What do you do during your commute?
I hate commutes. When I lived on the East Coast, my commute significantly contributed to my quality of life, as in it made it worse. It was so infuriatingly unproductive, so pointless. Obviously, in most cities, it's simply a fact of life - unless you can afford to live closer to work or work from home, there's not much you can do about it. I decided to do one thing, however. If I was forced to sit on my butt for an hour getting angry at people for driving stupidly. then I might as well find a way to use that time to learn. Enter the podcast.
Health and fitness podcasts are a big reason I've become so passionate about this topic in recent years. It's fascinating to me how much knowledge and lack of knowledge we have about how our own bodies function. You can ask ten personal trainers the same, seemingly simple question about fitness and you'd probably get ten different opinions. How can that be? Let's discuss it - in a podcast.
I encourage anyone interested in exercise and health to check out podcasts. There's a wide range of topics and quality out there nowadays, which is why I listen to several different ones at a time to help me shape my own philosophies. I listen to them both during my commute and during workouts. To get you started, here are a couple of my favorites. All of these can be found on iTunes or other podcast apps.
1. Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Ben is by far one of the coolest fitness nerds out there, and not many people do it as well as he does with quality of content and breadth of knowledge. His background includes being a top ranked amateur triathlete, a current professional obstacle course racer, a former bodybuilder, best-selling author, and slightly crazy self-experimenter and biohacker. Oh and he also has a Master's in exercise physiology and biomechanics. His podcast is generally serious in tone and can get super into-the-weeds, but that's what's fun about it. Even if you don't absorb all the science-y stuff (I certainly don't), you're still guaranteed to learn something new. Ben usually has a guest that he interviews, but he also does Q&A episodes featuring his Australian partner Rachel, who basically acts as a sounding board to Ben's authoritative comments.
2. Fat-Burning Man Podcast. This podcast is run by the man behind the best-selling book "The Wild Diet", Abel James. While I don't prescribe to Abel's well-researched take on the Paleolithic-like diet, I absolutely love listening to this podcast. Abel always has someone truly interesting to interview on his podcast, and it's not always a famous celebrity fitness professional with lots of credentials - sometimes it's just a regular Joe. I also love Abel's casual, joyful voice - he exudes enthusiasm and happiness. You can hear his smile on the air. I want to hang out with him IRL, but so far I guess I'll settle for his podcast. Yeah, the title is weird (even Abel himself makes fun of it), but the Fat-Burning Man is one of my all-time favorites. Bonus: Abel doesn't like sponsors, so he tries really hard not to sell his listeners on any products.
3. MIND PUMP Podcast. Trainers and entrepreneurs Sal Di Stefano, Adam Shafer and Justin Andrews run this irreverent and highly entertaining podcast. If you're okay with listening to a couple of dudes shoot the breeze with each other, and you're further okay with a little raunchiness and locker room banter, then this one's for you. I'm not going to lie, the first time I listened to an episode I was super confused because I thought it was a fitness podcast and it sounded like it was just frat boy storytime. I almost turned it off. But I'm glad I kept listening, because these dudes have serious brains to go with their brawn. They have decades of experience in the fitness world and you can tell how genuinely passionate they are about using their hard-earned wisdom to educate their listeners. Most of their episodes consist of the three of them telling random stories and then answering submitted questions. They also conduct interviews with big-time fitness professionals, including Ben Greenfield.
*The guys don't pull punches and curse like sailors, so if you're sensitive to that then stay away from this one.*
4. TED Talks Health Podcast. If you're a fan of TED Talks, then you'll likely enjoy this podcast. There are a wide, wide range of topics and speakers with varied backgrounds. Just scroll through the titles and there's bound to be something that interests you. Talks on diets and weight loss to mental health and cutting-edge health technology keep me coming back to this one over and over.
5. Nutritional Diva Podcast. If you're short on time or attention span, add this podcast to your repertoire. The host, Monica Reinagel, is a certified nutritionist and professionally trained chef. She dishes out 1-2 minute bites of information based on listener-submitted questions on nutrition. Her voice is also clear, soothing and would probably perfect for some sort of hypnotism, if you were into that sort of thing.