Michael Easter: EPISODE LINK
TRANSCRIPT:
Colleen: Welcome back, everyone. We are in for an interesting conversation with our guest today,
Michael Easter. Welcome to the show.
Michael Easter: Thanks so much for having me.
Colleen: Well, you know,
Bridgett and I see all the time in our neighborhood men and women walking with these
weighted vests. And I think women over 50 look at it and go, is this something I
should be doing? Is it beneficial? Is it more harmful? So when we saw your book,
Walk with Weight, the Definitive Guide to Rucking, which we also did not know was
the, not formal, but the technical term for walking with weights. We thought, okay,
this would be a good conversation. So I wanted to start with weighted vests.
Yes or no?
Michael Easter: Yes.
Colleen: Okay. Okay. For women over 50,
I should amend that. Weighted vest for women over 50, yes or not.
Michael Easter: Yes. Full on,
full on Wholehearted, yes. So the easiest way to think about this is adding weight
to your walks, whether it be a weighted vest, whether you’re just throwing on a
backpack with some weight in it. It allows you to get more from every step. So you
will burn more calories on that walk. You will stimulate your muscles.
So that’ll help with muscle retention. You’ll get a bit more of an endurance effect.
So that’s going to help with your heart health. It also seems to help with bone
density, which becomes really important for women over 50. On and on and on and on,
everyone can walk. And if you just throw some weight on your body as you do that
walk, and I’m not talking about these crazy big loads. I’m talking like 10 pounds,
15 pounds. You’re going to get a lot more from that walk.
Bridgett: Yes. And you also, I
love in the book how you talk about the backpack because before you spend
a lot of money on a vest, look around your house. Can you talk about some things
you could do with the backpack?
Michael Easter: Yeah. So everyone has a backpack. So this is one
of the things that I love about walking with weight is there’s so many types of
physical activity exercise where you need equipment and it’s often expensive. And it
takes up a lot of room in your house and on and on and on and on. Well, the
entry point for walking with weight is just so simple because every single person
has a backpack somewhere in their house. It could be, you know, some old book bag
you used all the way back in college. It could be, you know, one of your kids’
school bags. It could be a travel bag, whatever it is. All you have to do is take
that bag and fill it with something that weighs something and then go out and go
for your walk. And you can really, I mean, you can use anything. I know people who
will use, you know, bottles of water. Some people will have like a dumbbell lying
around their house, a light dumbbell, and they’ll wrap it in a towel and put it in
there. You could use a bag of sand, a bag of rice, you could use books. You could
use on and on and on, right? Again, it’s just find something that weighs something
that’s relatively comfortable in the bag, not jamming into your spine as you walk
and then just start walking.
Bridgett: Right. And I love, too, that you include how to adjust
straps, if you’ve got the hip belt, the sternum belt. And I love the thing about
the water because if you’re walking and it gets too heavy, you just pour the water
out or drink it. I was like that makes so much sense that
that was great. And you also talk about bone density and
we’ve talked to so many different physicians about the importance of maintaining and
trying to increase bone density at this age. Can you share why that’s a little bit
important? Yeah. A lot important.
Michael Easter: It is a lot important. Yeah. It is a lot important. And I will also add, I know
that most listeners of this podcasts are women, but I’ll also add that bone density,
it’s traditionally been talked about in the context of women.
But because people are so much less active than we were in the past, this is
actually becoming an issue in men as well. So if you have a husband, a brother, or
whatever, this act would be good for them as well. But the short case for bone
density is basically this. As we age, people tend to worry about things like heart
disease, like cancer, like insert, you know, 100 other things. But we often don’t
think about one of the main killers of people over the age of 60,
and that is false. So what tends to happen is that if you fall and your bones are
not dense and they can’t take a hit, you could break something. Now, if you break
your arm, it’s like annoying, you have to wear a cast for a while. But if you
break your hip, that is really, really bad. So when you look at the research, I
think it’s about 30 % of people who fall and break a hip after age 60, they end
up dying within six months. And that’s simply because you stop moving. Everything
gets shut down and then all systems effectively go down and then it’s the end.
So when I think about how do we want to age well, of course, it’s like think
about your heart, think about what you’re doing to prevent and screen for cancer.
But also, what are you doing to make sure that if you should have an accident in
life, you can take that hit and just get back up and, oh, that hurt. But I’m
good. I’m keeping on walking rather than, oh, I broke my hip. And now, now things
are not good.
Colleen: Right. Yeah. You know, the book that you have,
Walk with Weight, is divided into three parts. And I wanted to kind of get into
this. First part is why to do it. Second is how to do it. And third is kind of
living the life. And you have some great programs in there. It’s, you know, great
resources for people. But with the second part, you know, we talked a little bit,
Bridgett said start with a backpack. Because some people are afraid to go, you know,
some people want to go out and buy everything and spend all this money and they
don’t even know what they’re looking for. And other people are like, yeah, I’m not
even going to do this because it opens up that door for finances. But like Bridgett
said, okay, start with a backpack, fill that up. If someone says, you know what,
I’m really enjoying this and they want to look into the weighted vests, how do
you decide what weight that you should be using for your own personal body?
Michael Easter: Well, I think one of the beauties of just using something that you already have at
home is it kind of teaches you, all right, what weight should I be using?
Now, I tell people, when you start, I would err on the side of lighter rather than
heavier. The reason for that is it gives your body time to adapt, you know, you
build some strength, you build some endurance, and then all of a sudden, oh, I’ve
increased the weight, I’ve increased the weight a little more. And then ideally a
person wants to land on a weight where they go, okay, this is uncomfortable. It’s
definitely a little harder than walking without weight, but it’s not so hard that my
walk feels like a death march. So I can still go out, enjoy the walk, but I’m
getting a lot more benefits from every step. So generally I will tell people, start
with, say,
specifically with a population it would be older women. I would say start with
between 5 and 10 % of your body weight. If the first time you go out,
you’re like, this is way too easy. Like I don’t feel like it, well, fine. Next
time, just use a little more. If you’re like, oh, this is too much, well, next
time just use a little less. And then kind of slowly, incrementally work your way
- And then once you’ve found that, it might be, say, 15 % of your body weight.
So if you weighed 100 pounds, that would be 15 pounds, right?
Then I think you can know, well, what weight should I buy should I decide to buy
a weight vest? And a lot of them have the ability to change the weights.
Some of them you don’t. Some of them you do. I recommend people if you can buy
one where you can change the weight. So some days you might go, you know what, I’m
going to walk two, three miles longer than I usually do, so I’m going to take out
a little bit of weight from the vest. Or today I want to challenge myself and I
want to do my walk with heavier than usual so you can add more weight. And there’s
a lot of brands. I launched a brand called Walkfully that has weight vests. They’re
specifically built for women because one issue in the space of gear that is sort of
built for this is that it’s basically designed off of men’s bodies.
So it doesn’t always fit women as well. And so our gear is designed with women in
mind. And it gives you the ability to interchange the weights if you would need to.
Bridgett: I also like, too, how you said so many people, especially in our country, it’s like
go hard. First thing, they go out and they go hard. But you talk about why maybe
that’s not the best. Can you share why not starting out at the very top is a
good idea to just start out gradually?
Michael Easter: Yeah, there are a few reasons for this.
I mean, big picture, one of them for me is that the best exercise is often the
one you’ll do most consistently. And so if you start really, really hard in a new
exercise, well, that’s no fun. You don’t want to do it consistently, right? It would
be like, I’ve never skied, and my friends take me up to the black diamond and go,
all right, figure it out, right? I’m never going skiing again after this. I need to
start on the bunny hill. I need to have some instructions. I know, okay, now I got
- And all of a sudden, oh, my God, I love skiing. But had I started on that
black diamond, there’s no way I’m skiing again. So you can apply that to exercise
where it’s like kind of easing your way in, I think, becomes really important so
you can find that you enjoy whatever activity it is. Then the second part of that
is that your body just needs time to adapt. The main cause of injuries that are
related to fitness are doing too much too soon. That applies to running, to
weightlifting, and to walking with weight. So you need that time for your body to
be able to adapt, for your tissues to adapt, to kind of get used to it.
And doing that sort of starting slow and slow, if you will, is the way to give
your body time to adapt so you avoid injuries. And that becomes really important
because especially as people age,
the key to being able to exercise across your life is avoiding injuries,
right? If you decide, I’m going to go out for a run and I blow out my knee,
well, now all of a sudden not only you’re not going to run anymore, you’re also
probably not going to walk as much. And so when activity declines because you’ve
injured yourself, that becomes really, really bad for your long -term health and well
-being.
Bridgett: Yeah, it’s like finding a sweet spot there.
Colleen: Right. Right. And, you know,
I do walk with a weighted vest and I was one of those overachievers who thought,
oh, I’ll just get the big one. It’ll be great. And my shoulder, I have
osteoarthritis in my back. So it was humbling to say, you need to take this down a
little bit. You’re not doing yourself any favors. And I think it’s a mindset that
you have to say, okay, I want to be healthy so that I can chase my
grandchildren. So I could do it. It’s not about being like heavy lifting, and that’s why I really like walking with the weighted vests because I do
about 9 % of my body weight because of my arthritis. And I just change the terrain.
Like I change where I’m walking or I’ll change the pace. So one thing I also liked
in the book is you’re saying you can wear this to do chores around the house, to
walk to the mailbox, to sit. I could have been wearing it now as I interview you.
But it’s very versatile.
Michael Easter: Yes, definitely. I’ll give you an anecdote.
So as part of my job as a journalist, I often go do these sort of crazy
adventures for my work. And I had to go up to the Arctic for more than a month.
And we had everything we needed to survive in our packs. My backpack was like 80
pounds. And so in order to get ready for that, I was like, okay, I’m probably
going to need to get used to having weight on my back all day. So what I would
do is I would just take a pack, I would fill it with some weight, and I would
just do everyday tasks around the house, like vacuuming, like cleaning,
like I’m walking to go get the mail. And that allowed me to sneak in a lot of
exercise, doing things that I already had to do and really got me used to that
weight. And I’ll tell you, it definitely improved my fitness along the way, too. So now,
of course, thank God, most listeners don’t have to go up to the Arctic for 30 days
for work.
Bridgett: We feel like we’re in the Arctic right now.
Michael Easter: Where are you based out of?
Bridgett: Nashville. Yeah, Nashville. We have ice everywhere.
Michale Easter: Well,
I’m in Las Vegas, so I will not tell you what the weather is here. But, yeah, I would just say that anyone can do that.
Like, you can just, you can throw this thing on, live in your life. And there’s
actually a lot of studies where scientists have actually had people do this. They’ll
take overweight groups and they will have them just wear a weighted
vest that’s 10 pounds as you live your daily life. And some interesting things
happen. They lose more weight. And when you compare people who lost weight but
didn’t wear a weight vest, their metabolism really drops after the weight loss. But
the people who had the weighted vest on, their metabolism doesn’t drop so much from
that weight loss. So they’re able to sort of sustain that, not to mention they’ve
increased their muscle mass, they’ve increased their bone density, like all these good
things happen. Now, I’m not saying we’re at 24 -7 sleeping in it, but if you can just
find ways to throw it on as you’re doing daily stuff, like it seems like a win.
Bridgett: Right. And, you know, I like, too, how you include maybe not doing all three of
the things to increase endurance at the same time. So can you talk about what those
Three things are, and maybe why doing one at a time is the best thing to do.
Michael Easter: Yeah. I have this substack called 2%, and this came in from a reader who I
believe, she was over 50. And she said, you know, the key for me to finding
sustainability is I either increase the weight if I’m trying to improve or I
increase my pace, and I never do both at once, though, or the distance,
right? It’s either I’m going to increase the weight, I’m going to increase the pace
that I’m walking, so walking faster, or I’m going to walk farther, but I’m not
going to do all three at once. So I think that’s a good sort of framework
to think about, how can you make this thing harder? It’s either walk faster, use a
heavier weight, walk farther. And then the fourth one that I would throw in that I
think is actually really important for people as they age is finding terrain that is
new and is maybe not quite as developed. So even something like a trail, really
interesting things happen. Your body has to balance more because the ground isn’t,
you know, perfectly smooth out concrete. You’re also sort of deeper in nature and
that has some really good mental health benefits. And you kind of have to figure
out where you’re going more. You have to figure out every foot placement because
there could be a rock there. And that seems to do really good things for staving
off dementia and Alzheimer’s. There’s some fascinating studies that I just love. And
they find that people who go into new places where there’s a little bit of
navigation, where you have to really think about where am I putting my feet, how am
I moving, they tend to have the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s and dementia. And
there’s these big reasons for this in the sense that humans used to have to
navigate the world outside in rough terrain for all of time.
And it’s like our brain is adapted to that, but we’ve removed it from the built
environment. We don’t have to do that. And by removing that, we really lost
something important about brain health and being a human, frankly.
Colleen: Right. So that’s
another benefit and also the social aspect. You’re getting out. You’re talking to
other people. There’s just so many benefits to it. One of the things that I think
I wanted to bring up was the importance of the right shoes, because you were saying
foot blisters can be a huge problem for people.
Michael Easter: Yeah, that’s a – so what’s
interesting is a lot of this – a lot of the research around walking with weight
comes from the military because rucking, which is having your gear in a backpack and
walking across the earth, that’s kind of the foundation of military training. And
they found that the number one injury from rucking is blisters. Now,
one, it’s annoying, but two, if you let that thing get really bad, that can be
problematic. And so this is where shoes and sock choices become important.
So you definitely want enough room in your shoe that you’re not getting rubbing.
Having sort of thicker wool socks can help with some of that. But if you do get a
blister, the nice thing is that, you Now, we’re not having to, the average person
isn’t walking into war where it’s like, well, too bad. We’ve got to complete this
mission. You can just go home. And usually if it hasn’t lapsed into something crazy,
that sort of rubbing is just going to toughen that area of skin and you’ll kind of
build up some calluses. And then next time, you know, over the next few times,
you’ll be fine.
Bridgett: Right. You know, that was a very interesting part too. And, you
know, if that gets infected. Calvin Coolidge’s son died from a
blister playing tennis. I’m weird about the history
buffing. But anyway, but that that is something that is so important. You talk about
also the clothing, the shirt you’re wearing, why cotton may not be maybe the best
choice to wear.
Colleen: And what is the best choice then?
Michael Easter: So I’ll tell you why cotton
isn’t as good. Now, it is the fabric of our lives, but maybe don’t make it the
fabric of your life when you’re exercising, especially outdoors, especially if there’s
inclement weather. So cotton in the heat, it doesn’t wick moisture away as fast.
And when moisture wicks away from your body, that’s what, that evaporation of your
sweat is what allows you to stay cool. So it doesn’t do that as well in the heat,
so you’re going to get hotter. I’m sure people have exercised in the heat and
they’re wearing cotton and it’s like, oh, it’s like I’m wearing a wet gown and it’s
just the worst. But then the second part is that it’s not as good in the cold.
So when it’s cold out, if you start to sweat from the exercise, if that moisture
can’t wick from your skin, now you’ve got this layer of water that’s going to get
really cold on you. And that is when things like hypothermia can set in. So this
is, you know, if you’re just going around your neighborhood, it’ll be annoying.
You’re like, oh, I’m colder than I have to be or I’m hotter than I need to be.
But if you’re going anywhere far away, I think it becomes more important. Like this
is kind of the foundation of outdoor survival. So if you were like camping,
packing.
Cotton will kill you. I mean, that’s one of the, one of the taglines in outdoor
survival. You always want either wool, like a light merino wool, or you want some
sort of synthetic fabric like polyester, because what that does is it pulls the
moisture away from your body. So one, if it’s hot, your sweat can do its job to
cool you. And then two, if it’s cold, that water doesn’t stick to your body and
allow you to get freezing cold.
Bridgett: Right. Merino wool. I love merino wool. And it also
doesn’t have the odor or it doesn’t, you know, keep the odor like other fabrics do.
And, you know, I’ve been wearing that a lot lately around here. And yeah,
I mean, like you said, the cool and the hot. We were in Belize a few
weeks ago. And I wore it for things in Belize as well. So it really does make a
big difference. You also talk about how women and the vest, how having an open
vest, why is that important if you have a vest that’s more open in the front than
being completely covered?
Michael Easter: Yeah, there’s two reasons. So to sort of back up,
there’s different types of vests. Like the one that we make it Walkfully, it just
kind of goes over your shoulders and swoops down and it leaves your chest open. But
there are some vests that are more, I would say, military style where you have like
a weight directly on your chest. So a few reasons that can be bad is one,
when you cover your chest, sweat can’t do its job to keep you cool because you’ve
basically put a piece of steel where water is supposed to be wicking away. That
won’t happen. Two, once you have weight covering the entirety of your chest, it’s
pressing on your lungs. You can’t breathe as well. So it can affect your breathing
as you exercise, which obviously you want to be able to breathe well. The third
thing is that especially for women, there can be some anatomical problems if you’re
just hanging weight off of your chest. So they don’t, they don’t fit women as well.
And then fourth, the military style vest, and this is more a question of style.
But to me, it makes you look like you are about to go into like an active war
zone. You look a little bit weird if you’re walking around your HOA. Like you’re
about to throw a coup against the HOA. You know what I mean?
Bridgett: You’re on every ring doorbell and now you’re on the Facebook community page. Colleen: Yep, exactly, exactly. In the third section of your book, you talk about the 2 % mindset,
which you talk a lot about. Can you explain what that is?
Michael Easter: Yeah, so this comes from
a study that found that only 2 % of people take the stairs when there’s also an
escalator available. Now, I would argue 100 % of people know that taking the stairs
would be better for their long -term health, maybe even their long -term mental
health. But 98 % of people choose to do the easier, more effortless thing that may
actually hurt them in the long run, given how little we have to move today. Now,
to me, though, that stat, it really is not about the stairs. It’s a sort of
metaphor for living. It’s about being willing to embrace short -term discomfort in
order to get a long -term benefit. So I would argue that every single day we have
these decisions we have to make where we can take the metaphorical stairs or the
metaphorical escalator to the second floor that we have to get up. And so to me,
it’s like if I can make the decision where, yeah, it might be
a little bit more uncomfortable in the short term as I’m doing it. But if it’s
going to give me this massive long -term return, I’m going to take that decision
every choice. And if you start applying that to all different areas of your life, I
think these benefits and these little tiny acts, they really just start to pile up.
And all of a sudden, you look back and you’re like, wow, I’ve changed a ton by
just making things that I was already going to do a little bit harder. So, for
example, like I said, cleaning my house. Well, I could just throw on a pack. I had
to clean the house, but now all of a sudden it goes from this kind of like
annoying task to, oh, now I’m getting a workout in. This is fantastic. And I didn’t
have to carve out this special time for a workout.
Bridgett: And, you know, the benefits for longevity overall for this, for rucking, for walking
with weight, it, when I read your book and just seeing the percentage of
the improvement in longevity was really amazing. And you also talk about lifespan
versus health span. And can you talk about why that’s important to have a great
health span?
Bridgett: Yeah. So lifespan is basically how long you’re going to live. Health
span is how many of those years are going to be healthy and active and allowing
you to do what you actually want to do in life. So if you just move the number
on lifespan, let’s say you live to 120, but like you stop walking after 70 and
your life starts to suck, like, so you got 50 years, but they’re like not that
great. What we want to do is we want to make as many of those years as good as
possible. And this is where I think activity comes in and where I think that
walking with weight can be really beneficial. And the short reason for that is it
packs a lot of beneficial things into one act. So like I said before,
you’re getting more from every step, meaning that you’re going to burn more calories
every single mile than you would from either walking or running. Two is that you
are stimulating your muscles. And this becomes especially important for women. So when
you look at the research on how many people meet the federal exercise guidelines,
It’s about 22 % of the population do, and the guidelines are 150 minutes of some
sort of cardio -ish training a week and then two strength sessions.
But when you look at who is getting those numbers, about 26 or 27 % of men meet
the guidelines, but I think it’s only 17 % of women. And the reason for that is
because women are a lot less likely to strain. And there’s a lot of reasons for
that. Cultural reasons, the fact that gyms are filled with, you know, awkward,
sweaty, grunting dudes that are just uncomfortable across the board. So if we can
find ways to add more strength stimulus, that becomes really good for longevity,
because muscle and having enough strength and muscle is really, really important.
So when you walk with weight, you’re able to work your muscles, but also getting
cardio without having to go into the gym with a bunch of awkward dudes.
Bridgett: I’m laughing, Colleen. I looked at you, and you and I both were going, nope, like when
you said sweating.
Colleen: So it’s a win -win, basically.
Michael Easter: Right. It’s a win -win. It’s a two -and -one. And I
will say that there’s some really interesting studies. There’s this woman named Carla
Prado. She’s a researcher up in, I forget what university, somewhere up in Canada.
And she found that among this massive group of women, the ones most likely to die
had a BMI that was considered healthy or normal, but they had the lowest levels of
muscle. So you would think, oh, if you just, who was most likely to die? It wasn’t
the heaviest people. It was people in a weight that you considered normal, but they
had the lowest amounts of muscle. So maintaining muscle becomes really, really
important as you age and for health.
Colleen: And can we talk about that? Because with some
of the experts that we have spoken with, BMI is not a huge factor
anymore and necessarily determining, well, you’re healthy because your BMI is between
this percentage. And it is relying more on strength training. So can you
talk a little bit more about the relationship between the walking with weights,
the strength training, and health span?
Michael Easter: Yeah. So I think that the way that we need
to look at BMI is a public health metric, meaning it cannot determine the health of
any one individual, but if you balance it out across millions of people,
it actually shows that, yeah, having a BMI considered healthy seems to tip the odds
that you will live longer and better. So I compare that. I live in Las Vegas, so
everything gets compared to gambling. I compare this to rolling a dice, set of dice.
Okay. So if you are at a normal BMI, your risk of heart disease is,
say, you know, one in 10. If you have a BMI over normal, it might be two in 10.
So it’s really an odds thing. What that’s telling us is that just because you have
a BMI that is considered overweight or obese, it does not mean you’re going to get
heart disease. It just means that the odds of the dice rolling in that favor are
higher. Now, once you apply that to every single disease and most diseases show if
your BMI is in the upper end, your odds are greater. Well, now you start to see,
oh, okay, well, this is why this matters for me on average. That said,
physical activity, having enough muscle, those are going to alter your risk along the
way. So it gets rather complicated, but the TLDR is like, big picture,
keep your weight in a healthy zone as well as you can, but also make sure that
you are exercising via cardio, via strength training, via mobility, and that’s going
to alter all of that. This is kind of how I think about it.
Bridgett: Right. When I read
that, it’s like losing the weight, when you also reference those who are skinny fat, and a lot of people, they may not weigh a lot but
they may not have a lot of muscle they just may not work out a lot and another
thing that you said we shouldn’t be running with this weighted vest and can you
talk about that. I mean, I am a person who used to run, had an injury, did too much
too fast, you know that is such a big thing but why is it important to you can
walk fast, but why is important not to run with this weighted vest or the weight
walking with weight?
Michael Easter: Yeah. So running has a pretty high injury rate already. I will
say the studies are all over the place, but they basically find that in 20 to, I
think it’s 79 % of runners get injured every year. And the reason for that is when
you run, it puts a lot of compressive loading on your knees, on your hips, on your
ankles. So when you throw a weight vest onto that, that just increases that even
more. So I will say if someone were to go for a light jog with a really
lightweight vest, like your knees aren’t going to spontaneously explode. But in the
long term, I think it’s better to just keep it in the zone of walking. Because
again, avoiding injury is one of the number one things you can do to keep
exercising throughout your lifespan.
Colleen: Which is true. So if you do have questions
about, you know, you see people walking down the street with their weighted vests
and you’re like, is that something for me? I think this book, Walk With Weight: The
Definitive Guide to Rucking, is a great start and will answer all of your questions.
I’m holding it up for the YouTubers. Thank you so much, Michael. We appreciate
you being here and sharing all this information with us.
Michael Easter: Yeah, thank you so much
for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.