Echelon partners up with Disney’s Jungle Cruise.

John Mills joins us to discuss the return of Eric Villancy.

Checking in on how connected fitness companies measure up on social media.

Beachbody unveils their new bike.

Dr. Jenn – When you don’t think your best is “good enough.”

GQ writes about Cody Rigsby’s rise to fame.

Texas News Today covers the same topic in a barely literate fashion.

Jess Sims signs a deal with Nespresso.

Jess Sims shares her favorite stretches with In Style.

Angelo joins us to discuss how menopause affects your nutrition.

Germany has a new instructor – Marcel Maurer.

Morning Brew has data on Peloton’s marketing spend.

Peloton released a new TV commercial.

Peloton CMO sits down with The Drum.

Greatist writes about Rebecca Kennedy and building in rest days.

Breathe In, Speak Up returns.

Birthdays – Jayvee Nava (8/2), Marion Roaman (8/3), Jess Sims (8/5)

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Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Peloton’s Marketing Spend Reaches New Highs plus our interview with Katrina Sophia

I will be preparing for the ultimate weight loss plan, the crash diet of a colonoscopy.

Just to be clear, he’s doing this for medical reasons.

I’m 50 and they strongly encourage it. The HMO pays for it. There are so few things that they give you for free.

It’s important to get all the testing done. One of our listeners reminds me on a regular basis. I haven’t had mine done but I’m not 50 yet.

You got ways to go. I am 50 so I will be doing that. I got the pill but I didn’t get the drink. I was like, “There is no way I will be able to choke that down.” I know how I am. I was like, “Is there a pill?” They were like, “Counting you?” There are twelve pills that I have to take twice. I will be an honorary member of Parliament-Funkadelic by the time I get done taking all those pills, and so we will enjoy. Friday, I’m taking a cheat day. Don’t tell Angelo. Those are my big plans for the next few days. In the next episode, if I sound a little less full of shit, I don’t know why. What pray tell do you have in store for people?

The return of Eric Villency, we’re going to talk about him, and lots of other good stuff that we’re going to talk with John Mills about. He’s going to be joining us soon. Dr. Jenn stops by and she’s going to talk to us about how you can be happy with only getting in a twenty-minute workout, which we have deemed when you don’t think your best is good enough. We also have a whole bunch of great stories about the instructors and Peloton. We also have a visit from Angelo at MetPro. We talk about menopause. I know there are some ladies that are going to be interested in that topic. That’s it. There are tons of great information.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget, we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Wherever you find your podcasts, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure to rate and review us. Follow us so you never miss an episode. We have a new review. This is from Jennifer Storm. She says, “I love listening to Crystal and Tom and getting the T on all things Peloton. This show embodies the energy we all feel about Peloton and how we are so much a community. The Clip Out is where to go for all Peloton things more than a bike.” Thank you, Jennifer Storm. You sound like you should be in the X-Men.

I believe you told that to her when she was on as an interviewee.

Exercise is helpful to curing MS despite fatigue being a common symptom. Click To Tweet

I sound consistent. How about that? You can also find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. You can also find us on YouTube, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. You can watch these shows in full HD glory. We changed seats. Isn’t that exciting? We sit in different locations now. You can go look at that. Finally, if you want the pictures, the links and all the stuff sent to you in one easy to find format, sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com. It comes out mostly weekly. There’s all that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

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Joining us is John Mills.

What is going on?

All kinds of stuff. You’ve been posting full. There’s a lot that we need to discuss.

I look up all this stuff. I had it all at the same time, then I’m like, “I can’t post all this at once.” I schedule it every couple of hours. All of that, I got at the same time.

We should start with this story. This one is the most important because it’s about how right I was. We were talking about Peloton and Lane Break and the rise of video games. I said, “Imagine if they partnered up with Jungle Cruise and you could take a jungle cruise on the bike instead.” It turns out, of all the people, it’s Echelon.

They were listening to the podcasts, clearly. Now they’re cropping off of us. I’m joking. I say a lot of bad things about Echelon because I don’t like them.

Not good enough to turn something around that quickly.

No, this has been in the works for a while.

It’s either that or Tom has deep ties into Echelon but we don’t know anything about it.

Don’t ruin my marriage.

He’s like the que of Echelon.

This is interesting that they’ve partnered up with Disney and Jungle Cruise. That’s a good get for Echelon but not so much for Disney.

It sounds like within the ride, they will be showing trailers and some behind-the-scenes and footage. I wasn’t clear whether or not Echelon trainer is going to be in any of this stuff, other than them just playing it. They were going to be showing some things like that. They talked about some type of advertising connection. As if there were going to be ads for the movie tied into Echelon. I haven’t seen those yet.

Maybe train to run away from things on the Echelon.

This is the difference between Peloton and Echelon though. I feel like this is a squandered opportunity for Echelon. If they’re interrupting your ride to show you a chunk of a trailer that you can watch on YouTube, that doesn’t sound cool. That sounds irritating. To me, the natural thing to do would be to turn it into a scenic ride and you’re going through a jungle cruise while you’re pedaling your bike.

That would have been cool.

You then use footage from that. You can have Emily Blunt or The Rock giving you tips or telling you to increase your resistance or what have you.

I haven’t seen it but I know they have this big screen behind them when they record their classes. Maybe it was popping up on that big screen behind, I don’t know. I have to watch it to see what it is, but I hear you. It would have been a lot more fun if you try to make it somehow interactive riding through a jungle or something of that nature.

I can also see that that might be difficult to do with Disney because they’re pretty picky about their stuff. I don’t know that they would have allowed anybody to do that kind of thing.

It seems like such a great natural fit to me.

There’s one guy on your page, John, who tried to tell me that this means that Echelon is legit now. No, they’re not. Just because you have one good thing out of the million bad things, you did. No, it’s going to take a lot more than that.

Moving along, we see that Eric Villency has returned. Did he ever officially go away? How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

Every time I hear the name Eric Villency, I feel like twisting my mustache.

That picture he had a while back that you posted where he was in the middle of that weird sculpture thing, that’s what I picture every time.

They have that picture on this company site. They’re hyping up the fact that Eric Villency made this product that same picture. They got him out there. The company is called GRIT BXNG and they have boutique fitness centers in New York. I guess you go in there and box like a rumble. They’re trying to get it in the connected fitness space. They’ve developed this product called GRIT EPIQ. It’s like a bench and the top of it opens up. You have this 4 or 5-foot screen that can swivel. I mean it’s tall. It comes with these knuckles that have haptic feedback. If you’re punching, you feel like you hit something, even though you’re punching at the air. They’ve got weights on the inside that are supposedly smart weights and digital weights.

I don’t even know how that’s a thing.

If people knew moderation, there wouldn't be alcoholics. Click To Tweet

I don’t know how you do that with dumbbells. Anyway, their dumbbells are supposedly smart and digital. They’ve got platforms that come off the side like old-school steps. I don’t know what those are. They’re selling this thing up and they’re selling that Eric Villency designed this. You know it’s good, but they’re also attacking Peloton’s social dynamic. They’re saying and this is specifically their founder’s words, “The problem with Peloton is it’s not social and we get it because they were built seven years ago.”

What?

He’s like, “You can do a high-five but that’s not really social.” He goes into the fact that in their platform, there are going to be after class meetups. Everyone is going to have a profile. You can create your own two-way video, audio-video meetups with this big screen. They’re trying to replicate the Peloton studio experience where you ride, then after class, you’re like in the lobby.

Do you mean like parroted back when they started Peloton? Okay, just checking.

You’ll have a virtual lobby that if you want to opt-in and hang out after the class, everybody can see everyone like a Zoom meeting on this big screen.

Why would you want to do that?

I don’t know, but they’re selling it up heavy. It was more like, “Social, if you want to get together and meet, you do it right within our platform.”

I saw some comments about how Peloton needs to have their own social platform and stuff we’ve heard before. I don’t know that I agree with that because I don’t know that everybody’s going to join a whole another social platform. Look at what happened with Clubhouse. I feel like they had a moment for 30 seconds and it’s over. I know they’re still hanging on. They’re not dead. I don’t mean that. That was probably the largest social platform introduction that we’ve seen in a long time and it’s over already. For Peloton to put all that money and effort into it, they might be working on something like that for all I know, but I can see why it wouldn’t be as important as other things that they’re working on.

They’ve been successful with how they’ve managed social. It’s not just sipping on their platforms, but they’ve managed to social interaction the best of any of the players in the space. It may not be as critical to them to do something as extravagant as this. You can tell that this company is relying on the fact that they took all these pieces from all these different companies and tried to fit them into this box of one product. They’ve got some employee that used to work for Tonal, another employee that used to work for Peloton, and another employee that worked for a big company. They brought them together. It has AI for computer vision for rep count. It’s got the digital and smart weights that align like a Tonal thing, and then it has the social thing. It’s like they try to mush everything into this one.

They try to take the best pieces of all those disparate things and put them together and make this aggregate like, “We’re so cool. We thought of this.” Maybe if somebody has none of those things, they would want to buy it. Wouldn’t you almost have to hit people who’ve never bought any of this stuff?

There are only so many of these things that you can rack up.

If it’s overriding some of the other things you already have, then why would you buy it? Now you got two.

I also think they have a challenge with their pitch because they’re clearly trying to attach to that Peloton name to get this out there. They want it to sound like they’re competing with Peloton but actually, that is more of a strength-based device. They’re talking about the bike a lot but the bike is more cardio based. Their pitch doesn’t align well. It didn’t make a lot of sense when you listen to it. It’s as if they’re looking to convince folks that what they want is social. They pull your mind away from the discipline, “What you really want is social,” thus, you might look at them.

The problem with that is nobody came to any of this expecting social. Social was the benefit that Peloton brought. It was the thing you didn’t expect and got it. I’ve said this before with many of the newcomers, you can’t mass produce this thing. This thing came from people who genuinely loved it and the community made it.

The social doesn’t drive sales, it drives retention. This pitch feels like it’s coming from a place of sour grapes. They’d probably have a better chance positioning this as a complement to Peloton instead of an alternative to Peloton.

I agree with that. The problem with their whole pitch is what you just said. They should have stuck with a strength pitch that has its own distinct thing, and not try to create all these overlaps. They even say at the end of it, “If you call us for one of our products and you have a Peloton, we’ll take it away for free and give you our product for free.”

Who would want that? I don’t want their thing. I love my bike. Why would I give up my bike?

Why would you want them to take it away for free when you know you can sell it in 45 seconds?

It’s totally tone-deaf to what’s actually happening.

It seems all odd and weird. I threw it out there to see what the community thought. There are also those people that are hating like, “This social thing, this is it,” but then most of the comments were like, “I don’t need that.”

Besides the serial haters. That’s what I call them, the serial haters.

Speaking of the social aspect, you had an interesting post. You do this I guess once a quarter.

You added to it. We’ve got some newcomers here.

I do this roughly every quarter. This time it was ten weeks out, but I find it interesting because there are a lot of companies that aren’t public. They’re not reporting subscriber numbers intentionally. They don’t want you to know that. You can’t see where they fall so it’s hard to rank. They’re not reporting revenue or income. You don’t know how well are they succeeding. I find these unscientific ways to figure out what’s going on. I tend to use social media platforms, in this scenario, it’s Instagram. Anytime I go and look at Instagram followers, Peloton is way at the top. It has some 1.6 million now. I put the percentage they’ve gained in social media followers since the last time I checked, with this instance, it was ten weeks prior.

Peloton was up 6%, which is huge there at the top. They then gained 6% more followers on social. I listed that out and this time, I broke it out by different companies owned by iFit as well. I have Nordic Track. I have iFIT because they changed the name of the company and they’re also using that as their digital platform. I have ProForm separately too so you can see the breakouts. I added Equinox+ since SoulCycle changed the product name from Veritas to Equinox. I added Apple Fitness+ because they have their own separate thing.

I didn’t even realize they had their own separate thing.

It is interesting because they got almost 100,000 followers now. In a short span, they’ve got a lot of people.

I’m surprised at how high that number is, especially since most people would probably think they follow Apple.

The other interesting thing about it is Echelon is still at the bottom. All these newcomers come to the party and then they immediately pass up Echelon.

Everybody passes Echelon. Can we talk about Soul Cycle though? What is up with Soul Cycle with 0% growth?

In previous months I would post the rounded up number that they show on Instagram. This is the first month that I went, “Let me get the exact numbers.” I get the exact numbers, but if you look at the rounded-up number for Soul Cycle from ten weeks ago, it’s the same number you see now. When I look at the full number, it’s only 400 above that rounded up number. I don’t know exactly how much they grew but it’s under 1%.

It’s not good.

I don’t know what’s up with that, but since I now know that they got the Equinox+ platform, maybe the connected folks who have the bike are going there instead. I added them and they have some growth there but they were still way down there, above Echelon though.

Accept and work within your limitations. Click To Tweet

I don’t get why they’re so down there. They try so hard. We’ve said this before. There’s so much money going in. This Jungle Cruise thing should have given them a push on social media. Also, why does Disney care if they’re even doing something with them if their social media numbers suck? Is it possible that they’re big somewhere that you’re not looking at? I don’t even know how that could be a thing, John. Do you look at TikTok at all? I’m just asking.

I have only ever checked Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I might have to go to some obscure place. They’re always at the bottom on those three platforms. I know that’s telling me something and I’m assuming that it’s telling me that they’re not connecting to people in the same way that Peloton was so successful in connecting with people. To me, it sounds like it has something to do with their content. It says something. I just don’t know what it is.

Rounding up the topics, Beachbody unveiled a new bike from Myx II.

This was their intent to get people ready for their new Beachbody interactive platform? It’s supposed to come out in September, but you can sign up now and get access to it in early August like they’re pressing that. This new bike has a camera. Before, they didn’t.

They were the anti-social bike.

You don’t want to see nobody. You don’t want to talk to nobody.

Now, they’re like, “We want everybody on the bike.”

Now it’s a whole different thing. They’re selling up the camera but the other thing they’re selling about the bike is it now has a speed and cadence sensor. I didn’t realize that the old bike didn’t have that.

Me neither. What did that bike even do then? It had nothing. It had no connection, no camera, no sensor. What did it even do?

I know they used to talk heavily about, “We do heart rate training.” It’s like they expected you to ride based on feel. You turn up the resistance time and you’re constantly checking your heart rate. I guess that’s how they did it. Now that they’re with Beachbody, they’re trying to compete so they had to put some type of metric there. They needed the camera because their intent is to have that big board behind the instructor where you could see the faces of some folks at home who were in the class. They needed the camera for that, and they’re talking about doing one-on-one type training. They needed this two-way camera for that as well. Those are the big things.

There are a couple of things that I want to touch on. Number one, I find it interesting that we have another competitor who’s talking some shit. They’re very much like, “We’re going to do it better.” I’m like, “Okay, we’ll see. You all need to calm down.” I’m reserved. We’ll see how it all turns out. I’m not sure about this big board behind them and converting people to actually ride the bike. Let’s see how many bikes they’ll sell. I’m not even down on them. I’m just saying maybe you guys are coming in a little hot for my taste. The other thing I wanted to mention was they boast this lower price, but then the membership thing is a whole another ball game.

They talked about the lower price but with the release of this new bike, they’re no longer selling the old one. You can’t go to their site and buy the old one. The lower price isn’t as much lower anymore. The membership is odd to me because they own Openfit and it has strength, weight, walking, running, HIIT classes, and all kinds of stuff. That’s a platform that comes with this and you can pay for that. It’s like $29 a month. You can also subscribe to that as a part of your bike. You could also subscribe to this new body interactive live and on-demand classes, which will be bike classes. They also have off the bike content and that’s $19.99 plus a $99 a year annual fee. There are all these fees, depending on which of the two things you’re trying to do.

That’s why I’m bringing it up. That’s an odd way to do it. I’m sure there’s a good reason from a strategy standpoint. It can be misleading when they start putting these things out there that say, “This is apples to apples comparison,” but it’s not. I’m not going to call them hidden fees because they’re telling you upfront that you have to pay for them. I would say confusing fees.

It scathes your ability to compare one over the other. That has to be purposeful.

I can’t tell why I was Openfit over Body, Body over Openfit. I don’t get why one has an annual and a monthly fee, and the other one doesn’t. It is confusing, but on that topic of everybody’s coming at Peloton, they are coming hard now. Everybody’s coming hard.

When you’re the top dog, everybody wants to take you down. That’s what happens.

These guys were talking all this trash in the video. I saw iFIT’s latest commercial and they’re like, “If you just want to work out and you don’t want high-fives and all that bullshit, come see us.” They’re talking shit. Everybody’s all talking crazy.

Peloton’s over here like, “We’re going to have fun. We’re going to be over here partying. You guys try to keep it up.”

Thank you so much for joining us, John. Until next time, where can people find you?

They can find me on my Run, Lift & Live group or page on Facebook. They can find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Thank you so much.

—

Joining us once again is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and sports psychology consultant. She did it for USA gymnastics. That seems more important than us. She also has an app called No More Diets. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Dr. Jenn.

Hello.

We are so glad you were here. Another question for you that a lot of parents can relate to. We had one in another episode that fit the same bill. This one is from Christina Riviera. She says that she is struggling with dealing with frustration when everything gets in the way. She can’t say, “This can wait,” or “This is mommy time.” At the end of the day, when she wants to do something for 20 to 30 minutes for accountability, she can’t because there are other things that keep coming up. How can she accept that there are days that other things are the priority or come first and whatever she can do on the tread or bike should be okay? She should be happy instead of angry or sad.

First of all, before we go to the “Let’s be happy with what you’ve done,” we need to look at her boundaries. She doesn’t mention the age of her kids. I don’t know much about it, but what I do want to encourage her to do is to make some boundaries that allow her to carve out some time for herself that is reasonable. If there’s another adult in the house who also takes care of the child or children, making dinner or whatever the tasks are that are derailing her the most. You make a plan with that person.

Many of you have seen that I put a sign on my gym door that says like, “Mommy’s on the bike.” This is my time for myself. Unless the house is burning down, someone is bleeding, grammy and grampy are ill, please do not disturb me. Even if you hear me laughing, crying, anything that you hear going on and please don’t stand over my bike or my tread to wait for me to get off because it blows my mojo. It takes me out of the zone. I found that that’s helping, granted I have teenagers. It’s a lot easier with teenagers. It’d be totally different if I have a toddler.

Teenagers don’t want to talk to you anyway.

Peloton is less about your weight loss and more about your health and mental strength. Click To Tweet

I’m very fortunate that I have two of the greatest teenage girls that one could ask for. We do like to spend a lot of time together. I’m very grateful for that but they also respect the boundary, which is wonderful. If you have young kids, I also do want to encourage the parents who have young kids, especially those who work from home, to start establishing those boundaries of, “Mommy or Daddy are working from home. If that door is closed, that means I’m working. So-and-so will be taking care of you during that time.” You want to start to establish those boundaries early on because that makes it easier when you do have that self-care time. When you say, “I’m taking 30 minutes on the bike. Don’t bother me unless the house is on fire.” Once they’re older, they’ll be in the groove already and they’ll respect that.

The first thing is establishing boundaries, talking to family members that are old enough and saying, “This is something that’s important to me. I need your support that when I’m on the bike unless it’s an emergency, please don’t disturb me,” or “I need you to take on making dinner for yourself or for the family on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I want to be able to get on the tread or take this strength class or yoga class or whatever it is.” It’s alerting the family members and making the boundaries.

Have that time where you carve it out and take the time for yourself. I was doing a ride with Robin and she says, “Congratulations. You just took 30 minutes for yourself. Congratulations. You took five minutes.” Even if that’s the only thing you did all day, that’s five minutes that a lot of other people couldn’t take. You have to value that. I also think that when you have those minutes, whether it’s 5 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour, that put you in the state of mind and say, “This is my time for me. This is my time to do something wonderful for myself. Right now at this moment, I don’t have to be anybody’s mother, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, whatever it is.” When you don’t have a lot of time, try to be in the moment of the time that you do have so that you can use it to its maximum. That is something that’s important especially when you are a busy working parent.

That’s good advice. For parents who struggle with telling themselves it’s okay, is there a certain age that a child is okay to not have their needs met instantly? Does that make sense as a question?

It’s a great question. The first three years are the most important years because they’re totally dependent on you. The reason why I wrote my book, SuperBaby: 12 Ways to Give Your Child a Head Start in the First 3 Years is to give your kids all of these advantages that the first three years are the most important year psychologically. What we’re teaching our kids on a very unconscious level is when you cry, you get your needs met. The world is a safe place, “Mommy is here for you. Daddy is here for you,” or whoever it is in your household that is a parent.

Those first three years are crucial years. Part of what we want to teach our kids is to tolerate disappointment, to tolerate not getting what they want, to tolerate, “You can’t watch TV right now. You need to learn to play in your crib by yourself.” A lot of parents are so exhausted that it’s hard to do that. First of all, in Super Baby, I talk a lot about the reasons not to start screen time until kids are at least three. I know that sounds impossible. I can say it because I did it. I practice what I preach. I have twins girls and they did not have a minute of TV or phone or screen time until they were three and a half years old.

Granted that I’m very fortunate that I have family that was very on board with me and very helpful, I also was in situations many the times where we went to a party. The TV is on and I took my kids out of the room. A lot of people thought I was crazy for that but I read the science on brain development and how it affects children’s brains. I also felt like if my children in the first three years were dependent on a device, they’re not going to learn to be able to do this on their own. I stuffed their beds when they were old enough and safe enough with board books, stuffed animals and things that they could do so that they could learn to focus and concentrate on their own.

I reaped the benefits of it because then there were times where I had to go make dinner or I had to go do something. I can put them in their cribs and they could entertain themselves or I can have another person in the room and they could play with them and it wasn’t just screen time. The earlier you train your kids, once you get past that first few years of, “Let’s meet all their needs,” then train them to entertain themselves, tolerate the discomfort, and do it in a loving way, “I know you want to be with me. Mommy’s going to go take care of herself. She’s going to hop on the bike. I’ll see you in 30 minutes. Right now, daddy or grammy or the other mommy or whoever else is going to take care of you.”

That other parent also being mindful of, “30 minutes may seem like a long time,” or “I know distracting this child is going to help get them on track. They’re going to forget all about mommy on the bike in five minutes and I know what to do.” It was a long-winded way of answering your question.

That’s great.

Thank you so much for all that. Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on social media @DrJennMann. Also in InStyle magazine, I have a column called Hump Day With Dr. Jenn.

—

GQ magazine writes about Cody Rigsby’s Raunchy Ride to Stardom.

It is catchy. Cody’s been on a roll as we’ve mentioned many times. I do think he has a new PR person. I know it was a joke at first but it’s sticking. I don’t have a thing to say other than it’s a fun article about Cody and how he puts his own spin on everything, pun not intended, and he’s made it work for him. That also speaks to how Peloton allows each instructor to have their own voice and be themselves. I appreciate that for Peloton because you do not want the exact same instructor every day. You need different instructors for different reasons. I’m very happy they’re

When you were attracting an audience the size that Peloton is, it’s not just different people want different things, different days. It’s different people want different things. You can’t just have three instructors and call it a day and please all these people. It’s the cost of doing business. Not everyone feels that way, then we turn to the oddly titled Cody Rigsby’s Grumpy Ride to Stardom on the barely literate TexasNewsToday.com.

I don’t think they are literate. In fact, this was written by one of those bots.

I was thinking the same thing. This is either a Russian website that wants to draw you in and then feed you anti-vax info or something, or it’s written by a bot. First off, they spelled Rigsby wrong with two g’s. Even I know that. The grammar on this thing, the sentences are so weird.

 

I literally had to call it out because it was so awful. His name is spelled wrong the entire time. The very first sentence that talks about his mother, Cindy, is full of grammatical and punctuation errors. It doesn’t even make sense. There are words missing. It’s awful.

The first sentence of the article is, “And no one has nailed it to being friendly than Riggsby.”

That literally is what it says. Don’t read this article unless you want to laugh. It will be in our newsletter. You can enjoy it from the “What is happening here?” standpoint. That’s the only reason we went to call your attention to it.

I was like, “What is this website?” I went to their About Us section and this is in their About Us section of something that claims to be a new site, “We deliver the latest updates on national and international issues with photo, audio and video. Having a diverse range of products and sections, it is for everyone in the family.”

No, it isn’t.

This article is making my brain hurt.

I’m pretty sure I lost some intelligence points right out of the gate.

It was like Billy Madison, “We are all stupider for having read that.” If you’re wondering where to get your coffee from, Jess Sims would like you to consider a Nespresso.

This is a huge deal. Her repping Nespresso, one of my favorite companies. I do love my coffee. I love seeing her be able to represent this ginormous company. Congrats to her and congrats to Nespresso. They’re lucky to have her.

Speaking of Jess Sims, she pops up on InStyle magazine with five favorite pre and post-ride stretches.

She mentions how stretching is so important. She does have these little countdowns of classes here. We all know that stretching is one of the most important things you can do to make the next day’s workout even better. I’m very glad that they included this, but it’s not an article that you want us to go bullet point by bullet point because it’s just a countdown. She’s having a good week.

She must have hired Cody’s publicist.

—

Joining us once again is Angelo from MetPro. How’s it going?

It’s going great. It’s great to be back with you.

We’re so glad you’re here. We have more questions for you from our Clip Out community. I’m excited to hear about this next one because I’m not there yet but I will be. This is from Colleen Kaiser. She wants to know how do you balance weight loss with macros and exercise in menopause?

Could there be like juggling baby, shaving mixed in there? I will do my best to answer Colleen’s question. Macros are a component of what your diet is comprised of. The end results if those components are aligning and your strategy is working is going to be weight loss. It won’t be linear so you will plateau. That’s what they didn’t tell you. It’s death, taxes and plateauing when you’re on a weight loss program. That will happen.

Don’t panic. It is okay. That’s all part of the game. Your body will naturally acclimate to the changes you’ve made to your diet or to your exercise program. It’ll acclimate for a while, and then you’ll make more progress. In some cases, and this is what we deal with the metabolic profiling is we help know when your body has reached its threshold and now we need to change something. In fact, I was on the phone with a gal the other day and she’s like, “I’ve been here. I need to change my diet. I’m like, “Not yet, eat the same thing for three more days.” Why? Because when we’re looking at her stats, we’re heading in a certain direction. I could tell she was going to drop another 1 or 2 pounds in the next day or so. Sure enough, she did and then she’s like, “Do we stay here?” I’m like, “No. Now we’re going to change everything.”

I digress. Getting back to her question, how do you balance the macros? There’s not going to be a specific set formula. I’ll give you an example, The Zone Diet. His name will come back to me in a moment but he was brilliant. He came up with the 40-30-30. It’s been a second but he had a very balanced macronutrient ratio plan. What we did was we plugged it into our backend CRM to see if we run data to see based on averages, young people, old people, small people, big people, everything in between, what was the most common macronutrient ratio at the moment? We found that his macronutrient ratio is the wellness, well-rounded ratio popped up 99% of the time, which was the highest single reoccurring macronutrient ratio. It means that the diet plan and that writer was brilliant even though he was wrong 91% of the time.

What it goes to show is that everyone needs something a little bit different. The way you balance it is you look at, “Am I progressing?” A system of adjustments is, “Can I manipulate my calories up and down? When we say macronutrients, usually, the first one people are going to look at is carbohydrates. Assuming you’re getting a decent amount of protein and fats, “Can I manipulate carbohydrates up and down?” Those are your two X levers that are outside of exercise. You then look at the exercise and say, “Can I add volume? Can I add intensity? Can I add frequency? If there are no more levers to be pulled, because some people will get there like, “I’ve done that,” then you have to change your goal temporarily.

Now, we’re going to focus on performance. We’re going to spend a few weeks revving up that metabolism, not trying to lose weight, I know that’s a dirty word, focusing on speeding your metabolism. When you switch back to a fat-burning cycle, it will be once again effective. For menopause, the strategy doesn’t change. It absolutely can be challenging. I’m not saying that menopause doesn’t affect how your body stores weight or where your metabolism is because it absolutely does, but it doesn’t change the strategy. If anything, it makes good nutrition, consistent exercise and a smart strategy even that much more important.

You were looking for good news, aren’t you? If you’re experiencing hot flashes you have to eat ice cream.

That would have been a good answer.

We see women every day that despite going through menopause are finding ways to keep a healthy metabolism and are still reaching their weight loss goals, their fitness goals, and getting in better and better shape. We see it every day.

That’s encouraging. We all have to be patient.

We all know that patience is your strong suit.

That may not be true.

Thank you so much for answering Colleen’s question. Until next time, where can people find you?

MetPro.co/tco.

Thank you.

—

We have a new instructor for Germany.

Marcel Maurer has joined. This is interesting because he is specifically been hired for strength. He does not have any other listings on his Peloton bio for now. I’m not saying he’s never done anything else but he is only being listed doing Peloton strength. People are wondering if that means we are getting very close to the strength product that will be dropping. Will we be seeing another strength instructor just for the strength in the UK or Australia for that matter. Congrats and welcome to Marcel.

Everybody’s always looking for different ways to get their cardio fix in. Have you ever thought about boxing or kickboxing?

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It’s going to come with all the gear that you need to box at home, including a freestanding punching bag, boxing gloves, quick hand wraps, and their unique punch tracking sensors that challenge you to hit the minimum amount of punches each round and allow you to track your boxing and kickboxing journey so you can see all the progress you’re making.

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—

Marketing Brew, which we know is trustworthy because they’ve used us as a source. They’ve got to know what they’re talking about.

They also reach something like 75 million homes a day. They’re doing okay. I think they got it under control.

They have an interesting article about a report on DTC ad spend, which means direct to consumer companies. Peloton falls under that and it turns out they spend a lot of money.

Not just a lot. They spent the most on TV advertising during the first half of 2021. They spent $68.9 million. That is more than it’s spent in all of 2020 because they didn’t need advertising when the pandemic hit.

That is a crap ton of money. It was also interesting that it says that Peloton took the number one spot with more than 11.5 billion impressions through the first half of the year, while your favorite company, Chewy and Carvana settled into slots 2 and 3 garnering ten million views.

That’s amazing. Congrats to Peloton.

Anybody could do it if you spent the money, but they also have to generate the money to spend that money. If you think about it, their marketing spend is more than what a lot of these connected fitness companies are bragging about raising in their fundraising campaigns with Angel investors.

That’s true. That’s a good way to look at it.

While we’re talking about Peloton and their TV spend, they have a new TV commercial that debuted.

It’s talking about no matter who you are, you don’t know who’s on the leaderboard with you. I loved this commercial. I got chills when I watched it because it showed real community members, whether it was Usain Bolt or it was the guy down the street riding his bike. I loved seeing that juxtaposition because those are real people and they are riding Peloton. They are doing the strength classes, they are pushing themselves. That’s pretty cool that we have that breadth of variety of people on the leaderboard.

It’s also interesting that they’re finally going down this road. People have been saying for a long time that they should feature more community and regular everyday people in their commercials. It’s interesting to see that they finally have done that.

This is the third ad that they have. It’s not a brand new thing. I do think that it has a lot to do with Dara, the CMO. The next article is about her. That seemed like a good time to bring her in. She started at Peloton in early 2020. Back then, Peloton was still dealing with the aftermath of that commercial. Everyone knows what I’m talking about. People still ask questions about it. Dara has changed the direction and also, she’s a superstar in her own right. She is out there, the face of Peloton all the time. She’s always going to all these different marketing conventions and talking about Peloton. She always gives great insights when she talks and when she speaks about Peloton and talking about what’s going on. She’s made things change at Peloton.

There’s also some very interesting stuff buried at the bottom of this article. It says, “According to the market research company, Cardify.ai, a survey of Peloton users recently found that 41% of bike tread and app users are beginning to replace their workouts within studio gyms.” My guess would be that they’re augmenting that they still want to go to the gym, but then it goes on to say, “Additionally, more than a quarter indicated they’re likely to discontinue their subscription.” I got to throw the BS flag on that because I find it hard to believe that there are that many people who would drop that money on a product and then completely let it turn into a brick and walk away from it.

I don’t think that that’s true. We’ll see because the numbers will become obvious if that’s the case.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see maybe rides and usage decline as people like, “I’m going to work out five times a week,” and maybe two of them are at the gym. The overall engagement might drop. I found it hard to believe that people who dropped, $2,000, $2,500 on a bike or even more on a tread nine months ago are going to turn around and be like, “F it,” and walk away from it.

For what it’s worth. I see that there’s a quote here from Dara. She responds to that and she says, “What is sticky about the platform is that it works. Once people get into the ecosystem and start taking the classes, they stay with it. That’s going to continue. Even as we emerge from this pandemic, that stickiness is going to continue. You’re going to continue to see members coming back for more.” I agree with her.

I do too. A website called the Greatist talked about Rebecca Kennedy.

They talked to her and she posted that she had done this. I love this article because its title is building rest into your exercise life. Most people are aware in the Peloton community or maybe they’re not, Rebecca has been taking some time off to take care of herself. She hasn’t been teaching in the tread for a while. This person who reached out to her was a journalist and was like, “I didn’t know that people at her level could take time off for themselves and demand it.” It’s not like, “I’m taking off, I don’t care.”

That speaks to Peloton’s commitment to their trainers that whenever one of these instructors need some time they encourage and allow it. There are a lot of companies out there. There are a lot of institutions out there that do not allow people to rest and recover when they need it. I don’t know all the details behind what’s going on with Rebecca, nor do I need to. Her saying, “I need some time” is enough. I love that they highlighted this and have an article all about it. It’s another thing that nobody can ever beat Peloton on. They stand out.

—

The Breathe In, Speak Up thing is back. I feel bad saying “thing” because it sounds important, but I don’t know what I’m talking about.

It is important. I know you don’t take these classes. It was a group of classes that started in 2020. The Breathe In was the Chelsea Jackson Roberts side of things where she had these powerful meditations that were about Black Lives Matter.

I’m a big jerk right now.

I understand because you don’t take these classes. I get that. The Speak Up side of things was Tunde and she was on the bike. She did these powerful classes and she talked about the same subject matter. The two go together and it’s one year later from when those classes first aired. There was a special anniversary edition of the ride, the flow and the meditation. I encourage you, if you did not get a chance to take the anniversary edition, please do. It’s amazing. I love that Peloton gives their instructors a place to be themselves and to speak about things that are important to them.

—

August is a busy month for Peloton birthdays.

It does not shock me because Leos are August. Leos have big personalities. We have Jayvee Nava who I associate with the Heart of Peloton. Her birthday is August 2nd, and then we have Marion Roaman. People may not have even heard this name before. Marion was one of the very first instructors back when Peloton first started. I have been told that she conducted the first class that Peloton ever did live. I don’t know if that’s accurate. I wasn’t around then but that’s what I was told. Her birthday’s on August 3rd, and then we have Jess Sims, August 5th. Congrats to everyone.

We know she will be enjoying her birthday with some Nespresso.

 

We would be remiss if we did not add as a celebration that Ally Love is getting married. Congrats to her.

—

Joining us is Katrina Sophia. Katrina, how’s it going?

Good. How are you doing?

Good. We’re excited you’re here. I feel like we need to start off by also explaining how “we met” Katrina.

We’re meeting her right now. She left a review that we read and her screen name was Frauded by TLC and we were like, “What does that mean?” She reached out to explain it and we were fascinated.

Yes, you guys are like, “Is she talking about the TV network? Is she talking about the music group? Does she have a beef with Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes, RIP?”

We had lots of questions. We are going to get into all of that and find out all about what you do because everybody at home is going to be as excited as we were to know. I like to start off with Peloton. How did you first find out about Peloton and decide, “That needs to be mine?”

I’d known of Peloton. I was never an indoor bike person. I never did spin class before in my life. In fact, I had it a long time ago. I was running all the time and I had gotten injured. I’d gotten shin splints and all this stuff. I was told to ride the indoor bike and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. It wasn’t something that was on my radar. I’ve been off and on running through the last couple of years. I have a cheap old treadmill. It’s loud but it was free when our neighbor was getting rid of it, so we have it. When I wasn’t running outside, I was running on the treadmill. I was having difficulty motivating.

My fiancé got me the Peloton for Christmas. It was totally the commercial. He’s like, “I know you’re having trouble motivating to run again, so I got this. I think that might help. I would have gotten you the treadmill except that it was twice as much, so I got you the cheaper one.” I was skeptical because I didn’t like spin, I wasn’t an indoor bike person, and I’d never expressed interest in it. I got on it that first day and then I was on it every single day. I immediately became obsessed. I was riding every single day for months. Every single day, at least through my century ride.

I then started adding in strength. I found the #hardCORE On the Floor group and it became my tribe. I loved the strength workout. I was riding and doing strength. I became completely obsessed with it and then I found you and it fit perfectly. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I have been sober for years. The obsessive part of my personality, the Peloton fits in perfectly for that. It allows me to obsess over it. All the things that made me alcoholic obsessing about booze and all these things, I channeled that into the Peloton. I’m never going to get bored because there’s much content. That’s my story. I love my Peloton more than my children.

Luckily, they’ll never read this because kids are not interested in the things their parents do at all.

I tell them.

You want to leave it to chance.

They’re old enough to understand.

Yes, they are. How long have you had your Peloton then?

Since Christmas of 2020. It arrived two days before Christmas. We had to make some adjustments because both my fiancé and I are working from home. We both had our home setups upstairs and we work opposite shifts. He works nights because he produces radio. I work during the day. My day-to-day full-time job is as a government lawyer. My Peloton was downstairs in what was formerly his Xbox room which started calling it my Peloton room. We had to make some changes. He moved his work stuff downstairs, which means my Peloton stuff moved up in the dining room area. It’s this open concept. I have my work, Peloton, my shelf with all my weights, yoga, and stuff. It’s my little corner.

It’s probably a good thing you didn’t buy the tread. There’s no way to move that thing downstairs.

Part of the reason I also don’t have the tread is because my son has one more year of high school. When he moves out to go to college, I’ll take over his room. I will then have the room I need for the tread and I figured by then, they’ll be reselling it again, so I’ve got a year before I can get the transfer.

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You have this planned out.

Absolutely. I know which wall the Tonal is going to go on. I don’t have that yet either.

If you ever need to move the tread, you’re going to have to buy a Tonal so you can get strong enough to move the tread.

I told you, I’m obsessed. I don’t go in a little bit. I go all-in. It’s completely extreme. I have no middle ground. There’s no moderation with me. It’s all or nothing. It’s black or white.

You’re reminding me so much of Laurie Besden. I don’t know if you’ve heard our interview with her. She is a recovering addict and alcoholic. I don’t want to misspeak but she had addiction issues, though. She also, ironically, was an attorney. She came on the show and she talked to us about stuff. She said that she has so much. It’s the most of everything. She’s got it. It’s in her personality. She’s got to do more and more. She loves that about Peloton. You two should be friends. You have a lot in common. If you love dogs, you are soulmates.

I do. I have two dogs. I also love them more than my children.

You and Laurie Besden need to connect. You have so much in common. Back to your story, does your fiancé use Peloton at all? Is he into it?

He did it first and then he realized that he got shoes that were too small so he had to send them back and get new ones. That took a while because it was the height of some of their supply chain issues or whatever. When he got the new ones, I don’t think he’s been back on the bike set. He’s totally obsessed with the British, Leanne. Every time we’re in the same room and I’m getting on the bike, I’m like, “Leanne says she misses you.” He grumbles.

Let’s talk about your leaderboard name and how all this came to be.

My leaderboard name is not the name that I set. My name is Katreetree. It is a name that my work husband gave me a few years ago and it stuck. I left the review under my podcast name, which was Frauded by TLC. I have an Instagram page. It’s called Frauded Media, but for many years, I was Frauded by TLC.

You then got a cease and desist.

I did try to copyright my name. I couldn’t copyright it because of the TLC portion. I changed it to Frauded Media. The Frauded by TLC name, that Instagram account is, I’m a huge 90 Day Fiancé fan. It’s the Trash TV at its finest.

I got to know, how long has he been your fiancé? Is this clock ticking? Is he worried?

We’re getting married, so he’s safe. I became ensconced in the 90 Day Fiancé fan community on Instagram. I was on Reddit and then jumped over to Instagram. It then started with a couple of seasons. The second season of one of the spin-offs is called Before the 90 Days, and it was about long-distance couples who meet each other for the first time before they get engaged. The 90-day fiancé is after they get engaged and the person’s coming to America.

They have 90 days to get married under that visa. There’s this couple on there, John and Rachel. I had come across some information that made it look like they had already met and what we are seeing on TV was a reenactment. I started investigating, digging, and doing all this stuff. As it turns out, I’m convinced that was their actual first meeting, but that’s what spawned this whole venture. I had this Instagram account that was like, “Follow my fraud-y tale,” because they were like, “Follow my fairy tale.” I was posting evidence that I was coming across and things like that. After that season was over, I morphed into doing that same thing but for the show in general. I would pull back the curtain on the reality aspect of what we are seeing on TV. You see this, “That’s completely fake. That set up. The producer said that but that’s not true,” so I became this. At that time, I was the only one doing it but now there’s a lot of accounts that do it.

How did you find that stuff out?

I have sources.

You didn’t have sources on day one.

Part of it was investigating and digging. It’s harder because they’re better about scrubbing a lot of their past history. TLC and the Discovery Network are struggling to get on. They have these social media contracts and there are different things that they’re getting more and more, like getting the cast to tighten up and stuff. There were a lot of friends and family on social media. I’ve come across wedding pictures of friends of friends of friends of theirs. When you start digging, you have to go six Facebook pages deep. “This is their mom. This is the cousin. This is Aunt Mildred. She posted a picture of their wedding. Here’s the date.” You do all this stuff. You start investigating this stuff. You can look up marriage records and divorce records, things like that.

In my day job, I’m a lawyer for the government and my position is basically investigating the investigations. Investigations come to me and I review the investigations. I investigate the quality of those things. I’m digging into evidence at a very minute level. It’s the same skill set that I do for the 90 Day Fiancé. Once I started doing it, I came across some information and started posting it. People started reaching out to me and I would start getting more information. It was a combination of people coming to me and then me reaching out to people and having a network of people that would give me information.

Did your Instagram blow up?

It did. There was a couple of things where there was a cast member who was pretending he was all posh and he had all this luxury lifestyle stuff. He posted all these pictures of private jets, dinners at Monaco, and things like that with all these hashtags. It turned out he was copying other people’s Instagram. I became the clearinghouse for those people who are doing all this research. They were sending the original post, who posted it, and then his. It’s showing that he was literally copying this stuff. That was a big thing and that caused my Instagram to blow up.

There was another plotline where this one guy had a secret. It was on one of the spin-offs called The Other Way where the American goes and moves to the other country. There’s a couple, Sumit and Jenny, where Jenny moved to India to marry Sumit but Sumit had a secret. Matt Sharp, who’s the production guy of Sharp Entertainment and is also the production company behind 90 Day, who incidentally also do Love After Lockup. He had this secret. Everybody was like, “What’s the secret? Do his parents have him engaged to be in an arranged marriage?”

I found out ahead of time through a secret network of sources that his secret was that he was already married. Before I post all this, everybody was like, “Oh my God.” The next week on the show, they revealed it and everything blew up from there. Each season, each iteration, and stuff that started became this big thing. We’re in a season called Happily Ever After? which is about couples after they’ve gotten married. It’s following them. It’s Happily Ever After? to see what’s going on. It’s incredibly boring. These are couples that we’ve seen over and over again. I’m like, “I’m bored with it.”

Here’s the deal, if they’re happy, that makes for a pretty lousy reality show.

They have to be completely dysfunctional.

That’s the best.

It’s interesting.

Does Matt Sharp hate you?

He’s not a fan of mine. I know after I revealed that Sumit is married, the network was shaking down the cast members.

If someone loves that show enough to follow your Instagram and wants to get all those details, they’re not going to not watch the show because you told them.

There are some of them. It’s hard because I have close to 100,000 followers, so there is a lot of commentaries. I try to engage with it but it can be difficult and overwhelming. There’s a lot going on.

I know how much we get and we don’t have 100,000 followers but still, if somebody who’s that engaged, they’re not going to stop watching it, even if they’re pissed off. They’re going to hate to watch it but they still going to watch it.

They found out a week later anyway so what difference does it make?

People were speculating, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. The Instagram page morphed into a podcast called The Fraudcast. Right now, because there’s not a lot of fraud, we’re belly-aching about the show. We’ve tried that but we don’t recap at all. We bitch about like, “They’re showing Family Libby in the freaking RV for the sixteenth episode in a row. They’re having the same argument they had three seasons ago. Get over it.” That’s the stuff we talk about.

Do you do one for Love After Lockup?

We covered a season of Love After Lockup on our Patreon for one season and that’s when we discovered we’re terrible at recapping. Ask our opinions about the show but I’m terrible at recapping. I started following it on my Instagram because I’m following it as a fan. I have gotten some behind-the-scenes information.

What can you tell us?

I talked to some of the addicts. RIP Tracie. Do you remember Tracie Wagaman who married Clint? She passed away at the beginning of July 2021. She had given birth to a baby girl who my sources tell me, not independently confirmed, that she gave the baby up for adoption. It was either that or CPS was going to take the baby because she was still using while she was pregnant. It was a couple of days after that. I’ve heard that it’s from an overdose but I have not gotten an independent confirmation of that.

As an addict myself, I had talked to her multiple times, I’ve done a couple of interviews with her, and she gave me the inside scoop on some of the things that you saw on TV where it was like, “What happened to the rental car that she disappeared with?” She told me the whole story of what happened behind that, which was crazy. It’s stuff like that. It’s the same production company. It’s Matt Sharp Productions and Sharp Entertainment. I don’t think he needs to have as much of a producer hand in Love After Lockup because that stuff is organically trashy and entertaining that you don’t need to produce much.

That makes sense. We watch some shows where you can tell, like Jersey Shore.

They’ve pushed things to happen. It was like, “Let’s set all these people up in this,” and they make it sound like Uncle Nino showed up.

We were watching one where Vinnie called his mom and was like, “Will you come over and make food?” She’s supposed to be surprised but there’s a camera crew at her house.

There’s also a camera crew when she answers the phone.

You can’t be too surprised.

There’s a certain amount of where they reshoot scenes multiple times. Something happens, and they’ll have them do it again and again. Sometimes there are continuity errors.

We’ve spotted stuff like that before.

That is low-level fraud.

Those are production issues. They want to make it look and sound prettier but it’s still basically true.

What Sharp Productions tends to do on 90 Day is they take something that has a kernel truth to it. The couple will tell him certain things or whatever, and then they’ll blow that up and make that a lot bigger than it is in real life. They make this huge thing. There’s a couple named Libby and Andrei, who’s from Moldova. They’ve been married for a couple of seasons at this point. Their storyline is entirely him not getting along with her family. They’ve spent four seasons arguing but I have sources on the ground there in Florida that they actually all get along fine in real life. All the fighting and everything is all completely made up. I’ve watched it and I’m like, “It’s so boring. Give me the real stuff.”

Are there any reality shows that you watch because you like them?

That’s Love After Lockup for me at least. I started watching again. I missed last season, and then I caught up with it on a marathon and I’m like, “This is awesome.”

I feel like you picked a good season to come back on.

I started watching it and I’m like, “She’s in a dill-pickle costume.” She’s laying on the ground behind this concrete barrier. It was amazing. She didn’t even get up to surprise him. Not only is she wearing a pickle costume, but she’s hiding and laying on the ground behind this barrier. She’s going to get up to greet her convict.

It was the worst dill-pickle costume ever.

On the flip side, there probably isn’t a whole lot of options in the dill-pickle costume category. There are a finite number of options.

If that’s your option, don’t do it.

That would be good but these people are making good choices.

If they’re making good choices as a lieutenant in corrections at this facility, she’s probably been sleeping with the inmate that she’s living with.

That is frowned upon.

A double proxy. I do watch it because I enjoy it so much. As part of my recovery work, I go to jails. There’s a local jail that I go to. They have a separate living unit. I used to go before the pandemic. I would go, bring meetings to them, and talk to them and stuff. I have a heart and a soft spot for convicts, especially addict convicts. I watch it and I’m always rooting for these people to get sober or whatever. However, I’m like, “This guy used a credit card to slice off a piece of this is a nine-foot-long bologna.”

You cannot make this stuff up. Out of all the things you would want to eat when you go to jail, you want bologna?

They eat bologna in jail all the time.

You would think if you got out of jail, bologna would be the last thing you wanted.

He doesn’t seem to be making good choices. As an adult, he’s been out of prison for 41 days in total.

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That’s a shocking number to know. One of the couples in Love After Lockup is based in St. Louis. If you need boots on the ground, you go to Rita Hunt.

We call him Wig and not because he bought those three wigs and put them on the heads in his backseat like a serial killer but he was a serial killer. I don’t want to know what his basement looks like where he’s going to take her when she gets out of prison.

He spent $1,600 on those wigs. I’m like, “If you’re willing to spend that much money on wigs, explain what’s going on in your head.”

What is happening in that comb-over thing?

My fiancé walks into the room and we call it Hetero life mate because for a long time we weren’t ever going to get married. He was my hetero life mate because I’m a Kevin Smith fan, Jay inside Bob. It’s a whole thing. He walked in while I was watching it and the first thing he said was, “Why is that guy wearing a bad hairpiece?” The thing about that couple, which is interesting to me is he met that girl, Lisa, on the website Seeking Arrangement, which is a sugar daddy website. He’s trying to say that they fell in love but that’s a whole lot of no. I’m not saying that she’s doing this. I don’t have any independent information from her but that’s what these people do. They have lots of pen pals, and they have this to get money on their books so they can buy at commissaries. They’re doing this with lots and lots of people. Lizzie admitted it and she thought that Scott had a lot more money than he did. She’s like, “I’ll pretend to be in with him.”

Although I will say, I find it interesting that the St. Louis guy wasn’t using a prison pen pal. Most of these people have sought out prisoners to interact with.

It is confusing to me. Talk about life choices. I’m not saying there’s never a scenario that’s a good idea.

You would think you’re drastically reducing the likelihood of finding a relationship.

The psychology behind what they call Met While Incarcerated on the website, PrisonTalk.com forums. If you want to lose a couple of hours of your life, go to PrisonTalk.com. Look at the forums and start reading. There’s a category called Met While Incarcerated. There are these people for a variety of reasons. “They’re visiting my cousin and this was a soulmate,” or whatever. Of course, there are all of these prison pen pals and stuff.

The psychology of the people who reach out to those who are seeking this kind of relationship fascinates me. The intellectual psychology analysis behind that is fascinating to me. Why are you going to seek out this relationship? Some of it is control. You know where your person is, you build up this fantasy in your head, and he calls you three times a day and has these conversations but he’s doing that with five other people. She’s showing pictures of her boobs to whatever.

They’re not fully available. For some people, that’s a good thing.

I would love to talk to somebody who studied this and not just the phenomenon of women who go after serial killers like the people who are interested in Charles Manson.

That’s a different thing.

That’s a whole different psychology.

There’s a TV show and it’s on an app, maybe WeTV or Oxygen. It’s called Prison Wives. It was one season and it didn’t go anywhere. In each episode, it follows a wife.

It’s a different wife for an episode. It’s like how 16 and Pregnant started. Each episode followed a different girl. They pick the most popular ones and put them together in Teen Mom.

Exactly, but this never went anywhere beyond that. You got to watch the stories of what their lives are like and it’s fascinating to me during those late nights where I can’t sleep.

Do any of these shows get it right or more truthful? Are there any ways you’re like, “That show plays it pretty straight?”

As far as the portrayal?

In terms of not faking things or setting things in motion, that would prevent it.

By far, Love After Lockup is one of the least produced because you don’t need to tell her to dress up in a dill-pickle costume and lay down behind the cement barrier.

That’s intuitive.

I don’t think anyone could think to do that.

Even from a genius like Matt Sharp.

 

How does MS work with all of your exercising and stuff? I know that that’s a difficult disease to have.

I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2017. It was caught early, which is unusual with MS, with the disease course. I only had the one episode that diagnosed me. I then started on medication and stuff, and I haven’t had any disease progression since. I do have a band of symptoms that I always have that are part of daily living. Exercise is supposed to be helpful to MS. The problem that you run into is one of the big factors, one of the big symptoms is fatigue. It’s chronic fatigue, and it’s not like “I’m tired. I haven’t slept well in a couple of days.” There’s a whole different word for it because it’s like a whole other level of exhaustion. It’s like I need a nap after taking a shower type of fatigue. That will play into it.

I also deal with chronic pain, which is fairly well managed, but not always. People with chronic pain are always at a certain level. Four or five pain level is my normal. If it goes above that and stuff, I do have difficulty. I had to get okay with not working out every day. Because I have this obsessive personality, I was like, “I got to do it every day. I got to do riding and my strength every day,” but then I was fighting through the pain and fatigue, and I was doing all these things.

I have this weight loss coach, Strong with Sarah, on Instagram. She’s amazing. She’s also a spin instructor and she does it all. She has been helping me with that thought process. “Some days, it’s okay that you don’t work out. This is your lot in life.” You do what you can to overcome some of those symptoms but there are days where I don’t have feeling in my feet. What are you going to do? There’s nothing you can do about it. It happens and there’s no predicate to it. Heat and stress flare it up.

Pandemic has been good for me because I’m not doing as much. I’m not leaving the house. I’m home all the time, so I’m not getting this fatigued and this pain but there are days where I’m planning on working out and I can’t. It’s a high pain day or my fatigue is so bad. Before I got on with you, I was napping. My afternoon naps have become this thing for me. I have to have my afternoon naps. Of course, the opposite side of MS fatigue is that you also get insomnia and you can’t sleep. It’s this battle.

I had to get okay with the gray. Not everything is black and white of my working out. As much as I want it to be, rewards come to those who got to hustle and you got to work hard. All of these great things are helpful. I had to take a step back and be okay in that gray zone. I’m not going to be able to get a 45-minute Jess Sims’ Boot Camp in but I might be able to do an outdoor walk for twenty minutes and those things. Some days, I can’t do it at all. There are some weeks where I ride every day, I do the hardcore calendar, I’m doing all of this stuff, and then another week where I’m lucky if I can get one ride in.

Especially in the summer when it’s much hotter and the heat flaring things up. That mind change was difficult for me. I had to get help and I worked on this obsessive black-and-white, extreme thinking in therapy years ago. There is this middle ground. There’s this area called moderation that alcoholics don’t know. If we knew moderation, we wouldn’t be alcoholics. Learning to accept those kinds of limitations and learning to work within them has been a process. It’s been a journey for me.

One of the things that I love so much about Peloton and the instructors is Peloton never advertised themselves in a weight-loss capacity. It’s all about your health, mental strength, and fortitude. Robin had a post talking about not comparing yourself to others. Compare yourself only to your previous self. Hide the leaderboard if that’s what it is. I will often hide the leaderboard. I PRed one time on a good day. I haven’t even come close to that number since and seeing my numbers on a day when I may not be feeling my best, but I’m riding anyway. Seeing how far away from that PR number I am, what good does it do me? Learning those kinds of things, be okay in those things, and what’s an excuse to not work out versus what’s a real issue.

That would have to be difficult to figure out the difference between those two.

I feel like all of those things, I struggle with them on a daily basis, so I don’t even know.

I live in the DC area and we’re at a heatwave, so I’m not doing out sidewalks but I will do a lot of those on days when I can’t ride. I feel like that might be too much or I can’t even do the hardcore stacks. Maybe I can do the ten-minute core and then I’ll do a twenty-minute walk, a power walk, or something outside. Those are great. I have a bright neighborhood for that thing. That’s been good. Of course, in this heatwave, we’re not but I like to do that in the evening. If it’s been a day where my planned workout earlier in the day didn’t work out like I couldn’t have it, then I will try to at least get a twenty-minute walk-in. If I’m feeling good, then I’ll stack on another twenty minutes.

I’ve been doing a lot of virtual Five K’s. If I go down this road to this light, that’s 1.5miles there, if I do it out and back, that’s a 5k. If I want to do hills, there’s a powerline trail that goes through my neighborhood and I can do that or this one is really flat. The Peloton content for that is fantastic. If you haven’t gone and done those, they’re amazing. Generally, you will pick them by playlist. If it’s a run and I’m not feeling up to a run, I’ll do it as a power walk and change the cues. If they’re saying, “Run at this pace.” That’s my power walk pace. I’ll adjust it or I’ll scale it down. If it’s a walk and I’m feeling that I want to do it as a run, I’ll do it as a run. I pick the ‘80s and ‘70s playlist because I’m a Gen Xer.

That makes sense. you mentioned Jess Sims. Was that the name that popped into your head or is she your preferred instructor?

She popped into my head. I have not done a 45-minute Jess Sims Bootcamp because it intimidates the hell out of me, to be honest. I do like Cody’s bootcamps. I tend to end up doing this because I tend to choose my rides by playlist. I end up doing a lot of Cody rides because I love all that’s pop. I’m a huge Britney Spears fan. I was at one of her concerts, pre-breakdown in 2007. I remember being in the front row at one of those concerts as an adult because that’s what I do.

I’ll end up doing a lot of MR rides because she does a lot of ‘90s alternative and then I’ll end up doing some CD rides because they call them New Wave rides, but it’s like Depeche Mode. It’s all this emo ‘80s music and it brings me back to high school. Andy Speer on some of his walks or runs. He does soft rock or a yacht rock type. If I had to say a favorite, I’d probably say Cody because of the playlist. My overall favorite is probably Selena Samuela. Her strength workouts are fantastic. I love them. I love her even though her imams are m-raps. I love her and I do a lot of full-body stretches. Cody and Selena are my favorites.

If you like yacht rock, you’ve got to check out Jenn Sherman’s yacht rock rides.

She does great playlists, but she’s also hard. Some of the rides are a bit and hard and I’m like, “I’m a little bit intimidated by that.”

I’ll ride a lot when on Sundays because I run most of the other days. I’ll do hers and make it more of endurance. I do all the stuff you were talking about with the running, but I changed it to a steadier state the whole time. That’s how I do most of those rides. She is definitely tough.

That’s also what I love about Peloton. You can push if you’re in the mood to push yourself. You have those options and you can do it. If you’re in the mood and you can’t push or you only picked that class because of the playlist, you can scale it back and they support and are okay with that. I watched it. I know that they script their classes and stuff like that, how they come up with all of these inspirational and perfect things to say, it’s like, “I needed that. That’s what I needed to hear.” That’s part of why I’m obsessed and love Peloton. I’m never going to get bored with them. There’s always so much.

I was trying to do the Power Zone challenge and I got bored with it. I missed all the other classes. Power Zone was great. I had done the Discovery of Power Zone Course right after I got my bike. It was good to do after I got my bike. I learned a lot of mechanics and a lot of things about it. The FTP was helpful and all that stuff. I missed all the other stuff and there’s only so much time in the day. When homecoming came around, I’m trying to do, “Do I need a spreadsheet to layout? I’m going to do three rides because I want all three of those.” I want this live and that one’s okay if it’s an encore but trying to coordinate all of that. There’s so much and I’m never going to get bored of it. The instructors always continually motivate me in ways that seep into all areas of your life. It’s not only applicable to your workout it’s also applicable to your life and that’s fantastic.

Do you have any advice for people that are getting a Peloton device?

I’ve had several friends get them since. The advice that I like to give people is one, get a padded bike seat. Your butt will get used to the seat but that first week can be rough. They’re $20 on Amazon. They’re fantastic. Make sure you’re fitted properly because that makes a difference. I did the Discover Your Power Zones early in my Peloton career, which I found helpful. If you’re struggling and you don’t know where to start, they have many like Beginner Strength or Crusher Core. They’ve even added more and different ones. Those are great and they’re there for a reason.

These people know what they’re talking about. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I go to the hardcore calendar because Nicole, who you have had on your show knows what she’s doing. I would randomly pick and choose different strength workouts but she knows what she’s doing. She puts them together in a way that makes sense. Listen to the experts. They put these programs together. Do it. There are basics like a bike-riding basics class. Also, don’t be afraid of the other courses. Don’t be like, “I don’t like yoga so I’m not going to do yoga.”

Once upon a time, I was a yogi, but then I’ve had three shoulder surgeries. I now have a fake shoulder. My right shoulder is artificial. I have a difficult time with a lot of yoga because I don’t have mobility because my shoulder is a reverse total shoulder, so I don’t have the range of motion. Yoga is difficult for me, but I do it. I modify where I need it. I do it. You might surprise yourself. I don’t like it but I can do a downward dog again. I didn’t use to be able to do that. When I pushed myself up out of the bathtub, I have strength in my arm now. It’s because I was open to Pilates. I don’t have a bar. What do I do? I use the back of my couch if necessary. Being open to all of their content and you might find something you like, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it again but give it a chance.

Great advice. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. Before we let you go, let everybody know where they can find you on social media since you have a podcast. I’m assuming you would want to be found.

You can find me @FraudedMedia. It is all of the 90 Day trash TV stuff. That podcast is called The Fraudcast and you can get it wherever you get podcasts. My leaderboard name is Katreetree. I do an Instagram. That’s my Peloton-related stuff. You can follow me there, which is @PeloKatreetree.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

—

I guess that brings this episode to a close. Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can find me on Twitter, Instagram, the bike and the tread @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Swing by our YouTube channel where you can watch these shows with full video at YouTube.com/TheClipOut. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

Important Links:

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• Laurie Besden – Previous episode
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• MetPro.co/tco
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• https://Podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fraudcast-a-90-day-fiance-podcast/id1484406030?i=1000528133796
• https://TheDipp.com/author/katrinasophia
• https://www.Facebook.com/groups/RunLiftAndLive/permalink/3962924943830871/
• https://www.Facebook.com/groups/RunLiftAndLive/permalink/3972516186205080/
• https://www.Facebook.com/groups/RunLiftAndLive/permalink/3968944693228896/
• https://www.Facebook.com/groups/RunLiftAndLive/permalink/3974920679297964/
• https://www.GQ.com/story/cody-rigsby-peloton
• https://TexasNewsToday.com/cody-riggsbys-grumpy-ride-to-stardom/381566/
• https://www.InStyle.com/beauty/health-fitness/peloton-jess-sims-stretching-exercises
• https://www.Instagram.com/p/CRy22VGna0M/?utm_medium=copy_link
• https://www.MorningBrew.com/marketing/stories/2021/07/28/spotted-ispot-report-dtc-ad-spend
• https://FB.watch/v/1jTbl_D21/
• https://www.TheDrum.com/news/2021/07/27/peloton-cmo-how-she-s-marketing-the-brand-out-choppy-waters
• https://Greatist.com/discover/building-rest-into-your-exercise-life
• https://www.Instagram.com/reel/CRkKYewDRfz/?utm_medium=copy_link

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