be intentional about aging. Maybe not fear it, but be aware of it. think the opposite is like burying your head in the sand and then you wake up one day and you're like, Jesus Christ, what happened I can barely walk. I think that's not great either. Anyway, so for the record, not afraid, but intentional. That's right. All see you.