Get into your best SHAPE ever with JJ Flizanes - Fitness Guru!

Have you ever wondered how to get in your best shape ever?! Or struggled with weight and health during COVID times. I have the answer for you with our guest, JJ.  She will be included in my new book launch, Queendom, as she understands fitness, health and getting ready for e special event...with confidence!

JJ Flizanes is an Empowerment Strategist and the Host of several podcasts including the People’s Choice Awards nominee "Spirit, Purpose & Energy".  She is the Director of Invisible Fitness, a best-selling author of "Fit 2 Love: How to Get Physically, Emotionally, and Spiritually Fit to Attract the Love of Your Life", and "The Invisible Fitness Formula: 5 Secrets to Release Weight and End Body Shame".
Named Best Personal Trainer in Los Angeles for 2007 by Elite Traveler Magazine, JJ has been featured in many national magazines, including Shape, Fitness, and Women’s Health as well as appeared on NBC, CBS, Fox, the CW, and KTLA. Grab a free copy of the Invisible Fitness Formula at http://jjflizanes.com/book

She lives in California, but coaches internationally. Sign up for your health today, wth JJ:

http://jjflizanes.com/workwithjj

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to call podcast. I'm Janice McQueen, pageant, coach, author, and podcast host. This show is your beauty and pageant BFF, and you will learn skills to help you win that crown and beyond

Speaker 2: 0:26

JJ[inaudible]. Now she is an empowerment strategist. She's the host of several podcasts, including the people's choice, awards, nominees, spirit, purpose, and energy. She is the director of invisible fitness, a best selling author of fit to love, how to get physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit to attract the love of your life. Woo. I like that. And the invisible fitness formula five secrets to release weight and end body shamed. She is named best personal trainer in Los Angeles for 2007 by elite traveler magazine. And she has been featured in many national magazines, including shape fitness and women's health, as well as appeared on NBC, CBS, Fox, the CW, and K T L a welcome to the show, JJ, how are you? Thanks Janice. I'm doing amazing. Thank you for having me. Well, you, I tell you I was just so, so excited. Uh, we sort of, we sort of found each other and this was a very quick put together for this podcast because I'm launching in just a couple of weeks and I've always looked up to you and just really admire all the things that you've done. And of course have, you know, heard you on multiple podcasts and just think that your strategies and your lifestyle choices and just how you go about what you do is very impressive. So I thought I want to bring this to the pageant world as well as you know, pageantry is not just one thing. It's really about a lifestyle and how we can take the things that we learned through pageantry into our life. I want to make sure people understand that getting prepared for any kind of event, whether it's a wedding or a pageant that you need to change your lifestyle and not just diet yourself to death. So let's, let's talk about that a little bit first share with our listeners a little bit more about you and how you got started in the health and fitness industry. Now, when you were looking for people who that had experience in fitness and in pageants, when I first saw that I just discounted it and kind of went about my day and then it's some little voice in the back of my head said, hold on, you were, you competed in Baton twirling and in dance competitions, you grew up in getting on a bus to go wear a dress or a unitards to flip around and get judged on it. So while it's not exactly a pageant it's pageant, like, and, and it really colors the story for me, because I did grow up in an environment where I was constantly judging myself against others and being a girl who developed into a woman rather quickly had hips and boobs before

Speaker 3: 3:00

Everybody else did. I didn't look like the skinny, you know, um, shapeless, tall, skinny lanky desirable at fourth and fifth grade, like the rest of the girls, where I was developing hips and boobs. And so I looked different and I, unfortunately I grew vertically instead of horizontally, but so for that, some of those hips and boobs, I ended up working out later, right? They worked out later, but when you're looking at yourself in a mirror standing next to other girls, and there's this emphasis on beauty, you do get caught up in that and the S the shame and the self-sabotage begins and the dieting to lose weight and fit in and look good and be attractive, starts at a pretty early age. And so what I didn't know to title the first book, my fit to love, how to get physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit to attract a love of your life. One of the words I, I didn't even use because I wasn't even aware of it yet was shame and how that the fit to love journey was really about taking all that I had learned in my own self care, in my own evolution of loving myself at a level at a deep, real, authentic level to do things for myself, because I loved myself, not because I hated myself. And for me, the fitness industry, and sometimes the world of beauty can be, I only make decisions based on what I think I will look like and therefore earn love or earn attention. And when I would walk into a gym as a personal trainer, and I would feel the energy was just, it was palpable. You can feel the people on the treadmill who hate themselves. They don't, they hate themselves, and that's why they're doing it. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of people have resistance to exercise because they, when they get on there, they just anchor that shame and self hatred while they're doing it. And so who wants to exercise when that's the way you feel about it, or when that's the way you feel about yourself every time you do it. So that first book fit to love really was about changing that conversations. That way, when you exercise, you did it because you loved yourself. Even if you didn't like what you were doing, maybe it's painful or uncomfortable, but you get over it because you understand that you're doing it because you love yourself and you want to take care of your body and your health and your longevity for the rest of your life. So

Speaker 2: 5:18

That's true. And it doesn't matter. Like I said, if you're like you were in so many competitions, and I forgot about that, you know, when I was a kid, you know, I didn't maybe do exactly like what you did, but there you're a cheerleader or you're whether you're a girl or a guy, maybe you're in a sport and you're, you have to say a certain weight, or you have to be, you have to be a certain size, or you have to be a certain criteria to be able to play and to Excel at what you're doing. And so we started at a very, very young age that we start to have, instead of self-love, we have self-loathing and it can, that body shame carries on into our adult life. And even though I coach all ages, it seems like I'm more known for the miss. Mrs. And Ms. And during that time, you're, you're, you might be a female that has had this in your prior years, and then you've grown up and now you are married or you've been married and you've had kids. And then it's a whole nother as a whole nother ball game. And you go through that, that body shame again, of where you just don't want to look into the marriage, just don't feel your best. You don't look your best. And I think that's an important topic to talk about because how do, how do you get through that? How do you start? What's the first step back to self love so that you can get physically fit,

Speaker 3: 6:38

Recognizing that your self worth has nothing to do with what you look like, how much is in your bank account or what you've achieved

Speaker 2: 6:46

Beautifully said, it's

Speaker 3: 6:48

Really, it's really the bottom line. And it really has to be the truth, depending on whatever your spiritual beliefs are, whether you have spiritual beliefs or not, most people have some sort of belief system, whatever it is, whatever God creator source that you ascribed to. Uh, there has to be an understanding that your life, isn't a mistake that you, in some way or other chose to be here or gifted to be here. And therefore there's a purpose and your being this, because we live in a society that's about doing, and we get caught up in the momentum of doing. And so we judge ourselves on how much do I do that? It creates this false reality, really that I, in order to be valuable, I have to be productive, or I have to have accomplished something. It's not just good enough just to be, and then be a light or be full of love, or just enjoy. We live in this crazy manic control, addictive society. That's judging people based on accomplishments. So it's very easy to get caught up. And of course, when you're in a competition there, you're getting judged. I mean, you can't escape it, right. You're being judged. And I have a, an ex friend who was, she struggled a little bit with some drugs at one point in time in her life. And then when she came out of that, she, you know, the addictive energy didn't go away. She didn't heal the addiction. She just changed the injection. She went from a drug that would help her feel alive and better and more productive. And then when she stopped doing that, she went to bodybuilding competitions. And, and for some people it looks like, Oh, well, isn't that healthier? No, it's not. It's literally the same, same addictive energy just with a different substance. And, and so we didn't really ever get back to do you love yourself as you are? And that's where it has to start. So regardless if you put yourself through a competition, a pageant, whatever, and you're an audition. I mean, I was an actress. So you put yourself in front of people. You don't have to put yourself in front of people and totally disempower yourself by giving the power to them, to tell you who you are your most, the strongest position you can take always is to walk in knowing who you are, regardless of what they say, because you understand that their response to you is just one opinion or something about them. So to build and cultivate authentic love and self care only makes you a brighter star. When you decide to put yourself out there and allow others to give you feedback and you get to decide if you take it or not.

Speaker 2: 9:27

No, that's a really great point because feedback is so important. And you know, when we are in a society of feeling as if we're judged, regardless if it is for a dance competition or a sporting event, or a pageant, or, you know, bodybuilding or dating or life in general, a job, we, we tend to look at that and view that and take it so personally. And I think you do have to step aside and remember that you have to have that self worth and that self love, and, and more importantly, have that confidence. Well, I tell a lot of what I tell all my clients, that it doesn't matter, your height, you're lucky, and that you said you, you were curvy, but then you started growing upward. I was curvy and I stayed curvy because I didn't grow upward I myself. And I've disclosed this on my beauty call podcast to my listeners that I went through. I went through an eating disorder. I was borderline anorexic. I know what it's like to have body shame to some degree. I still feel as if I have it to this day because of what I went through. And, you know, I share that a lot on my episodes, 60 and the beauty call podcast that was, that was launched in may of this year. If you want to go back and listen to that guys, but you know, I talk about it and I talk about it being very vulnerable. And that's why it's so important to me that when I work with clients and I refer them to anyone, I want to refer them, them to someone like yourself, who understands that everything begins with loving yourself and the fitness. It will come with the lifestyle. And in so many of us, we do have those addictive type personalities. Like what you said is one addiction to another, and it might be where you overexercise or overeat or whatever it happens to be. We have to start analyzing what is important to us and how we can better take care of our health. So I'm with you sister. I tell you, it's an, it's an important topic to talk about because when you're, you're teaching people, you're helping them get better shape, but you're also helping them get mentally better too.

Speaker 3: 11:39

Well, it's all connected. And over the course of 20 years of being a personal trainer, I kept, which is actually why I started my podcast was I needed an outlet to talk about the other connections that a lot of people didn't want to hear about. You know, the reason why you struggle with overeating is because you're using it as an addiction to numb your feelings. So we're not going to win this by counting calories or changing diet plans every week. If ultimately you get triggered and he used food to numb. So we have to look at the behavioral, mental, emotional reasons, and even spiritual reasons why we're on the path. Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to look better? And if we're clear, it doesn't mean you can't. You can, or can't do some certain things. You can do whatever you want, but it's the energy in which you are coming from that determines your success, longevity and sustainability with the habits and patterns that you have in place. And that you're doing it from a place of self-love again, instead of self-abuse or self hatred, because no, our instincts are to move away from that kind of emotional response. So you're never going to love exercise. If every time you do it, you you're abusing yourself in, in your mind, you're saying nasty things to yourself. You're disrespecting yourself like your inner being knows that that's not true. And so it's going to push away from anything that amplifies those kinds of messages, but you can transform that by changing why you do it. And then that it because becomes something you do out of self-respect and honoring yourself, and then you feel good about it. And it anchors in good neural chemicals. So now you want to do it,

Speaker 2: 13:15

You know, that sound advice. So what I want to do, I want to, I want to back up a little bit, because I know we've been talking for some time and of course I know those are listening are looking to find a healthier way of approaching the fitness part of any type of competition. And since this is a dedicated podcast for pageantry, I just really want to talk about that really quickly. Um, so everyone understands and we're on the same page is in pageantry. You can enter in what would be a swimsuit competition. In some, some pageants do have two piece and one piece, and it's all ages from teenage years and up. So you can be a woman that has had children, or that has been out of shape and then getting back into shape. And you're expected to compete a two piece bikini. And that's common in pageantry. We also have fitness competitions, and I'll tell you, sometimes we're in the fitness outfits and these pageants are less flattering than wearing a two-piece bikini. So, you know, that doesn't mean that you Slack off with your fitness routine, but there's so many different levels of watching your fitness and how you're being quote, unquote judged. And a lot of it is it comes down to do you look healthy? I really want to get that across to everyone is first and foremost, do you look healthy? You don't want to enter and be too thin. You don't want to enter. And of course, if you're overweight, then that's another underlying issue that really pageantry is not going to solve. It's about being healthier. So, so for you to Ajay, you understand what it's like to have competed having had your background and, you know, in fitness, of course, and you know, competitions as a child. So if we were giving a step by step guide for people just finally looking into getting in shape for, let's say a said event, which in this case is a pageant, what would be your, your top maybe tough tips and tricks that you would like to give everyone?

Speaker 3: 15:19

Well, obviously we have to look at the whole package, right? Because it's, the advice is going to be different per person, because there's a couple things to consider. So the age, your age will determine what hormones are at play and for the Mrs competition, if you're over the age of 40, the likelihood that you could have adrenal fatigue, the likelihood that you could be high thyroid or low vitamin D, we have a, we have a panel of issues that could cause your lack of success. And so that would be an important thing to look at for anyone over 35 or 40, who might be trying a certain exercise program and are getting no results. I will tell you, I've worked with every age for 20 years, plus 20 years. And people who think they know how to exercise, who come to me, who've been plateaued. It's a very simple process. And most of the time they're doing the same thing over and over again for years and years and years. But when your body adapts and changes, you can't do that same thing and get the same results. So we have to adapt the program to where you are now, and then continue a program where every time you get to the next level, you change it and you change it specifically. So when it comes to the difference between cardio and resistance training, a lot of people do a lot of cardio. And the problem with a lot of cardio is that you set yourself up to basically be counting calories. It's like if I do an hour of cardio and I only eat this much calories, I burn these many pounds over X amount of time. Well, that equation stops working as you get older. And that equation stops working when you run out of extra fat to burn, because you're not efficient anymore at using it because you're at a new fitness level. I had a next client who had contacted me and she was doing, she was little, she was like five foot four, or maybe not even five foot. And she was, it took her three months to burn, to get rid of five pounds because she was on the treadmill an hour, a day, six days a week, and eating under a thousand calories. Now that is not a recipe for success for anybody. Yes, she was little and my metabolism didn't need a lot anyway. But again, here, here in lies the problem with making it a lifestyle because you're not doing it for lifestyle, you're doing it for a goal you're trying to get somewhere. So it's short term work for most people. Resistance training is absolutely necessary for changing the shape of your body for increasing your metabolism and for helping you to, you know, that's, the tight look comes from is building muscle building, building lean mass that actually is active and requires calories, which helps you to burn more fat and burn more fuel energy, AKA calories all day long, but because it's less understood, most people don't know how to do it, or do it safely or effectively, they avoid it. So they just do cardio and cardio can be more interesting anyway, from dancing to walking. I mean, during this timeframe, I've definitely done more cardio than ever because it's easy to get outside or go to the beach and do it with my partner or with a friend. And then when we get to resistance, because it's, again, like I said, there's a lot of science about not hurting your joints about doing efficiently so that you build muscle. But when I say build muscle, the other thing that women do all the time, they misunderstand that when you say build muscle, they think they immediately go to like Arnold Schwartzenegger body. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. That is not. First of all, you don't have the hormones to do that. And second of all, half of that is not even real because it's steroids and other adaptogens that have been taken. So lean muscle looks healthy. It is strong, it has cheat, and it don't have to put a lot of it on, but you can be pretty skinny and flabby and not look healthy, but you could also have more body weight, but look so much better with more muscle and just a small amount of fat on your body. So I, I'm a big proponent of adding a well-balanced routine that serves your structure and your metabolism. And then of course you have to look at the food, but exercise wise, I would say add some resistance training, make sure to focus on legs because that helps build muscle quickly, which changes your metabolism quickly. And don't forget your upper body. You don't want to be imbalanced. You want to do a little bit of everything. So you have a nice, balanced looking structure.

Speaker 2: 19:37

I love everything that you just said, and I will reiterate that and just sort of break it down. And I call layman's terms because you're, you know, you're talking about, you know, I think the mindset is really what it comes down to the mindset. Yes, you're, you're competing in an event you're competing in a pageant or you're getting ready for whatever event you're doing and you are, you have a goal. And I think goal setting is extremely important. Um, we talk about that in another episode and I think that's an important thing is to give yourself goals and allow yourself to make smaller goals. And I think that's the number one huge takeaway from all that you just said, which was amazing. Number two, which was a huge for me, especially I'm a woman in my fifties and I cannot get in shape the way that I did in my twenties or my thirties, or even in my forties and especially my teens. So I could just cut one thing out in my teens and my twenties and lose 10 pounds in a week. And it's just not the same game for those listening and trying to figure out what am I doing wrong, or what is happening is your body does change. And this why it's so important to talk with someone like JJ, like you, because you have the knowledge to understand the difference between the different times in our lives and what is needed. I know that I need myself. And again, I'm just referencing myself as an example that I have to increase my, my weight-bearing exercises. I have to do Pilates. I have to do weights. And if I add on cart or I'm doing cardio, I have to balance that you're exactly right. Or as maybe 20 years ago, when I was competing a lot is I only really had to worry about cardio. And I still did weight bearing exercise because it's healthy for your bones and just healthy in general. But, but it does change over time and every person is an individual. And so you want to take that into consideration, not get frustrated. I think we have to goal-set, but bearing in mind that things can take longer than you used to. If you're competing at a later stage in life, which I mean after 35. So just being patient with yourself and allowing yourself to try different routines, which is another reason why you, I always recommend a coach for anything that you're doing that is not in your own wheelhouse, I'm a pageant coach. And that's what I am an expert in that. And I know how to find other experts, but if I were competing again, I would definitely be calling you JJ, because you understand the dynamic. It's not just a cookie cutter type of let's do this workout and let's do this much cardio and let's have this many calories. And I think so many pageant girls and competitors in sports fall into that trap of staying under the thousand calories or doing a tremendous amount of cardio and not understanding that their metabolism metabolism might be different than someone else's. So those are my two great takeaways from that. All good.

Speaker 3: 22:45

Well, I appreciate the confidence in, uh, contacting me if you should ever compete again. Um, I will tell you that there is a lot more science than people give it credit for. And you know, like a marathon runner who only trains before marathon. In fact, there's a lot of people who just do marathons to lose weight, but what happens is I meant they stopped doing marathons, they blow up and it's because they're only using it to lose weight, but it's very extreme. It doesn't have balance. It's not changing any of their habits and they often get injured because, because of that and what happens in a marathon, just as an instance, like for instance, you can be burning so much muscle that your metabolism is slower at the end of it every time. So you're actually not helping yourself and resistance training, weight, bearing exercises, being able to use tubing and weights and body weight and all kinds of things for resistance can be added at any age in, in specific ways. I mean, the younger you are the less you need it, of course. But as you get older, it's part of a well-balanced routine just to keep your body optimal. And again, because most people don't understand how to do it properly and they are afraid of it, or they think they're going to look like a Hulk afterwards, which trust me, you won't, you won't one of my, you know, my most successful clients, the more they lift, the less, the smaller they get. So the smaller and tighter they get. So that is how you know, and not to say, go lift heavy irresponsibly, if you don't know what you're doing either because my brand, really my company is called invisible fitness. And the reason is because I saw so many people choosing exercises that were dangerous for their joints and not efficient for their muscles and trying to get, trying to look better, lose weight, build muscle, but at the expense of all the parts and pieces of your body that keep you together. So if you get injured doing it incorrectly, guess what guys, you're not going to be doing it anymore because you've injured yourself. So we have to take the risk versus benefit approach for long-term health. And just like you were saying at the beginning of the show, Janice, this has to be part of a lifestyle. Even if you don't do it all the time, how you do it is going to determine long-term how your body responds.

Speaker 2: 24:56

Absolutely. And I've, I'm one of those who has suffered injury and not necessarily because I was trying to fast or do anything crazy before a competition, but I used to run marathons, oddly that you said that, and I broke my foot, uh, doing that from a stress fracture of probably not training properly for it and going too far too fast before I was ready for it. And that happened to me and I'm still healing some from it. So I primarily now hike and bike and walk and then do Pilates, but that was an injury. And then I was one of those who taught aerobics from the time I was in high school, probably until about 10 years ago. And back in the day, we didn't always have the proper type of footwear nor did we have the proper type of flooring. And I luckily haven't really received any kind of major pain or injury to my knees and my feet, but I can definitely feel the brunt of having done that in my earlier years. So being smart about what you're doing and getting the, the expertise behind how to do it well is extremely important. And then I do want to point out that, you know, you're listening to this podcast because you want those tips and tricks of what to do in fitness to get in shape for a pageant. And I will still go back to setting the goal and preparing a timeframe to get in shape, but practice it so that maybe you are working a little bit, maybe more prior to the event, but it's something you do keep up with. Like you said, a marathon runner sometimes won't run or walk or do anything afterwards. And then you sort of lose that in your body after a couple of weeks, your body doesn't maintain. So it's the same thing with any type of lifestyle choice. If you want to get in shape, the best way to get in shape is to be in shape. So it needs to be something that you continually do and take care of, take care of yourself. And just like with any competition, whether it's a fitness competition or dance competition or your wedding or in, and of course a wedding weddings, not a competition, but you know what I'm being guys, um, or pageant, um, you, you might, and I, I don't want to say, I want to say this lightly. I know most pageant girls want to be ever so slightly limited be five pounds under their ideal weight. And I don't condone trying to do anything extreme to get there by understand, cause I've been there. I know what it's like, but have a goal in mind of getting in shape at least a month or so that your goal is to be where you want to be within a month prior to the competition so that it then sets in as a lifestyle for those next 30 days, and then continue it after. I think it's so important to learn the best way to eat the best way to exercise the best way to get cardio the best way to take care of yourself and also make sure you're stretching, um, men that we haven't gotten to talk about that yet. But I know for me, I've lost a lot of my flexibility because I, I lifted weights. I taught aerobics, I ran and I was not a yoga person. I was not a stretch person. And so now I'm trying to put that back into my fitness routine so that I don't lose that flexibility as I get older. So you want to talk about that just a little bit. The, you know, they added on that to your, your fitness plan.

Speaker 3: 28:23

Hmm. Well, it's actually probably the opposite of what you'd expect me to say. I'm not a fan of, I'm not a fan of stretching at all. And that's passive stretching. There's a difference between passive stretching and active stretching, if you're, so what a stretch is, isn't your ability to move in a certain direction. So let's say if you're stretching your chest, it's your, it's your ability to move your shoulders back behind you as far as you can go. Well, when you're stretching your chest, that muscle isn't actually active. There's no neurological connection. There's, there's no contraction happening and it's a relaxing of the muscle. So in essence, that muscle is doing nothing. So the muscle that's moving it though, in order to get to a stretched position, there has to be a muscle on the opposite side of the joint contracting to get you there. So really stretching is the opposite of what we think it is on one side, it's a relaxation, but on the other side, in order to get to that relaxation, there has to be contraction. So an active stretch focuses on the active part because then the other side of that is if I'm stretching my tricep or if I'm, if I'm activating my tricep and contracting it, then by default, I'm stretching my bicep, same thing with your legs. So if you focus on active stretching, you're doing a two for one, you're building muscle, you're gaining strength and you're increasing flexibility. And you're increasing real flexibility, not forced flexibility. When you take, when you're lying on the floor and you stretch your leg out over, you know, you stretch it out towards the sky and you take your hands and you pull your leg towards you. If you can't pull that leg towards you with your quadricep, then it is not a real range of flexibility because you have to take your arms strength and pull it towards you, which by the way, can tear your hamstring. And now you have an injury. So I'm not, I'm not a big fan of passive stretching for that reason because it's dangerous. And if you injure yourself stretching again, we're going to lose momentum on all the other goals you have because it's going to hurt and you have to recover. So if you do a balanced program of resistance training and which includes active stretching, making sure you're getting all sides of the joint and you're, and you're strengthening in it, then your ability to move in every direction increases, thereby increasing your flexibility. I had a client for a long, long time, and he's very his, the way he's built. And that's another thing your, your flexibility depends on your structure. Some people have a longer torso, some people have longer legs. So it just, you can't judge yourself like in a yoga class or somewhere someone's squatting in a certain way. And you're like, Oh, I can't do that. I'm inflexible. Well, your joints aren't the same. Maybe they have a longer upper leg than you do, or you have a shorter neck than they have is you can't judge yourself based on someone else's ability to fold themselves. Cause that's based on their structure. So if, so this client who doesn't fold well normally, uh, said to me, Oh, I don't think I, cause we don't, we didn't stretch. And I've had them for 10 years. And so he said, I don't think I'm very flexible. I've never been able to touch my toes and I, and so then he decided to try and he could touch his toes for like the first time ever in his life, but we don't stretch. But what I do is make sure we work all the muscles so that he can move in all directions. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 31:42

Yes. I love that. You know, I could probably get down with that kind of stretching because I am one of those who is, I'm five foot four, and all my muscles are nice and short. I feel like I, I have, uh, I don't know, I don't have the body for yoga at all. I try so hard, but I can so get down with the working every single muscle so that it is, you know, it's appliable, it's strong. I, I love that philosophy. I think that is a fantastic philosophy and understanding, um, our own bodies and also how to really be strong as well as, as flexible. That's amazing. That's a great way of, um, of talking about that. So JJ, thank you for clearing that up for me because I may have been the aerobics instructor for many, many, many years, but I never went, I never did the deep dive into what down that, that road of nutritional and fitness training. Um, I just enjoyed the group exercise and leading that and the dancing part of it, I think is what I liked the most part is the dancing. So yeah, it's a lot of fun, but Oh my goodness, you are just a wealth of knowledge. And I think if regardless, if you're entering a competition or doing anything, we should all have goals that we're setting for ourselves, if anything, just a goal to, to take better care of ourselves. And, you know, especially during this time, 2020 has been a very different year for, for all of us. And if, if anything, great came out of this year, it is to learn to have that, that love for yourself to make health, your first priority, to take care of your body, to take care of your emotional being and to not, and to love yourself. I mean, nobody's perfect. And when you look in that mirror, you need to love what you see it, regardless of what age you are at what competition level you are, or if you are like myself, a former and helping other people along the way as they compete. Um, and there are different age groups for whatever they want to do in life. And it's something that you take with you, fitness and health is something that you have to take with you outside of any major event that is in your life. So I really appreciate all of your knowledge and please tell everyone how we can get in touch with you and how we can also get a copy of your book. I think you have an offer for our listeners. I would love for you to share that. Sure. Yeah,

Speaker 3: 34:17

Everyone can grab a free copy of the invisible fitness formula, five secrets to release weight and end body shame. And that's at[inaudible] dot com forward slash book. Although I will tell you if you just go to digital Zane's dot com, you can find it. But the, the direct link is JJ floodplains. That's F L I Z a N E S T J's JJ[inaudible] dot com forward slash book. And I have, um,

Speaker 2: 34:45

A lot of podcasts. So I

Speaker 3: 34:47

Would say that there's also a podcast tab on my website. It's[inaudible] dot com slash podcasts. And you can see what I have. I have spirit purpose and energy, which has become my flagship show. I've got fit to love health and wealth women, men in relationships, nutrition, alternative medicine. Those are just a few and some of them have the same content on them and some of them don't, but generally just find the one that speaks to you, whatever it is that you would like to focus on. And my first show was called fit to love. It's been around the longest and you know, it's currently the one with the blue around it. There are several versions of it on, on, on, uh, iTunes, if you're, that's where you're searching. And you can just also reach out to me and tell me what you're struggling with and direct you to a podcast they're free since you're listening to this

Speaker 2: 35:38

Show, I know you listened to podcasts. So feel free to consume all the free content you can on, on any one of my podcasts. I love that. And you know, I'm someone who started a second podcast. So I understand the wanting to share your, your passion and your love and giving that information. And I appreciate all of our listeners listening today as well. And hopefully we have, you know, people that are weathering a pageant or not your first and foremost, taking care of yourself and whether that is to find love or to end up body shame, to get emotionally well or to get fit or all of the above, all of the things, because that's what we're all here for on this, this live to do is just to, is to feel good and to love other people. So I really appreciate you. I, I definitely, I'm going to reach out to you. We, we live fairly near each other. I'm in Santa Monica, you're in, you're in Southern California as well. And even though I'm not competing anymore, I am always looking for the best ways of to take care of myself. So I appreciate you so much today, JJ, thank you so much for all of your wisdom and your insight and have an amazing day. Thanks James, for having me on, I always look forward to spreading more loving, helpful knowledge about how to love ourselves on a deeper level, which includes our self-care. So I appreciate you having me on, thank you. Thanks so much for listening. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and if so, please go to your favorite podcast platform and subscribe. Make sure if you're on Apple, that you subscribe, rate and review me on iTunes. And I would love your feedback@anytimeyoucouldreachouttomeonjanicemcqueen.com and contact me or join my newsletter and give me the feedback of different subjects and topics that you would like to hear, or if you would like to be a guest on my show. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.