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Transcript
- 08:45 General Leigh’s General History
- 33:02 Leigh Lowery’s diet and exercise routine
- 40:40 The Obesity Epidemic
- 44:41 Where to find Leigh Lowery
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the live to 110 podcast. I am your host Wendy Myers and you can find me on www.myersdetox.com. Today I’m really excited to be interviewing Leigh Lowery of Generalleigh.com. Leigh is the new Live to 110 podcast co-host. I finally found someone after Cate, It took a little while but I think Leigh is going to be a really good fit for the show because she is a personal trainer and a fitness competitor so, she’s going to be kicking your butts into shape today.
Leigh Lowery: That’s right. Haha.
Wendy Myers: But actually I wanted to thoroughly introduce you guys to our new co-host and do a full show with her because she has a lot of valuable information to share with you about fitness and how she stays in shape.
But first I have to do a little disclaimer. Please keep in mind that this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The Live to 110 podcast is solely informational in nature. Please consult your health care practitioner before engaging in any treatment or fitness regime we suggest on the show.
If you’re interested in shedding a few of those holiday pounds, I just put a new and improved version of my Live to 110 by Weighing Less eGuide on the site. So if you want to learn more about the latest science on weight loss or The Modern Paleo diet, which is my version of Paleo, go to myersdetox.com and sign up for my free 35-page Live to 110 by Weighing Less e-Guide.
I’m also really excited to announce that I’m finally done with the rough draft of my first book The Modern Paleo Survival Guide. I wanted to write this book to show everyone how to take Paleo to the next level. This book is all about surviving in our modern world. It’s not enough to simply eat a Paleo diet to be healthy. We need to take it to the next level. We need to be eating the most nutrient dense foods allowed on the Paleo diet. This book has millions of tips on how to choose and cook the most nutrient-dense foods for maximum nutrition, yet sadly many foods that were very healthy in Paleo times are not healthy today due to toxins and contamination in our modern food supply. So I’ll let you know how to navigate these toxic foods and more importantly, the book is about how you can eat the healthiest Paleo diet in the world but you won’t live a long disease-free life unless you detox from heavy metals and industrial chemicals that plague our modern environment. No one is an exception to the rule. So I have a chapter called “Detox or Die” in the book. That’s a little dramatic but it goes into exactly how and why you need to detox. So that’s the book in a nutshell. You can look for that for sale on myersdetox.com hopefully in March 2014 if I play my cards right. Haha. These always take a lot longer than you think but the goal is in March 2014.
So today I’m thrilled to introduce the new podcast co-host Leigh Lowery aka General Leigh on the show. She had a former life as a CBS television advertising executive but she cast aside her career to follow her true passion, fitness. She’s now an NASM Certified Personal Trainer. She’s also ventured into the world of fitness competitions and so far she’s won three fitness competitions and counting. You can find her on her site generalleigh.com and on Facebook @followmyfitfoods. So Leigh how are you?
Leigh Lowery: I’m awesome. I’m really excited to be here today with you and on the podcast.
Wendy Myers: Well, I’m really happy that we were introduced by our mutual friend, my gyrotonic instructor, Danielle Litman. She’s really awesome. How do you know her?
Leigh Lowery: Danee and I met in college. It’s so funny, the way that we met was we both had a love for hip-hop. At that time way back in the day no one knew of who Outcast was. So I remember I was walking by this dorm room and I heard Ain’t No Thang But a Chicken Wing and went, “I need to know who that is.” and I walked in and there was this really beautiful girl who talked like a dude and I thought this is a cool chic, so we made friends and we found that both of us danced growing up and we would go downstairs in the basement of the dorm that we lived in and we’d make up dance routines and take ‘em out to the clubs. We thought we were hot but I see now that we were a little bit dorky.
Wendy Myers: I love that. That’s actually always been one of my dreams, to do a little diddy on the dance floor and clear the floor.
Leigh Lowery: Oh yeah it’s like Night at the Roxbury.
Wendy Myers: Dancing and singing. I really want to get her on the show to talk about gyrotonic because I know most people don’t have any idea what that is. It’s a fitness routine that you can do. It’s like Pilates with a different machine. We’ll get into that on that show.
Leigh Lowery: With a little rehabilitation to it, it’s wonderful.
Wendy Myers: Well why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and what drew you to fitness?
Leigh Lowery: Well just a little bit about myself. I’m Houstonian originally.
Wendy Myers: Me too.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, and so we have that in common I thought that was really interesting. I’m drawn to Texans and now my family lives in Dallas where I grew up. In high school I was a soccer player and a dancer and I absolutely loved sports and I ate whatever I wanted. I literally lived on carbohydrates and I weighed a great amount. I looked fabulous and I didn’t realize it took what it took when it came to sports to keep my body the way it was eating what I was eating. So as I went on to college, I went to University of Arizona where I met, as we talked about, your Gyro teacher Danee and I really stopped doing anything. I kept my body in shape for about a year but after that I really started to lose my shape. I think I told you a little bit and I’ll get into this later in the podcast, but I needed to find a quick fix to get skinny and I didn’t know how to do so and I was introduced to some things like Ritalin and Adderal and so I was going the wrong way about it for many years of my life.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, There are many people cheating their way to thin.
Leigh Lowery: Cheating their way and it’s just like anything that you do that’s instant gratification. It has no lasting results and it typically has a lot of negative effects as well. I spent many years of my life living that way and what drew me back to fitness after a long career in advertising was the passion that lived inside me to really feel the way I felt when I was in high school, to get that body back that I always wanted. But really it was about health and well-being and watching those around me really not being able to keep it together and have long-term healthy lifestyles. I wanted that so bad and I was willing to really do whatever it took to find out how to do so.
Wendy Myers: So where did you get the nickname General Leigh? I love that because whenever I sought out a personal trainer I’ve always wanted someone that had a General-like drill sergeant mentality. Like get my fat ass into shape. Whip me shamelessly how I deserve, I love that nickname.
Leigh Lowery: It’s perfect. It’s very fitting. My sister is about ten years younger than me and she named me General Leigh because I was bossy and I like to tell people what to do. I think for years I was just telling people what to do with no aim or direction. It was just what I wanted them to do and now, luckily, like you said, people find it to be appealing because they know that I’m going to whoop their butts into shape and that they can follow my direction and obviously I have the guts to put that name on myself and use it so I better stand behind it, and I do. Haha.
Wendy Myers: Haha, So tell us a little bit about your history like when you worked at CBS.
Leigh Lowery: I did. I was a dance teacher in Miami when I left college in 1999, I moved to Miami and I became a dance teacher at Arthur Marie dance studio teaching salsa, rumba, merengue, swing. I wasn’t that good at it but I was still teaching it to people and I remember I was scraping quarters out of my car trying to just get to the job, wasn’t making a lot of money. It was pre-Dancing With the Stars so it wasn’t really that popular. It was like old folks only and my mom said, “You know you’re either going to have to come home because I’m not going to wire you any more money or you’re going to stay there and you’re going to figure it out on your own. I needed to use my communications degree. I actually had a friend and they had worked at CBS and said, “You should come over here because they are hiring a bunch of kids in advertising, really young right out of college and see if you can make it. Cut your teeth.” And I did and I ended up having a fourteen-year career with the same company by way of Dallas and then Miami and then Los Angeles and it was wonderful. I was in management, I was in advertising sales and I was also in production so I’m pretty well-versed across the board. I loved it for many things.
Wendy Myers: So what propelled you into fitness? At what point did you say I’m ready to do a complete career change and why?
Leigh Lowery: I think I spoke to you a little bit earlier pre-podcast about one of the reasons that I got into fitness was through sobriety. In 2007 I decided that I needed to stop doing and living the way that I was living. I really was trying to get that quick fix of being skinny and whatnot and I had a lot of negative consequences due to drinking and honestly drugs as well and even though I had a great job I could maintain the appearance but inside my home I was dying inside. Something inside me, through sobriety, came about and that was a recognition that that little piece in me from my high school soccer career where I found success, wanted to come back out.
I think I used running and just going back to the gym once a week as part of that healthy regimen along with my sobriety and then it grew from there. I saw that it gave me self-esteem. I saw that I was achieving things truly that had long-term great effects in my life and so really that’s how my beginning of fitness re-entering my life started to expand and now it’s 2013 and it’s certainly expanded quickly. I was at my job at CBS for most of this so not until May of last year did I actually fully leave the job. I’m not saying that I have this huge stability underneath me but I have always known that if I take the risk and I jump, knowing what I want, the net always appears. That’s really been the case. I mean you came into my life pretty quickly and it’s so interesting. And winning these competitions that we’ll talk about in a second.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’ve thought about that too, that you I guess have made a decision that you wanted to go in to fitness and I was talking to Danee about how I needed a new podcast co-host but I don’t know anyone that has their own website and that’s really passionate about sending their message out into the world about how to be healthy. She said, “I know someone. She’s staying in my house.” Haha. I said, “Perfect! I want to meet her.” I think it’s a really good fit. I think I can tell you’re very very passionate about fitness and you really want to help people and get that message to them “if you want to get healthy this is how you do it, let me show you how”.
Leigh Lowery: The other part is if you have something in your heart, follow your passion, follow your dream and I think that people so much stifle themselves with ideas of social norms. Even if it’s things from your past, what you think your mom wants for your life and I did that and it wasn’t her fault it was mine. I was the victim of my own choices and now I feel so freed up because I’m really truly following the path. So, it’s awesome! It’s really awesome.
Wendy Myers: So at what point did you get sober and you decided “Okay, I’m going to start working out.” What led you back to the gym for that first time?
Leigh Lowery: Oh my gosh, I was so intimidated by the gym the first time I went back. There was a boy and typically if you look at any path in my life there’s a boy attached to why I started doing what I was doing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah every time I’ve gotten in shape it was because of a boy, too.
Leigh Lowery: Like, “’Oh, you work out?” “Do you work out, Leigh?” “Oh, yeah totally.” “Okay, take me to the gym.” And I look at the machine and I have no idea what to with this thing. I can’t even remember what I was telling somebody the other day. I think I was doing shrugs which is an exercise for your traps on a chest machine and doing it the wrong way. I’ve made a fool of myself many times but I did it with confidence so no one knew.
Wendy Myers: I made a fool of myself with my hot pink weightlifting gloves that I got at Urban Outfitters. Hahaha.
Leigh Lowery: I think that’s hot. I think that’s great. But I remember that and I say this to everyone, I think that fear is the biggest factor in most people’s lives when it comes to getting back into the gym. Especially us women. Just personally, this woman was intimidated by the machines. I was intimidated by the whole weight rack where all of those big, meathead looking guys were. I didn’t know how I was going to insert myself and do something right and I was scared. But what I did was I went to bodybuilding.com and I started watching videos. I was like, “I’m going to watch a video of how somebody uses this machine and I’m going to go do that tomorrow.” I just challenged myself one little thing at a time. I didn’t try to take giant steps. I took baby steps forward.
Wendy Myers: So why weight lifting?
Leigh Lowery: It started actually with cardio for me but I did know just based in my past that if I was just doing endless amounts of cardio, I wasn’t seeing the results. Some of these women that actually had tone to their body I was watching and observing what type of body I wanted. I just saw that every woman that I wanted what they had typically was lifting some weights. I just didn’t ever think I could do it and that’s what I ended up doing. That’s what I want and I started looking for the people that I wanted what they had and following what they were doing. That’s why I went to weight lifting.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I used to work with a personal trainer for many many years. I lifted weights a few times a week and I really loved the results because you really have to push yourself to the max and I love how Arnold Schwarzenegger puts it, “You feel like you’re cumming.” [in Arnold Schwarzenegger accent] Haha. You have to feel that muscle burn and I’m not quite getting that with Pilates or Gyrotonic. I know that I need to get back to that because I really do love weight lifting. I have a long history since I was 20 years old, even when I was 15, I started going to the gym lifting weights. Then when I was 20 to 30 I got a personal trainer learning all the different kinds of techniques and whatnot. I’m getting a feeling that I need to get back to it and I think it’d be fun if we shot some videos of you kicking my flabby butt all over the gym.
Leigh Lowery: I really do believe in all forms of training. I love to weight lift because I love the actual results that I can see on my body but I think it’s very important to have cardiovascular health. I do body-weight exercises, I do everything, I do cardio barre and Pilates myself so I make sure I really keep it well-rounded because I like the results of all the different formats but weight lifting is my love. That’s for sure.
Wendy Myers: I think I need to rediscover my past love. Haha.
Leigh Lowery: We’ll do it together.
Wendy Myers: Clearly I’ve stuffed my love into a box. I’m doing a lot of writing, sitting around and eating chocolate croissants and things like that. Okay, back to you. What’s the most common question you get from people like clients and at the gym and things like that?
Leigh Lowery: I get a couple of questions. It’s so funny. One of the questions I get is, “How do I get your butt?” which I think is the funniest question. I’ve worked on my tush for a really long time; I’m going to tell you the truth. Women, we love those gluts. Everyone wants to have those really rounded, nice gluts and I’m not saying I have the most amazing rounded gluts, but I have been working on them for a while. So that’s the funniest question I get. It’s like, “I just want your butt.” I’m like, “Well, we got to do a lot of other things, too.”
Wendy Myers: What do I have to do to get your butt?
Leigh Lowery: I get that question all the time, which I love. The other question that I often get is really just like, “How do I get fit, Leigh?” or “What’s a great diet plan for me?” or “What should I do?” I just get this very generic “What should I do?” and I can sense, based on my own, I remember being in the beginning of my fitness carrer, it’s really desperation. People are desperate for results. They want them quickly. They want them now. As I said, there’s no instant gratification in this world. If it does come, it will also go away as quickly. It burns out quick. It takes time but it doesn’t take that long. That’s the great thing. You can do it but it is one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, really building up the muscle fibers. You want to make sure that you do it right, that you’re not prone to injury. Not every person is the same. There is not a diet plan that says, “Okay, I’m going to give you this many calories a day.” and I can just send that out to everybody. Everyone works and operates differently. I wish I could just give everyone the same, “Here’s what you need to eat everyday and here’s what you need to do in the gym and you’re going to look just like you want.” but everyone is different.
Wendy Myers: Have you worked with clients in the past doing personal training?
Leigh Lowery: I have worked with people in the past and what I was telling you, that it’s important to me is now I’ve really changed from working one on one with a lot of clients. I really got into working with others besides myself because of my own personal family. My mom and a lot of my family members have obesity. My mom is starting a fitness regimen actually because of me which is awesome. She’s starting this week. That’s why I started to train others. Now I have to distance a little bit from training others more into videos and my products in general. You’ll be able to watch me workout. Learn machines like I was talking about. One of the things I’m going to do is start taking the audience into the gym with me so they can view how I use a machine so that they’re not intimidated. I want to help people get over those fears like I had to get over those fears.
Wendy Myers: You have a Youtube channel, right?
Leigh Lowery: I do. I have a Youtube channel and I have a bodyweight exercise video on it right now.
Wendy Myers: What’s that called?
Leigh Lowery: “44 body weight exercises for women”. It’s actually for everybody so anyone can do these exercises but the contest that I had entered with that video was for women specifically.
Wendy Myers: I watched it and I thought, “Dear God, how will I ever be able to do that?” Haha.
Leigh Lowery: Some of the exercises I actually think, “You know what, don’t do that one.” but I did it for the video because I wanted to win. But there are lot in there that are amazing. You can do them. We’re going to get you up to speed and you’re going to do some of those but some of them are quite challenging. It was definitely at an advanced video.
Wendy Myers: What’s your Youtube channel?
Leigh Lowery: It’s under Leigh Lowery. You can just go under Leigh Lowery or General Leigh and you will find me on Youtube.
Wendy Myers: Okay. In the future you’re going to do some fitness videos?
Leigh Lowery: Yeah. So right now, I have a friend of mine who’s in production. He wants to do a series with me so I’ll be doing a series on how to use 10-pound weights. Because of my age, I’m 37 years old, I have a lot of friends who are married with 2 kids at home. They can’t make it to the gym so I really want to help them get a set of 10-pound weights in the house, maybe get a kettle ball that’s 20 pounds, and work with them on how to do that along with body-weight exercises incorporated so you’re getting that cardiovascular in there as well. I’ll be doing a video series on how to use 10-pound weights in your house for women with kids, if you can’t make it to the gym. Then I’ll also be taking people inside the gym and working through different machines. So whole routine on legs, whole routine on that big booty that we’re talking about, and I always say, the guns show, getting those biceps pumping.
Wendy Myers: What about 2-minute abs?
Leigh Lowery: 2-minute abs. It’s so funny. I don’t even work my abs. I rarely work my abs because you get abs when you’re doing all the other stuffs so I rarely even do ab exercises. Abs are made in the kitchen, that is the truth. It is totally the truth. What you’re eating is a direct reflection of what your stomach looks like so if you can’t see your abs, that’s typically because of your food. It’s your diet.
Wendy Myers: Wheat belly.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah and listen. We all put a little bit of a holiday layer on, even myself.
Wendy Myers: Me too. I definitely did. I put a layer on top of a layer.
Leigh Lowery: I like to add a little bit of love for the winter. Haha
Wendy Myers: So how do you want to help others with fitness? What are your aspirations?
Leigh Lowery: My goal from the beginning, we talked about my fit food blog on Facebook and the videos that I’ve been doing, is to help people become less intimidated. I also have a pretty big fan base of women who are over 30. I always say it’s like getting a second wind. I’m more fit now than I was in my 20s. I really did not believe that that was possible and I want women to know that whether you have children, a full-time job, your home, you just can’t get off the couch, that you can, that all of this is possible and that you can find that better self within yourself and we’re going to bring it out. To me, and to men too, it’s not just for women, but from a personal standpoint, I have so many women who really link to me because of the fact that I overcame alcoholism. I was overweight and I hadn’t worked out in 10 years. So there is a real direct relation to that vulnerability and knowing that I overcame it and so can you.
Wendy Myers: I really identify with what you said, how you’re really in shape in high school like many of us were, and just did a ton of activity. Then you still think that you’re in shape and then one day you wake up and you’re 30 and you’re like, “What the hell? What happened?” Your hormones are out of whack and they’re starting to go downhill after 30, 35 when you have a kid, for many women. Then you’re like, “Okay, how do I get back there?” or “Can I ever get back to my high school figure?”
Leigh Lowery: It seems so unachievable. My family calls what I went through, ‘The khaki pants phase’. It was 10 years long. Because I wore these big khaki pants, no pleats, they were about 5 sizes bigger than I am now, and big sweat shirts. I didn’t feel good. I didn’t even wear makeup. It’s just everything about me said I don’t feel good. Now I’m wearing purple leg warmers like I think I’m 20 years old or I’m Olivia Newton John all of a sudden. But I feel amazing. That’s what I want for anyone who’s listening. I want you to feel amazing inside and outside. That’s the goal.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s really surprising that the more I learn about fitness, I know quite a bit, but when you really get down to the nitty-gritty of it, you don’t really have to do that much. You have to do short intense bursts. I talked to Abel James, one of the number 1 podcasters, a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about how he doesn’t really take a whole hour at the workout. In my mind I always thought that I’m not even going to bother if I don’t go for an hour or even an hour and a half. I used to not even bother if I couldn’t do that but you really can get incredibly effective results by just working out for 5, 10, 20 minutes really intensely.
Leigh Lowery: High intensity interval hit training is really popular right now. I absolutely recommend it to anyone especially people who don’t have as much time. A lot of people think that because I’m fit now and muscular, that I spend hours or the whole day in the gym and I spend an hour a day, 5 days a week. That includes my cardio. I do about 2 sessions of cardio a week for 30 minutes. It’s pretty much walking. You see some people who spend hours and hours on those machines and it’s really not necessary.
Wendy Myers: That’s what I did. After I had my baby I was up to 200 pounds. When I was in high school I was at 122. That was like a whole other me I’m carrying around. Just that should’ve gotten me in shape. So I was like, “Okay, I need to start working out.” and I literally worked up to the point where I was working out almost 8 hours a week with just me entering along. I just lost a little bit of weights, a little bit of yoga.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, not keeping that heart rate up.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, a little bit of walking, and it just wasn’t doing it. I had a thyroid problem too. It was definitely a roadblock to weigh loss. But I was just going about it all wrong with the whole hours and hours and hours of workout. You don’t have to do that.
Leigh Lowery: Nope, you do not.
Wendy Myers: You’re doing fitness competitions.
Leigh Lowery: I am.
Wendy Myers: Can you talk a little bit about that? I just sent out a newsletter probably a month ago about how you’re entering into bodybuilding.com…
Leigh Lowery: Spokes model competition. Yeah, it’s so funny. I feel like the Universe sometimes brings you exactly what you need for inspiration and motivation. Hopefully this podcast will be that for somebody. I’ll never forget the day that T-major, he actually trains multiple forms of our military at a base, I believe, close to Afghanistan, and he had created a video called 44 body weight exercises. I remember my trainer posted it on the site. This guy does back flip burpees. If you don’t know what that is, Google it or go watch this video. I watched this video and it made me high-excited. I was on the top of my chair. I watched it 500 times at least.
I couldn’t get over what this guy was doing. I took it to my trainer and I said, “We’re going to do this.” and he started laughing because it’s a back flip burpee. I can’t even do a cartwheel but I was bound and destined. I was determined that this is what I’m going to do and he said, “Alright if you want to do this, let’s do it.” Well, I started working out a little bit harder with him. He just gave me all the motivation I needed. It’s so weird, I signed up for T-majors newsletter just like you have a newsletter. I’ll never forget, it was one week until this competition. He had a competition for women to create the same 44 bodyweight exercise video with their own version and he was going to pick a winner. I had one week to create it so I had to find a shooter, an editor, I had to come up with the exercises, I had to figure out music and…
Wendy Myers: That was a really good video too. When I first saw it I thought, “Wow, this person’s really serious.”
Leigh Lowery: Yeah. You know who shot that? My sister’s boyfriend shot it and we shot it over two hours at a gym straight through. I did not rest. I thought I was going to die at the end, literally. It was crazy. Then I found an editor. I ran into this guy. He actually work for Disney and he said he’d edit my video for really inexpensive and he was awesome. It just all came about. Like I said, the Universe brings you something on purpose and it almost released my destiny. It was like it was meant to be. It was. So I did it. I followed through with it and my trainer said, “Leigh, I’m going to donate my time but if you want to win this, you have to do it all on your own. You have to come up with the exercises. You have to get all these people.”
So it was a challenge and the General Leigh loves a challenge. Like I said, I’m a bossy little girl who thinks I can do anything so I did it and I won it. I couldn’t get over it. I ended up with tons of followers and fans because of it internationally. It’s been amazing. That’s been amazing. So that’s how I started in the competition road. Then I won some Instagram competitions that are about fitness. It’s kind of silly but to me it matters. Now I am up for bodybuilding.com spokes model. I made it to the top 20 and voting ended yesterday to be in the top 5. By the time this podcast airs, we’ll probably know if I made it to the top 5. I think they’d tell us on December the 23rd so I am really excited. If that’s the case, you guys can come watch me at the L.A. Fit Expo. I will be on stage January, I think it’s the 25th through to 27th that week. I would be competing to be their spokes model.
Wendy Myers: Nice.
Leigh Lowery: It would be a big deal.
Wendy Myers: I know that would be amazing. I voted. I have some of the listeners who get the newsletter voted.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, regardless. You know what, I just love the support and it’s a huge, huge deal for me. It’s taking that challenge, anything that presents itself to you that you feel in your heart, I just say follow that passion. Every time I do what I feel inside my gut I’m supposed to do, something happens.
Wendy Myers: I know what you mean. I never thought two years ago that I would be having a podcast and a book and thousands of listeners and people on my emailing list. It’s just really amazing. I really am very grateful for all you listeners and all of the people who support me that want to actually listen to what I have to say. Haha.
Leigh Lowery: Absolutely.
Wendy Myers: Because I do have something to say, dammit! Haha.
Leigh Lowery: You do have something to say and you’re helping people. I think that’s the key. It’s like you’re following that passion and you’re a good spokesperson for what you do and your site is beautiful. I mean it really couldn’t be any prettier so I love it.
Wendy Myers: Thank you. I can’t even tell you how much I wake up every day and I’m so excited to take every skill that I’ve ever acquired and worked for, every passion I have and assimilate into one thing. It never ceases to amaze me how I’m using every skill I’ve acquired to bring people this information.
Leigh Lowery: You were brought to this point with all of those tools. It’s just so cool. I agree.
Wendy Myers: Yeah so hopefully both of us can fulfill our life’s purpose of helping other people through what we love to do.
Leigh Lowery: Some of which together. It’s really cool.
Wendy Myers: What type of diet are you following? You are doing all this exercise. How much do you exercise a week?
Leigh Lowery: I exercise 5 days a week, an hour a day. I do 2 sessions of cardio and I do 1 hit training usually as well. I’ll do 2 30-minute walking under 120 beats per minute so that’s really just like walking at an incline on the treadmill at about a 3.4 pace which is pretty light, pretty easy going. That’s just to get that cardiovascular in there and then I’ll do high intensity interval training which is sprints or, a lot of people have a hard time with sprints because of knees but you can do it on a bike, you can do any kind of interval training on a bike.
Wendy Myers: Can you do swimming too?
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, absolutely. There’s anything-there’s rowing. There’s a lot of non-intensive things for your knees if you are having issues with that but what I do is I’ll do about 20 seconds going as hard as I can and then take 40 seconds to relax then 20 seconds as hard as I can for about 10 intervals. It really gets that sweat going. It gets your heart rate up. It doesn’t burn off the muscle. It’s wonderful. I suggest and recommend hit training. I absolutely love it.
Wendy Myers: The last podcast I did was with Mikki Reilly and she was talking about how they had this one study where they compared participants. Some did 20 minutes of HIIT training and the other ones had 60 minutes of just walking. The HIIT people lost 3 times the amount of weight and they worked out half the time. It’s insane how much more effective it is.
Leigh Lowery: That’s exactly right and then I think people get intimidated because they believe you have to do sprints and you don’t. You can find any machine and you really can do it on any machine. You can do it walking on the street and then running for 20 seconds so it’s an incredible useful tool to quickly burn fat and still build muscle at the same time.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s hard. I tried it one time on a treadmill and it’s kind of hard because you have go up up up and to start going really fast. If you’re not that coordinated like me, I’m like a big gigantic giraffe. I’m really tall. You can almost fall on your face. Haha.
Leigh Lowery: What I do is I typically press the number in. So you can put 3.0 enter and then 8.0 enter but it is hard. You go to be coordinated and I have almost definitely fallen off the back end several times. I try to stick to the bike because I know I can do it – stand up and push hard for that amount of time and not fall over.
Wendy Myers: So what type of diet are you eating?
Leigh Lowery: I did a completely clean eating for a very long period of time where I was really looking at the overall calorie count for the most part, really really clean meaning, sweet potatoes, very low sodium, chicken, fish, I would have red meat as well but I was not eating anything that had sugar in it and I was at a very low sodium count. I have switched over recently to something called IIFYM. What that stands for is ‘If it Fits in your Macros’. What you do in that is look at your macronutrition so you’re drilling it down all the way besides your calories, you’re looking at fats, and your proteins, and your carbohydrates and your fiber intake.
Wendy Myers: So you’re logging all of that?
Leigh Lowery: Absolutely. I use a tool. It’s an app on your phone, it’s really easy. It’s called “my fitness pal”. I log my food in it and what’s cool about my fitness pal is that you can not only log your food into the diary but you can look at your nutrition. You can see I have exact numbers given to me by the person that I work with on my diet of where I’m supposed to be especially as I go into competitions my macronutrition will change. I’ll eat the exact amount he gives me, the exact amount of proteins. I eat like 125 to 130 grams of protein right now. My carbs are really high which I love because I love carbs.
Who doesn’t? They’re at 191 grams right now and fats are at 42-45 grams. That’s keeping me lean. I’m at about 16% body fat right now but it’s not keeping me completely shredded so it keeps me healthy, it makes me feel good, I’m at a good place for women. Women are usually between 18 and 22% body fat. I’m a little bit lower because I am in fitness but it’s wonderful. I absolutely love it. What’s great about it is anybody I have vegans, vegetarians, Paleos and all sorts of people and they can fit their nutrition plan within this so it doesn’t pigeon-hole you. It’s just really a very good inventory of looking deeply into what you’re eating.
Wendy Myers: Isn’t that the eating style that a lot of body builders do?
Leigh Lowery: There are two eating styles: there’s old school which is going to be like, especially for competition, everyone’s eating asparagus and chicken and egg whites Haha. You’ll hear that often. I did that for a long time and I still incorporate some of those things in my diet. Asparagus is amazing. It’s got great folic acids. It’s wonderful for several things. I eat all of those things.
Wendy Myers: It’s wonderful for gas also. Haha
Leigh Lowery: Yeah. It de-bloats. It’s amazing. I still eat all of those things but what I found was I had issues remaining consistent with having binging episodes on the weekend or when I got around Christmas I would end up eating the whole turkey and there was nothing for anyone else to eat. I didn’t know what to do. Now it gives me the opportunity to fit anything in my diet. I told you this and I don’t know if this is good for your listeners but I ate a pop tart this morning. I typically don’t eat horribly corn starchy bad foods for myself but occasionally I would have something that makes me feel like I’m okay, like I got this. It’s okay to make mistakes or have a little something bad and cheat as long as 85-90% of my diet is absolutely on track. My fiber is at between 25 and 32 grams a day so in order to do that you have to have some of those really healthy foods in there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, we’re all human beings. I definitely tell my clients the 90-10 rule or 80-20, whatever your little flexibility is because you can’t eat perfect all the time.
Leigh Lowery: You can’t eat perfect all the time. For me the cool thing is I don’t gain weight or get way out of whack because I’ll have something that feels like a cheat. But I have a small amount and I have almost a small amount everyday whether it be a skinny cow or a pop tart or something that’s got that sugar in it that makes me feel like I got a treat. But then, like you said, 90-10 or 80-20 or whatever your rule of thumb is, I really try to stick to that clean, good, healthy eating because overall you need the nutrients for your body to help it work properly. That’s important.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I think you also need a psychological buffer too. You need something to feel like you’re being naughty or you’re not having to work all the time. Work, work, work, work, perfect diet, perfect diet. Sometimes you need a little bit of treat to reward you. Those people I think can stay more consistently on a healthy diet. I have a question I like to ask all my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
Leigh Lowery: We were talking about this, it’s the chronic diseases. You’re seeing such high levels of chronic disease. I’ll just talk about what I’m touched with, closest to home and that’s obesity. I’m a Texan. We like to eat in Texas. That’s what we do.
Wendy Myers: Oh yeah, Houston won the award for the fattest city in the US.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, well I think I’m related to all of them. No I’m just kidding. But it’s true and that’s okay. It’s very tough when there is that much food. We’ve grown the size of our plates and the amounts of food that we’re eating so it’s very hard to say no when what you’re given is a giant plate of food.
Wendy Myers: Especially some gumbo in that Cajun place in Houston.
Leigh Lowery: Yeah. It was so funny. I was telling somebody the other day that sushi to California, Mexican food to Texas. We eat that 3-4 days a week. It’s good stuff. I think all that is great but it’s very sad. That’s just close to home. It’s taken over. You’ve obviously seen a lot of that with the children today. People are less active than they used to be, video games and all things taking over. Getting active is really important. What you’re eating is really important. It has long-term effects, diabetes and all the chronic disease it comes along with. Obesity is a scary sad thing. We don’t want to lose our friends and family. I don’t want to lose my friends and family. My whole family is on a thing right now where they’re changing their potatoes from big white potatoes to sweet potatoes. It’s been cool.
Wendy Myers: Are you whipping them into shape? Haha
Leigh Lowery: Yeah. My mom won’t let whip her into shape. She’s just scared of me but she lets me change her foods. When I come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving, she’s always making some turkey chili instead of beef chili so I’m proud of them. It’s little steps and I’m watching her make big changes just based on each little step she takes forward.
Wendy Myers: I think that’s what it’s all about. It’s just small incriminal changes, small little steps. It’s a Japanese philosophy I forgot what it was called. I think it’s called Kaizen I forgot the exact name but it’s small tiny steps that lead to giant changes.
Leigh Lowery: Yup. I always say there’s a culprit in everyone’s diet whether it be that you pour your ranch dressing on your salad and you have no idea that you just put 42 grams of fat because you poured rather than measured. Everyone’s got culprits in their diet and we can find those little things. I worked with a girl just recently and she lost 30 pounds over the past 8 months. She looks amazing but she had to change those little things, changed her full peanut butter to natural peanut butter and it’s been really cool to watch. It’s amazing to watch people change.
Wendy Myers: All those little tiny things they add up. They add up to huge results and that’s one thing I have to remind myself. When I cheat or I eat full fat cheese, I only eat full fat cheese, but if I eat too much of it, that extra 200 calories a day makes or breaks your diet.
Leigh Lowery: I use that tablespoon, I say use that table spoon with syrup, with peanut butter, with anything. I use my tablespoon with my creamer and my coffee. Every single thing I do, I use a scale, I use a measuring cup and I use a tablespoon so that I know that I’m hitting those portions and I’m not going out. It’s pretty easy.
Wendy Myers: Leigh, thank you so much for being on the show. Well you are going to be on the show from now on. Haha
Leigh Lowery: Yeah, thanks for being here this time.
Wendy Myers: Thanks for coming on for the first time. I’m really looking forward to us having some fun on the podcast and entertaining the listeners and not just yammering about nutrition or fitness but making it really really fun for everybody.
Leigh Lowery: Totally.
Wendy Myers: Where could people find you?
Leigh Lowery: I have a fit food page right now. I’ve got the Generalleigh.com as well as fitfoods.com. “Follow my fitfoods” is my facebook name. You can actually put into Facebook “Follow my fitfoods” and find my page there. I’m on Instagram under Gen Leigh. I will be on this show so you better find me here too.
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much, Leigh. I’m so excited to have your contribution regarding fitness on the podcasts and hopefully maybe have some guest blogs on Live to 110. I’m a nutrition guru but I need a fitness guru as my right-hand man. You’re just the one for the job. Haha.
Leigh Lowery: I’d love to hear back from what you guys want to hear out there. If there’s something specific like if you want to know how to get that big round booty, you tell me and I’ll do a whole segment on it so we can get you there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, go on. Follow myfitfoods on Facebook and post some questions for General Leigh. Anything you want to know regarding fitness and we’ll try to address it on the podcast.
And If you want to learn more about the Paleo diet, weight loss or how to do a serious detox, not a B.S. detox in a box, you can find me on myersdetox.com, you can follow me on Facebook and twitter at I will live to 110. I’m also on youtube at Wendy Liveto110. I’m not allowed to change the name. Haha. I didn’t know that when I saw it up front that I was stuck in that name forever. I’m always crying, debating whether I should change it. But anyways, that’s where you’ll find me for right now. I
f you like what you heard on the show, please give the Live to 110 podcast a review in iTunes. I would appreciate it so much. Thank you listeners for tuning in and remember, you must actually get your butt moving if you want to lose weight and get healthy so put down your iPhone, walk away from the computer and go exercise. Do anything. Do some sit ups and walking and whatever, some burpees even if it’s for 5 minutes. You’ve got to start somewhere. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Do it now. Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 podcast.
