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Landmark in the News

Jennifer Whitlock: 5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Can Dramatically Improve Your Wellbeing

Authority Magazine, by Candice Georgiadis, December 18, 2020

 

Make it an adventure. Your exercise doesn’t have to be the same treadmill at the same speed at the same time every morning over and over until you are so bored you can’t stand it any longer. Exercise can be fun, hard, scary, sweaty, loud, quiet, and so much more. I’ve learned to really enjoy mountain biking, I’m no longer scared to rock climb indoors (fantastic core strength exercise), and I have learned to love open water swimming. Embrace the fun, mix it up, and make it work for you. Our vacations are now planned around exercise, like traveling to Istanbul for a bucket list swim and flying to Nepal to hike to Basecamp. There are yoga vacations, mountain bike camps, SUP retreats, boat-based swim vacations, and so many more options waiting for you if you embrace the idea that exercise can be fun.

 

Asa part of my series about “5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Well-being”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jennifer Whitlock, a gastroenterology nurse practitioner, a glass artist, and an avid explorer and world traveler. In 2019 her dream came true: She trekked to Mount Everest Base Camp, a goal made as a 310-pound pack-a-day smoker. To get there, she shed almost 90 pounds, quit smoking, and got serious about her health.

 

Jennifer was 22 when she traveled to her 5th continent, moving to Istanbul for the summer and traveling between Asia and Europe on a daily basis. Her plan to return to Istanbul in 2020, this time to swim from Asia to Europe rather than taking a bridge, has been delayed by COVID-19 travel restrictions but is on track for 2021. Today, Jennifer is working on a new goal: to travel to continents #6 and #7: first to Chile to paddle the Futaleufu River, some downtime in the crystal waters of Bora Bora, an exploration of the Moai of Easter Island, and last but not least, an exhilarating swim in Antarctica, all in one epic whirlwind trip.

 

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?

 

I was six when I first started competitive swimming, and I started to swim year-round a few years later. In high school I swam, played volleyball, and “threw” track as a shot put and discus thrower. After that, routine exercise slowly slipped away as I entered college and started working. The pounds started to creep on — slowly at first, then one day I looked in a mirror and realized I was morbidly obese. It was in my early forties that I remembered my athletic roots and slowly embraced exercise as one of the foundations of good health. Swimming came back easily; running took a lot more work, but over time, I remembered all of the reasons that I love exercise and how good it makes me feel.

 

Once I started exercising, I realized that you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. You can work out as long and hard as you want, but if you eat too much, you won’t shed an ounce. That’s when I started to educate myself about nutrition. Unfortunately, most medical professionals will tell you that our education is woefully lacking when it comes to nutrition, so I had to educate myself.

 

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

 

There is never a dull moment in medicine. My favorite story is the day that all the pieces seemed to fall apart, then magically fall back into place.

 

We had a patient who had been waiting for a pancreas transplant for what seemed like an eternity. It was a difficult match, and despite our best efforts, we could not find a match for our recipient. Day after day our team waited for the right organ — this went on for over a year, with the patient getting sicker and more frail as time went on, which is a serious problem as people can become too sick to get their transplant.

 

When it seemed like the right organ would never become available, a near-blizzard struck the region, burying part of Michigan and most of Ohio in a blanket of thick ice and snow. Of course, as Murphy’s Law would have it, that was the day the perfect organ became available in Michigan… for a recipient in Ohio.

 

We had exactly six hours to get the pancreas from Michigan to Ohio; if it took a minute longer, the pancreas would have been unfit for transplantation, and the weather made flying impossible. What happened was a monumental effort by dozens of people in several states, two surgical teams, some adventurous ambulance drivers — who may have ignored a few speed limit signs until they hit the snow line — hospital staff running a very important box in a wheelchair to the operating room, and a patient whose life was saved by strangers who believed they could do just about anything if they worked together and tried hard enough.

 

That day felt like winning the lottery and finishing a marathon at the same time. I can’t even imagine how the pancreas recipient felt receiving that lifesaving organ.

 

That teamwork and success reinforced something I’ve always believed — if you want it enough, you can accomplish it. I’ve always had that faith in my career; I’ve always believed I was intelligent enough to do well in the workplace, but my life really went from average to an exceptional, very big life when I truly understood I could have that in my personal life, too. I now know and live the reality that whether it is weight loss, saving money for goals, adventure travel, writing a book, or any other goal, your actions just have to be in line with your goals to make it happen. It’s that simple. Choose a goal and aim for it daily.

 

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

 

I think we all make mistakes when we first start doing anything; the key is to laugh about it, learn from it, and move on. Fear of failure can lead to not trying at all, so I acknowledge the fear and do it anyway, and encourage others to do the same.

 

When I was in nursing school I got sick with the flu on Christmas Eve and strep throat on Christmas Day. I was so new to the world of medicine that I didn’t even take a Tylenol; I just suffered. I was miserable until I finally got so dehydrated that I was taken to the hospital and given IV fluids and antibiotics and, of course, I was told to take ibuprofen or Tylenol. I felt so dumb. Who isn’t smart enough to take ibuprofen? It is so absurd that it makes me laugh every time I think about it now, so many years into a healthcare career.

 

That happened to me for a reason, and was perfectly timed before I even started my career in healthcare — it serves as a daily reminder to be patient with people, to explain clearly, to be empathetic when people don’t understand information and, most importantly, to take enough time to make sure my patients truly understand the plan and their role in making the plan work. Those days of misery have made me a better person and provider; I’m more empathetic, and much more patient, whether I am talking about weight loss or illness.

 

Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?

 

My professional credentials are certainly important, as I am a board-certified nurse practitioner specializing in acute care as a both an internal medicine hospitalist and gastroenterology hospitalist — a fancy way of saying I only take care of people sick enough to be admitted to the hospital. I wrote The Everything Post Weight Loss Surgery Cookbook: Everything You Need to Meet and Maintain Your Weight Loss Goals, a comprehensive manual for bariatric surgery patients, and served as the surgery expert for a division of The New York Times and Verywellhealth.com for over a decade.

 

Even with all of that, I believe the thing that makes me truly unique is that I’ve been there. I’m not imagining what it feels like to be obese; I have walked that path and truly appreciate what a complex issue weight loss can be.

 

I started my health and wellness journey as a 44-year-old who weighed 310 pounds. I knew what I was supposed to do as a health professional, but I still wasn’t doing it. I had to get my thoughts and motivation right before my body could follow. The idea that weight loss isn’t just a physical process of reducing calories and exercising, but is at its core an emotional journey that can require some serious introspection, is an important distinction in the world of weight loss. You can’t expect to change a lifetime of bad habits if you don’t identify those habits, learn what drives them, and change your patterns of behavior.

 

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

 

My friend Michelle Tennant is a publicist to the stars, but to me she is famous for introducing me to The Landmark Forum, a personal development course that transformed the way I thought about my personal abilities and truly helped me get out of my own way so I could accomplish the goals I set for myself on a daily basis, along with larger more complex goals.

 

Before Landmark, I was good at meeting and exceeding professional goals, but I lacked confidence and consistency with meeting my personal and health related goals. In short, I was an over-consumer. I ate too much, I spent too much, I was a couch potato who smoked too much, and I was stuck in a place where I thought that was my reality, my lot in life, the place where I should expect to stay for the rest of my life. I was convinced that my life was fixed and unmovable, and even though I knew I would die young if things didn’t change, I didn’t feel I had the power to truly change the trajectory of my life and health.

 

Since Michelle introduced me to Landmark, and completing the Landmark Forum along with additional courses, I’ve not only lost nearly 90 pounds and trekked to Mount Everest Basecamp, I’ve quit smoking, I have transformed my personal finances and started buying rental properties to secure my financial future, gotten over my fear of marriage and (happily!) taken the plunge, found my dream job, and I have taken my glassmaking from a hobby into a real business that not only funded my trip to Nepal but also gives back to the community. I’ve regained my love of exercise, particularly swimming, and I have given myself permission and the authority to be an overachiever outside of work.

 

Have you ever had someone tell you their deepest, darkest secret, and you are just shocked and amazed by what they have been hiding for so long? I felt like everyone knew the worst thing they could possibly know about me, because my worst quality was my obesity, and it was obvious. In our culture, it can feel like being fat is worse than being a felon, a cheater, or a liar, worse than being habitually cruel or selfish, as though your weight negates everything else about your person and character and leaves you judged and feeling like less than everyone else.

 

Knowing that, I started with having the courage to tell the world I weighed 310 pounds, which was one of the most terrifying things I have ever done, and something I would never have considered without the lessons I learned during The Forum. I even named my company 310 To Everest. When people find out what the name means, they often comment on how they won’t even put their real weight on the driver’s license, much less tell the world, but shouting it out to the world was a key piece for me because it ended the shame cycle.

 

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. We all know that it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?

 

Blockage #1: Excuses, excuses, excuses. First things first — stop with the excuses. There will be thousands of excuses to skip exercise and eat too much, but you only need one great reason to get it right. I wish I had a dollar for every person who asked me how I did it, and when I explained that I track everything I eat and work out six days a week, they would say “that’s too hard” and the conversation would be over. If being mindful about your food intake and getting some exercise on a routine basis is too hard, then you probably don’t want it enough. This is true of any goal: If you aren’t willing to work for it, you probably don’t really want it.

 

Blockage #2: Believing it is all about the food. So few of us become seriously overweight just because we eat too much or exercise too little. We are emotional creatures. We eat to celebrate, to soothe, to feel less, to feel more — you name it and we eat for it. Figuring out what makes you tick, and what drives you to eat more than your body needs, is a big part of the emotional heavy lifting that you need to do in order to not only lose weight, but to maintain that loss.

 

Identify your triggers. Recovering addicts are warned about HALT, or Hungry Angry Lonely Tired, as triggers, and for some, boredom should be added to the list. Your own triggers may be different, but identifying them is a key to preventing emotional eating in the future.

 

Blockage #3: Listening to the ugly voice in your head. The ugly voice inside your brain lies. It says horrible things. Mine used to say that I was fat and disgusting and that no one would ever want to love someone so gross, which would make me feel bad, so I would go eat something to feel better. Repeat that a few thousand times and guess what the result is. If you said 310 pounds, you are absolutely correct. That nasty voice is yours and, by definition, you are in control of it. Learn to acknowledge it for what it is: you being your own worst enemy. So many of us have an internal monologue that says things that our worst enemy wouldn’t say to us, and yet we never learn to silence it. Addressing your ugly inner voice, and changing that voice to a powerful motivator, takes some work, but having your internal voice turn into a cheerleader and banishing the ugly is a key piece in achieving your goals. Come up with a few positive sayings in preparation for the next time you hear the ugly voice. When it says something vile, acknowledge the thought, dismiss it, and replace it. You won’t believe how much better it will feel to have that voice saying “You are awesome.”

 

Can you please share your “5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”? (Please share a story or an example for each, and feel free to share ideas for mental, emotional and physical health.)

 

Know what you will be eating tomorrow. And the next day, and maybe the day after that.

 

Know what you will be eating today, tomorrow, and maybe even the next day makes the process so much easier. The old adage about a failure to plan being a plan to fail is both annoying and true. Tracking your food is a known tool for serious success, but if you wait until the end of the day to enter your food, you may have an unwelcome surprise when you realize you’ve eaten 500 more calories than you planned, and the damage is done. I use the MyFitnessPal App to track my food, and I often have 80% or more of my food planned for 1–3 days in advance, and sometimes more if I’m doing meal prep for work lunches that week.

 

Find the right goal

 

I’m really good at long term goals; I can choose a goal, like a master’s degree, and put my head down and go after it. Historically, I was less accomplished at smaller, seemingly easier goals, such as going to the gym three times a week. For me, a goal that was both challenging but attainable was key to my success. Summiting Mount Everest wasn’t even under consideration, but Mount Everest Basecamp, a 12-day uphill climb that wandered into 18,000 feet of elevation, was just hard enough to require real work but not feel impossible. That goal made me feel like I needed to get out of bed and go to the gym three times a week. My goal was never a certain weight, since I’d failed too many times at attaining a dream weight; my goal was a very specific ability. So now I choose events, like swimming from Asia to Europe, or the 10-mile Swim The Suck race, and adjust my training to suit the goal. Your goal should be something that makes you feel inspired and motivated, and makes you feel like you’ve done something valuable with your time and energy.

 

Make it an adventure

 

Your exercise doesn’t have to be the same treadmill at the same speed at the same time every morning over and over until you are so bored you can’t stand it any longer. Exercise can be fun, hard, scary, sweaty, loud, quiet, and so much more. I’ve learned to really enjoy mountain biking, I’m no longer scared to rock climb indoors (fantastic core strength exercise), and I have learned to love open water swimming. Embrace the fun, mix it up, and make it work for you. Our vacations are now planned around exercise, like traveling to Istanbul for a bucket list swim and flying to Nepal to hike to Basecamp. There are yoga vacations, mountain bike camps, SUP retreats, boat-based swim vacations, and so many more options waiting for you if you embrace the idea that exercise can be fun.

 

Consider boring (or at least not too tasty)

 

Our house has been purged of food that is too tempting, too tasty, too yummy in my tummy. For me that means no salty processed potato chips, no salted nuts, and no milk chocolate. Ice cream is allowed, because it often gets freezer burn before I eat even a small portion of it, and is no longer a temptation. The point is this: Why have something in the house that takes me further from my goals? I want it to be work to step outside of my plan to reach my goals.

 

I also tend to eat the same breakfast and lunch for days in a row after a Sunday spent meal prepping. For this hardcore foodie, meal prepping was a big change, and there was a time when I would have been horrified by the same meal five days in a row. Now, this is a tool, particularly when I’m feeling like I’m headed toward emotional eating. A repetitive diet is still nourishing, and since it isn’t overly exciting for the taste buds, can help with the process of examining the emotions that are driving the urge to eat for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. Bonus: tracking is super easy when you eat the same things routinely.

 

It’s about the food… until it isn’t

 

In some ways, the calorie counting, macro tracking and exercise is the easy part. If you eat somewhat below the calories you need for the day consistently, you will lose weight. Simple, right? Not so much if you talk to anyone who has ever lost even five pounds just to watch it come back, often with some extra friends to join the party. It absolutely is about the food we consume and the energy we burn through on a routine basis, but the behaviors and attitudes that fuel our desire to eat, eat too much, and eat to numb our feelings can’t be counted on a diet app.

 

As an expert, this might be obvious to you, but I think it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?

 

Exercise is the fountain of youth. I have made a point of asking my really sharp elderly patients what their secret is to a long and healthy life, and I get the same answer every time. One, a very young 93-year-old, told me that “I stopped mowing my own lawn a few years ago, and my tennis game has slowed down a lot recently, but I move every day.” Another, with over 30 Boston Marathon finisher medals, said very succinctly, “If you want to be running Boston when you are 70 or 75, you have to be running Boston today.” My 90-year-old patients who are living independently in their own homes, driving their own cars, and balancing their own checkbooks have made daily exercise a lifestyle for decades.

 

Exercise is also a great way to manage stress and depression. Stress levels are at an all-time high as we learn to live in the midst of a pandemic, with social unrest and unending political drama. Add in some genuine fear of COVID-19 and death, along with isolation from our friends and loved ones and we, unfortunately, have a recipe for stress and depression. Exercise is a natural way to get the endorphins, your brain’s feel good chemicals, flowing. It doesn’t have to be hard exercise; a regular brisk walk will get the job done and help with feelings of sadness.

 

Finally, while exercise is certainly good for making us look good, it makes us feel good. It keeps us limber, helps with aches and pains, and makes us feel more energetic long after the workout has ended. It keeps us strong. It reduces our risks of falls, broken bones, and heart disease. It lowers blood pressure and — let’s keep it real here — better cardiovascular fitness leads to better sex. Once exercise becomes a habit, it truly becomes a way of life because it feels so good.

 

For someone who is looking to add exercise to their daily routine, which 3 exercises would you recommend that are absolutely critical?

 

Walking

 

Walking is the gateway to great fitness. Walking is nearly free, aside from a decent pair of shoes, and you can walk fast or slow, uphill or on flat ground, and for as long as you like. You can make it as challenging as you like; it is easy, effective, and once you really get going, you may enjoy taking the time for yourself and incorporate listening to music or books on tape. If you get to a place where walking isn’t challenging enough for you, you can add in some more difficult workouts.

 

Swimming

 

Swimming is a fantastic no-impact workout for young and old. It is a sport that you can participate in for a lifetime without worrying about your joints, and if you get tired, you can float. If you aren’t a good enough swimmer to get a good workout, consider signing up for lessons or trying water walking or water aerobics for the same benefits.

 

Yoga

 

Staying both strong and limber is important for feeling good. Yoga helps reduce pain, strengthens our core, and can be incredibly relaxing. It’s a nice combination of a solid workout and stress reduction. For people new to yoga, look for classes described with words like beginner, restorative, or chair yoga. For someone who wants a more challenging workout, look for words like flow, heated, and sustained poses. There are many yoga classes offered free of charge online, but beginners will also benefit from a yoga instructor who can fine tune their form.

 

In my experience, many people begin an exercise regimen but stop because they get too sore afterwards. What ideas would you recommend to someone who plays sports or does heavy exercise to shorten the recovery time, and to prevent short term or long term injury?

 

Muscle pain and fatigue is a very real thing after beginning an exercise regimen. It can be tempting to just stop and sit on the couch, but that is one of the worst things you can do for exercise soreness. If you are sore from exercise, start with getting up and moving. Even a 30-minute walk can help reduce your muscle soreness. Even serious athletes, like triathletes who compete in the Ironman, typically don’t take the day off after a competition, instead doing some low impact movement the day after to help speed their recovery.

 

Hydration will also help reduce your recovery time. Water is truly amazing, and we typically don’t drink enough of it. Being well hydrated can reduce pain and inflammation, improve energy levels, and for some, can even stop a headache.

 

Stretching, whether in the form of a more formal practice like yoga or pilates, or some gentle stretching sitting on the floor, will help reduce injury and pain. While the debate continues over whether you should stretch before warming up or after warming up, there seems to be agreement that stretching after your exercise is beneficial.

 

Foam rolling is a hurts-so-good solution to muscle pain. Quite simply, a foam roller is a dense tube that you use to “roll” your sore muscles. When used on sore muscles, the sensation can range from tenderness to outright pain, depending on the location and how aggressively you roll the area. With time and daily use, the foam roller can dramatically reduce pain through a process of myofascial release, a technique used by trainers and physical therapists.

 

There are so many different diets today. Can you share what kind of diet you follow? Which diet do you recommend to most of your clients?

 

I keep it very simple. I don’t limit any particular food group and I don’t suggest others do that either; it just smacks of crash dieting and fads. I focus on a few core objectives: mindfully tracking every morsel, planning ahead, clean foods, high volumes of steamed vegetables and fresh fruit, with an emphasis on avoiding all processed foods. Processed foods are not forbidden, but are infrequent and need to be scheduled at least 48 hours in advance. The 48-hour rule really helps when a coworker shows up with a box of doughnuts, and is equally helpful when you are going to a birthday party next week and would really like some cake. Perhaps most importantly, I know this isn’t a journey that ends at a particular weight or goal. This will be a lifelong issue; I will have to track what I eat for the rest of my life, or risk being 310 pounds again. That’s just fact, and many of us have learned that we are susceptible to stress eating and bad habits returning — it is a new phenomenon I like to call the “COVID-19 20.”

 

For my patients who have issues with their digestive system, I not only insist that they begin tracking their food, but even more importantly, a food diary that includes how they felt after eating each meal, pain level, bowel movements, and digestive tract symptoms. Even a 14-day diary can help us figure out what foods they shouldn’t be eating due to sensitivities. Gluten intolerance is a well-known issue, but many people don’t realize that you can be intolerant of milk, sugar, and many other foods. Finding out that there are foods that can make pain notably worse is also an eye opener for most people.

 

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

 

When it comes to diet and exercise, “Eat to Live” by Joel Fuhrman, MD is the most amazing book. It was the first book I found that used real science rather than opinion, personal experience, and fads to promote weight loss. This book literally has hundreds of footnotes, citing study after study of real science exploring human nutrition, and I learned more from reading that book than in entire semesters of nutrition classes. I can’t even tell you how many copies I have bought — people borrow it and don’t return it — so now I just buy used copies whenever I see them.

 

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

 

As a healthcare provider, I would start a movement to have people stop eating processed foods, and it would help billions of people. If the American people removed processed foods from their diets, we could fix the entire healthcare system in a decade, with more than ample funds to take care of those still in need. It’s hard to imagine a slimmer, healthier America happening so quickly, but eliminating processed food could dramatically change American life as we know it, preventing and treating diabetes, heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, and many other chronic diseases for a majority of individuals.

 

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

 

The best boss I have ever had, Mindy Zoll, would say “No one wakes up in the morning hoping to make a mistake” when something went wrong. It was a lesson in kindness and acceptance for the group of Type-A overachievers lucky enough to be managed by her, people who tended to be harder on themselves than others would ever dream of being.

 

Mindy taught me about showing others kindness when mistakes happen, but more importantly for me, that message was about showing ourselves that same grace. This idea of grace is particularly important with weight loss and the guilt and shame that is tied in with being overweight. Feeling shame and stuffing feelings in an effort to not feel that pain is often a trigger for overeating, but having the grace to forgive ourselves for our mistakes, and to not go into a spiral of negative self-talk, is a key piece of the weight loss journey. Better is not to make excuses, but to acknowledge the mistake, examine why it happened, and consider what triggers were present — so you can prevent it from happening in the future. Then let it go and continue making progress.

 

I cannot say this often enough or loud enough — eating a piece of cake doesn’t make you stupid, worthless, disgusting, or any of the other vile names we call ourselves. In the end it is just a piece of cake and its power over us is imagined. Letting go of food shame, and the desire to self-medicate it with more food, can shatter the vicious cycle of overeating and negative self-talk. As Brene Brown says, “Shame needs three things to grow out of control in our lives: secrecy, silence, and judgement.” Let go of the judgement, control the emotional attachment to food, and you will have the essential tools of sustainable weight loss and health. You don’t have to tell the world your weight, but you don’t have to be silent either.

 

Aiming for perfection is just as bad, because you are setting yourself up for a total failure eventually. Perfectionism is stressful and just leads to disappointment when you inevitably fail to be 100% all day every day, and that feeling of failure or even shame can be very triggering for emotional eaters. A healthier tactic is aiming to be a little closer to your goal every single day, keeping your eyes on the prize and moving in that direction. Preparing for a marathon, not a sprint, is sustainable and effective.

 

When we embrace giving ourselves and others the grace to make a mistake, to live a less than perfect life without feeling punished or belittled by our own inner voice (or someone else’s real voice), we are able to truly stretch into goals that scare us because they are so amazing.

 

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

 

No question, sharing a meal with President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama would be the most extraordinary meeting I can imagine.

 

I admire their trailblazing; their ability to maintain a loving relationship under the most stressful conditions imaginable; their dignity, intelligence, and thoughtfulness; the way they worked to improve America for the underdog — whether it was gays who wanted to marry or people who desperately needed health insurance — and of course, their ability to go high when others go low. I can only imagine the stories they could tell, the wisdom they could share, and I know they have great taste in music because I have been enjoying his 2020 Summer Playlist on Apple Music.

 

If the Obamas have a full schedule, I would love to sit down with Brian Buffini. He’s a self-made multi-millionaire Irish immigrant, best-selling author, motivational speaker, business coach, real estate mogul, and host of a fantastic podcast. He’s a student of all of the great self-improvement masters, and every time I listen to him speak I feel like I’m smarter and a better person.

 

What is the best way our readers can follow you online?

 

My website 310toeverest.com features my thoughts on the weight loss journey to Everest as well as the handmade art glass that made the trip possible.

 

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!