Welcome to Retail Checks and Balances, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the bustling world of commerce and culinary delights to help you grow your business and win. Join us as we explore the fascinating stories, trends, and challenges that shape the retail and hospitality industry, from cozy corner cafes to sprawling shopping malls and everything in between. And now, here's your host, Kevin Spencer. 

Okay, welcome back to another episode of Retail Checks and Balances. We have a returning guest, Eddie Rozelle. Welcome back to the show, Eddie. 

Good to be here, Kevin. I'm excited to continue the conversation. I know the first time we had some valuable back and forth, and so I'm excited. 

Yeah, and from then on, you know, One of the reasons I wanted to do this episode is really to dive deep into this topic of consistency in working out. The key to success is consistency. So whether you're a seasoned gym member or somebody who's now starting off like me again, I think I want to want you to kind of get into the principles we can discuss and the impact the way you approach your workouts. 

Yeah, sure. Look, I have I have a list of eight or principles that that I kind of. believe and kind of evangelize and talk to my clients about, you know, and I've shared these with you. One of those core principles is that adherence and consistency are key in any in any kind of nutrition, fitness, you know, health goal. Adherence means, you know, sticking to the plan, right, adhering to the plan. So that's the most important thing. And then obviously doing that consistently is going to get you the best results. Now, Science has proven to us that I can give you a terrible, maybe not terrible, but not so great, you know, you don't need an optimal workout plan or nutrition plan. But if you follow a consistency, you will see consistently you will see results. On the other hand, I can give you an incredible tailored, personalized nutrition and fitness program. it's not going to do you any good if you're not following the system, right? And that's all. And so that's why I always preach that, you know, in my position as a coach, I, my biggest, my biggest job is to provide opportunity to create opportunity for my clients. And so what that means is finding ways for my clients to see success, And the best way to do that is to find something that they can do consistent, something that they that work. And that's why it's so important that it works for their lifestyle, that it works for whatever kind of equipment they have or don't have. So whether it's nutrition, well, what kind of foods do you like and what do you enjoy? Because that's what you're going to end up doing and following consistently. Right. I don't want to ask someone to give up their favorite food if they like it and it makes them happy. sometimes different cultures have different specific foods that are very important in that culture. And you're just not going to give that up. So there's no point in asking someone to give it up completely. Now, will we kind of reevaluate how much we're having of certain foods? Sure, maybe, you know, that may be part of the plan. But at the end of the day, you have to make it so that the person can follow it on a consistent basis, because that's what's going to get them the results is following something, you know, on a consistent basis. 

And as you say that, you know, one of the things that. I've noticed, and it really depends on a psychological factor as well, is that, you know, you you get up every day and you you keep looking in a separate mirror and sometimes you say, am I changing? But. you know, there's an old saying that my dad used to say, you know, people notice that you don't notice, right? So, and it's like if people with you every day, they're not going to notice that you're losing weight until, you know, that big grand surprise is there. And, you know, one of the things I've noticed for myself is that, when I look at pictures, because I take a lot of pictures with my son and stuff. And I look back at that picture and I see my face change. My whole body looks different compared to now. If I take a picture today, you know, like even when I'm on a video call like this, I'm looking at my face and my face is slimmer now than you see that those fat cheeks, as we call it. What would you recommend in terms of how people deal with that psychological 

That's a great question. You know, it reminds me, it reminds me of when I was, you know, almost 300 pounds. And I remember going to the park where I started, you know, walking and eventually, you know, running and so forth. And I kind of started my journey. This was over 20 years ago. And I remember looking down and I remember not being able to see my feet. I couldn't see my toes. I couldn't see my shoes because my belly was, was big. And I told myself that day, I said, well, immediately, there's nothing more in your face than, hey, you can't see your feet. And you know that tomorrow you're not going to be able to see your feet either. And then there's a good chance that if I started on Monday, that on Wednesday or Thursday, I'm still not going to be able to see my feet. So I'm not going to see the change that quickly. Right. That was and so that kind of slapped me in the face. And then I what I did was mentally I had to accept that first of all. So I think the first part is just acceptance. What you said. Right. I'm not going to see an incredible change every single day. However, you have to also remind yourself that the change is happening. That doesn't stop the progress. The progress is happening and it's real. But you're not going to notice it, obviously. And the people that see you every day, as you mentioned, aren't going to notice it until you see a bigger difference. Right. So what I told myself was, I'm going to be better tomorrow than I was today. I'm going to be healthier tomorrow than I am today. And then if you do that every single day, then you're on the right path. You're tracking in the right direction. And it's kind of like the old example of the airplane that leaves, you know, California, and is just a few degrees off. And instead of landing in New York, as planned, you land in Philadelphia, or you land in somewhere in Baltimore. And that was just a couple of degrees, a couple of degrees difference over time is going to make a big difference. And that's the same thing that I'll tell people is You have to get out of your head and you have to just know that you have to do the right things. And those small things have a compounding effect, just like you have a savings account and that money and that interest compounds. And over time and over time, you have a bigger and a bigger and a bigger pile of money. The same thing happens with your habits. The same things happens with your decisions. You know, we are where we are today because of all the tiny little decisions that we've made in our lives. And for health and fitness, it's the same thing. You look at someone that's in the gym and they they look all healthy and strong. And you're like, wow, I want to look like that. Well, guess what? That's that could be day number eight hundred and twenty five for that. And then you're the person that's walking in and you're on your day one. Right. And so anybody from the outside would say, well, yeah, that's obviously you can't compare your day one to this other person who's on day number 800 and whatever. And so that's a perfect example of we have to kind of get out of our heads and we have to understand that as long as you trust the process, you will see changes with time. But you have to kind of remove the emotion from it and get out of your head and know that those small differences over time are going to compound and you'll see a difference eventually. And then people, as you've noticed, people will notice a difference and then you yourself will look at pictures of yourself maybe a month or two months before And that's also why you do things like waist measurements, right? So, you know, your waist has gone down a significant amount. Those are actual differences that you can tell that you can notice. So there's the psychological side of things. There's the way people look and pictures are great for that. But then there's also the way that your clothes is fitting. You can gain muscle and lose fat, but you can go down a size in your pants and your shirt. It's just something that you've experienced, right? your weight may not have changed much, but you're down a couple inches on your waist. You're feeling stronger than ever. And at the same time, your clothes is fitting differently, but you're at around the same weight. That's a perfect example of the beginning of a process, right? You're seeing change. 

Yeah. One of the things I've noticed is that I couldn't even button a 17 and a half color. No, I can't. I mean, I was up to 18, 18 and a half because my neck was, was, was thicker. And as you said, some of the clothes that I wear now that were kind of tight on me are very much looser. So I'm going to have to spend money on a new wardrobe eventually. Right. So what you're seeing is that, you know, the consistency is about forming habits. What I want to know, discuss more or less is the strategy for building, um, sustainable habits, um, to get to your fitness goal. Um, yeah. You know, share your insights on that habit formation per se, and, you know, the tips for making your workout part of a natural routine. Sure. 

The first thing I'll tell you is, and it's incredibly relevant right now because we're in January, it's January 9th, and people are flooding the gyms and everyone has a New Year's resolution. People are doing 75 hard. people are doing all types of different challenges, right? 

Not to cut you. There's a big kind of a back home in Trinidad in February. So people want to put on their sexy costumes and stuff. So the gyms are really overloaded now, but there you go. 

And so that's great, right? It's great that everyone's excited to get healthy. Um, it's great that everyone is, is, is, has an emphasis on their health and their, their wellness. The one thing I will say is that most people, like what happens to the gyms when you look at the crowds in January and February versus June and July, right? There's a big difference in the amount of people that are in the gyms, there's a big difference in the amount of people that are still focused on their health in June and July, you know, or especially in the holidays right at the end. One of the biggest reasons for that is people try to take on too much too quickly. And the reason why it's a good thing, right? It's motivation, people are motivated. And what I want people to understand is that there's two very, very important things that you can leverage in the beginning. The one is motivation, you can leverage motivation, I feel like I want to work out this is the time for me to do this. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. It's a new year, it's a new me, I'm going to go after. But what I want people to be aware of is that that motivation is not something that you can depend on. Motivation is going to go away. You're going to wake up tired. You're going to wake up feeling sore. You're going to wake up feeling like you do not want to work out. And so what happens is people take on too much. And what I mean by that is they say, I'm going to go to the gym every day or five days a week, for example. And before that, they weren't going to the gym at all. They don't even have a gym membership. They went and they signed up for the gym. And then all of a sudden, they say they're going to go every day, five days a week or six or seven days a week, whatever it is. Right. What I would say is start small, because at the end of the day, what you're trying to focus on is back to our original point of consistency. Consistency is what's going to get you your results. Well, if I look at the logic behind that and I say, all right, well, consistency is the most important thing. then everything that I do after that has to be grounded on consistency, has to be in line with me being able to be consistent. And it may not be five days a week, it might be starting off with two days a week, right? So when you and I first started, we started off, I asked you, I said, how many times would you like to work out? And you said, well, I mean, I could work out three, four days, depends, whatever you want me to do, right? And I said, how many days are you working out today? And you said, well, right now, none. And I said, OK, let's start with once a week. Why? Because we can establish some consistency with once a week. Now, once we get consistent with once a week, then what happens is what ended up happening with us, which is you said, hey, like, I feel good. Like, I love my workouts. I have a lot of energy. Like, like, do you think that I should do more? And I say, well, if you want to do more, then absolutely you can do more. So you've already established consistency with one workout a week. And all of a sudden, instead of me being the one that's telling you, hey, you have to do this twice a week, now you're the one who's coming to me and saying, hey, I feel good. I want to do more. And then I say, all right, let's do this twice a week. And then we may end up going and moving on to three times a week when you feel good enough for that. But the point is, you're being consistent with it, and you're building on those consistencies. And over time, you're going to see more effectiveness and more progress toward your goal than the person that's super motivated and goes five days a week hard, and then either one, they get injured, or two, they just get exhausted and tired and burnt out. And then they end up taking a week or two off, and then a week or two off turns into a month off. And then that turns into, I don't go to the gym anymore, right? So you have to start small, leverage the motivation that you have in the beginning, but understand that you have to develop what we call discipline. Because once that motivation goes away and you wake up tired, the discipline is what's going to keep you going. The discipline that you've worked on throughout that beginning stage when you're leveraging that motivation and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to work out. Make sure that you're trying to establish discipline because when that motivation goes away, and it will, you're going to have your discipline to fall back on. And then discipline is going to help you to stay consistent in anything. 

And I'm happy you shared that. And one of the things I'd like you to elaborate on, and I think it's more along the lines of the technology, of bringing the technology into your work or plan. So even in business, we talk about planning and execution. And as you specifically said, there's a path to get you where you need to go and your goals. And, you know, one of the things that I like about your program is the app that you have. It really puts everything in perspective and puts everything in front of your face. So at least you have those small little goals that you need to do every day or every time you have a meal. Can you elaborate on that for me in terms of, you know, how significantly important that is for, um, for working out? 

Yeah. So my app has a couple of different components and it's built that way on purpose. There's intention behind it. And so there's, there's an aspect of nutrition tracking where you can track your nutrition, there's an aspect of the actual fitness component where you can track your fitness, right? And then there's a couple of other things like, you know, which kind of falls into hydration, like your water intake and things like that, right? And when I say fitness, it could be a workout, but it could also be just how many steps you take throughout the day, how much movement you get in general throughout the day, right? Those two things are important because along with the theme of consistency, most people, they need accountability. Right. And so they need something that they're going to go back to. And we check in every week, right, you have a check in, you go into the app, you know, you're probably in there every day, tracking nutrition and tracking, you know, your fitness, but but you also go in there once a week, and you you have this accountability meeting, you know, check in point that you know, I was here that last week, and then next week I'm going to check in on the same day. And I want to be better than I was last week and that that establishes some kind of accountability and an urgency around what you're doing so. that's going to affect the small decisions that you make throughout the entire week, right? So if you didn't have an app that you had to check in on, then maybe you would make different decisions throughout the week, right? So that technology, and also it has to be easy because everyone's on their phone these days. So yeah, you can go online and you can do it on your laptop or on the desktop, but everyone's on their phone and everyone has an app. There's an app for anything these days. And so that's why we created an app, is we needed it to be easy to track, easy to check in, and easy for me to get a good understanding holistically of how the week went, right? So we're using technology to get insights on nutrition, on calories, on fitness, but we're also using the app and technology to get insights on how much energy you have when you wake up. How are you feeling? How is how is your hormonal health? Right. So even things like that, some people get uncomfortable with talking about libido and things like that. But for a man, libido is a very important thing to tell us how our hormonal health is doing. If we're grinding, grinding, going hard, hard, hard, like people's people's central nervous systems get shot. And then that affects the hormonal health of someone. And the next thing you know, your libido is down. That's that's a really big indicator that something's going on. If you wake up and you don't have a lot of energy. And that's happening on a regular basis, then that's a red flag for me to be aware of. And we need to do something to change the plan. So technology allows me to get all of that information. And then it allows the client like yourself to be able to have it on your app on your phone, you can do it anywhere you can do it on a plane at an airport, you can do it at home, you can do it while you're sitting on the couch watching TV, you can do it at any time, you can go go for a walk and check in. And it's quick. It's a five minute, you know, if anything, five minute process. And then you've given me the feedback that I need to then continue to create opportunity for you based on what I'm seeing, based on how you're doing, based on your energy levels, your food, everything. Right. So so at that point, we're checking in and we're making sure that if we had a good week, well, what did we do that week and how can we continue to do those things? How do we replicate that? If we had a not so good week, that's OK, too, because that's going to happen and you have to expect that. But What is it that can we identify where it is that we went off and why it is that we went off more importantly? And then what do we what do we do to learn from that? What do we do to adjust? Right. I have one more thing that I want to mention. So I have something called the two day rule. It's another one of my core principles. And my two day rule is basically don't have two bad days. Right. So there there's seven days in a week. If you can manage to have everyone's going to have a bad day, it's going to happen. Right. But what I tell you, Kevin, is don't feel bad about it. Just learn from it and don't have a bad day that the phone don't don't make it two in a row. Right. Have a good day, because that's going to set you off of that path, because what happens is people have one bad day. They eat a whole pizza or whatever it is. You know, they're in an environment where there's a lot of bad food. There isn't any healthy options. You weren't prepared for the situation. It's going to happen to everybody. Happens to me, too. Yeah. You eat something that you maybe didn't plan for, that made you go above your calories or whatever it is. Don't feel bad about it. Understand why it happened. And then the next day, go right back, erase what happened that day. And then the next day, just go right back to what you do, your routine. This is what I do. This is who I am. I eat these kinds of foods. I do this kind of movement. I do these kinds of workouts. And that's exactly who I am. And that's who I'm going to be every day. And if we stray from that every once in a while, that's not why people aren't getting results. People aren't getting results because they stray off one day and then one day turns into three, five, seven days, which turns into a month. And then it's hard for people to go back to those habits. You know, so if you can follow the two day rule and don't have two bad days in a row, then I think you'll be in pretty good shape. 

Yeah, so that comes back to what you're saying, but breaking the consistency, breaking the habit. So it's hard to get it back if that time of being consistently bad to get back into being consistently good. And I think I like the fact too that the app integrates with the Apple Watch. And when you walk out, it sends the information to your your program so you can see how often you're working out. I think the health app from Apple helps a lot too in terms of counting the steps. One of the things we talked about and I would like you to elaborate on is, you know, the cardiovascular health in terms of your resting heart rate and your elevated heart rate. Can you just share a little bit about that before we close up? 

Yeah, so to address the first part about the Apple Watch and Apple Health, so that's one example. Look, I have a technology background. I was in technology sales for a long time and still love technology. And obviously, you're in technology too. Technology facilitates things for us and makes things easier. And so the fact that the app integrates with Apple Health and with your Apple Watch, that's just another easier way for me to know how many steps you're taking throughout the day or how much energy you're using throughout the day, right? So that just makes it easy for you because you really don't have to do anything. You're not typing in how many steps you have every day. That's just automatically done for you, right? So that's one less thing that you have to do, right? And then at the same time, it allows us to see trends over time. So going back to your point about your resting heart rate, things like heart rate variability, things like your VO2 max, like Apple does a good job of kind of looking at a few of these different metrics, which overall tell us a story about how your cardiovascular health is doing. So one of the things that you mentioned that you noticed is that your heart, your resting heart rate has gone down. over the last couple of months since we started working together. Well, that just means that you're getting cardiovascularly healthy. Why? Because you've picked up your steps, because you're moving more, you know, since we started working together. And that is going to have an impact on your overall health. So you're getting cardiovascularly healthier, your heart is beating less times in a minute, than it did before. What does that mean? That means that your heart is strong. That means that in order to supply your entire body with blood and oxygen, your heart has to pump itself less times in a minute. And think about, you know, let's say you drop I forget how many beats we drop, but let's say you drop five beats, five beats a minute, right? Think about that throughout the day. How many minutes are in a day? Think about that in a month and in a year. That's a really big difference. If you think about how much less. 

It's actually 20 beats. So it was from 91 to 71. 

So you went from 91 to 71. That's 20 beat, 20 times less than your heart has to pump blood every single minute of the day. So if you extrapolate that to a week, a month, a year, five years, think about how much healthier you and you've done that change in two months, three months. Yeah. Right. So that's just and look, that's a testament to you and the work that you've put in and the fact that you've been working on your steps and moving around and, you know, just getting overall good quality movement in. Because I always tell people, I'm not the one doing the work. I'm creating the opportunities and providing opportunity, but you're the one who's doing the work. So that's a credit to you and the fact that you've been, again, consistently getting your movement up, consistently focused on your workouts. You're doing some new stuff. You're feeling soreness in some places that you haven't felt sore in a long time. You're feeling stronger. And that's all being reflected in your markers, in your biomarkers. And one of those biomarkers obviously is your resting heart rate. I'm gonna be fascinated to see your blood work when you finally get your blood work back because of a couple of crucial things that we're looking for there to see improvement there. So those are all things that are very important for your cardiovascular health because cardiovascular health is very heavily tied to longevity. And the more cardiovascularly healthy you are, obviously, the longer you're going to be able to live. And the heart working a lot less than it was before is a perfect reflection of it. So good job for you kind of getting your steps up and getting your movement up because it's obviously having a huge, huge impact on your health. 

Yeah. Thank you so much. Perfect. Well, that wraps up another episode of Retail Checks and Balances. We hope you're leaving with a sense of renewed determination and solid understanding of the consistency can elevate your work or game. Thank you so much, Eddie. It's always a pleasure. And I'm sure we're going to have more and more episodes because in my business and business owners around the world, they want to make sure that they are healthy enough and get that stress controlled. And I don't see any other way to release stress than working out and doing what you're supposed to do to relax. 

Absolutely. Yeah. Look, you want to, as a leader of a business, as a leader of a company, you want to put yourself in the best position to be the best version of yourself and to optimize everything that you do, ideally. And the number one way to optimize the way that you do your job is to be able to be as healthy as possible. Right. So you're seeing that, you know, you're proof of it. And so thanks for having me on. It's always it's always a blast. I really enjoy it. And the one thing that I'll tell people since it is January is start small, start with whatever it is that you can do consistently, both from a nutritional and a fitness perspective, start small. stick with something that you can really stick with for months and months and not just a week or two. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kevin. 

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts, so we'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Until next time, friends.