TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

228: Cody Rigsby Makes ‘Dancing With The Stars’ History plus our interview with Yaneyra Pellascini

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

Cody Rigsby dances from home on DWTS.

A sneak peek at Cody’s next performance.

John Mills joins us to discuss the BeachBody live experience.

Dr. Jenn: Tracking vs. Intuitive Eating

We have a new instructor – Carmilla Ramon.

Peloton Apparel releases a Breast Cancer Awareness collection.

The Wall Street Journal writes about “Peloton Fatigue.”

PC Mag reviews the Peloton Tread.

A Peloton-loving civil servant in the UK raises eyebrows.

Alex Toussaint partners with Puma.

Jess King guests on the Ali On The Run podcast.

Cafe Mom writes about Peloton and social media.

Marcel Dinkins sits down with Well & Good.

Aly Love teams up with Celebrity Cruiseline.

Angelo joins us to discuss strength training vs. cardio.

Chrissy Teigen gets a Peloton.

Lars Ulrich talks about Peloton on The Eddie Trunk Show.

Andy Speers is starting a series of rock classes.

There are new pre and post-natal classes available.

Cardio Dance is back. Now with Usher!

Selena Samuela has a new leg and glute challenge.

Ben Alldis launches a strength and cycle challenge.

The latest artist series features Karol G.

All this plus our interview with Yaneyra Pellascini!

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Cody Rigsby Makes ‘Dancing With The Stars’ History plus our interview with Yaneyra Pellascini

I am freshly back from Nashville.

You drove in, took a nap and hopped right on the microphone.

It was a very different trip for me because I took food with me this time like a weirdo.  

You also workout in the hotel room.

I had to workout because I forgot to pack shorts. I don’t think anyone wanted me in the gym in my underwear.

Even if you take that out of the equation, you workout on a trip. That’s never happened before in the entire time I’ve met you.

I felt like Disney counts because sometimes we have 10, 12 mile days of walking.

It is movement but it is not an intentional exercise. That happened. I’m proud of you.

I had to get all my things ready and request a microwave. It was a whole deal, and then I got there and they put me in the wrong room. I go back down to the desk and then they’re like, “Is something wrong with your room?” I was like, “Unless it comes with a free gift, there’s already luggage in it.” Thank God that person wasn’t in the room.

That would have been so awkward, especially if they were busy.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

I got a free upgrade. I got a fancier room because they felt bad. Anyway, what pray tell do you have in store for people?

We have a visit from John Mills. We have tons to talk about. We’ll do a brief rundown of Dancing With The Stars. We have a visit from Dr. Jenn. She is going to be doing her answer to tracking versus intuitive eating, which will be a direct response to Angelo’s answer. We have tons of In The News from Peloton. Angelo also drops by and we are going to be talking about why I don’t do a lot of strength training when I’m doing MetPro, plus tons of updates on the instructors.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Wherever you find a podcast, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review if you would be so kind, and follow us so you never miss an episode. We have a new review.

This is from Donna Casola. She says, “This show is addictive. I found The Clip Out in late 2020. My only complaint is that there’s only one episode per week.” That’s what the Superset is for. “I’ve made my way through the library.” Holy smokes. People used to say that a lot when we had 40 episodes, but these days to go through them all. “Crystal and Tom are so entertaining, and regular segments and interviews are terrific. I remember way back in high school, teachers would raise money for charities by sitting in the dunking machine. Do you think we could get Tom on a Peloton to raise money?” No. “If he’d eat a raw carrot during the ride, I’d double my donation.” You got a better chance to get me on that bike than get me to eat a raw carrot.

We need a hoard of people chasing you with raw carrots and we’ve got a plan. Let’s chase you toward the bike.

“Thanks for all you do to feed my Peloton addiction. Donna Casola. Leaderboard name, I pedal for food,” but not carrots.

Thank you so much, Donna. That’s a nice review.

You can also find us on Facebook. You can keep up to date on things throughout the week at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. If you want the links and all the stuff we talk about sent to you in one easy to digest format, you can sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com and finally, our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut where you can watch these episodes in their entirety. That’s it for that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

Joining us is John Mills. How’s it going, John?

What is going on?

Before we start officially talking about topics, we should let everyone know that you are now on the Tickety Toc.

You’ve made the jump.

Is that what they call it?

That’s what we call it because we’re old.

I’m with it. I don’t know about these things. I had to know what it is.

I felt like the best part of this video was you didn’t need to do anything special for Erica to give you that look.

That was not acting.

The real struggle is when you need her to not give you the look.

That would have been more difficult.

You don't need to go to the gym anymore. Your gym is at home with your Peloton. Click To Tweet

This was such a funny video. All of your videos always are. This was a wonderful premiere to TikTok. We’re glad that you’re over there. Where can people find you on TikTok?

It’s the same place on all platforms @RunLiftAndLive. It’s the same everywhere, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. It’s all the same.

I need you to go out there and follow John on TikTok because to get followers, you got to have followers. It’s a vicious cycle. We all have to support John so he can grow the platform. It is unforgiving over on TikTok. We need to give him some love over there. I know I didn’t want to be on it either but I’m over there following John. You guys can too. Watch the videos.

I’m trying to see if my parodies and these comedy videos work on TikTok. I’ve had to shorten them a little bit. I might have been extravagant with costumes and wigs.

You have to take another route to make them a little smaller.

It’s working so far. I did that Marcel Dinkins, parody. It was The Color Purple scene when Shug Avery comes out, “I’m married now.” I turned that into excitement because I just finished a Marcel Dickins class. It works. Marcel loved it. She was out there all excited about it. I’m still working on shortening these things. My things tend to be big and extravagant.

Is there a time limit? I don’t have TikTok.

There isn’t a time limit but I don’t know if they’ll watch.  They’re swiping.

The kids, you got to pull them right in, the younger gen. I loved that you wore your daughter’s necklace in the video. That cracked me up.

She didn’t know. She wasn’t home anyway. I took the necklace to go with the dress that I stole from Erica’s closet. She called me out off on Facebook about wearing her necklace. She told me the next day, “I saw my necklace on the kitchen table and I didn’t know how it got there.” I did.

That’s called rent. That’s how that works. That’s your cost of living in this home.

We have more big news from John Mills. You have an amazing speaking engagement at Wesleyan University. How exciting. You have done so much with this. I am so proud of you. It’s so cool.

I appreciate it. They are great people over there. Dr. Jesse Nasta who runs the Middlesex County Historical Society is also a professor at Wesleyan University. A lot of the work I’d been doing around equity and telling stories revolving around people that were around that general area. Since that’s his field, that’s what he does, he invited me in to speak to the class on a book that they’re reading regarding a subject that I’ve talked about in posts. I’m going to help give them some insight into how I started my journey, how I came to this particular person, what I know about the story, and then we’ll have some dialogue. It’ll be good.

You need to start issuing demands and be like, “I want an honorary degree.”

I was willing to do this thing for free, and then Wesleyan was like, “You know we’re going to pay you, right?” I was like, “Yeah, I always knew that.”

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

As much as they make those kids pay, they shouldn’t be doling the cash back out. That place isn’t cheap. It’s not like you drop by a local community college.

I went to a community college, nothing wrong with community college.

I’m just saying that the kids at Wesleyan got money.

I just acted like not been there like I knew, “Of course, you’re going to pay me.”

Congrats though. Seriously, that is so cool and exciting. I’m so proud of all the things that you’ve done and all the attention that you have gathered for Prince Mortimer. If people have not signed your petition, they need to go sign your petition.

There’s more coming from that. I’m working with the city of Weathersfield about a memorial in that city with regards to him. All this stuff takes time. I’m hopeful, that happens. There’s a ceremony. I’ve been talking to the author of the book about his life as well. He’s all anxious about this occurrence so he can be at the revealing ceremony. There’s more coming over time.

It’s like TikTok followers. It builds on itself. Each thing and the next thing is like, “If they talked about it, I should talk about it.”

You’re humble. You’re not accepting how much you’ve done with this. I’m going to give you credit even if you won’t.

Segueing into Peloton stuff. This is week three of Dancing With The Stars. They danced at home.

They were separate at home by themselves but dancing together virtually. They did amazingly giving the restraints that they had. It’s important that people know that they emptied out their own living rooms. They put up their own lighting and their own system. I’m sure Dancing With The Stars sent everything, but they did all of the work required for it. That’s fantastic. However, the judges are not impressed. They got the lowest score of the evening. John, did you watch this?

Yeah, I watched. I’m learning that I’m not a good judge of dancing because every week, I think they blew it up and then they’ll get sixes. Others will have certain critiques that I didn’t even see, but I thought the same thing here. Given the situation they had, I was buried. I was extremely impressed like I am every week.

Does she always have a pole in her living room?

That was for the dance. I don’t think Cody normally has that bench there either. We’re going to give Cheryl the benefit of the doubt.

What they should have done is played with the video aspect of it. He should have handed something to her off frame and make it look like she picked it up. If they have to deal with that as a hindrance, then they should turn it into a positive.

They tried to with things like the hat and stuff like that in the fan, but part of it was that at the end, it started to get a little off. The timing wasn’t 100% and they got dinged for that. One of the judges called them on that. Our Peloton community is the best Peloton community in the world. They’re also the most rabid. People went nuts. They’re adding at on Instagram, all of the judges. There was an article written about it because people were flipping out. I had people sending me messages and they were like all caps upset over this.

To a certain degree, I get it but I’m not invested in the show in the same way. I feel like this is all for drama and Dancing With The Stars is eating us up. If they didn’t want Cody to do well, they would have already sent him home. This is all just for the buzz. They had to score low because he’s going to come back and he’s going to kill it. When he does, they’re going to point to that and be like, “He did so much better whenever he was in person.” Who wouldn’t do better when you were in person?

That’s a great narrative to sell right there. You had this issue and you had to be at home. You had to go through all these obstacles and you came back and deliver. That whole storyline is a good one.

These shows live for those sorts of storylines. The other thing to remember too is you can win a reality show even without winning a reality show. A case in point, Jennifer Hudson. She came in fourth, fifth. People were stunned when she got booted. She has an Oscar, so who’s laughing now. The fact that he’s on there and he’s what people seem to be talking about every week.

It’s not just us Peloton people. There are articles written about it. They’re writing about how Peloton we are. We’re a little crazy. The crazy is showing a little bit.

Next episode. I saw this over on the Boo Crew. I want to give them credit for that because that’s where I found this. It’s going to be Disney themed. It’s going to be two nights. Monday night is the heroes. Tuesday night is the villains. We already know what Cody Rigsby is going to be doing. Cody Rigsby and Cheryl Burke will be dancing the jive to Stand Out from a Goofy movie on Monday. On Tuesday, they will be dancing the Viennese Waltz to Gaston from Beauty and the Beast

He’s especially good at expectorating.

I also want to say that people were also very upset about Britney music because it was not the original Britney music. They didn’t have the licensing rights to play Britney music.

They did Britney but they didn’t have the rights to her performances of the songs. That’s insane and dumb.

People were not happy about that either.

They should have just called her dad. You can’t do that anymore.

We know now what they’re going to be dancing to. We don’t know now though whether or not they’re going to actually be in the studio.

We do, I thought.

I don’t think their ten days should be up by then.

I am almost positive. I saw in one of the billions of articles I read that Cody is cleared. He’s going to be there, so is Cheryl. It will be in person and it will be amazing.

I expect it to be amazing again. It’s amazing every week.

No matter what happens, we need to be good representatives of our community and not bash the judges.

I don’t think it matters. It’s part of the thing. I know American Idol was like that.

It’s just not my thing. It’s not how I want to be or live my life. I don’t get it but okay.

It’s part of the shtick.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

People seem legit upset, Tom. I don’t think they are shticking.

It’s all energy. It’ll probably help his name and fame. It’ll probably all work in the end.

That goes back to you can win without winning. That’s I think what he’s got going on right now. Moving along from Dancing With The Stars, you had an interesting post in your group we’re going to talk about in regards to BODi and Beachbody, the BODi classes or whatever.

Brandi Hayes posted this. I hope you guys are okay with us using it. I felt like we hadn’t gotten a deep dive on feedback from this. I thought this was great. Brandi says that Peloton has nothing to worry about in regards to cycling. The class was not Peloton level. It’s more like your local gym level. She said the way the music was done was weird. This was fascinating to me. If you take the class live or the first time on-demand, you hear the playlist the instructors used. If you happen to take that same class more than once the music is coming through Feed.fm and it’s random. How weird is that?

I don’t know if they’re doing this for Beachbody, but sometimes the instructors are singing along to the song or running to the cadence of the song. How does that work if you took it out and put some random music?

Talking about how much you love this song or the playlist you put together is not going to make sense.

That seems odd. I guess from a licensing perspective, it’s probably cheaper.

I’m sure it’s cheaper but it didn’t sound like their monthly fees were cheaper.

This was interesting to me too. Every time she’s taken a class live, she’s been featured on the big screen. The fascinating part about this is she’s on her Peloton when she’s doing this. They are featuring her on their giant board riding a Peloton. She says in her review here that it’s all different kinds of bikes, except not many with the MYX bike because there are not that many people that have them yet that are taking the classes.

That’s the thing. MYX didn’t sell that many bikes. I can’t remember what it was but it was like 20,000, 30,000 units they had ever sold. With Beachbody, they dropped that MYX II bike and selling that a few weeks ago. It makes sense that if they’re going to be doing cycling classes, everybody’s going to be on something other than one of those bikes. I originally thought that when they place people on that bodyboard, those things behind the instructor, that was going to be coming from the camera on the bike. Since they don’t have these bikes, they set up their phone in some corners. That was new to me.

I didn’t think about that.

These players all have their own niche. iFIT’s niche is the instructor can control your incline, decline and resistance. You go to Nautilus, their thing is they got that VeloCore. I think this is Beachbody’s thing. The bike doesn’t have anything specific. This content takes you back to old school Peloton in the studio. You see the people riding back there and you might be excited to see somebody you know, and they might be excited to be on bike six. That’s the thing they’re trying to get. I think Peloton is the quality of their production and content. It’s like, “What do you put the most weight on?”

What is also interesting is all those other bikes cost around $2,000. Peloton is now down around $1,495. Beachbody comes in around $1,399. The disparity is you have to pay for that white-glove service. With Peloton, that is in the $1,495. Basically, Peloton has the lowest cost bike in comparison to all these players. Plus you get this quality of content. I don’t know if all those niche things are enough for me.

Not for me, but I guess there are probably people out there that hate the idea of Peloton.

There are contrarians out there that are like, “That’s just a fad. I’ll buy this knockoff. That’ll prove I don’t fall for fads.” I know, Crystal, that you were mystified that they show the Peloton in the video. I think their thought process is like, “See, even Peloton people like our classes.”

It’s interesting because the biggest thing that I thought fascinating about was like, “Does corporate know this yet?” I could see them being like, “You cannot show our bike on your screen. I think when they find out about that, they’re going to be contacting BODi and shut that down.

Legality on that works.

We have gotten a letter before, Tom, saying that’s our property.

That’s a straight-up advertisement. This is more documenting something people are doing. It’s a little different.

It’s during the class, though.

I don’t know. I can see either way.

I don’t know either but it would not shock me. I’ll put it that way.

At least give it a shot. Foley walks into the legal department like, “Write a letter and see what that does.”

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Another thought I had was, has Beachbody taken a concept that Peloton had with the in-studio stuff with the folks behind the instructor, riding and being excited to see their friends? Have they taken that concept and it’s a concept that has evolved away? It’s like how the new folks come in now as that would annoy me.

To that point, John, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t brought this up on the show because I’m afraid of what people are going to say whenever I say this. The UK studio has a background. It doesn’t have a mirror. Some people say that it’s a screen that can be pulled down and the mirror is not there. I don’t know one way or another. What I do know is they’re not showing the bikes at the same angle. It’s like a little bitty sliver. It makes me think that’s where the US studio is headed. To your point, John, so many people are saying, “I don’t want to see the people anymore.” I think it’s all going to change. I don’t know how I feel about it. I have some feelings that I haven’t worked out yet.

I got these legacy thoughts, but then all the new people are going, “I don’t want that anymore.” It makes me wonder the same as you whether or not that is better. Does Peloton determine that that is better? Is Beachbody taking an angle that is past? I don’t know.

I don’t know either. Whatever happens, it’s going to cause drama. I know that.

I’m here for the drama though.

You pick the right bike to back. Finally, you like to check in every quarter or so and gauge where the various fitness companies are from a social media perspective.

I can’t tell where they are at because all these companies are public. Some of them are private. They don’t report their numbers. You don’t know what’s going on with them. This is all scientific but I see what’s going on socially with all these players, then you can figure out how popular they are or come up with some conclusion. The fascinating thing that I learned about this is what in the world is going on with SoulCycle.

I know, you’re little emoji kills me. It’s right next to it. For people who are not watching the video, the reason John is saying that is because they’ve lost people. They’ve lost 1,600 people or 0.4% down in the last few weeks.

It’s not just the SoulCycle account on Instagram, it’s also the Equinox+ account. I just put it at zero but it actually lost some 500 people. Both of their accounts are losing people.

What’s happening over there?

I don’t know. The last quarter was a similar thing. They had gained in one and flattened on the other. Their gain was so small. You thought, “What’s going on?” This is a continuation of that.

It’s bizarre. Some other highlights here. Peloton is making number one with 60,000. Percentage-wise, they were not the top contender but number-wise, they were. That was 3% for them. I just have to hit Tonal because we’re big Tonal fans right here. They did great at 16,000, up 8%. Apple Fitness was interesting. They are up 16,000, 17%. That’s the one where they made the separate account.

Tonal has been very consistent at being at the higher end of percentage growth. It doesn’t change. Every time I check, they are at the higher end of that percentage growth. Apple Fitness has not been. This is the first quarter that I looked at it and they are starting to pick up steam. I don’t know what that’s all about but they’re picking up some steam. BODi, not the Beachbody account. They have a separate body account now. They grew some 24,000 subscribers. I think we’re in the midst of that.

I’ll be curious to see what happens once it settles because they made that split off the last time you did it. It will be interesting to see. It looks impressive right now because it’s 176% growth.

That’s a lot of low-hanging fruit. You don’t have to do much to make the percentage of growth at that level.

The other consistent thing is Echelon is hanging out at the bottom. I don’t know what’s up with that either. I’m not trying to the dog. I’m saying they don’t grow socially. What’s happening?

I haven’t heard a lot about them lately.

Peloton’s growth is greater than Echelon’s total following.

What is up?

I don’t know.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

I think Echelon wants to be left alone. They don’t care about that aspect of it.

They’re the real anti-Peloton group. MYX wanted to be that but Echelon ended up there.

That’s hilarious that MYX was like, “We’re the anti-Peloton. Don’t talk to us. I’ll go with Beachbody and put a big screen behind you.” It’s weird.

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

They can find me on Facebook, Run, Lift And Live. They can find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive. They can now find me on TikTok @RunLiftAndLive and at RunLiftAndLive.com.

If you want to take your workout to the next level, you should look at strength training.

Strength training is proven to be one of the best ways to help you train. It helps you get stronger and faster. Having a Tonal can do that. It’s like having an entire gym and personal trainer in your home.

It’s the smart home gym that knows your limits and then pushes them higher. The patented digital weight system senses your strength and adjusts the weight automatically in real-time so you can get the most out of every workout.

What I love about Tonal is its variety of classes. I was having a very bad day, but I did a release negativity meditation. It was amazing having the breath of ability to do that meditation and then jump up, and do one of the programs that I’ve been working on. It’s cool to be able to have that experience.

No matter your experience level, Tonal has thousands of personalized workouts from strength training to HIIT, yoga bootcamp, barre, and so much more.

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Visit www.Tonal.com for a limited time and get $100 off when you use promo code The Clip Out at checkout.

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She’s back. We missed her but she returned like we said she would. It’s Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, both of which were wonderful, or her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She’s written four bestselling books including The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide To Improving Communication, Connection and Intimacy. Ladies and gentlemen, and all points in between, it’s Dr. Jenn. Hello.

It’s great to see you, guys.

It’s good to see you too. We’ve got a fun one. We’re going to put you on the hot seat. One of our followers brought up the fact that when it comes to dieting, you’re not a fan of dieting. You’re a fan of intuitive eating. We also have a guest every week that talks about nutrition and they’re from MetPro. They’re coming at it from a tracking and hacking your metabolism viewpoint. Their point was or their question was, which do you do? Which is better, intuitive eating or tracking? Do you approach them at different times? We had MetPro’s answer and now we want to hear your answer.

I would love to answer it. As you guys know, I wrote my doctoral dissertation all about intuitive eating, weight loss and body image. My app, No More Diets is all about how to use intuitive eating to have a healthier relationship with food and lose weight. My bias is an intuitive eating bias because I have worked with too many people who have gone on diets, have lost weight, and then gained it back and then more.

The studies tend to show that the recidivism rate when it comes to diets, where people lose weight and gain it back, is extremely high. The reason why I love intuitive eating so much is because it’s not based on something external. It’s not based on following a plan. It’s not based on doing what someone says. It’s not based on an app. It’s based on what comes from inside of you.

Once you develop that, you’re golden because nobody can take that away. You can travel and still be in sync with yourself. You can go to someone’s house and not have to worry. I know that before I was an intuitive eater. I would feel out of control if I went to a party where there were foods that I didn’t normally let myself have. The studies have shown that the more you restrict yourself, the more you tend to be out of control with those kinds of foods that you don’t let yourself have when you are faced with that. That’s part of my bias with intuitive eating.

Regarding tracking, to me, it’s almost a separate issue. A lot of the time, when you first start out in intuitive eating, what most dieticians or oftentimes therapists, and even my app will suggest to write down what you’re eating. Granted that my app does not track calories, fat gram, sodium or anything like that, it’s because most of the people who want my app and most people who are looking to become intuitive eaters have come off of the diet bandwagon. They have said, “This isn’t working for me anymore,” or “I’m struggling with my relationship with food. I’m bingeing.”

Even some people with eating disorders have used my app. I always recommend that if you have an eating disorder, use it with a therapist or a dietician. You shouldn’t be doing anything on your own until you have a level of stabilization. The reason why I like having people write down what they eat is not because of the calorie stuff, but to be mindful. One of the important factors in intuitive eating is tuning into yourself and looking at how foods affect you.

It’s like what we were talking about, Tom, before we started recording. It’s that a lot of the time people will say, “My intuition sucks.” The thing is we are not born with sucky intuition. It is very unusual. I would say it’s maybe 2% of people who have something going awry in their brain where their body does not follow the proper cues to give itself enough gasoline to make the car drive. When we are born, we are pretty much all born natural intuitive eaters. If you look at kids, they go out and play until they’re hungry. They come in and they say, “Mommy, daddy, feed me.” They leave food on their plate. They even leave cookies on a plate and they go back out and play. That is the ultimate intuitive eating.

Intuitive eating is getting you back to that original state of listening to your body and also lessening some of the emotional meaning of food. Food is complicated. I can talk about this for hours. Our relationship with food is incredibly complicated because food is comfort. It starting at infancy when we are either bottled or breastfed and held while we’re eating. We are comforted by the touch, by being held by the comfort of food. We all have physically associated with certain things. We all have food. We think of food as “treats” at times.

It’s important to look at not just what does your mouth want because intuitive eating is not just about what does your mouth want. It’s also about what does your body respond to? The reason why in my app, I have people write down what they are eating, and then there’s a note section is so you can say, “I ate that those French fries and guacamole and chips, and it was delicious. I enjoyed it but an hour later, I had a stomach ache or I was constipated or I felt bloated. I didn’t have enough energy to get through my Peloton workout.” It’s a combination of factors. What does our mouth want? What does our body want? What does our body respond to? How do we feel after we eat?

It’s funny when you say that because, for my birthday, I went off the MetPro plan for a day. I had pizza and got cookies from a place called Crumble, which I don’t even know if it should be illegal. We were commenting the next day because we both went off one day and then we’re going back to it. We probably had more of those cookies. Those cookies are huge. The next day, Crystal was like, “I have a food hangover.”

I felt like I had drunk the night before. It was terrible.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

It’s common. My partner, Eric, he’s also vegan. He is a much “cleaner” eater than me. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Most people consider me a pretty healthy eater. He is like basically six days a week, no processed foods, only whole grains. He’s hardcore. He looks amazing. I’m a very lucky woman. Saturday is his cheat day. Inevitably he feels terrible. Afterwards, he feels like his stomach doesn’t feel so good. He feels tired. He’s always like, “I wish I didn’t do that. I shouldn’t have done so much.” Our relationship with food is complicated. We like sweets and delicious things. We like comfort foods.

To me, it’s always about finding that balance. In my app, one of the things I talk about is the stages of developing a healthy relationship with food and it’s a long process. I did not weigh myself for twenty years, maybe even more, after recovering from my eating disorder. Now if I weigh myself, it doesn’t matter. It means nothing to me. It’s neutral. I might weigh myself to be like, “I’m taking some medication. I need to be able to tell my doctor how much I weigh so they know the proper dose,” or “I’m just curious. I’m looking good. I wonder what I weigh.” It doesn’t mean anything.

It’s just a piece of information. It’s not loaded with emotions.

I will say with where I’m at right now. I’m only 5 pounds lighter than when Crystal and I got married, but I look like I’m 15 or 20 pounds lighter. It’s crazy.

It’s also that developing of muscle. I bet you feel better. You probably feel healthier now than you did when you two first married because you are stronger and leaner. You have better cardio and you’re more active.

I don’t tend to notice that stuff. I think that’s part of my disconnect. She has to point it out to me. We talked on a couple of episodes back about we were at a comedy club and we forgot our masks. We had to book it back to the car and then turn around and put it right back because the show was starting in five minutes. On our way back in, we’re still talking the whole time. Crystal’s like, “You’re not even breathing heavy.” A year ago, we would not have been talking.

I don’t think you could have done it like being able to talk. It’s important to tune into ourselves. It sounds like for you, Tom, there’s still a bit of a disconnect between you and your body, which also makes sense. We’ve also talked about your family history with exercise and about the finger-wagging that you got from your family in this area. It makes it very easy to disconnect, but it’s important whether you’re doing a diet, intuitive eating, MetPro or anything else to try to tune into your body and to notice how your body responds to different foods, to notice how your body responds to exercise, and also to notice the improvements in your body.

That’s such a positive and it’s actually motivating. I was a smoker in high school for a year or maybe college, but I’m not a smoker. I have been very healthy for most of my life, except for that brief smoking stint at night school or college. I feel like I have a different set of lungs. Since I got my Peloton, I can breathe totally differently.

I remember you telling me about that. I’m very fascinated by that.

Thank you so much for tackling that question. I don’t think it was just one of our audience. We’ve had multiple people that are like, “One camp says one thing and the other says the other thing.” I don’t think you guys are as far apart as the audience might think so.

I also think that the thing to understand about intuitive eating is that it’s about learning to listen to your body. If you go in that direction like I recommend or like No More Diets have been, it’s a process. Sometimes people gain weight before they lose weight. Sometimes people get scared and sometimes people need more guidance than my app or a book or anything like that. It’s about our relationship with food and it’s an ongoing experience.

That’s very helpful because I know I feel better not eating the cookies, but I want to eat the cookies.

It’s actually important to eat the cookies. I don’t believe in deprivation. If we deprive ourselves too much, we’ll go crazy when we are exposed to those foods and we eat beyond what is healthy or comfortable. Finding a balance is really important.

As we did on our birthday, not the balance. The other thing. It was like The Days of Wine and Roses but with cookies or pizza. There’s that dated reference for people. Let me update that. It was like Requiem for a Dream but with cookies and pizza, just keeping it current. Thank you so much for joining us and answering those questions. Until next time, where can people find you?

You can find me on social media @DrJennMann. I also have a weekly column in InStyle Magazine called Hump Day by Dr. Jenn. That’s all about sex and relationships, and comes out every Wednesday.

Thank you.

We have a new instructor.

We sure do. Camila Ramon joined and it’s very exciting because she will be teaching Spanish and English classes. She will be teaching classes on the bike. Her premiere class was Tuesday, October 5th at 8:00 PM Eastern, and people raved about it. They loved it. I have heard many good things. I even got a video that was sent to her from a Latina group. They were excited to have an instructor that’s specifically teaching classes on the bike in Spanish. They were so excited.

I predicted that years ago. I was like, “Spanish is what’s next.”

She is teaching out in the New York studio, which is what we thought would happen.

She’s already making her rounds.

She showed up on PopSugar. Go, Camila. It’s very exciting that she already has an article out.

Peloton Apparel has released a collection for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I know we talked about this but I did want to bring it up because Shape has an article all about it. I thought that was pretty cool. That’s why we’re mentioning it. If you somehow missed this line dropped, it’s still out there. You can go by all the things.

Is it me or does it seem like the quantities must be larger now? It’s not quite the sprint to buy stuff like it used to be.

I’ve been saying that for a long time now. Once they got everything under control in the middle of the pandemic, it got a lot better. I was like, “It’s going to take 6 to 8 months to get back,” and it did. It hasn’t been a problem since but whenever they release their own line, it has been a game-changer. There has not been that I know of that has sold out. Maybe it has and I haven’t heard about it. That is entirely possible. People are very excited or they’re not just buying as much, but I’m pretty sure Peloton bought a lot.

That’s my guess as well. The Wall Street Journal attempts to coin a phrase, “Pandemic’s Peloton obsession turns to Peloton fatigue.”

It’s similar to how our Peloton fanatics didn’t like the judging that happened on Dancing With The Stars. They didn’t like this article either. It’s adding insult to injury by putting all the clothes like a clothes rack.

The article comes with a picture of a Peloton with clothes hanging on it. You’ll notice it’s not actually in someone’s house. They had to stage this in a studio because they couldn’t actually find this occurring.

You can’t find this. I’m not saying there’s nobody out there like that because there is, but it’s not that many people. I don’t want to get into this super long description of this article because it’s not that exciting. I do want to say that it’s like they went out of their way to ignore the fact that there’s always a drop in the summer. They even quoted Peloton as saying like, “We expected our numbers to go down.” 2020 was the exception but not the rule. It was a pandemic. People could not leave their homes. It was different. In 2021, when people have the ability to at least get outside and see people with masks on, then they’re doing that. They want to do other things than stay in their house and ride their bike. That doesn’t mean they don’t love their Peloton.

All I can think of with Peloton fatigue is, to quote Mean Girls, “Stop trying to make fetch a thing.”

I thought it was funny because The Wall Street Journal used to love Peloton and now, not so much.

PC Mag has a review of the Peloton Tread.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

I actually saw this because John Foley tweeted it. It didn’t pop up in my little things until he did. It’s a glowing review, tons of pros on the new tread. The only cons were that it’s a traditional belt loop. It lacks automation, automatic speed and incline adjustments, but it still has the buttons that you hit and it makes it super easy. There’s no built-in heart rate sensor, but those suck anyway. I don’t even see that as a con. Those are never good. I’ve never used a machine that’s accurate with those. That is awesome that PC Mag is giving such a great review. I’ve seen a lot of people buying treads lately. It’s like they didn’t have room for the Tread+ and the treads are going quick. I have a feeling Peloton is very happy with their sales right now.

From the UK, the Daily Mail reports Peloton-riding civil servant is blamed as 80% of her staff works from home, despite the ministers’ desperate attempts to get officials back to the office. A quick skimming of this article, they were trying to get people to go back to work in the actual office. She’s like, “I dig being at home on my Peloton, so I’m not doing it.” They can’t get other workers to go back because they’re like, “If she’s not, why should I?” They’ve been fighting that battle.

I thought it was funny because Peloton was mentioned a couple of times in the article. Other people are coming back and being like, “You guys need to stop riding your Peloton and get in the office.” I think it’s so funny that it’s being thrown around like that. It’s like, “Don’t ride your Peloton and come work in the office.” I guess it’s a worldwide issue now that nobody wants to go back to the office. We dig working from home.

That’s why they don’t want you to do it.

Alex Toussaint has inked a deal with Puma.

To see the joy on his face and how excited he was about this made my day when he posted this. He was so excited. He’s worn Puma his whole life, and the way he went on and on about it. To be able to reach his deal is a huge honor for him. I am so excited. It’s cool to see these instructors getting these deals and how proud it makes them. Congrats to Alex.

Jess King was featured on the Ali On The Run podcast.

If you, want to check out an interview from Jess King, you want to jump over there. It was September 30th, episode 427.

If you can’t get enough of Ali On The Run, you can check out the episode she was on with us. Cafe Mom has fifteen things we learned about our favorite Peloton trainers from their social media.

You’ll have to scroll. We’ll bring up a couple. We’re not going to read all fifteen things. Cody was number one. His rides are always good for laughs and he’s a big fan of Britney Spears. It said that these days he’s dating fitness trainer, Andres Alfaro. I feel like the internet is obsessed with his boyfriend all of a sudden. It’s crazy. Jess King, they talk about how she loves to travel and cook, and that she often shares her favorite recipes with Sophia.

If you want to see the whole thing, it’s over at Cafe Mom or sign up for the newsletter and you’ll get the link when we send it out on Sunday-ish. Well & Good talked to Marcel Dinkins.

Talk about the new instructors hitting the circuit already. She says, “I’m a Peloton run coach, and this is why running consistently isn’t improving your endurance.” She walks you through point by point. You definitely want to check this out. If you don’t have our newsletter, you absolutely need to get it because there are tons of information.

Finally, Ally Love partnered up with Celebrity Cruiseline and she’s raving about their food.

She was on Instagram doing that. Congrats.

Joining us once again is Angelo from MetPro, here to answer all of your nutrition questions. Hello.

Thanks for having me back.

This is a totally selfish question. I really like to do strength training. You encourage me, especially during the cut, to focus on cardio, but I feel like the “standard advice” is to do more weightlifting. I know that it’s something that’s about me, but I don’t know what it is. Why do I need to do that? What is wrong with me?

There’s absolutely nothing wrong. The standard advice is by far the most common scenario that we see as coaches at MetPro with all the people we work with is most people would benefit from more resistance training in their life. There’s this holdover psychology from years of, “Weightlifting will make me bulky. I want to lean out so I’ll just do cardio,” and then people are missing all of the benefits of strength training, the metabolic benefits, the health benefits, the muscular benefits, the bone density benefits, we can go on and on.

Peloton is a cheaper version of therapy. Click To Tweet

To be blunt, Crystal, you’re not missing any of those because I know that you’ll do it all. You’ll do your cardio. You’ll do your Peloton. You’ll do your Tonal. You’ll do all of it. I’m simply not worried about that. What I’m doing is you’re seeing something that I would not recommend for the casual user. I’m just moving the pieces on the board to create additional contrast at the tail ends of either metabolic revving cycles or stripping cycles for you.

Now we’ll get into a little more technical explanation of should you be doing cardio or resistance training? The answer is both. Within that, there is a scientific and a strategic way of moving the dial based on your goal and your body type and how your diet is influencing your progress. I’m going to try and break this down as simply as we can. First of all, what is your goal? Your goal is going to change. What is your primary goal now?

My primary goal is to lose weight. I want to be leaner. I want to lose fat specifically.

If you said to me, “My goal is to get strong and build muscle, then this is going to be a very different conversation. Crystal, your goal is not that you don’t want to get strong, not that you don’t want these, but your primary objective at least as of now is to lose fat. That means that right out of the gate, in my mind, I’m going to put one tick in the direction of cardiovascular exercise as long as some resistance training is still present. Why?

Cardiovascular exercise, specifically endurance training, has the most direct correlation to a smaller sized human being. Before everyone raises their hand and say, “Wait for a second, you burn more calories with HIIT training. You burn more this, that, and resistance training builds muscle. That speeds your metabolism.” All of that is correct. Here’s why endurance training is the most direct line between being a bigger or smaller person because endurance training is the principal form of exercise that expands energy without creating a hypertrophic response. I’m going to repeat that but in layman’s terms. It burns calories but doesn’t build muscle. Is that a good thing?

Not for the long term.

I want to build muscle too.

That doesn’t mean that that is the methodology of choice. It’s just that we want to understand our tools. This is back to the illustration that I use with food a lot. You can apply it to exercise. What’s better, the screwdriver or the wrench? It’s a ridiculous question. It’s a matter of what’s the right tool for the job. At MetPro, we break down exercise into six broad categories. On the far left is endurance training. It’s going to burn calories and it’s going to not have a hypertrophic effect. In fact, type two muscle fibers will become less dominant. Type one muscle fibers, which don’t yield a lot of strength explosiveness or size will become more dominant over time.

You then have HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training of any type. Interval training is beautiful because minute for minutes, hour for hour, you can burn way more calories. I shouldn’t say way more. You can burn even more calories than standard steady-state aerobic endurance training. There is a hypertrophic effect that can be measured to that. Think of the Olympics. When you watch the Olympics, think of the long-distance runners and what their body looks like. You have that image in your mind, the long-distance runners. Now, compare that to the sprinters. Both of them dominantly do cardio, but one is all interval training and one is all endurance training. Which physique is better? It’s a ridiculous question. It depends on what you want. What are you aiming for? Clearly, the sprinter is more muscular.

You then have cardio circuits. That’s basically a way of saying, “I want to do toning. I want to do resistance training. I want to build a little bit of muscle, but the priority is still maximum calorie burn.” Those are the three categories on the cardio side. We then move into the hypertrophic side circuit training. Do you know what circuit training was? Do you remember curves? That was the big rave. That’s circuit training. It’s weightlifting. I’m doing muscle-building exercises minus the rest so I can keep burning calories. It was a great method of double-dipping. For a lot of people, cardio circuit, circuit training is a go-to recommendation, not for any of these highly technical reasons but for practical reasons. There are only so many hours in a day.

We would call those bootcamps.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

Bootcamps would be under the circuit training, maybe with a little bit of cross-training. That’s where you move the dial one more step. I put cross-training as the mid-tier muscle-building. Here’s why, because in cross-training, you can have running, cycling, even swimming, but if there are deadlifts involved in your program, even if you’re doing all the other aerobic activities, you’re still putting your body in a hypertrophic muscle-building state. We have to put that in the category of this will build muscle.

You go all the way to the far right which is going to be strength training. That’s your powerlifting sports and your bodybuilding sports. People say, “I don’t want to build as much muscle like a bodybuilder. I don’t need to be as strong as a powerlifter.” I say, “Do you want to be stronger than you are now?” They say, “Yes.” I say, “Do you want to use an inferior method to them?” That’s like saying, “I don’t want to do strength training because I don’t want to be that strong.” Perfect, that makes my job easy.

We’re going to do exactly what the strongest in the world do, but we’re only going to do it until you’re as strong as you want to be. It’s silly. It’s like people who go, “I don’t want to drive 100 miles an hour. I just want to drive the speed limit. I just want to go 60.” Do you want to take 40 minutes to get to 60 miles an hour? Do you want to get there fast?

It always cracks me up when someone’s like, and it’s typically a woman, “I don’t want to get muscular.” It’s like, “Do you know how hard it is?” It’s like you’re going to do three bicep curls and you’re like, “I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger now.” If you’re going down that road, you will see it occur and you can pump the brakes. You’ll be good at pumping the brakes because you’ll be so jacked.

Circling back around. In your case, when you do a lot of resistance training, what tends to happen is certain body types have a greater propensity to add lean mass, which is a plus. If you do it before you’re close to the goal size you want to be, what will happen is it’ll have a tendency of maintaining your size and improving your composition. It is not the final word. Your diet is going to be the final word in what happens with your overall size. It will exert a subtle influence towards hardening your body but building more muscle.

Without going into an over-elaborate scientific explanation, a larger body has the ability to build and maintain a larger amount of muscle. Whereas if you take a small, skinny or ectomorphic body type, it’s very difficult for them to add large amounts of mass to simply one muscle group without their entire body getting larger as well.

In the bodybuilding world, that correlation we talked about, you have to gain so many pounds to add an inch to your biceps, an inch to your arms. You can’t stay the same weight and add an inch to your arms in the bodybuilding world. Why is that? There has to be a foundation. Getting hyper-specific for you, Crystal, you have the body type that does both well. You can build muscle well and you can strip well.

You’re that mesomorphic body type, but you’re mesomorphic leaning towards endomorphic, not mesomorphic leaning towards ectomorphic. Therefore, when we do an aggressive cutting cycle and I have a specific goal where we’re bringing your body down to a certain size, you have a finite ability to recover from an exercise. That finite ability to recover is further decreased by being on a cutting cycle because I’m not giving you enough fuel to recover from extra exercise.

What’s happening during those time periods for you, your body type, and where you are in the progression, I have uniquely asked you to go all-in on the cardio and not eliminate, but reduce the resistance training very temporarily. We’re talking 2, 3 weeks at a time. Once I get you down to this rough size, now what I’m focused on is we want to harden and tone that size. More emphasis is going to be on the resistance training but I have to remember, there are only so many hours in the day and so much exercise you can recover from.

Where do we want to slide the chips? It is okay to slide the chips around and go, “We’re spending more time focusing on toning. Now, we’re spending a little more time focusing on energy expenditure, and going back and forth.” That contrast can work against that metabolic acclimation and help push people through plateaus. That’s why you’re experiencing me giving you some unique direction.

That’s very helpful. Thank you.

You should not be so rude about it. Thank you so much for that explanation. If people want to find out more or want to try this stuff for themselves, where can they find you?

MetPro.co/tco.

Thank you.

We have a new celebrity sighting as Chrissy Teigen has finally caved and got the Peloton.

She documented her first ride. Just to show you how much of a normal person she is, she couldn’t get her shoes off, and she went to go ride her bike and it didn’t work.

John Foley tweeted back at her.

That doesn’t happen for us, people. Whenever she was talking about taking her first ride, she ended up like, “Now I need to eat.” Her husband, John Legend, cooked her this amazing feast because she had had such a hard run because it wouldn’t work so she couldn’t ride. It was a pretty funny story. Thanks to those of you who pointed that out to me and made sure I got to see that.

We think we talked about this a few years ago but it came up because Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica, was on the Eddie Trunk Show, which is a serious heavy metal show. I say that because I liked the rock. He was raving about his Peloton and going on and on about using his Peloton. In case we didn’t talk about it in the past.

I’m pretty sure we did but it’s been a long time.

For a lot of our new readers, maybe they don’t know. At least one of the guys in Metallica is digging his Peloton.

Welcome to the family, guys. Not that they would hear that, but wouldn’t it be cool?

Andy Speer is doing some rock ride.

On the first Wednesday of every month at 5:30 PM Eastern, there will be rock night. It could be a bootcamp or it could be a run. It kicks off with a bootcamp. That’s pretty cool. We don’t have enough rock classes, just straight-up rock.

They’ve driven that to keep Lars Ulrich happy. Although the last thing he probably wants to listen to is rock.

Another thing that you guys might have missed is that there are new pre and postnatal yoga classes that dropped. If that is up your alley, make sure that you check those out.

Cardio Dance is back.

It’s back in a big way. They’re calling it Season Two. Callie Gullickson is going to be the new instructor. More exciting than that is they came true on their promise made way back in Homecoming that Usher will be part of the dance classes that get dropped. It will be dropping before people actually read this. It will be old news, but it wasn’t old news when we recorded it.

Selena Samuela is doing a glutes and legs challenge.

She has four weeks. You do two 20-minute classes and one 10-minute class each week for four weeks. You’re going to feel it.

If you have glutes and/or legs, you should check that out. If that challenge wasn’t to your liking, Ben Alldis has a challenge of his own.

He calls it the October Strength and Cycle Challenge. It’s for four weeks, four sessions a week, three rest days, and recovery days per week. It’s super exciting for the whole month of October. He posted it right on the official Peloton member page. You can go find it on the OPP.

The latest artist collaboration is with Karol G.

She has a mix of reggaeton, trap and RNB. I don’t listen to any of those so it’s not shocking that I don’t know who Karol G is, but I love the colors and background they got going on with this. This is amazing. It makes me want to take the class to check it out. There’s a Hannah barre class and a Robin ride that’s happening on Wednesday. If you haven’t had a chance to take them when you read this episode, then you should definitely go do that.

Joining us is Yaneyra Pellascini. How’s it going?

How are you guys doing?

We are good. How are you? Have you had a good weekend?

I’m good. It was a great weekend. We had a little party last night. Not much because I am on call. I am glad you told me, “Can you go a little earlier?” I was like, “Yes. Just in case they call me.”

I always like to start off by finding out where people originally came across Peloton. How did you decide, “This is the bike for me?”

In December of 2016, I had a hysterectomy. It was by choice. There was a lot of bleeding there. They said, “You have to stay home for six weeks. You cannot go to work. You can’t lift anything.” I was always in a gym. I had two gym memberships. One was for strength training boot camp. The other one was for Zumba classes, step classes and spinning classes. As I was sitting at home, watching a lot of TVs, I got to see a lot of commercials about Peloton, the Bike, the screen and instructors.

I kept watching and by March of 2017, I went into the store 45 minutes from my home in Corte Madera. I told the guy, “I want the Bike.” He’s like, “Do you want to try it?” I said, “No. I just want it.” They sent the Bike to me. They came and set it up. I fell in love with the Bike and the instructors. I started going to the gym less and less. It worked out for me because I am a nurse. I’m in surgery and I am on call a lot. When they call me, I just get off the Bike or the Tread, take a two-minute shower and then run to work. When the Tread came on in 2018, I happened to go to New York. I went to New York in 2017. By October, I was there. It was right after the big fire we had in Santa Rosa.

I went there and I met Jessica King. She’s my favorite. She’s still my favorite for the Bike. In 2018, the Tread came out and I went and tried it. I was remodeling my house. As soon as the house was done, they converted one of my garages into a gym. I have a gym at home and I got rid of all the old gyms. I do not go to the gym anymore. My gym is at home and all I do is Peloton classes, the Tread, the strength training, and the Bike. I am in love with so many people. There are some times where I keep working out.

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Wouldn’t that be amazing if you could just work out all you want to?

I was not the lucky one that I got to stay home for a year and a half. As nurses, we had to go to work.

You were on the front lines.

We had four months where all the elective surgeries were canceled. I chose to stay home for a couple of days a week to give a chance to other people with less seniority to work. I took advantage of that, but now it’s blown full-time. I have to do it either early in the morning or late in the afternoon when I come out of work. I love it.

You don’t go to the gym. You had the gym come to you.

Yes, I have it here. I can do it here.

Do you work out as much as you did before when you went to the gym or do you work out more?

I work out a lot more. The time that you spend driving to the gym, changing and you had to call them and reserve a spot on a bike. Every time I did spinning, you had to call two days before for the instructors are good. It was two days before you get a spot on a bike. Here, I get on the Bike. I can choose on-demand classes or I see the schedule. I did a boot camp with Jess Sims. I did Jessica King’s classes. I did strength training. I did running. Everybody thinks I’m crazy. On Saturday and Sunday, since I’m not working, I try to do as much as I want with the people that I love.

You did the Jess Sims Saturday 60, you did a run and you did another strength class.

I did the bootcamp and there was a time in between. I think I did two 20-minute runs, and then I did Jessica King’s Sweat Steady class. In between, Marcel was doing a live class. I did the last ten minutes of her class, I went back to Jessica King and I did her fifteen-minute Pop, and then I think I did something else. I can’t remember.

You probably blacked out by then.

I was exhausted. I eat like hell after that. I eat a lot, but I love it.

Your body needs it, after all, that workout.

You’re certainly getting your money’s worth.

Make how you do everything the way you are when nobody's watching. That's who you are. Click To Tweet

I keep saying it’s not only a workout. It’s also my mental state. I call Peloton the cheap therapy. The $9.99 a month, that’s cheap therapy. Initially, you got to pay $100 to a therapist for an hour. I listen to what they say. I listen to the way they push you. I have those things in my mind and I carry them to work. I carry them with my friends. I carry them everywhere. The way you do something is the way you do everything. The way you are when nobody’s watching, that’s who you are. It’s all that stuff I carry with me and I think about.

People say, “Why in the hell? It’s 7:00 in the morning and you’re so freaking happy.” I am happy. There’s no faking. There are no drugs. I don’t do drugs. I only do alcohol when I can. I wish I could have a little shot of tequila, but I’m on call. I wake up like that. I do this and I step out of bed, do my coffee, do what I need to do, and get going with my day. Either I work out before I go to work or after. It keeps me grounded and happy in viewing the world in a different way.

She talks about taking that to work with her. I picture someone getting wheeled into surgery and you’re like, “You don’t have to get a quadruple bypass. You get two.”

Sometimes we do surgery and sometimes they’re really difficult. I’m an assistant. I started from the bottom and now I assist the surgeon. I do a lot of the stuff that they do without having to go to school for twenty years. They’re doing this hard thing and I’m saying, “You can do it. You got this.” They start laughing and they keep going. I use the same set of instructions saying, “You have to do this. You got to do this.” Like nurses, when they complain, I just say, “Damn, you got to do this. We are blessed. Come here with a positive attitude.”

One piece of advice that you can’t give to the surgeons is, “You do you.” They can’t do surgery on themselves. That is frowned upon.

That’s hard. They cannot. We cannot. The good thing is that we get to see everybody do surgery, so we know who we want for ourselves.

You can pick the best.

You should start a little side business where you give people tips. Like, “No, not this guy. He’s got the shakes.”

Sometimes there are friends that ask me who do I go to? I say, “I like this person,” or “I like this person.” Coworkers ask people in the hospital that don’t work in surgery, “What do you think about so and so?” I’m like, “No, don’t ask me that kind of question. Do you think so and so is good? We work here and you work here. You got to always say and I don’t want that. I keep it very professional. Everybody’s very good. Everybody’s different. Everybody does stuff in a different way. That’s it.

I think Tom was just teasing. It’s amazing how much you use the Peloton. All the different kinds of modalities given that you have had the Bike for as long as I have. The Tread really reinvigorated me. It sounds like it did the same for you. I find that I end up on the Tread more than I end up on the Bike. Do you find that same thing?

Yes, and sometimes I’m like, “I haven’t done the Bike in four days.” I get into the Tread between the boot camp, the running and the strength training. By the time I’m done with that, I’m like, “I’m not doing the Bike.”

You’re tired.

I usually try to do all of Jessica King’s classes. She knows that country is not my thing, so I put those on the side for later and then I do it whenever. When she’s still live and I’m home, I will take her classes. I put the other one aside for a little bit. They have this conflict between Jess Sims and Jessica King. They were starting the boot camp and then they started Jessica King in between. I gave Peloton hell for a month. Every Saturday, I’ll talk about, “What are you doing to me? You don’t need to overlap some classes.” I would tag them. I would tag Jessica King, Jess Sims and everybody. They changed it. I was like, “Yes,” because I like both of them.

Tell us about when you moved to America because you’re originally from the Dominican Republic. Tell us about that. I can’t even imagine what that was like to move here.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

It was in ’97. I met the father of my daughter in Costa Rica at the beginning of ’97. I came to visit in the summer and I didn’t know English. He knew a few words. I knew a few words. I don’t know how in the hell we did it. He’s this American guy. He was young. I was young. I ended up moving here by the end of ’97. I didn’t know I liked nursing at all. I ended up working with a friend of the family who had terminal cancer. That’s when I noticed that I liked that stuff and I was like, “Nothing would bother me.” I told my ex-husband, “I think I can be a nurse.”

I didn’t know English, so I started going to school, taking intense programs, all English. I ended up at JC in our town. I told the counselor, “I want to be a nurse.” She said, “No, you can become a nurse assistant first, and then LPN, which is below the RN, and then RN,” because my English was really bad. I went and told him, and he said, “You’re not doing that.” He went back with me and said, “She’s going to be a nurse, so give her what she needs.” She did. It was not easy. It was really hard. I failed so many times. I failed tests and everything, but I did it.

I ended up with the Dominican University in San Rafael. I graduated there in 2006 with my Bachelor’s degree. From then on, I started as a med-surge nurse. I knew I wanted to be in the OR. I was in the OR as a circulator. After a few years, I was working hard. Now, I’ve been assisting. You can do whatever you want, but you have to work hard. It’s not easy. You have to pull the extra work in. That’s what I do. I’m still learning. I still have to hit the books and do what I need to do. My English is okay. I say a lot of bad words all the time.

My English is just okay too. I also say a lot of bad words.

I love to curse. I haven’t said one bad word to you. That’s amazing.

I can’t imagine the level of education that it requires and to do it in a foreign language. That’s amazing.

I remember taking Spanish classes in college. It starts off pretty easy. By the time you get to the end of it, and you’re reading and translating, it’s really tough. To do an entire college program in another language is incredibly impressive.

It was tough. It was horrible. The first few months in this country, I was going to school. I was doing homework and I was crying with Chris. He will try and explain to me, “This is just learning English.” I was like, “I can’t do this.” I kept going. I will fail a test, so I will take it again. I got used to it. It wasn’t that I didn’t study the material. When they asked me something and there was one simple word that I didn’t know, it would throw me off. You know a tricky test. I don’t know why they tried to trick people. Just ask the question.

Just to be clear, that is the case whenever you do know the language. I know when I took my project management certificate test, they asked all these questions in such a way that if you’re not 100% attentive to every single detail in the sentence. Again, I can’t even imagine doing that in another language because there’s so much to know. In English, add to the fact that we have so many words that are similar, that look and sound the same, and then they mean something completely different.

Cheek and kitchen chicken. I had to think sometimes.

It makes total sense when you say that. I would never think to get those words and stuff, but when you put them side by side and you’re coming at it, it’s all new.

I was in nursing and a med-surge. When I started, our charting was all paperwork. It was on paper. You have to write everything out. I was always afraid. I always had to look up that I didn’t put the wrong thing. I always have to look up stuff. I always carry a dictionary. We can read the phone and we can look it up, but we don’t have to do as much. I don’t have to do any charting as an assistant. It was tough, but it’s doable. When people complain and tell me, “I want to do this, but it’s going to take me six years.” I was like, “Please. It took me almost eight years just to become a nurse in this country.”

Time will go by and you’d be like, “The six years passed and I didn’t do anything.” If you want to do something, start it. Don’t look at the time. It takes one class at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time and one year at a time. That’s what I did. I did blocks, “This semester, this is what I’m taking.” I focused on this. I never focused on what’s going to come the next year. “This is what I’m doing.” I didn’t procrastinate. I think I have that from the day I was born. I like to do things right. If it’s hard, I know that I’m going to have to put extra effort into it. I always knew it was going to be harder for me because of the language barrier. Therefore, I was studying three days instead of two hours.

It’s okay. I’m doing great. I’m not complaining about my hard work. I love it. I love that I did it. To this day I go like, “I’m doing this job that I love,” because I love my job. I love Peloton and working out. I get there and I forget that I have a family. I forget that I have kids. I forget that I have problems. I just block out everybody. I leave everything outside of the door. I tell people, “Do not bring your problems to work. Nobody cares. Leave them outside. They don’t want to hear your crap.”

I would think within that field. The patients are there, and they’ve got their problems.

I’m sure they appreciate that you can do that. I want you to be my nurse. If I ever have to have surgery, I want you to be the one making sure everything’s happening because you were paying attention and I love that.

We want you to pick the surgeon because we know you know. Normally we would say, “You know where the bodies are buried.” In this case, we’d say, “You know where the bodies aren’t buried.” Tell us about the Dominican Republic. What’s that like growing up there?

Latinos say, “Latinos are fun.” The Dominican Republic is fun. I grew up with nothing. When people tell me, “I don’t have anything to eat,” and I went through your pantry, I can make you food for about a month. I’m the oldest of five. Maybe that’s why I do my work right. I had to watch over my brothers and sisters. My father was in the military and my mom was a teacher. She’s been retired for a long time. We grew up in the countryside, which is almost at the border with Haiti. We share the same island.

When I was around twelve, we moved to the capital to Santo Domingo. The game changed because my grandma would make food. We’d eat with grandma all the time. We moved to the capital, we didn’t know people close to us. There were days that we had nothing. When you say nothing, it’s nothing. We had coffee and a piece of bread until my mother would come back home in the afternoon. She would borrow money or we would sell something so we could eat.

This happened 3 or 4 times a month for years. Even though we didn’t have anything, we had music. We had family, friends and neighbors. We moved to another house with our neighbors. We would share food. We would share the plates. We didn’t have plates. We had so many basins. We used to have those little cups with the little plates in the bottom. That’s the way you serve coffee to people. If we didn’t have it, we borrowed from the neighbor. We borrowed the plates. We did it to each other. One of my best friends that lived in the house, we’re still friends. She’s in Switzerland and at least once a year, we get together somewhere. My other best friend, we get together. It was tough but that’s what makes me appreciate everything.

Everything I have done in my life, I appreciate it now more than ever because I have been there. I have been so poor and I have been with nothing, with no education. I appreciate people and I look at people and I go, “I’ve been in your shoes.” At the same time, it makes me feel bad for everybody that doesn’t have what I have now. Everything I have that I could buy doesn’t interest me, “I’m getting these,” and showing the brand name or something. “I got the phone blah, blah blah.” I don’t care. I have my clothes. I wear the same stuff because I don’t care about material things. Even though I can have it all, I don’t want it. The Dominican Republic is fun. I’m going there soon.

I was going to say, do you get to go back? How’s your family doing there?

We’re good. I was the first one that left the country. Because of that, my sisters moved to Switzerland. They married there. My brothers are in Argentina. My parents are still there and they have everything they need. They’re still working. They still want to work. I went there. Even during the pandemic, I still went because I needed to see them. It was a couple of years before that. We took a vacation. I’m going to go there soon, but I’m going to stop in New York and see my friends run the New York City Marathon. Ebony and Jackie are going to run. I’m going to go there for a couple of days and then I’m going to the Dominican Republic.

Which Jackie?

It’s Jackie Dean. The training they’re doing is incredible. I run a lot, every day 10, 12, 18 miles. Girls, how are you? You guys are amazing.” I went back to marathons since I got my Tread, which I didn’t know I could run. I trained on my Tread. I did the Brooklyn Half marathon in 2019 and then I went to Houston to Ebony’s place. I did a full marathon there. In 2021, I did it full on the Tread because she was in Houston and I couldn’t fly there. I did a 10K. I was like, “I’m done. I don’t want to go to those full marathons. It’s too much.” You’re like, “Why the hell am I doing this?” but it’s good to do it at least one time.

That’s definitely a bucket list.

When Crystal did hers on the Tread by the eighteenth mile, I wanted to cry.

I walked because I didn’t train for it at all. I can’t even imagine being able to run for 26 miles.

It’s really hard. It’s more mental than anything. If you have a strong mind, you can run a half or a full. You have to have a really strong mind. I think I did the last seven miles without music. That was tough.

I do believe that. I did a Half IRONMAN relay. I did the running portion because I was on a team. I did the thirteen miles and because it’s an Ironman, they don’t allow you to have music at all. I did the entire thirteen miles with no music. None.

That’s hard. My AirPods died and I didn’t have the little charger with me. What I did was I went back in my life. I recounted my entire life during those 7 miles. That’s what I did. That’s what kept me going. I finished it by thinking about the past and the present.

From what you’ve described of your life, is 7 miles enough? It seems like you’ve done a lot.

She’s like, “I only got to age seven. That’s it. It was a year for each mile.”

It’s a good life. I appreciate it. I’m very grateful.

I don’t feel like I grew up in a background that’s similar to yours, but we didn’t have a ton when I was growing up. Every time I accomplish something that I set out to accomplish, it’s a sense of pride. I love that I can do those things. Anybody can do it. I get stuck in that too. I think it’s nice that you’re so encouraging of people and that you share your story with people to encourage them and to get them motivated to be able to do things. It is easy to sit down and be like, “I can’t. It’s too long. I don’t want to.”

It’s also the fear. It’s the fear of not being able to do it. It’s the fear of trying something new. It’s the fear of “How long is it going to take me?” It’s the fear of, “I don’t have any money. I don’t have resources.” It’s all negative. In everything I’ve done, I’ve been afraid. Becoming an assistant, scrubbing up a heart, I was like, “I cannot do this.” When somebody told me, “You can do this.” I also listened to a lot of people. Three times I said, “I’m not going to join the open heart. I cannot scrub.” Finally, I said, “Let me try.” I tried and I totally fell in love with it. I did something that I thought I couldn’t do but I didn’t know that I could do it until I tried it. I was like, “This is amazing.”

I have a question. I know nothing about the different kinds of nursing that you can do. What is intimidating about that?

You have somebody’s chest right open. You get to touch the heart. You get to bypass it. You get to fix it. We get to do all that. Scrubbing means passing the instruments to the surgeon.

It’s pretty high pressure.

I started on the legs. The legs are where we take the vein that we use to bypass the heart. You start as a second scrub. The second scrub is the one that helps the first scrub. When they need sutures put together, you do that for them. I started there and then they said, “You need to learn how to first scrub.” I was like, “You’re kidding me.” There are three big tables with all these instruments, all these little sutures and all this stuff. The girl that was teaching me said, “Let’s try.” We did it the first day and I was like, “You just created a monster here. Damn.”

They thought it was going to take me two years. I did it in six months. I was ready. I was impressed with myself. I learned how to do the things that I didn’t know. I brought papers to work with all the instruments, the names, and I studied. I brought two things when they bypassed the blood. I brought it home together and I will study. I would look at it. I was dreaming. I would get there early. These surgeries, we have to be ready. We have to be there at 5:00 AM to get ready to serve right at 7:00 AM. I remember doing a 4:30 AM, I count for almost two years before I went into the open heart.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

I said, “This is why I did these classes.” When I had to get up at 3:50, it was the same time I was getting up to do a 4:30 AM full count. I was like, “This is crazy.” I had no problem when they told me, “You got to be here at 5:00 AM.” I’m used to that. I was doing it three times a week. I was there. It was intimidating. I was so afraid of the surgeons because they’re like gods. They’re something else. I put in the work. I listened to the surgeon telling me, “Do it this way.” The next time we did surgery and I did it the way he asked me to do it, he would remember.

I would say, “How the hell can you remember this?” These little things that you asked me to do and change. He worked in three different hospitals with three different teams. I’m amazed. That’s the same guy that asked me to become an assistant, which was by accident. I helped him by accident because one of the surgeons was late. After that, he came to me and I went to him. He said, “You need to become an RNFA. It means Registered Nurse First Assistant. I’m like, “Are you kidding me?”

I was like, “I have to study again. I have to go to a program. No.” When we were doing surgery, he took his precious time to explain to me why I should do it. He said, “This is why. You’ll never know. You might move to another place. You might go to another hospital. This might happen.” I came home and I did my research. I asked other people. I went to my manager and said, “Dr. so and so said that I should become an assistant.” She’s like, “We’ll support you.” I was like, “What?” I studied like hell. Everything was online. I picked Vegas to go to for my suturing class for a week. I don’t like to gamble and Vegas is close to home. I had tons of fun. It was good.

That’s amazing. That’s really incredible.

Thank you.

What is your leaderboard name?

My first name, Yaneyra. I was trying to teach Marcel how to say my name. I’m taking a 45-minute class with her. There are people above me, people below me and she’s skipped me three times. I tagged her on my Instagram and she said, “You got some names. I cannot pronounce them.” I said, “This is how you say my name.” She started cracking up. I said, “I saw you skip me four times.” She’s like, “Yes, I did.”

Points to her for owning it.

It’s simple. I’m one of the originals, so I got to choose my name. That’s different enough.

I’m going out on a limb that there aren’t a lot of people with that name.

So far, so good. You don’t have anybody trying to take your leaderboard name.

I haven’t seen any Yaneyra 2 or 3 or something. I should look, by the way.

You said Jessica King is your favorite on the Bike? Would you consider Jess Sims your favorite on the Tread?

Then came Adrian. I love Adrian. I have so much respect for all of them.

They’re all so incredible.

Running a marathon is more about mental than anything. You need a strong mind for that. Click To Tweet

I never go out like, “Adrian, I’m dripping,” but I started supporting him as soon as he joined. We got Marcel and I’m in love with her, Daniel and Brad. Brad is my compadre. I call him my nephew because he’s Dominican and his mom is Dominican.

I didn’t realize his mom was Dominican. That’s really cool.

That’s why I try to take as many classes as I can from him. I got to support la Raza.

Do you have any advice for people who are just getting the Peloton, be it the Bike or the Tread?

First of all, try every instructor. If you have the Bike, try everybody. Try more than once because there might be a class that you’re like, “I would never do that again.” Also, the Tread. Also, don’t compare yourself on the leaderboard. Do not watch those numbers on the leaderboard, please, mostly on the Bike. Every Bike is different. I got the new one, the Peloton Bike+. I thought my bike was light. Now, I have this bike and I think I’m doing the right thing.

Do not compare, like, “This person is going at 3,000 miles an hour and you’re going at 2 miles.” That’s fine. Let it be. You are there. Do your work, do your thing and get the High Five but please do not look at the numbers. Don’t bother because you want to torture yourself. Do your work and make sure you do strength training. Do it before or after. Don’t just go on the Bike and do cardio. Cardio is not going to help you.

You have to do strength training if you’re going to get stronger. Focus on being stronger. I don’t mean skinny. I learned that from Jessica King. She started changing things. Let’s be strong, not skinny. Lose the weight if you want to lose the weight, but don’t focus on being a skinny little thing. I do it because I want to be strong because my job demands me to be strong.

You have long hours on your feet.

Also, you tire up, but I worked 12, 13 hours and I don’t have time to do it. You got to figure out how you’re going to do it because this is your time. It’s your life. A lot of people tell me, “You give them time to go to your kids’ games.” Get your own time. You got to be a little selfish. Take the time and do your workout because it’s so good for your mental health. Even when you feel tired, put the clothes on and get on the Bike or the Tread. That’s what I’ve done. “I’m so tired.” I force myself. After you do it, you get energized. You feel stronger. You can clean, you can cook and you can do all your stuff.

It’s wonderful advice.

Before we let you go, where can people find you on social media, if you would like to be found?

I am on Instagram a lot. It’s @YaneyraPellascini. You’ll find me there. I show a lot of the classes that I take. I make a lot of jokes. I curse a lot. I joke with instructors and I tag them. I say, “Good morning bitches,” every day. I don’t know how I started that thing. Some people would go, “You didn’t say ‘Good morning bitches.'” I take the nurses in the OR and sometimes they tell them, “Can you tell them ‘Good morning bitches’ because I forgot?” My coworkers say, “Good morning bitches,” and it gets me going. I wake up, I look at my phone, I get up and I start laughing.

I also teach people how to cook Dominican food. Every time I cooked some Dominican food, I post it. I have posts and highlights about how to cook chicken and plantain. I give tips on avocado. Ripen them and put them in the refrigerator. They’ll last 2 or 3 weeks. I don’t know why they don’t do that at the store. They let them rot in the store. Why? I talk about everything on Instagram. I’ve been almost out of Facebook. I go there for the groups, Jessica King’s group and for Jess Sims. I look around a little bit, I give somebody some love and tell them they’re doing great and congrats.

Advice on love. You help with hearts no matter what you’re doing.

I do it often. I love it. I love everything I do. I teach you how to clean. I don’t know why, but some people are like, “What? Vinegar?” Vinegar and baking soda for everything.

You have advice on all the things.

On love life, I’m single, but I still tell people, “They have to have good credit.”

Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us. We appreciate it.

Thank you and thanks to John. He was like, “I told those people about you.” I’m like, “Why?” He’s like, “Why not? You’re amazing.” I don’t know about that. I just do what I do and I try to show what I love. I love the guy.

TCO 228 | Achieve Your Goals

 

He’s a good guy. He and Erica are good people. They’re wonderful.

I love them. I met them too in New York several times. Thank you.

Have a good rest of your day.

You too.

We’ll talk to you later.

Goodbye.

I guess that brings this episode to a close. What pray tell do you have in store for people next episode?

That will be Marcy Bullock. We’re going to talk to her. That will be awesome.

Until then, where can people find you?

You can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, the Bike and of course, the Tread all @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. Sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com. Don’t forget our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, keep pedaling and running.

 

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