Hi, I'm A .J. Hoag, the author of Effortless English.
Learn to speak English like a native.
I'm back with a walk and talk.
This is only for my audio podcast. Obviously not video.
It's a special thing, only for people who get my audio podcast. What is the walk and talk?
The Walk & Talk is when I just talk casually about any topic that pops into my head.
So the idea is to give you more topics for language, right?
And a very natural way of speaking.
Sometimes you know with my videos, my videos are, I'm very natural in my English speaking on my videos too but usually my videos is a little more of a presentation meaning I'm talking about a very specific topic I've usually thought about the topic a little bit before I do it and it's a little more organized.
Whereas the walk and talks this one is meant to be you know very very casual I don't really plan them I just think of a topic or a topics and and then i walk around and i talk about them and sometimes while i'm walking new stuff pops into my head and i just talk about that too so it's this is meant to be a very relaxed conversational style of English and also the other thing is my videos my effortless english show YouTube and effortlessenglishclub .com I usually stick to certain kinds of topics.
I talk about English, of course, learning English, I talk about motivation and learning psychology and success psychology and things like that and I do that for a reason, that's the focus of effortless English That's the focus of my courses courses, a power English course, very much focused on success, psychology, help you succeed with English and everything in life and my VIP program even more so.
So that's great, and that's what most people want and that's what I'm passionate about, all great.
But it's also good for your language learning and also just for interest to sometimes just get you know all kinds of just regular daily topics so this podcast and this he's walking talks giving me the opportunity and give you the opportunity to you know listen to English discussions chats language about all kinds of different topics not just success psychology I will talk about that too of course but just anything and finally this is meant to be natural right so I'm walking around and I'm just talking and very naturally right I'm not reading this is not planned out it's not like textbook type
of English where I'm trying to focus on some certain verb tense or some language point none of is just very natural English but hopefully about topics that you might find a little more interesting.
At the very least, it gives you some variety to listen to.
So for all of these reasons and more I am going to do these Walk & Talks.
And finally, one advantage of the walk and talks is they're a little easier for me to do.
You might hear an echo just going into the garage for a the walk and talks are easy for me to do very quickly and in a more relaxed way because I'm not on camera I can move around if my kids come out here I can do stuff I can you know so it gives you more audio input it allows me to give you more right now I'm you know I'm struggling to get one video per week but I can probably do these walk and talks if not every day then certainly several times a week.
And the last thing, I guess, is a little reward for those of you who also subscribe to my audio podcast on iTunes or some or whatever podcasting app you use.
So let's begin, shall we?
I'm talking to you from Indiana.
Indiana. Those of you who have followed me for a while, you know I was, we were living in Japan last year, and then last summer we moved here to America to Indiana, because of my son primarily needed surgery.
And we were planning to this day part -time we're planning to come here and have him you know get checked medically possibly do the surgery here and then and once he recovered we were planning to go move back to Japan but we've changed our mind for a few reasons reason number one is that the medical care for my son was so much better and I talked about that in a previous podcast several a few months ago the other reason is we really quite like the life here especially with kids we have Two small kids, we're 6 years old, twins.
You know we're living out in the country in a nice big piece of land, which my sister owns.
So it's just really nice, my sister invited us out here, and she really wants us to stay here.
My sister has a big house on this land out in the countryside.
And then as part of her land there's also this little small cabin which is where we live.
And we live in the cabin and my sister and her children live in the large house.
But there's just it's just a nice big piece of land lots of woods and trees it's all surrounded by woods so it's like a big we're kind of in the woods and there's lots of you know grass areas.
and it's nice and quiet out here.
It's just a much better environment for kids than the city.
You know, we both like Japan, we like Osaka, but Osaka is a big city and there's definitely a city life and I think with young kids city life is not so great.
Being out here in the country, they just love it.
They're out here digging in the dirt and running around and riding their bikes and and we don't have to worry about traffic or cars or, you know, weird people or anything, we have a lot of privacy here and it's just fantastic.
So country living suits us.
At least for now, we'll see what happens when they become teenagers.
but until then, we're now just planning to stay here.
So now my wife has to, who's Japanese, my wife has to get a green card, going through the immigration stuff so you know a few years ago we had to go through the immigration stuff i had to do it and the kids because we're living in japan and we're american citizens and uh now we've moved to america so now we got my wife has to do it and anyone any of you who've done the immigration process in america you know you know it's kind of a long process it takes we started it last year and there's all these steps you gotta do and so until then we've got to kind of stay in America until my wife gets her
green card so that's where we are it is now spring right April 1st first day of April the a bunch of the trees here on property have flowers that have popped out.
Most of the trees, they're really big trees, we've got big oak and ash trees and black walnut.
Those don't have leaves yet, but some of the other trees, some of these kind of like, I think they're called pear trees, and a few other kinds of trees.
I don't know the names of all these trees.
I need to learn. But anyway, though, they've got these great white flowers that are covered in white flowers now.
It It feels similar to sakura.
The cherry blossoms in Japan.
Of course those are pink.
But it definitely has a feeling of spring now with all these flowers popping out.
A lot of the bushes around the property have leaves that are popping out now.
So definitely a feeling of spring has started.
And I have started my big project for the year.
Recently, I did a show on the YouTube channel about this that how I suggest to stay young and mentally and to keep yourself sharp and to age well and to have long -term growth and success in life.
It's so important to constantly be learning and that at any age and every age to challenge yourself with new things because, you know, kids do this naturally, you can see it if you have kids, you know, they will just explore anything and everything.
They have no fear of being beginners or not being good at something but we also know that, you can look around you see, most adults lose that and they suddenly start worrying about how they look or maybe they're just, excuse me, they're just tired or something and just suddenly they just, they kind of just just keep doing the same thing all the time.
It's totally fine to keep doing things you love and enjoy and or need to do.
But part of staying energetic mentally and staying creative and being engaged in your life and not becoming a boring and bored old person is to keep giving yourself new challenges.
So I like to do it every five years or so.
I like to do something big and just try something that's totally different for me and being out here in the country this time it's gardening I've never really done it I had one little tiny garden when I was in my 20s and but really I've never really done it I've always lived in suburbs or cities and so last fall we did a little tiny fall garden but this spring we're going big.
I've expanded our gardening space like 12 times.
It's 12 times bigger then what we did in the fall and we're gonna do a nice big real garden this year.
We're gonna grow a lot of stuff we're growing tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, corn, beans a bunch of herbs especially for Italian cooking because Italian cooking is my other project for the year.
Got a cookbook and I'm learning to cook Italian dishes.
So I thought well I'm gonna grow, try to grow a lot of the vegetables that I use in the dishes try to grow them myself.
Tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, all these things are quite common at least in the dishes I'm making.
So yeah, I've really tired today physically because the last two days I've been spreading compost so there you if any of you who are you know do you know have done gardening or into gardening or farming but especially gardening I'm not doing we're not doing farming farming is serious right people they do that as a career but we're doing a big garden and you know there are a lot of different methods actually like I said, this is a completely new thing for me.
So, what I always do when I start something new is I just read a bunch of books on the topic.
The first thing I do is start doing tons of research. I start reading lots and lots of books and of course also get on YouTube and find videos on the topic.
It gives you an idea of all the different approaches.
With I've decided to go with one called NODig.
Right? Sometimes you might know, you know, sometimes people do what's called tilling, T -I -L -L.
It's a gardening word for you.
Till means to kind of chop up and dig up the ground, the soil, the dirt, before you plant.
Right? It's a very common method, tilling.
Right? And there's a machine called a rototiller.
That's what we call it in America.
A rototiller. It's got these like little, like it looks like a wheel, but it's got little blades that cut and, excuse me.
And you kind of, you can, you know, you turn it on and it chops up and digs up the dirt.
So that's one common way to do gardens is you rototill, you chop up and dig up the dirt.
from the area you want to garden.
And that has some advantages, it kind of loosens up the soil, loosens up the dirt for your vegetables or whatever you're going to grow.
It chops up some of the weeds which can kill the weeds.
Anyway, it has some advantages, but it also has disadvantages.
For one thing it's kind of hard work to dig up all that stuff and you need a machine to everything to do it, and there can be some other disadvantages where you're you know you're killing a lot of the worms and maybe some of the good stuff in the soil too.
But anyway I, after doing research, I decided not to do that and decided to go with a different method called No -Dig.
And there's specifically a guy in YouTube I found called Charles Dowding, a British guy who's uh he's like of the big guys maybe the big guy who teaches about this no dig method and with his method you don't till, you don't chop up, you don't dig.
Like last fall when we did our little garden which is very small I did something called double dig and I used a shovel and I dug down a dug out maybe 40 centimeters deep and then I took a fork and stabbed down even deeper and then I refilled it again and that's kind of the same idea as a tiller right but good lord it was hard work it's that little garden it was such hard work and I thought I'm not doing that this year there's no way I'm either using machine or we're doing a different method so I found this no dig method Charles Dowding and he's got some great videos and also I got one of his books
so his method is you don't dig at all you leave the soil as it is.
the challenge is that you know we are our garden area has just this really kind of long grass and lots of other plants basically, you know, weeds plants we don't want a weed is a plant you don't want so it could be anything it's just a plant you don't want so um there's a lot of that so you gotta kill those off so what you do what we did is I just got I had a big giant truck deliver compost and they dumped it here next to our driveway and in the last two days with the shovel and wheelbarrow I've been covering our whole garden area with this compost with probably what what three or maybe four inches
would that be in centimeters eight centimeters something like that and compost with compost Compost is decayed plant material.
In other words, like you can take, there's lots of things you could do.
You could, anything, any kind of plant.
You could take grass that you've cut, little chips, little pieces of wood that'll get chopped up and you pile them up, and then what happens?
They start to rot. They start to break apart.
The bacteria and other things and worms start to eat it and it becomes dirt.
It becomes soil. And that's called compost. And it's really good, right?
It's full of nutrition for plants.
So I needed a lot of it.
We have a compost pile here.
So when we get sticks or grass or anything like that, even some food we don't eat that goes bad, we dump it on there.
But I needed way more than we have on here, on our property.
So I ordered a bunch of compost from a company that sells it here.
Luckily Indiana is a big farming state in the middle of America.
There are a lot of farms around here so it's easy to find and they came with a big giant dump truck and dumped a huge pile of compost here where I wanted it and now I've got to spread it around and for two days I've just been shoveling this compost which It's certainly easier than digging deep into the ground, but it was still a lot of work.
I see why farmers have a reputation for being extremely strong.
Physically tough and very strong, and I see why.
It's hard work. But good!
Really good for me.
I feel good. I'm physically tired right now, because for 2 days I've been digging and shoveling this compost. and getting the garden ready.
I still have more to do but I'm taking a break today because I'm just physically tired, I need a break.
Now here in Indiana, we get our last frost. According to the websites we get our last frost is usually about April 10th and I looked at the weather forecast and that looks like that's about right.
So why is that important?
So last frost. Frost is when the temperature at night or early early morning is freezing or below right and frost. Frost is that little bit of ice you'll see on the grass or on the plants you know when it gets cold at night it gets below freezing and it doesn't rain it's not snow, it's not rain it's just that that little bit of moisture that's on the plants and it freezes so it looks like there's a little bit of white maybe on the grass or something right in the morning that's called frost and it can kill your new plants if you start a garden a few plants can handle a little bit of that but a lot
of plants can't. So a lot of plants you've gotta wait until there's no more frost. Okay, there's no more risk, right?
It's not going to go below freezing because if you plant them before that, then there's some frost and it'll kill them.
We had frost last night, so we woke up this morning and I could see on the compost here in the garden, it looked a little bit of white in the morning.
It just dropped down for Celsius.
It probably got down about zero or minus one last night.
That was enough now.
Luckily, we didn't I actually planted six little onion plants two days ago.
And it looks like they survived that little bit of frost. They look like okay.
But I'm not gonna plant anything else for another week.
So I've got one more week to get this garden ready.
I'm gonna spread out the rest of the compost and then there's still weeds under there, right?
That'll help start to kill off some of the weeds.
all that compost smothers them, blocks the light.
But a lot of them, they can still grow through that.
So there's a couple methods you can use.
Because we have so many weeds and this is our first year doing it, I'm going to use black plastic, big sheets of black plastic.
We're going to cover over the soil, cover the compost, the soil that we put down, and then we'll cut holes into the black plastic and plant our plants through those holes so that our vegetables will grow up through the holes but everything else will be covered by the black plastic so it'll kill off all the other weeds and things that will try to grow back up through this compost. This should, from what I've researched I don't know we'll see it's just I'm just reading and researching now trying things this should be the only year we need to do this, just the beginning, because we have, I'm planting
on top of thick grass and weeds.
And after about a year those should be pretty much eliminated and we should not need any black plastic or anything next year.
Next year, according to Charles Dowding.
Next year we should be able to just put down a little more compost, not so much, as we did this year.
And that should be enough.
And then, of course, we'll just pick weeds as we go.
So, exciting. My daughter's waving to me through the window.
Hey! So it's really good, you know.
It's just such a more natural lifestyle than the city life.
You know while the kids were babies and toddlers, very small, you know for their first five years basically we lived in the city in Osaka and it was fine.
You know of course with babies they're mostly just, you're just in the house or if you go out you're just carrying them around and so no big deal.
It was fine. I think we all had… it was, you know, good for us.
but now the kids are so active and running around, and I was already starting to get a little stress trying to find things to do with them in the city.
And now... so it's more relaxing because you know, we just opened the front door and they run outside and they're climbing a tree that's right in front of our house.
My daughter just taught herself to ride a bicycle.
amazing she just uh she of course she's been using the ones with no pedals and she also had one with those extra wheels the training wheels she just grabbed another bike yesterday and started riding around like we were all shocked like wow i remember when i was a kid and i learned how to ride a bike you know my dad had to hold it for me and i had to keep practicing and she just jumped on it and did it it's quite amazing but anyway we've giant trampoline out here I've got a couple other projects I've got to do for the kids in this big yard I've got a like big monkey bars playground called like
a Ninja Course they call it I have to put together which I got it last year I started it and then it got cold I got to finish doing that this spring and And then my other project will be, I'm going to build a new treehouse for them.
They've got a little treehouse right now but it's falling apart.
It's rotten. It's from my sisters...it's from actually before my sister, whoever owned the property, before my sister bought it.
So it's getting a little dangerous, so I've got to build a new treehouse.
So definitely into the country life now.
Building stuff. I'm getting much more serious about gardening this year.
You know, the thing is that the other thing I am interested in besides gardening, I think it's good for the kids.
It's probably the main reason I am doing it.
It's good for kids to learn where food comes from.
And they don't necessarily have to become farmers or something, but you do understand that it's not just from a package in a store, right?
That fruits and vegetables grow, they grow from plants and trees, and of course, cows and chickens and whatever, too.
Oh, get on your bike!
There you go! Impressive!
Wow! Look at you go.
Already better. Everyday getting better.
Ah, amazing! This girl is amazing.
Well done!!! So that's one reason to do gardening.
Number two, I just want to do it.
But number three is just for the health benefits because you know America, the food situation here, it's so much poisonous crap here.
There's so much garbage food that it's definitely much worse than Japan.
So, you know, we try to buy our food from local farmers and small farmers that grow the food in a more healthy way and I would like to start growing more of our own, at least, our own veggies.
We're gonna put in a blueberry bush, too.
That might take a couple of years to produce blueberries, but, you know, it's just...
you can't trust what you get at the grocery store anymore.
Especially in the United States.
I think that... it's getting worse in Europe, it's getting worse in Japan, I don't know about other countries, but America is THE worst. I don't know, maybe Mexico, Mexico's pretty terrible too.
Although well and then again, I don't know because Mexico, you know, and when we went to Mexico The grocery stores are you know, it's garbage just like America, but on the other hand they had more markets more like small markets where you can buy directly from Farmers and things so yeah, America's probably the worst Just I don't even like buying stuff in grocery stores anymore because you know, even the vegetables.
They're brought in from halfway across the world, so how fresh can they be, right?
How good can they be?
And health is so important.
My other focus this year, which, like most people, at the beginning of the year, I decide on some things to focus on.
Number one is some new things, my new projects.
So my new project is sort of gardening and also then just building things here in the land.
But another, just a personal focus, not really a learning project, but just something I want to focus on is energy in terms of health.
We talk about health a lot, but what does it mean?
One thing, it means you're not sick, and luckily, look on wood, I haven't been sick, which is great.
But my energy, I was so stressed out last year because of my son's, you know, upcoming surgery.
It was a surprise that he was going to need another surgery.
And then really the first, the last five and a half to six years with my son because he's just had this, you know, heart issue and he's had multiple surgeries.
He's had three surgeries, three heart surgeries.
and then other hospital stays for tests and things, and just seeing how stressful and difficult it's been for him.
And so I kind of realized, wow, I have been under just gigantic stress for, you know, six years?
Close to six years, five and a and luckily his surgery last at the end of last year went very very well he's doing well and but I feel like I'm just now starting to let go and relax a little bit but all that stress it really starts to affect you physically.
I was exercising I was doing what I you know what I thought I could and it helped some, but I do realize now that, you know, all the stress of the past five and a half, six years has definitely affected me.
And last year especially, I just started feeling really tired.
Like my energy. I just didn't have my normal energy.
I'm usually a pretty high energy person and, you know, all last year just felt tired all the time.
And then emotionally just grumpy, irritable, not patient.
just didn't have the energy to do a lot of stuff with the kids like I was would do before and that's not good you know it's hard to do anything if you don't have energy physical energy first of all and then of course that then effects your mental and emotional and even spiritual energy so So if you don't have that, it's hard to do anything else.
Right? We need energy for whatever your goal is.
It doesn't matter if it's to be a better dad or to learn English or to travel or to build a business.
You need energy. So I decided this year, okay, yeah, health.
What does it mean? Of course I don't want to be sick, but more than that, it's energy.
Right? Feeling physically energetic.
You wake up, you know, I look at my kids, especially my daughter.
She wakes up and she's, boom, a second she wakes up.
She's talking and full of energy and she goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, goes, all day long, until she goes to bed, and it's hard to get her to bed, because she's still so energetic.
Okay. And then, boom, she finally falls asleep, right?
But it is non -stop full energy all day long.
And my son—a little bit less so, because he's had so much, you know, all the surgeries and all these physical things.
So he's not as energetic as her.
But he's still more energetic than I am.
And more my wife. So uh, and he's getting better and better.
He's getting more and more energetic now, too.
So that's what not just being a little healthy—you know, not being sick—that's what like vibrant health we call it vibrant means like vibrating it means energetic health.
That's what we really want right.
Of course if you're sick you want to deal with whatever illness you have. If you've got you know oh your back is always hurting you or uh you know you're always getting colds or the flu or that kind of stuff.
Of course that's that's the basics of health, is to avoid all that.
But really, peak health, high level health, is that plus you're energized all day long you're not laying around, it's not a struggle to do things, exercise becomes easy because you want to exercise, you don't have to force yourself, oh no I gotta exercise, ah you want to cause you're filled with energy, you don't have to force yourself to go study English, Not how you want to do things, you constantly want to be doing things.
You're filled with that energy and you're alive.
And that to me is what full health is.
So that's my focus this year, is, I realize...
Okay, my son, we've gotten through the big surgery here.
It actually went very well, so much better.
I'm so happy we came to America and did it.
Oh, he had such a better experience.
So much less stressful for him, and therefore me.
And now you know, we got through the winter.
He's now fully recovered.
His recovery went really well also.
So, spring is here.
It's the time of renewal, a time of rebirth.
So, this is my focus with nutrition.
And I'm focused mostly on nutrition, and eating.
But eating in a way that produces energy.
And, But I will say that what I've been learning and what experiments I've been trying go against a lot of my old beliefs.
This is again part of lifelong learning, and keeping your mind young and flexible.
Because oh we get so stuck.
Adults, meaning we, meaning adults, get so stuck.
And everything becomes like, you know, rigid, right?
It doesn't move. We get these ideas and we're kind of like afraid to challenge them then.
But things I'm learning, things I'm trying now, with nutrition and eating, goes against a lot of what I have believed for the last few years, right?
Like for example carbs.
I've been very anti -carb.
anti sugar for many years now but you know as I have been diving into you know healing your metabolism and overcoming stress because what happens is when you're super stressed for a long time it starts to kill your metabolism all that stress it does a lot of things it uses up magnesium and uses up here b1 vitamins.
It does a lot of things but it you know basically it starts to affect your physical metabolism.
Metabolism is the energy system in your body, it's how your body uses energy.
Get how your body gets energy from food and uses it.
Okay that's called metabolism.
It's a good word in English, metabolism.
So what happens is when you're under a lot of stress, physical and or mental, especially for a long time, your metabolism starts to slow down.
All the stress hormones, all the stress reactions in your body start to slow your metabolism down, and this is why you start feeling tired.
And then if it goes long enough, you start feeling tired all the time.
You start just generally just, uh, you wake up feeling tired, and then all day it's hard to get going.
You feel mentally tired, you feel physically tired.
It can often lead to weight gain, and I gained a bunch of weight last year.
So to heal that, you know you got to do a lot of things.
Of course you want to try to eliminate the stress or overcome it and luckily my life is now less stressful.
But once you've done that damage, you've got to have to make some adjustments.
So one thing I've been reading about and a lot of people, nutritionists—there's a guy named Ray Peat, I've been researching a lot, and a few others—but the people, the nutritionists, who are really focused on this, you know, energy and metabolism, they are not anti -carb, right?
They're not anti -sugar.
They're actually sugars are not so bad, carbs are not so bad, you just want to get them in a healthy way and they are particularly against, they warn against the dangers of things like bad fats.
Bad fats are unsaturated fat.
Seed oils, these are things that, you know, have not been in human diets for very Things like, I don't know, canola oil and things like, corn oil, soy oil, that soybean oil, that kind of stuff.
And the thing is most processed foods in the grocery stores, especially in America, and most restaurants nowadays they all use that stuff.
They fry with that.
They put it in everything and it destroys your metabolism.
Possibly one of the major causes of all the obesity, all the fatness in America, are these seed oils, other things too.
What's particularly bad is when you combine sugars and carbs with these unhealthy fats.
That combo is deadly, it's terrible.
So it's not so much that carbs are horrible, or even that sugar, especially sugars from fruits and things.
They're not bad by themselves but when you combine, when you put let's say a bunch of sugar with these really unhealthy oils and fats and then you eat them both together that kills your metabolism and it's a recipe for a super fast weight gain.
In fact this is what they do with animals, they want to get them fat in America in the farms these factory farms. If they have pigs let's say and they want the pigs to get really big and fat, they feed them these fats, these oils with grain and it fattens them right up.
If they only feed them healthy oils, like say coconut oil is a good one, coconut oil speeds up your metabolism.
It gives energy, the kinds of fat in coconut oil your body uses very quickly, so it doesn't store it, doesn't keep it.
So they tried, like I can't remember, I was reading, where farmers tried a bunch of experiments where they tried to feed coconut oil to their animals and the animals all got really thin, so they lost fat, that was the opposite.
They didn't want that.
So they're like okay no no coconut oil right and the same with sugar if you just go pure sugar just pure carbs with super low fat you won't gain weight and you'll probably have pretty good energy so it's just you gotta it's it's interesting because like there's all these you know all these years I'm gonna experimenting with different nutrition things there's so much confusion about it and you can and kind of see these trends like every few years, they'll be like fat is bad, right?
That was when I was a kid.
Fat's bad, fat's bad, don't eat fat, right?
And then more recently, carbs are bad, carbs are bad, fat is good, low carb is what you want.
And then when I was a kid it was low fat is what you want, but it's actually, it's not so much. It's not, protein's not bad, fat's not bad, carbs are not bad, and even sugar is not bad.
It's where you get it from, it's the kinds you get.
Right. Like fats, the fats that are good.
Coconut oil, natural.
You know, again, it just goes back to the natural way.
The way people have eaten for thousands of years.
Butter, lard, beef tallow, so fat that comes from beef.
Coconut oil. People have been eating these oils and fats for a very long time.
Olive oil is fine, right?
But it's these industrial oils and fats that are horrible, horrible.
And again, fruit. I mean, fruit is - you could eat - we all know fruit's healthy.
It's filled with great vitamins and minerals, is the sugar from fruit you could eat.
all the fruit you want, right?
So it's obvious that sugar is not necessarily bad.
Eat all the apples and bananas and grapes and things you want to, okay?
Right? Cough, cough, cough, excuse me.
So anyway, I've been experimenting with this And I started eating more carbs and playing around with, so I'm getting a little more carbs eating like things more like just rice Bread but again, it's you know, it's just the industrial thing the bread that we buy at the grocery stores horrible crap They add all this stuff.
They add in these seed oils They add in these industrial seed oils to all the bread that we buy at the grocery store in America.
It's terrible So it's not that the breads bad.
It might not what's the problem?
The problem is the garbage they put into it.
So we got a bread maker and now I get basic organic flour with nothing added to it, right?
And water from our well here on the property.
Yeast, some sugar and some salt and we just make our own bread, And guess what, none of us are having any problems with it.
No problem at all. So, it's, a lot of it is just getting back to our ancestral ways of eating.
It's kind of like I say with books too, you know.
It's like, okay if you want, if instead of all the modern confusion and trying to figure out what studies to follow and, oh, you know, you can't trust the science.
You cannot trust the science.
Don't trust the science, because science is corrupt.
The science, as they say on social media and on TV, is paid for by gigantic companies, corporations.
Okay? They're funding most of these studies that you will find.
So it's impossible to figure out, you know, these studies can be designed to get whatever result they want.
So instead of that, just look.
What have people been eating for a thousand years in your country or your region?
Okay? They've pretty much figured it out already.
You don't have to like try to become a biochemist or a nutritionist. Eat traditionally.
When I married my wife, I was at the time experimenting with all these different diets and so she moved to San Francisco we were living in San Francisco and she started trying these different diet experiments with me.
She got so unhealthy so what did she do to heal she just went back to eating a traditional Japanese diet.
Didn't try to worry about protein this and you know how many carbs am I getting and how much fa -da -blah -blah -blah.
She didn't do any of that.
She just tried to...
she just ate the kind of old -school traditional Japanese style of food as much as she could.
And she got healthier and healthier.
Now unfortunately in order to do this, it means you're probably going to have to cook and make your own food at home.
And you're going to have to be a maniac about...
you have to be very careful about ingredients and shopping.
you can try to find local, organic, natural farms, farmer's markets, right?
The more industrial it is, the more it comes from a big company, the less you can trust it, right?
Because they start adding in.
You don't want them even adding vitamins because a lot of the vitamins they add to say flour for bread, for example, they're not good forms that they're just cheap, crappy vitamins that for many people are not good for them their body doesn't use them well.
So you want things in the most natural form possible and then make it yourself.
Make it yourself at home.
That's the number one place to start.
You know if great great grandparents were eating it it's probably ok probably ok right try to eat like they did that's the best place to start for for health and I'm feeling much better I don't know people haven't even said on video they've noticed that I look more that I see much more energetic I see much more alive and lively again and I feel it I'm feeling much more energetic little tired today from all the gardening the last two days, but overall, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually too even, I just feel a lot better.
I have more energy during the day.
Like yesterday I worked all day in the garden, then I went and started chopping down a bunch of bushes and things and clearing out an area.
I cleaned out the shed over here, did some homeschooling with my kids, so I just i'm like i'm getting more and more energy again i'm getting ideas for the business and for teaching you and i'll talk about that in a minute some things we got coming especially our social site so all this is good i'll share more details about what i'm doing to heal my metabolism to energize myself I will say the one simple test I'm using, there's a simple test, to test your metabolism.
How good is the energy system in your body?
And that is, you don't need to do any crazy blood tests and all this crazy stuff.
All you need is a thermometer.
Just take your temperature in the mornings.
When you first wake up, immediately when you first wake up, you can even put it next to You wake up, put the thermometer in your mouth and measure your morning temperature.
That's called your basal metabolic rate.
It just means that's kind of your basic metabolism, your basic temperature after sleeping all night so what's a good what's a good temperature so you want your temperature to be in the morning it's gonna actually going to be lower in the morning right you've just been sleeping all night so it should be somewhere between ninety seven point eight to ninety eight point two fahrenheit that's Fahrenheit you that I can't remember what it is Celsius 36 something anyway just get on just get online get on the computer and on the internet and just you can convert it to f to c Fahrenheit to Celsius so fahrenheit
you want it to be again 97 .8 to 98 .2 that range If your temperature in the morning is that range, then that's good.
That means, okay, there's nothing that's too terribly wrong.
You're pretty good.
The second thing you want to do with your thermometer is then later, a few hours later after you've been awake, maybe you've had some breakfast, you've been moving around, you want to take your temperature again a couple of times in the day — late morning and early afternoon, maybe late afternoon — and then you want your temperature to go up.
Right? active you're moving so your temperature should go up again Fahrenheit you want it to be 98 .6 or more or higher 98 .6 or higher not too high you don't want it to go probably 99 .6 would be the highest if you're going higher than that then your it's your metabolism going too fast but most people that's not a problem so So again, what you're going to notice, what's interesting is you will notice is that you eat different foods it will affect your temperature.
Like I'm taking my temperature every couple hours because I'm curious and I have noticed, I have proven it myself, that when I take coconut oil, like about 30 minutes later, my temperature rises, my body gets warmer.
It's producing more energy.
Right? I've noticed that with certain carbs, like for some people like rice and bread, those Those are called starches, and maybe not so good, but I've noticed I actually do better with some of those because my temperature will go up a bit after I eat that.
So, anyway, you can play around.
You'll notice and this will start to give you an idea of like how good is your metabolism or not.
If your body is constantly cool, it's not getting those ranges.
It's maybe a little cooler in the mornings or maybe it doesn't really go up much during the day that's a sign your body is not creating energy very well.
And you need to probably start looking at your diet and what you're eating.
And especially if you're not feeling very energetic.
Because it just feels you'll get so much more done you feel better, your mood's better, everything's better when you feel energetic, when you feel energized.
And that's why, in my courses even, in Power English in my VIP program, even my business English course for pronunciation, I talk about energy, energy, energy all the time, because you have to have it.
It's a lot of work to master English.
You want to speak like a native speaker.
You with very nice, clear, great pronunciation, you know, you want to be a top -level English speaker.
You need energy! It's going to take a lot of energy to do all the courses and all the audios and all the listening and reading and practice that you must do.
Okay? You know, I joke!
I say, to speak effortlessly requires a lot of effort.
right? You can't be lazy.
It's not lazy English, it's effortless English.
Effortless is the result meaning when you talk, when you speak English, it feels effortless.
You're not trying, you're not thinking, you're not analyzing, you're not worrying about grammar. It all comes out easily and effortlessly.
That's the result you want.
To get that result, you have to do a lot of listening.
You ideally do my power English course, my VIP program at least and you don't do them in a low energy way you follow the instructions and the method that I teach you and that means high energy high energy I tell you it before every lesson your shoulders back head up right you shout your answers you've got a strong energetic body and voice every time that you're practicing English listening to English doing English lessons right energy energy energy, that's how you get the great results.
That's how you become an effortless English speaker.
And this is true in every other part of your life where you want excellent results, right?
I see... I could tell you as a dad, to be a great dad, it requires so much energy.
I mean, it's way more difficult than learning a language or anything else.
Okay, I mean, I'm I'm I'm doing much better now, but I still I am struggling to keep up with my kids Because they're just it's non -stop They wake up in the morning and then until they go to bed It's just they constantly want to do things they constantly asking me questions.
They're constantly making requests they're constantly going going going going going and you know, that's the standard and And yeah, I admit, many days I'm just like, Oh my God, I just can't do it.
Ah, right? But it's strong motivation for me to keep working on this important topic.
There's an important area of my life which is get my energy back.
Okay, you need that too.
If you're a parent, you know, you need it.
You want to start a business or you already have a business and you want to grow it, tons of energy.
I know when I started Effortless English, Like the first 10 years, I was, you know, thinking about the business, working on the business, doing things for the business.
Like, way more than 8 hours a day, it was constantly all the time, high energy.
Go, go, go, go, go.
And if you just wanna enjoy life, you wanna enjoy life, you wanna feel great, you need that energy.
and there are a lot of psychological tricks we can use, and I teach them to you in my courses, and I teach them to you in my podcast. Those are all fantastic.
They work, but they're a little more short -term.
For them to work long -term, you must solve this problem.
You must get your metabolism, your physical energy systems, working at the highest possible level, okay?
And you've got to do this your whole life.
Yeah. You know, a lot of 16 -year -olds have tons of energy, although, sadly, these days a lot don't.
I can't tell you how many tired, lazy teenagers or people in their 20s that I've met.
It's kinda sad. When I was young, there was nobody.
It was people who were 22, 23 years old.
Everybody was high energy.
Nowadays, a lot of kids that age, a lot of people, young adults that age, they are always tired and lazy.
Imagine what they are going to be like when they are 40.
Good God. I'm terrible.
Ok, so you gotta solve this problem and if you don't I promise as you get older it's gonna get worse.
Ok so now I'm 57 and I was doing ok until I hit this period of my life this five -and -a -half six -year period of high high stress which I could not control you know, worrying about my child and just a very tough and you know yeah now I'm having to restart to heal to rejuvenate my metabolism my physical energy systems. I know all the mental tricks I know the emotional tricks I can do those things but if you're physically fatigued and exhausted if your metabolism is just slow and not working those mental tricks they just won't work for you long term.
They can work for a moment like if you got to go give a speech on stage you can jump around and do all these mental tricks and emotional tricks and yeah you'll do fine but then you go home and you're totally exhausted afterwards and the next day you're going to be exhausted maybe the next week you're going to be tired ok so to have that energy like my kids or like you know small children where it's just constant all the time every single day and to keep that energy when you're 57 when you're 67 when you're 77 or more you're gonna have to make some effort you're gonna have to really be You're disciplined
about your eating. You might need to take supplements, some supplements if you already have problems. You might have to fix some problems there, and sometimes that will require taking some extra vitamins or minerals or herbs or something.
Still better than medicine.
But you gotta do it.
It's so so important.
This is the foundation for all, okay?
Because it makes everything else easier.
Everything else becomes easier, your spiritual life and practice, your family life, your business and career life, your English learning or your educational life, exercising, if you got a slow metabolism, if you've got low energy all the time, it is really, really, really hard to make yourself exercise every day.
Oh, I got to go to the gym again today or go for a run or whatever you do.
It doesn't matter, it's like you got to, you're trying to force yourself every day and it is very, very tough.
It requires so much willpower.
But when your metabolism is going, right, you're generating energy, your body temperature nice and warm all day maybe even a little little above average and it's so much easier you want to do it you want to move your body I didn't have to motivate myself to come out here and and dig and work in the garden and do all this field work I wanted to do it I felt energized the whole time I've been doing kettlebell exercises now so much easier last year I tried to make myself do it it.
I tried to make myself to start a strength program, start doing pull ups and push ups and some kettlebells.
I couldn't make myself do it.
I would do it I would do it for a couple days and then uh I would just stop.
I'd get too tired and after you know a week or two weeks I just would stop doing it again.
Now I've been doing it for several weeks because why?
Because my energy is getting better because of my eating, because I'm healing my metabolism, and I am taking some supplements to heal certain things, but because I'm doing so much better I've got so much more physical energy, my metabolism is better.
I just have a lot more physical energy to use.
Because of that, it's much easier to exercise.
Now I'm doing this kettlebell program, and I've been doing it consistently for several weeks.
Starting to notice my strength is getting better excuse me my throat's getting dry from talking so much i need some water anyway so doing exercise now i want to do it and if there's a day where i feel tired like today because we're working hard the last two days.
I just take a little break, a little rest. I still have good mental energy, still feeling good.
I listen to my body, take a rest. Tomorrow, do some more kettle bells.
Life is easier when you've got energy.
And when you don't, everything in life is a battle.
Everything in life becomes a fight, a struggle.
So I'm telling you, focus on this!
When you think of health, people are just too, they're not specific enough.
You know, people think health, they think of how they look.
Ahhh, I won't be fat, I'll look good in the mirror, or I'll have great abs, or...
Or they'll think of some athletic performance.
Like, ah, I'll be able to lift the big heavy weight, or I'll run a marathon. I've done those kind of goals.
But the truth is, it's still possible to run a marathon, but then feel tired a lot.
It is possible. I mean, you'll feel better than some fat person who never exercises.
But you can still be kind of fatigued.
The same goes for like being, you'd be a great big power lifter and lifting big, heavy weights.
But then in between here kind of you know, you just don't have much energy, you wake up and you feel kind of tired.
You got to push yourself to go to the gym.
So I believe that the number one goal, the foundation of health, and fitness, should be energy.
Focus on this first. Not on how much you can lift. Not on how far you can run or cycle.
Not on how much you weigh.
Not on how good you look in the mirror or in a swim suit.
None of that. Energy.
And you can measure it with a temperature, with a thermometer, to confirm, but you'll know it.
You'll feel it. Okay.
Your number one health goal should be every single day you wake up, you feel good.
And then very quickly, you get a little water, juice, breakfast, whatever, and then boom.
You feel good, you feel energized, and you have that feeling of high energy all day long until you go to bed.
And that's the standard of good health, and decent fitness too.
Get that first. Then, on top of that, then you can start to add your other goals, your athletic goals, your physical goals.
Okay, I want to lose 10 kilos now, because I'm a little fat.
Or I want to increase my bench press.
or I want to do a triathlon, whatever it is, that's fine.
But get the energy first, because then your training for those specific things will be so much easier once you have solved this issue of energy, energy, energy.
And, of course, the second reason is then when you focus on this energy issue first it improves every area of your life not just the physical right it will improve your English learning guaranteed it will improve your relationships it will improve your job performance it will improve your happiness you'll just feel better just being a better mood most of the time So get that first, and then do the other stuff.
As you want. Alright, well this has been a pretty long walk and talk.
It's a beautiful day.
I'm going to go in now, it's what, 3 in the afternoon, I'm going to go in and play with my kids the rest of the day.
I hope that you will acquire this fantastic level of energy, that you're going to feel great that you're gonna feel energized that you're gonna feel fantastic all the time that life will become exciting for you!
Lots of love to you!
Check out my website effortlessenglishclub .com effortlessenglishclub .com I'll see you next time.
Bye for now!
