July 7, 2026

Fred Spring, TY HealthSpan Chief Guide

 [00:00:00] All right, let’s get started. welcome. By the way, this is our first of the weekly healthy habits on Tuesday night. It’s gonna be at seven PM Eastern Time. Some of you are coming in from different time zones. I’m glad to see Eunice is on. Thanks, Eunice. I see Ravi. I know Tom’s in. I think we have one or two other invites who are looking to come in, so they will join us as in progress.

Tonight’s goal is to, ask questions and to answer questions, and I’m gonna present a few topics on health and nutrition and longevity, and I’m gonna go deep on a couple of them and then open it up for questions. You’re also welcome to put things into the chat. Know that this will be recorded, and it will be, um, chunked up into some nuggets for content for TY Healthspan in the future.

And it’s [00:01:00] gonna be probably the first of many, brought to you by Healthspan guides at TY Healthspan, including myself, Paige Love, Kirby Coggins, and some guest, guest hosts coming up as well. We have a few surprises for you. So I think what I’ll do next is share my screen and get going. Um, and again, I’ll look for the chats to see what’s popping up.

Tom will also help me on that regard. So tonight’s topic is gonna be about longevity, of course, and specifically around training and nutrition. I’m your Healthspan guide for tonight. My name is Fred Spring. I’m one of the few at TY Healthspan who not only does the diagnostics and helps the process at TY Healthspan, but I also get to help the members and help people who come in with their journeys.[00:02:00]

One, one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of good questions get asked, so I’ve assembled, a f- couple of the topics today that address several of the questions that I get pretty much daily

So the format is pretty simple. I’m gonna do a little deep dive with, some presentation and then open it up to questions. And again, this is being recorded. Today’s topic is gonna be around training and nutrition, specifically around what’s gonna boost your healthspan. Healthspan is different from lifespan.

Healthspan is about the quality of your life and the vibrancy of your life, as well as the longevity of your years. So with smart training and very practical nutrition, you can build on lifespan, you can build on healthspan, specifically around strength, metabolic [00:03:00] health, and being active for decades to come.

I’m gonna use evidence, I’m gonna use data, I’m gonna use measurements to help us understand this. I’m gonna map it back to the six pillars of health. at TY Healthspan, we’ve started with five pillars, and we’re big, so we’re growing to six pillars of healthspan or six pillars of health. The six pillars are sleep, movement, nutrition, stress management, which is emotional health as well, social connection, relationships, and avoiding toxic substances.

We’ll get to that in a second. I’m gonna focus on two of these pillars in today’s healthy habits discussion. I’m gonna f-focus on movement and physical activity and nutrition as it underscores metabolic optimization. Around nutrition– There’s a whole lot around nutrition. Today, I’m really gonna talk about [00:04:00] one thing, and that’s about protein.

I think it is probably the single most important nutrient when we talk about healthy aging. There’s animal-based protein, which most of you are familiar with, includes dairy, and there’s plant-based protein. Regardless of what I’m talking about, a tip, and I’m gonna present a tip pretty much every time I throw a new slide up here, my tip for you is good guidance is base your protein intake of grams per pound of body weight.

So, for example, I weigh almost a hundred and sixty-five pounds. Each day I strive to take in a hundred and sixty-five grams or more of protein. I can’t do it all at once, so I’m gonna split it up or chunk it up into different meals and different snacks. But the guidance I’m gonna give you is eat more protein than you’re probably eating right now, [00:05:00] and the guidance is, for every pound of body weight, strive for one gram of protein.

Older adults need more protein. And I say that because we tend to lose muscle mass with age, and protein helps build muscle mass. So the tip is older people, especially people over age sixty-five, I call it older people, and I’m one year away from it, should aim for a little bit more than a gram per pound of body weight.

Especially if you’re recovering, if you’re recovering from illness or you’re recovering from surgery, or your body is not quite in the same shape it’s been in for recent, recent times, like if you’re battling something, protein helps your body bounce back. It helps you bounce back faster

So let’s talk about the two different types of protein. Um, [00:06:00] there’s animal proteins. Um, very familiar with beef, chicken, fish. Eggs and dairy are good animal proteins. And there’s plant-based protein. Tofu, soybeans, some of the ones on the list here Meat and dairy have higher amounts of protein per serving than typical animal, typical plant-based proteins.

So as you’re, as you’re juggling your intake, both are healthy, both are advised, but know that dairy and animal proteins produce a bigger punch when it comes to amount of protein per serving. Again, here’s a tip for guidance. If you’re gonna eat three meals a day and have a fourth larger snack, strive to get thirty-five to fifty grams, really forty to fifty grams of protein in those [00:07:00] meals or in those big snacks.

And try to get it through whole food rather than through protein bars or protein shakes. Nothing wrong with protein bars and protein shakes, but some of them are highly processed, and some of them contain lots of amounts of sugar and are less ideal than whole food However, my mantra is more protein, more better.

Even if you have to resort to shakes and snack foods like protein bars to get it in for the day, s- do it, but mindfully strive for whole foods as a basis for your protein intake So alone, high intake of protein isn’t necessarily the trick. In fact, a study found that if you just take in protein and don’t do any activity, that amount of protein can zap calcium from your bones.[00:08:00]

So when paired with strength training or resistance training, protein will lead to muscle mass building and will help protect your bones. So the pair of nutrition protein and the pair of strength training together work very well When it’s consistent and you’re doing both, they produce muscle synthesis, muscle protein synthesis.

And that’s what we advise is not just high protein intake, but combine it with activity, especially strength training, and it will work to build the muscles faster without depleting the calcium from your, your bones. And there was this myth that you needed to do both, but that you had to do immediate protein after working out, like within forty-five minutes or an hour.

that’s been kind of debunked. There’s a large [00:09:00] window of eating protein after you work out that will help you synthesize with your muscle and protein, and that window is generally hours, sometimes four and five hours afterwards. So as long as you’re eating and as long as you’re working out, that it will get synthesized Let’s talk about training or movement.

Movement comes to me in two easy-to-understand buckets. One is strength training or resistance training, and the other is cardio activity

They’re pretty understandable on their own, and then together they work magic. One increases your cardio respiratory fitness level, and that’s the cardio activity. Commonly thought of things like walking, jogging, biking, running, dancing, swimming, [00:10:00] rowing. I see you, Eunice. So those are great forms of cardio.

And resistance training is things with weights or bands or weighted vests, um, working out with, um, machines, free weights. That’s what I consider resistance training. The tip on screen here is three sessions per week is ideal, especially if you can combine thirty minutes of cardio

And 30 minutes of strength training in your session, then you’re getting the benefits of both. Personally, I’m not a fan of two to three hours at a gym at a time. I’d rather be efficient. I’m a busy person, and I like to maximize my time. So I will do [00:11:00] almost an hour in a gym and try to break it up with some cardio activity and some strength training activity and pack it together.

That’s the guidance I’m gonna give you is, like, get two sessions or three sessions per week and try to mix up both cardio and strength training in your session. If you can’t, if you have to do one or the other, then try that. Do one strength training for at least 30 minutes, and then the next day, if you get back to activity session and you’re in the gym or you’re back outside, concentrate on the cardio.

Maybe you’re flip-flopping day after day. If you have the time, you have an hour or more, go for both in one session There’s this theory called progressive overload, and I’m gonna explain it. It really means not staying at with what you’ve been doing or s- or doing the same old routine. We believe [00:12:00] at TY Healthspan if you do hard things, you will be rewarded.

If you push yourself, you’ll be rewarded, and this is the principle of gradually increasing demands on your body over time, and this will allow you to make gains in strength, muscle size, and endurance. Because without progressive overload or pressing your body or pushing your body, your body’s gonna adapt to whatever demands it currently has, and it’s gonna slow down the improvement.

It’s gonna possibly stop improving. So consider doing the hard things, pushing yourself, getting that extra rep in, making it harder as you go along. That will improve your overall health and create the muscle build that we’re talking about and create the endurance gains that we’re looking for

I’m a fan of measuring and tracking. I have always come from businesses and industries where data is important, and we believe in [00:13:00] data-driven growth. What we measure, we improve. So consistently tracking your behaviors or your output, however we endeavor to do that, will actually improve your mind, your body, and will dramatically shift your results.

That which we measure, we can improve Measure is getting easier and easier these days. Um, wearables are everywhere. Apple Watches, WHOOP devices, Oura Rings, Garmin, Fitbit. These wearables track a lot of our activity and a lot of our body biomarkers. There’s lots of improvement in home scales. They typically use bioimpedance, whether you have a Hume or an Ebbion or Withings or other home scales, even InBody.

They do a great job of trending and tracking your, your [00:14:00] weight and much more than that. At Ty Healthspan, we really believe in superior measurement. We have advanced equipment like DEXA machines that can measure your body composition or Metalizer equipment that can measure your resting metabolic rate and VO2 max scores Those precision measurements help understand where your body’s at and where you can go from there.

Many apps these days help track individual aspects of your health, whether it’s steps or hydration or protein through MyFitnessPal, and there are other apps that are coming forward that bring all of that together, and that’s what we’re developing at TY Healthspan. We’re gonna be releasing our version of a all-encompassing comprehensive health app in the next few weeks, and, um, we have a few beta testers right now testing it.

It’s exciting. I’m [00:15:00] excited really for the amount of information that can be delivered on one screen and that can be customized to you. So stay tuned for more information on measurement and our a- our app. So lastly, before I open it up to questions and answers, I wanna just give you an example of what I’m tackling over the next two to three months.

There’s some big events in my life coming up, including our son getting married, and I wanna be ready for these big events, including a, a surgery, and I’m gonna get into better physical shape by tracking a behavior on each of these six pillars. This is my example. This doesn’t mean you have to adapt this or adopt this, but think about each of the pillars of health and where you might wanna have a measurement or a daily activity around that.

For me, sleep, I’m gonna try to be more consistent. I’ve been better at getting hours of sleep, from six to seven hours, but now I wanna be more consistent by going to [00:16:00] bed at eleven, getting up at seven. Physical activities, I’m gonna alternate every day activity. One day it’s gonna be cardio, the next day it’s gonna be strength training.

Some days I might go strength training, then strength training, and then which day I’ll follow with cardio. My goal is to be active every day and to try alternating. I’m also gonna push myself in my strength training days or really push it towards hard work or towards failure. Nutrition, I’m gonna take the tip that I offered earlier.

I’m going for one hundred and sixty-five grams of protein a day, and if I’m feeling sick, I’m gonna actually have more. Today, I started my first of many days of meditation, intentional meditation of twenty minutes. Twenty minutes or more is one of my goals. That’s gonna help me with my stress levels. It has in the past.

I’m gonna continue to do that every day. Under the area of relationships and social connection, I feel [00:17:00] that practicing gratitude is a big helper in that, and my goal is to reach out to someone who’s important to me or I respect or I care about and tell them what I’m grateful for. Share it with someone else.

avoiding risky or toxic substances. For me, I notice in times of stress or uncertainty or other times, maybe it’s even celebration times, I’ve reached for alcohol, and my commitment over these next eight weeks plus is to drink only socially and then to cut back my drinking to one drink or less. And by less, it might be a drink that’s non-alcoholic, but it still might be a beer or a mocktail.

Either way, my goal is to drink socially and to drink less. So that’s my idea of daily habits around six pillars of health. Let’s [00:18:00] open it up to question and answers based on the topics I’ve talked about today, which was training and nutrition

So if you are muted- Hey, Fred Hey. Yeah. Yeah, I had, put a couple in the chat, and you guys can put, put some questions in the chat if you, if you want to. Uh-huh. Or you can, or you can just unmute yourself and, and, ask the questions. But, um, so, you know, for, for us imperialists, you know, like w- grams ver- grams versus ounces, so 28, 28 grams to the ounce, right?

So if they say four ounces of, of, of protein, you know, with, with a meal, that’s like 112 grams, right? Yes. I don’t do the math as well as you do in your head. Yeah. So something, something, something in that, in that range, right? So, so, so your 165 is about like six ounces, six ounces of protein. [00:19:00] A day? Yeah, a, a serving of protein like this size of fish or chicken or beef is typically six ounces, right?

Between four and six, I’d say. Yeah, something like that. Okay. Yeah. So, um- And that is very close to what I advise you to get for your entire serving for that meal, is based on that large portion of dairy or protein from animals. Okay. Then my, my only other question was, you know, when you’re talking about the cardio, um, you know, what about, what about walking?

And so if you’re walking, how long should you stay in zone two for, for, for, for that to be, like, correct walk? Yeah, zone two is a great cardio goal. More minutes in zone two, more better. I typically describe zone two as, the ability to carry on a conversation while you’re doing the cardio, like walking, [00:20:00] but strive to walk briskly so that your heart rate is getting up to a level where you can’t carry on a conversation for the entire walk.

You might be going up hills or you might be walking faster so that you have to walk and talk in choppy sentences or shorten your paragraphs. So walking is great zone two, especially if you’re briskly walking or walking up hills. Not entirely up hills, but some of the walking will be on hills. I think Eunice, you asked a question, what is one of your typical breakfast meals?

it’s a great question. Um, I typically eat eggs and toast or overnight oats as a meal. So my morning breakfast will b- typically be three eggs plus toast, and I’ll add berries to that. If I’m not having eggs, I will have yogurt, which has a lot of protein in it, and I’ll add [00:21:00] granola and berries to my yogurt.

Or I’ll have made overnight oats, which has some protein in it, and I’ll add some other things to the, overnight oats to add taste and flavor. Did I answer your question? Awesome.

What other questions do you might have? I have a question. Ask away. Yes, Deborah. Um, what is creat- creatine? Is that how you pronounce it? It is. And, and is it good for you? That’s a great question. So creatine is really good for you. It is good for men, it is good for women, it is good for young, it is good for old.

There’s no downside to creatine. It’s one of the few supplements out there that I can carte blanche say it’s worth taking. It’s worth taking in the form of monohydrate [00:22:00] creatine, which is a, a kind of creatine that’s been widely available as a supplement for everyday goers. And my tip is to try to take creatine that it doesn’t have flavors in it.

Sometimes they add flavoring and flavors to make it taste better. But if you mix your creatine with your morning beverage, whether it’s orange juice or water or coffee or tea, it blends in pretty well. And if you do an unflavored version of it, it won’t upset the coffee or the tea or the orange juice

The type of creatine is monohydrate. The amount to take is consistently take five to 10 grams per day. That will help with muscle building. It will help with neurons firing in your brain. So it f- fuels both your mind and body [00:23:00] connection, as well as actively helping to build muscle Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome

Are there any other- And we have that avail– And, and, Robbie’s chimed in. We have that, we have that available for sale at TY. We do, yeah. We have some discounts on things like wearables and products that we’ve vetted, including creatine. Um, he also asked, how about skipping for cardio and movement versus walking?

Skipping is, um, amazing. sometimes I’ve taken clients that I have out for skipping sessions and watched their smiles and watched the people who see them smile. Skipping is a higher form of walking or jogging that does raise your heart rate pretty fast, so it is a great way to get to zone two and beyond.

You can get to, [00:24:00] zone three and four with skipping, and it’s also fun. It reminds me of my childhood. It reminds me of working out in a gym and being told that skipping was more than just healthy. It was causing smiles on other people. So I’ve forgotten about skipping. Thanks for that question. It’s really g- it’s really clever

Brad, is there, is there any other, are there any other questions that you think might be useful that we can add, here? Things that, things that you hear a lot that, you know, maybe other, other, couple other myth bu- busters you might have for us. Um, some are things like, “If I’m injured, can I still work out?”

Mm-hmm. And the, the, the safest answer is, of course, check with your primary care doctor or your health agent or your health coach first. The other [00:25:00] answer is, generally you can find something to do if you’re injured based on where your injury is. For example, if you have a knee injury, there’s plenty of opportunity to do upper body exercises that complement a strength training workout, or band exercises that don’t cr- create impact or, or torque on your knee So there’s always something you can do physically when you’re injured that’s in the area of not further injuring yourself.

But definitely check in with your, your trusted advisor, healthcare-wise, or doctor

Great. Robbie also put in here, can you give some examples of progressive overload? More reps, more weight, ladder? Yeah. I’m actually gonna refer to something that I have nearby. Um, it’s a guide on progressive overloading, [00:26:00] and there’s some really good information about what to do with progressive overloading.

Let me grab it. That, is that something we can, we can post for everybody’s benefit- Yeah, I think- Or is that… Yeah? I, I think we should, and I’ll get that to you, Tom, so that you can post out. So there are three ways to achieve progressive overload, and the first is adding weight or resistance. So if it’s a band, grab a thicker band.

If it’s weight, add more weight. The second way is to add volume or reps, so more repetitions in your workout set. Or to add volume, which is the total number of sets you’re gonna perform. More reps or more sets. And the third is exercising in a slow, eccentric way, and that’s a fancy way to say adding time under tension.

So if you’re doing a bicep curl and you’re lifting it up with [00:27:00] two dumbbells, one in each hand, as you lower it, the eccentric move, spend more time doing it more slowly. It’s a safer way to exercise. You get more results because you’re creating more time under tension as you let go of that weight. Another way to think of it is if you’re doing a body weight squat, as you’re standing and start to descend and fold down towards the floor, go at a slower pace and then pop up with power and then go back down into a slower pace into your body weight squat.

Or if you’re doing weighted activity, that eccentric move of letting go of the weight, I call the let go slow, is another way to create time under tension. That’s a third way to create progressive overload

Good stuff. Any, anybody else with any other questions? Looks like we’re running, running up against our, our, stated time Yeah, we’re, we’re at 30 [00:28:00] minutes. I’m happy to take any more questions if there’s anything urgent that someone wants to talk about. If not, we will answer them every day at TY Healthspan, so just come by, call in, or reach out to us via email or text

Okay. Good job, Fred Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Deborah. Thank you, Eunice. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Ravi, I learned, I learned some stuff … more, more of these will happen each week, and we’ll have more people on, so I’m looking forward to, um, Kirby next, and then Paige, and then some guest celebrities coming on for topics, and I’ll be- come back around again in about a month.

Thank you all for joining us. We’ll- Thank you … re- we’ve recorded this. We’ll chunk it out into nuggets and get those out to you as well. For TI Healthspan and for me, Fred Spring, bye for now [00:29:00]