Android app finally allows Bluetooth heart rate monitors.

RUMOR – Bootcamps are coming that use the bike instead of the tread. Plus, yoga with weights.

Peloton launches their Comeback program in the UK.

Dr. Jenn Mann – How to get your partner to workout.

Jenn Sherman is featured in New Jersey Monthly.

LinkedIn has an article about Robin Arzon.

Morning Brew reports on Peloton’s two new marketing hires – Dara Treseder and Karina Kogan

Jennifer Jacobs is now at Ladder Teams.

Crystal talks about her kickboxing lessons with FightCamp.

Alex Toussaint launched his own web store.

Live DJ Rides are back.

Peloton 2020 is over.

Prince is in the artist spotlight.

All this plus our interview with Stacey Rivere!

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Are We Getting Bike Based Bootcamps? plus our interview with Stacey Rivere

I’m looking for the show notes, sorry.

Tom is super prepared.

It’s only the 169th episode. I need time to get up to speed.

Tom, I’m throwing an audible at you. If you’re not ready to discuss this publicly, let me know.

What are you doing?

I was thinking about letting everybody know my latest moral dilemma. Moral might be the wrong word, but it’s definitely a dilemma. As you guys all know, I love my Android.

She’s contemplating making the switch.

I am. Here’s the deal. I’ve had some opportunities to be part of some cool informational things with newer programs.

Fitness tech devices.

The thing is that they only work with Apple. I am like a hair’s breath away from making the switch. I am sure this opens me up to much snarkiness.

Your birthday is just around the corner. I think we could get you an iPhone for your birthday. Then for your birthday dinner, we could take you out for some crow.

Here’s the thing. Do I have to eat the crow if I still don’t think that Apple is the better product? Do I have to eat the crow then if I’m only doing it to have access to other things?

I’m just saying being fat and lazy is really paying off for me right about now.

I’m sure that opens me up to all kinds of ridicules, snarkiness.

I have no doubt.

Bring it on, guys.

While you wait for that avalanche, what do you have in store for people this week?

Peloton had an update for the Android this week, ironically. We’ve got some rumors that we’re going to discuss. We’ve got some new stuff heading out to the UK. We have the visit with Dr. Jenn Mann. We’ve got some cool, interesting stuff happening in the news about Peloton, and some cool stuff going on with our instructors.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple Podcasts, which Crystal can’t wait to access for all you Luddites. You can also find us on Spotify or Google podcasts, iHeart, wherever you find it, you should be able to find us. While you’re there, be sure and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Also maybe leave us a review, so people that are coming along behind you will know if we’re worth the listen. We have a new review. This is from #Titanium_Foot. They say, “I got my bike in early 2018, but didn’t start listening regularly until about a year ago. I love my Friday morning commute to hear all things Peloton. Crystal and Tom have infectious chemistry. I enjoy listening in. Thanks to Tom, I’ve learned a few things about pop culture too.” See, it’s not all a waste.

It depends on who’s listening.

“I saw a post on the FB page which mentioned some of the prior guests. Since then I’ve gone back and I’m listening from the beginning. It’s so interesting to hear how much has changed, and yet nothing has changed at the same time. The instructor interviews are certainly worth a listen.” Thank you. I know your leaderboard name is #Titanium_Foot.

Thank you for that very nice review.

Thank you very much. If you would like to stay up-to-date throughout the week, you can find us over on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. If you just can’t get enough of hearing us, you can also see us now at YouTube.com/TheClipOut. We’re filming these episodes in their entirety. If we mentioned something that has a visual component or you want to see the faces Crystal makes when I upset her, YouTube.com/TheClipOut. That’s all of that. Let’s dig in.

—

There was an update to the Android app this week. This is the first in six and a half years.

It sure felt like that long. Now, you too Android users can use a Bluetooth HR monitor to be able to see your heart rate when you use the app. Here’s the thing. A lot of Garmins only use ANT. If you have an Android, often you have a Garmin watch or a Fitbit, both of which have ANT.

I don’t know what that means.

It doesn’t transmit over Bluetooth. It transmits over ANT. It’s a different technology. It’s like Bluetooth but it’s a different technology. Every time you see workout things, it will say ANT.

That’s why I haven’t heard of it.

Yeah, that pretty much explains it. Anyway, the point being that there’s still a whole lot of people who can’t do anything with us. Just to be clear, Peloton Apple app has had it for the entire time the app has existed, almost the entire time. Now that they’re actually working on it again, maybe they will start rolling out some other stuff because they are woefully behind at this point.

Maybe they’ve been getting some pushback from people. Who knows? Especially as they’ve seen an influx of people come in.

I don’t know when they’re going to catch onto the fact that other countries don’t love Apple as much as we do. I don’t know. It is like my one really annoying thing about Peloton. It’s irritating. The thing that is causing me to think about getting Apple products is the fact that developers tend to develop for Apple first. According to what I was told, 96% of people are on the latest Apple platform at any one time. Only 26% of people are on the latest Android platform, which is why developers tend to develop for Apple, then later stabilize it and then later send it out to Android. I get that, but it’s been a year and a half, almost two years since Peloton has done any major updates for Android. Come on.

That’s a long time.

Instead they were pushing out everything else. It’s very frustrating for this Android user.

There was a little rumor you stumbled on this week.

The wind is Corpus Christi’s hills. Share on X

I don’t want to say how I heard, but I heard that Peloton is working on creating bootcamps that are specific to the bike. Right now when you do a bootcamp, it is directed toward the tread. You run, on your screen it shows you running, then you hop off, use the weights, etc. The thing about that is that if you use the bike, you can’t see the tread classes that are bootcamps. The only way right now to use your bike is to use the app, which if you have an Android product is problematic. Then you still have your heart rate issue to deal with the Android and all that. A lot of people, what they do is if they’re going to use their bike, then they use an iPad and they set it up on their bike and then they’re able to switch back and forth.

The other thing, this is an assumption on my part, I would think that if they do this, if this is true, they’re going to have one transition per class versus two or more transitions per class on the tread, because you would have to change your shoes. It would be awkward to get off, unclip, change shoes, get back on if you had to get back on. That’s what I’m thinking if it’s true. We will see. The other part of the rumor is that there will be yoga that has weights with it, yoga classes that include the weights. It’s like yoga sculpt kind of thing. That’s very exciting. As soon as I told people that, everybody was like, “Why haven’t they done Pilates? Why haven’t they added boxing? Why haven’t they had a bar?” I was like, “I don’t know everything. I don’t have the roadmap, guys.”

Do you think this change signifies anything about the rumored new bikes that are coming?

Somebody posted in The Clip Out group, and I actually thought it was pretty good theory. They thought that this could be timed around the new bike coming out, the premium one. Perhaps, this is all theorizing, maybe the new bike has a swivel monitor that you can turn around when you hop off the bike to do the other half of the bootcamp. It’s all speculation. The rumor I’m hearing that I feel like has actual weight behind, but the rest of that is speculation based on how Peloton works.

It seems like a solid theory.

I thought it was a super solid theory. We’ll see.

The Peloton comeback program is so successful that they’re launching it overseas.

Officially today, they launched it in the UK. Now, the comeback can also be brought back in the UK. That’s great. They said today that in the US, they have given away 600 bikes so far. That’s amazing.

—

Back again for her much loved weekly segment is Dr. Jenn. She’s a licensed marriage, family and child therapist, sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn or her long running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show. She’s written four bestselling books including The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection & Intimacy and is a five-year national team member in Rhythmic Gymnastics and Sports Psychology for USA gymnastics. Dr. Jenn, hi.

Hello.

I would like to ask Jenn, how do you go about getting your partner to work out?

Not that this is an issue in your relationship at all.

No wonder I wasn’t informed of this.

In some situations, not that you would be familiar with this at all, Tom, sometimes things from one’s past holds one back from exercising. For example, just hypothetically, if you came from a family where they really pushed exercise on you and you were belled by going to the opposite extreme, it’s important to let such a partner really understand that when you do that, your family still has control over you. That in your desire to not let them control you, in your rebellion, you’re actually letting them totally control you and harm your future and your health. As we all know, exercising is healthy. It helps us to live a long time. It helps us have better immune systems. Some people whose name might start with a T, who loves him desperately and wants him to live a very long time. There are a lot of readers who want to be reading this for a very long time. Hypothetically, sometimes that happens, Crystal, not that you know anyone like that.

I don’t know anybody like that, but I’m sure whoever might be reading who might be in that particular circumstance. I bet they agree with you wholeheartedly.

I’m sure they do. Don’t they, Tom?

Theoretically, in the abstract. What do you do to jumpstart this monster?

First of all, it’s important for everybody to find what exercise works for them. What works for Crystal may not work for Tom. What works for Jenn may not work for Eric. Eric is a big Tonal guy. I’m a hardcore Peloton woman. My kids who are very athletic have dabbled in both. It’s really important to find what works for you. If you have a partner that hasn’t worked out in a long time or isn’t as active as you are, encourage them to start small. Crystal, you and I are hardcore exercisers at this point. We’re not your average, as I’m sure most of your audience are. To have a partner like you or me who works out seven days a week, who works out a lot, who’s always talking Peloton, Tonal and stuff, it can be a little intimidating and make it hard for a partner to start with small increments. There’s a tendency to think all or nothing, “If I’m not at your level or if I’m not working at as much as you, it doesn’t count or it doesn’t matter.” I think that the key is for people who have super exercising partners and you’re the person who’s not is to really start small, manageable goals. I’m talking small like five minutes, “I’m going to spend five minutes on the tread or I’m going to take a five-minute abs class.” Try to build on that. Things like Fitbit can be really helpful in tracking steps, also making some exercise goals. If you don’t want to share it with your partner, because sometimes it becomes too contentious with your partner.

A lot of the time, one of the reasons why couples therapy can be particularly effective is because we don’t hear things as well from our partners as we do from other people. If you make those goals and if you’re not comfortable, say to your partner, “My goal this week is to work out for ten minutes on Tuesday and Thursday. I’m going to do twenty minutes this week.” If you don’t want to share it with your partner because you’re worried that they’re going to judge you or they’re going to nag you or anything like that, write it down and put it someplace where they won’t necessarily see it or share with another friend. Find an exercise buddy that’s separate from your partner that you can do a FaceTime workout with. You can be accountable to one another and support one another. Sometimes it gets too complicated and emotional with our actual partner. We have to pull back from that and find our own way. Eventually once we find our own way, we can join our partner in some of the activities together.

What I’m hearing is it’s her fault.

They say, “Happy wife, happy life.”

I wish there was something cool that rhymed with husband.

There’s not that much.

We got nothing. Thank you so much for joining us. Maybe this will even air, who knows? I’m lazy in more ways than just exercise.

You can feel free to go and put the episode together.

I’ve got to argue with you on that. I don’t think you’re lazy. You’re a very disciplined person. You work very hard professionally. You work very hard on this show. You’ve never once been late. You’re always prepared. You’re a very disciplined guy, which also really points to your resistance to exercise is not about discipline. It’s about your history. It’s really important to work through that history. Not only am I a therapist, but I am a client of therapy as well. I’ve had tons and tons of therapy, decades of therapy to work on my stuff. If you, and I say the collective you, anyone in the audience, are finding that you’re having a block to accomplishing something that is good for your health and your wellbeing, and you can’t seem to get yourself past that. Therapy is a great tool in overcoming that and examining that and moving past that.

One of the pieces of good news about the pandemic is that almost all therapists are offering teletherapy and telemedicine, which didn’t used to be the case. You can do it from your own home. You don’t have to miss the commute time. You can pay with a credit card. Things have become easier in terms of getting therapy in that way. There are lots of therapists who will lower their fee. There are clinics who have low cost options of telemedicine. Anything that holds you back in your life, it’s important to address the issue.

Those are all very good points. I know we like to tease Tom, but for anybody out there who actually wants to work on it, those are all very good pieces of advice.

Thank you for all that. Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on all my social media, @DrJennMann, on my website, DoctorJenn.com. Also my InStyle magazine column comes out every Wednesday, Hump Day with Dr. Jenn.

—

From one Jenn to another, Jenn Sherman was featured in New Jersey Monthly. It’s nice little article there about her.

I like how they talked about how she was the very first Peloton instructor. It goes on to talk about how she pedaled her way to virtual stardom. She is 51 years old, the oldest Peloton instructor and the first Peloton instructor. Can you believe that she has been working at Peloton since May of 2013? In Peloton years, that’s a long freaking time. Of course, we’ve heard the story about how they all started in the closet. I love that story. It talks about how she grew up in Fort Lee, which is local to New Jersey. I have no idea what that means. She loves Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. It talks about her My Mixtape Rides that include them. Then there’s a little bit about COVID.

It’s weird to think as someone from the Midwest that you could go to a Bruce Springsteen concert and be like, “I like to support local music scene like Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Frank Sinatra.”

Do we have anybody like that locally?

I think the closest we’ve got here is Nelly. Before that man, I think you’ve got to go back to Chuck Berry. There’s a there a long gap there. The next story we discovered comes from of all places LinkedIn.

Isn’t that crazy?

When did that start?

They have been placing some articles out there. Peloton is very clickable these days. This is all talking about Robin Arzon’s career changes, “Say yes before you think you are ready.” I have sat through many women’s advocate program. They say this. This is something I typically hear that, women especially need to be in the mindset of, “If you are comfortable about a job that you’re looking at, you’re overqualified. If it scares the crap out of you, that’s the one you want to go after.” I think that Robin is also saying a lot of other things here about being inspired and loving what you do, because we can’t all do that. She also is saying that, and I think regardless of what you do, I think that is true.

I’ve reminded you of that when you were going after a job one time and you were like, “I don’t know. They list 12 things and these last three, I don’t really know.” I’m like, “Those are the last three for a reason. F it.”

What’s funny about that is I heard a statistic that let’s say there are five categories that are important for a job category. Men will have one or two apply for the job. Women feel they have to have five. Maybe they might try it with four. I find that fascinating. It is very true.

I shouldn’t say absolutely because I haven’t talked to all women, but I’ve seen you do it and I’ve had to talk you out of it. Then MorningBrew.com.

What did you think of this? I’m curious what your thoughts were about this one.

Tell me what it said.

This is talking about how we have two new marketing leaders for Peloton. This actually launched after we aired last week. For those of you who have not heard the news, there are two new lead marketers. It used to be Carolyn Tisch Blodgett was the VP of Marketing. Now, we have Karina Kogan will be heading up Product Marketing. We have Dara Treseder, who has worked at both Apple and GE. She will now be Peloton’s Senior VP, Head of Global Marketing and Communication. This particular article I thought was interesting because they took two things that happened this year 2020, as far as the changes in marketing in general. There were a lot of reasons for companies to make changes in their marketing with COVID and the entire world has been in a different place this year. Also whenever Peloton made such a strong stance with Black Lives Matter.

This is also interesting because it says in this article, “Hiring Treseder, a black woman, for the role is one step toward Peloton CEO and Cofounder, John Foley, making good on his June promise to make Peloton leadership more diverse. If you zoom out, Peloton sales surged 66% year-over-year in its third quarter. It held its largest class in April. It became so popular during the pandemic that Ad Age claimed Peloton doesn’t even need marketing.” Their takeaway, “Treseder and Kogan will be tasked with riding the company’s unexpected momentum into 2021. Hopefully this time with better ads.”

That would be an interesting position to be in, “Hi. We’d like you to take over our marketing. Also, we’re not doing any.” “Okay. I guess I’ll just sit here and read a book. Let me know when you want to fire things back up.”

It seemed too funny.

A TN content exchange, whatever that means.

The insurance company, as a whole, focuses on the after and not the before. Share on X

It means an exchange of content.

In Tennessee?

Yeah.

It has an article about Jennifer Jacobs.

For those of you who have been Peloton patrons for a while, you would know that Jennifer Jacobs used to be an instructor for Peloton, a much-loved instructor. There was a lot of sadness when she left the company. She has a couple of new gigs. This one was just announced this week. She is going to be an instructor on Ladder Teams. It is an interesting fitness experience that is totally different than what anybody else is doing out there. What I understand is you can get personal training from this and you can take different classes from different people. It is pricey. It’s $59 a month. If you’ve been missing Jennifer Jacobs and you really want to take her training, this is your opportunity.

Are these classes or are these one-on-one sessions?

My understanding is it’s classes. I think that it reaches out to a wide variety of people. It’s like a class similar to Peloton, where she’s reaching many people at once is my understanding, but it’s still in certain time slots. Having said that, it’s on Apple only. I don’t know. You get to try it for a week for free. I totally plan on doing that.

So you are getting an Apple phone?

I’m going to use the iPad that I use for FightCamp. This particular company, Ladder Teams, is described as the Slack of Fitness for its emphasis on community and team engagement. One thing that’s really cool about this, you can chat one-on-one with your coach or you can connect via their team group chat. You can have great conversation with your coaches. I chatted with Jennifer Jacobs offline, like we were just instant messaging. She seems excited about the community aspect of this. I think she might be missing that from Peloton, and really looking forward to engaging with people again on that same mass level. We’ll see how this works. If anybody tries it, let me know. If I ever get an Apple product, then I will try it too. I definitely plan on trying it if I get an Apple product.

Speaking of that iPad you used for FightCamp. How’s that going?

It’s going great. I will be honest, I had taken a little time off because I’m preparing this week for my Quarantread. FightCamp is amazing. I’ve said this a million times. I love to be able to do the core workout. You get a great HIIT workout. You can keep it short. It’s perfect to add after a strength training workout.

I come down there sometimes and see you bouncing around from thing to thing.

I’m not like a ping pong ball. I do love that we have a home gym. It’s pretty awesome.

Are you still doing the kickboxing or are you doing something else?

I’ve been going back to the regular boxing. For me to get into the kickboxing, it was tons of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. It made me realize how many imbalances I have in my lower body. I need to take the classes that actually lead you through the path of kickboxing to feel like I’m more confident to do the class. I love it though. Definitely, we’ll be doing that again.

We heard from our FightCamp winner, Karen DiDonato. She was very excited. She already has it.

She has parts of it. She’s still waiting on the final piece. I think she’s still waiting on the bag, but she got two boxes. I don’t know what was in each box. She’s got 2 of 3. She was very excited. She has promised a video when she finally gets it.

If you want to check out FightCamp, you can go to JoinFightCamp.com.

—

We just had a whole slew of Peloton- related birthdays.

We had four instructors this week who celebrate birthdays, Alex Toussaint, Olivia and then we had Jess Sims and Christine D’Ercole. We’ve got a lot of August birthdays. It makes sense though, Leos.

Speaking of Alex Toussaint, he had a nice little launch.

He’s been talking about doing a shop for a little bit. This one he just launched. He launched it. The day that he did it launched at noon. I logged in fifteen minutes later to make a purchase because I’m me. It’s great looking. This is beautiful stuff. This is gorgeous. I was already order 143 and fifteen minutes in. Somebody posted somewhere like he added up what his total was that day of sales, and it was crazy high the first day. People have been clamoring for this. This is great. This is wonderful. Congratulations to Alex and happy birthday to all the instructors.

Live DJ rides are back.

They are for the first time in a long time, 08/14, 6:00 PM Eastern, Robin Arzón and DJ John Michael in the studio, socially distant, to have the first Live DJ ride in months.

Those are so popular. People will be very excited to have that back.

It’s a great way to wind up your week. They’re huge. It really is a party on the bike. For people who like to go out and have a happy hour and they want to be healthy, or right now it’s COVID and maybe in their area, they’re not comfortable going to a bar. This is a great substitute. I know it’s not alcohol, but it’s endorphins and they’re almost as good.

Pelothon 2020 has officially come to a close. Your thoughts?

First of all, it’s really cool what Peloton did here. At the end of the day, they donated $1 million to nonprofit partners fighting hunger in our communities. That’s really cool. That’s what this was all about. Did I feel like it was the best challenge? I feel like it was a little clunky. It could have been better, but it was also the first one they’ve done on this scale.

That’s a really large scale to orchestrate a challenge where like when the groups do them, not to some of the groups aren’t large, but that you have people that are all there for similar reasons. You can tailor it to your crowd. Here, you can’t tailor it to them.

It’s like you’re always saying about music and pop culture. It’s got to be mass appeal. This had to be mass appeal. It also had to be something that could work on every single platform. It had to be something that people could do on their schedules. You’re talking about countries that are wildly diverse in time zone changes. Let’s just run through the numbers here really fast, 324,790 members took part. Then we have at the very top Grit and Grace Gang had 48,269 members, 14,000 of which hit every single goal. There are their top classes. Legends of Fun, 67,000 members, 18,000 of which hit all four weekly goals. The Unstoppables were so stoppable. What happened? Only 7,943 people hit all four weekly goals. I’m sad about that. Sad trombone. Then we have the Breakthrough Crew, 79,000 members, 25,497 hit all four weekly goals. The No Limit Legion, 60,000 enrolled, 19,000 hit all four weekly goals. House of Shine, 36,000 members joined, 9,945 hit all four weekly goals. Again Unstoppable, totally freaking stoppable.

If you add that all up, that’s a lot of people that did all four things.

It really is amazing how many people did all of those things. The point was to be able to show solidarity and get together as a team. Peloton did their part, donated a lot of money because we all showed up. That’s the important thing. The competitor in me, not so happy. The person who loves Peloton and is happy that they do cool things like this for the community, A-plus.

It looks like everybody is going to be busting out their berets of the Raspberry Variety.

I think that they will, and they will be partying like it’s 1999, which even though we were all terrified in 1999, turns out much better than 2020. We didn’t see this one coming at all.

I’ll take Y2K over Y2Corona.

If we had known.

There’s a Prince artist series. People are going to love that.

Here’s another interesting thing. Just like with the DJ rides returning, we have our first dual instructor ride in a very long time. We’re going to have Emma Lovewell and Ally Love are going to team up, 7:30 PM Eastern on the 12th of August. They are going to be together. Then Selena Samuela is doing a Full Body Strength on Thursday, 08/13 at 10:30 AM Eastern. Ross Rayburn is doing a Yoga Flow on the 13th at 6:00 PM Eastern. Then Andy Speer is doing on demand run that drops today on 08/12.

If you do all those, your name won’t be Prince, but you will be funky.

I think it’s required that you wear purple. Berets are optional.

—

Joining us is Stacey Rivere. Stacey, how is it going?

How are you doing?

I’m good.

Crystal and I aren’t together physically like we normally are.

Tom didn’t want to hang out with me.

I have to work. If anybody wants to run to YouTube, they will get a glimpse of my office. We should dig into the actual interview.

Stacey, tell us how you originally found Peloton.

It’s funny, I found Peloton through Facebook. It was a Facebook Ad. I like to say I’m not OG, but I’m the second wave of OG because you were right behind me. I was April 2016 and you were June or July of 2016. There were a lot of Facebook Ads out about it. I was a very big outdoor cyclist at the time in Corpus Christi. I was getting burnt out with outdoor cycling because I don’t care what people say. Chicago is not The Windy City. Corpus Christi is the windy city. We used to say the wind was our hills because we didn’t have very many hills there. It was getting dangerous.

There were a lot of cyclists getting hit. I was riding with a group, but a lot of times they would go a lot faster than I wanted to go. Starting in Corpus in the summer, it’s 90 degrees by 7:00 AM. Even though you’re riding early, it’s miserable. Peloton came out at the right time. I was like, “I would love that.” Nobody had one. Nobody had ever heard of it. There were no stores near me. The closest store was Dallas at that time. I bought it. I haven’t tried it. I had never seen it and never known anybody that had it when I got it.

You didn’t know anybody that had one either?

I didn’t. I talked to Peloton a lot before I bought it. I had several calls. I had several chats and my biggest fear was I’m going to get it and I’m not going to like it, but it’s going to cost me $500 between paying for shipping coming in and paying for shipping coming out. I was pretty certain that I would love it. I did, and years later, I’m still doing something Peloton-related six days a week. I love it.

Since you were riding all the time, do you feel like you were already fit before you had the Peloton or did that shift at all when you got Peloton?

I was cycling fit. I have very strong legs and I was doing a lot of distance. I was doing at least 100 miles a week and I was doing a lot of outdoor. Every Saturday was a 25 miler and then lots of events where there were 50 milers. I did conquer the coast, which was a 70-mile going over to massive bridges. I’m an endurance rider. I can go for a very long time. I’m not a sprinter. I’m not fast. Crystal, you talk about you run like a turtle. I’m not a fast cyclist. I am on the bike. I’ve gotten a lot faster on the bike. Incorporating all of the Peloton stuff, it started coming in. I was fit to one degree but not overall as a whole.

You say you feel like you’ve gotten faster. Do you think that’s through repetition or has there been something that’s led to you getting faster?

I attribute that to Power Zone training. There are always times I want to get on the bike and have some fun, but that’s not my big driver. My big driver is I’m very competitive and especially against myself. When I get on the bike, I want to see that I’m achieving something. I love the Power Zone training that every six weeks or so, you retest if you’re good. I haven’t retested in a while and you see your improvement and you’re going for that. You’re on the bike and Matt is saying, “Hold the zone five for three minutes,” and you’re like, “Oh my God.” You do it and then you do it again. You realize, “I’ve got to retest.” Having that ability to continually make myself better and see my improvement, that’s what did it for the most part.

Do you feel like the Power Zone training made you more fit and therefore faster or do you feel like there’s something specific about what they’re teaching you? Are there tips or tricks involved that helped you get faster?

It is the tips and the tricks because sometimes Matt will have you at whatever cadence you want. You need to be at your zone. Sometimes he’ll be very specific, “I want you at a lower cadence, but a higher resistance,” or “I want you at a higher resistance.” You get the general gist. Also, all of the other stuff that he does, like the low impact rides that he does that focus on form and the whole nine yards. It’s not just let’s get on the bike and hit our zones. We are very purposefully driven on what we’re trying to accomplish and having an immeasurable way to achieve it. I remember that the number one thing on the OPP for so long was good Power Zone graphs. We got them and that’s huge. Even when I’m doing other rides, I’m watching what zones that I’m in. It’s definitely very focused on a specific outcome and being able to achieve that.

For people who aren’t as familiar with Power Zone training, like Tom, when she’s saying low impact rides and that he focuses on certain things, one thing that Matt does is he teaches pedal strokes. He’ll teach you to use one leg at a time to focus on different muscle groups. The pulling and the pushing motion, they’re always talking about you need to do it in a complete circle. During those low impact rides, he will go through different drills to teach you the skills to feel the difference between the pushes and the pulls. Whenever you’re doing any effort, you can feel the full circle all the way around. It’s a big difference once you understand how that feels. It’s one thing to logically understand it. It’s another to experience how it feels, I think. That’s what you’re saying. That’s what’s so powerful about learning that. I know that you’re a part of a ton of different groups in Peloton. I see you in a lot of the Facebook groups that I am in. I know that one that’s very special to you is the Auto-Immune Warriors. Is that the official name of it or is there a different title?

I’d have to look for sure and I’ll get that for you. It might be Peloton Auto-Immune Warriors to be specific, but yes. This is a group that somebody know very well. Jacqui Cincotta, one of your prior guests, she was the only one you had on twice if I remember correctly. I got to meet her at Homecoming 2019. She started this group in May 2019. At the time that she’d started it, that January, I had been diagnosed with Celiac disease and with Hashimoto’s disease. I was going to Orangetheory and I was running in on a tread next to a lady and we became friends and started talking. She was a doctor and she was focused on hormone imbalance, wellness and health overall. I was talking to her a little bit about some things I was going through and she invited me to come to a dinner that she was having where she was going to talk about what her company focused on, which was health and wellness. I thought, “I’ll go to be polite. There’s probably not going to be very many people that will come. I’ll go to support her and be nice.” I walked in and the room was packed. It was almost standing room only. Her message was very good. The main focus is that the insurance company, as a whole, focuses on the after and not the before.

I can get approved for gastric bypass in five minutes, but I can’t get approved for nutrition or going to a nutritionist or going to Weight Watchers or anything I’m going to try to do to get healthier or better, but they’ll pay for me after. They will pay for me if I was a diabetic, which I’m not. They’ll pay for my diabetes medicine, but not anything to try to prevent it. They’ll pay for me to have thyroid medication, but not what can prevent it. She was focused on the fact that it’s not health insurance. It’s after insurance, it’s aftercare. That resonated with me. I went to see her and what she practices is called Functional Medicine. One of the reasons that is near and dear to my heart, and thank you for having me on to talk about it is because most doctors, as a whole, only get a couple of hours of nutrition training as they go through their practice. They get hundreds of hours of pharmacy teaching training. What happens is that when it comes to nutrition and things that can affect our body, they don’t have a lot of the knowledge that other doctors that focus on Functional Medicine do. I went to see many. We decide to run a bunch of tests.

I sit down with her and she says, “You have Celiac and you have Hashimoto’s disease.” The first thing I said was, “BS, I don’t have that. I have no stomach problems. I can eat anything.” I used to say, “I have an iron stomach. I can eat anything I want.” She said, “Yes, you do.” I said, “Minnie, there’s no way that I have Celiac disease. I eat gluten all the time. I have no issues with it.” She said, “Do you itch?” I was like, “I itch all the time. My face, my head, my ankles would itch.” She says, “Not everybody that has Celiac disease has stomach pain.” It was very interesting. I thought, “No big deal. I’ve gone off gluten before. I can go off gluten. It’s not as big a deal.” When you’re first going off gluten, there’s a lot of it that’s very obvious to you. There is all this stuff that say gluten-free like gluten-free pasta. It’s gotten better because it used to taste like cardboard and it’s awful.

There are hidden things that have gluten and that’s where you become your own little detective. I would have no idea that soy sauce would have gluten in it. As you go through and you start cleaning up the body, little things will affect you and you don’t know why. That’s like where I think of becoming a food detective because you find out later that things that have gluten in it make no sense. Some of your supplements have gluten in it. Some of your medication may have gluten in it. You’re like, “Why would they put that in there? Why is this in there?” As you get clean and you clean up how you’re eating, you’ll start to feel something bothering. You’re like, “I don’t know what I ate. What did I eat?” You become like a food detective.

As you start cleaning up the body, little things will start to affect you. Share on X

With Hashimoto’s, it is an autoimmune disease. I’m not a doctor, so everything I’m going to talk about is my personal experience and what I have found. One of the things about it is that it’s not just it attacks your thyroid, so now I’m going to take thyroid medication and I’m going to be okay. That’s it. There is a whole understanding and change that has to happen when you have an autoimmune disease because foods greatly affect you. When we sat down, she said, “Here are the things that I don’t want you eating anymore. You can’t eat gluten. No dairy, soy, legumes,” which you find out as you go along that things like peanuts are legume where you think of it as a nut. She said, “No nightshades.” I was like, “What the heck is a nightshade? I’ve never even heard these terms before.”

I think that’s one of the characters in How to Train Your Dragon.

You’re like, “What the heck is this?” All you hear when you first go through this is, “No. I can’t not have this.” You sit down and go, “What am I going to eat? Am I going to eat broccoli and carrots all the time?” It’s daunting and it’s depressing and you feel like, “I’m never going to enjoy anything again.”

Your first thought is probably like, “Maybe it’s easier to buy a backscratcher.”

You feel like, “Screw it. I’m not going to do it. I’m still living.” Nightshades are peppers. They’re eggplant. They’re white potatoes and tomatoes. Bell peppers and tomatoes, I absolutely love. Part of the thing is that because our food has been so perverted over the years where we have so much stuff that’s GMO treated. It’s been modified where you’re not eating the wheat that your grandparents ate and we’re not eating the bell peppers and the corn and the things that our grandparents ate. Soy, they’ve been so genetically modified that some of our bodies can’t take it. For me, here I am trying to lose weight. I’m working out like a fiend. I sit down and make a delicious dinner. I make scallops, tomatoes, bell peppers and corn. For me, I might as well eat arsenic.

It’s a lot of stuff that on its face, you’re like, “I’m not eating burger and fries. I’m not going to Dairy Queen. It’s not fistfuls of chocolate.” You’re thinking, “I’m checking the right boxes.”

“I’m checking the right boxes and I’m eating healthy and why am I not losing weight?” Some of the symptoms that I had, I attributed to being older. I turned 50 a few years ago and I had started to lose some hair, which I thought, “As women get older, our hair starts to thin. That’s normal.” When I started stacking up all of the symptoms that I had, it was a lot and it was a big deal, but I hadn’t connected the dots. I had inflammation really bad. If I went to get a pedicure, I’m rubbing and my legs would hurt. If you walk next to me, people rub your arm and say, “How are you doing?” That just hurt.

Would it hurt on the skin?

Not the skin, but any light pressure. Even like a light massage would hurt. People walk up and my low back would hurt a lot. If I went and got a massage, I would have to be very specific, “Don’t push with your fingertips. I need you to push lightly.” I was losing my hair. I was very irritable, which is very unlike me because I’m a very happy person. I’m a project manager like you, Crystal. We’ve talked about that. People would be calling me to do my job and I’d be so angry. It’d be like, “Why are they calling me?” I was extremely tired. My husband is like, “You’re like a bear. You hibernate.” I’m like, “I do. I’ll do 12, 16-hour day sleep any time I want to.” I also was starting to get a little panicky, which is definitely not like me. I’m not a panicker. I didn’t have full out panic attacks, but I was getting very panicky. The worst symptom that I had for me was hives. Hives are the weirdest thing ever because I would break out in hives. It would come within ten minutes. It would be gone within ten minutes. Sometimes it was almost my whole body.

Sometimes it might be one leg or one arm or both arms. It was so weird. I’m like, “This is crazy.” When I was told about Hashimoto’s, I started becoming a food detective. I was still playing the game of, “I’ll eat a little bit of dairy,” but for someone like me that has an autoimmune disease, you can’t do this like alcohol. It’s not like, “I’m going to get trashed tonight. I’m going to feel bad tomorrow. Tuesday, I’ll be recovered.” It’s toxic. It is literally like putting arsenic in our body. You can’t ish it. I can’t dairy-ish it. You’ve got to cut it out. I made a choice in January 2019 that I was going to start cooking a lot and I do. I cook everything and I don’t go out a lot because it’s hard to find anywhere that’s going to do everything like I want it to and I drive the waiters crazy. Eating at someone’s house is hard. I usually bring my own thing. Nobody’s eating at anybody’s houses right now.

You’ve got to be careful with driving the waiters crazy because then you’re like, “How much gluten is in spit?”

One of the reasons that I love the Auto-Immune Warriors is everybody on there has an autoimmune disease and we’re all affected a little bit differently, but you can ask a question and nobody that would sound to anybody else like you’re losing your mind and it feels that way. Everybody’s like, “I know what you feel.” Somebody will say, “I know what you feel. I’ve gone through that.” Sometimes they’ve even said, “This is how I got rid of it,” and it works. I once heard someone talk about it. It was almost like they get a sunburn from the inside. I had never heard of this. All of a sudden, they’ll get a dark spot on their skin. It looks like they’ve been burned and I had never heard of this.

Somebody posted and said, “This is going on with me. Has anybody else heard of this?” Immediately someone’s like, “I get that.” They’re swapping pictures and they’re talking about things that have helped them. It’s a comforting feeling. Sometimes people will say, “I slept twelve hours and I still feel like going right back to sleep. I know you guys know how I feel.” We do know how they feel. I say all the time, “I’m sleepwalking or sleep working.” Even though I’m generally hyper, I talk very fast. At the same time, I can definitely lay down for twelve hours.

You have people that feel that way, but one of the number one things, Crystal, and one of the reasons that I wanted to be on your show and share is because I can’t tell you how many people will go on there and say, “I go to my doctor, I get tested. They tell me nothing is wrong with me. All my levels are normal and I’m losing my mind.” They’re having all these symptoms and someone’s telling them that there’s nothing wrong with them. When I went to my normal doctor after I went to Dr. Minnie and I said, “I need to give you these test results. I’ve tested for Celiac and Hashimoto’s,” she was shocked. She said, “I would have never tested you for this. You had no symptoms of this.” I didn’t share all of the strange things that I was going through. I didn’t think about it.

I feel like things happen and you don’t even realize that they’re a symptom, like the itching. My scalp itches a lot. I don’t know. Maybe that means something. I never thought about it. If the doctor was like, “How are you doing?” I wouldn’t have been like, “My scalp itches.”

Since the hives would come and go so fast, I would only think about them when I had them. I wouldn’t think about them later. You could have probably asked me, “Do you have hives?” I would have said no because I don’t think about it when I’m not in it.

It’s situational. There was something going on and I got excited or ramped up or nervous. I got un-nervous and now they’re gone. That’s not a condition. That’s something that happened.

The other thing, when I joke about being the food detective and one of the things that’s been frustrating in this journey is the fact that the food industry gets away with murder when it comes to what they have to report on labels. If something is under a certain percentage now, they don’t have to report it. Imagine if I made you a cake and I brought it over and I said, “There’s only 2% of arsenic in here.” You might have several pieces of it. Now you’re talking about a lot. The other frustrating thing has been that you buy something that you’ve ate for a while. You’ve checked the labels and everything is fine. All of a sudden, you’re reacting to it. You don’t know why you’re reacting to it. Now you turn it around and the ingredients have changed.

Now there’s something in there that was never an issue before or there’s something in there that’s an issue but was not in there before. One of the things I love is nut cheese. I eat cashew cheese and it’s nut cheese, and I make a pizza. I can make you a beautiful pizza that hits all my parameters. All of a sudden, I noticed that my stomach was bothering me every time I eat this cheese and I couldn’t figure it out why. I flipped it around, had potato starch in it now. It has a bean in it now. I’ve never had this before. I don’t know why it’s added. There’s no notification that, “By the way, our ingredients have changed.”

If I had the connections and the money, I’d become an anti-food lobbyist for that reason. I would say, “I want everything put on these labels. If you make a change, I want that noted.” People will say, “Look at our new packaging. We upgraded this,” or whatever, but they don’t have to say, “By the way, we changed the ingredients.” You do feel like you’re losing your mind. My husband is probably one of the most supportive people in the world. I’ll say, “I’m breaking out.” He’ll go, “Why? You eat that all the time.” I’m like, “I don’t know. This is bothering me.” It is frustrating. Especially for Hashimoto’s, it affects women more than men, but most of the time you will see that it’s women on there and their husbands, they think they’re nuts.

They don’t understand because their symptoms are so strange and they come and go, and they’re not consistent. You start to feel like you’re a little nuts. You do become the great food detective. I do joke, Tom, that I mess with waiters and stuff, but one of the pieces of advice I would give people is don’t feel bad if you have to dig at a restaurant. I tell them upfront, “I’m a great tipper. I’m going to drive you crazy but I’m going to tip you well for this.” I’m going to say, “If there’s something in here that I’m not sure, I need to see that label. If you can provide me the label or tell me, I have to see it because there’s sneaky stuff.” You’re reading your labels and you see that checks out. Natural flavoring. We have no idea what that means and that can be something that hurts you and you didn’t know it was going to happen.

How has your quality of life changed since you were diagnosed? What is it like now compared to before you were diagnosed?

I have pain that I didn’t use to have. I’ve always worked out pretty hard since I started cycling in general and I would have your normal soreness from working out. I have extra pain I didn’t have before. I have pains in my hip, I have pains in my knees. I used to joke, especially when I was running a lot, when Peloton first got into the running aspect and I already had my treadmill, I was running a lot. In fact, in 2019, I was training for my first 10K and I would wake up every day and feel literally like a truck had hit me. It would wake me up all night long. I’d have pain in my shoulders. It would wake me up. That’s when I tightened down the food where I didn’t ish it anymore. I did it exactly as I’m supposed to.

If I mess up it’s because something snuck in that I missed. I can’t say, “Autoimmune people, if you exercise perfectly and get your food perfect, you get your meds perfect, you’re not going to have any symptoms,” because that’s not the case. I have tamped down 90% of my symptoms. I don’t ish anymore. If I know something has snuck in, I would itch like crazy. We would be out at a restaurant and Michael would look at me, my eyes would get big and then I’d start to reach down and he could tell I was itching my ankle. It’s like, “You’re weird.” “I know.”

I have more pain and I’m tired a lot. That’s very common, but I push through it. One of the cool things that I wanted to share with you that I did that was neat. In April 2020, I reached out to a lot of my fellow team members. I worked for a very large corporation and I’ve sold a lot of Peloton to other people. I have a lot of friends that ride and I got our company together riding on Saturdays and there were over 50 of us. It’s been very exciting. As we are here and we’re going to be here for a while not being able to be out and be together, reach out to other people in your company, put together something. That’s been fun.

I want to be a fitness ambassador for my company. I’m creating my own title. I’m getting the word out because the other thing is I’m 50 pounds overweight. I move. There are people that have serious pain, Crystal. I’m not talking about that, but I’m saying in general get up and try to do something, get up and move. I move. I try to motivate others that I’m not going to let being older, I’m not going to let being have an autoimmune disease, I’m not going to let being overweight, keep me from moving. One of the things I have noticed is when I stop moving, it’s way worse. I heard a little bit more when I work out, but I’m miserable. The brain fog of not moving. I have to say the number one thing I cut out besides gluten was dairy. It was the key thing that took out the brain fog. It was night and day.

It sounds like eating better has helped you feel mentally better, even if it doesn’t always help your physical symptoms.

Dairy did. Dairy has a huge thing with brain fog. It’s very common that that dairy can be connected with brain fog. I noticed that I would get up in the morning and there were days I would stare at my computer for about 30 minutes and I couldn’t get rolling. I couldn’t put my thoughts together or my day together and figure out, “This is what I want to do first.” I would stare at it. After I stopped eating dairy, that was gone.

What made you decide to get tested and stuff whenever you didn’t feel like you had necessarily symptoms that stood out to you? What prompted you to have that conversation?

When I went to that presentation by Dr. Minnie and she was listing a lot of the symptoms, it was like this laundry list. I was like, “I have all that.” I didn’t have everything obviously, but I had a big list and stuff. I had never realized how many symptoms I had until I put it all together. That was what was the key. When we sat down, I figured she was going to say, “Stacey, you’re over 50. You’re facing menopause. Your body is going to slow down. You’re going to have some changes.” That was not the conversation at all. It was like, “You’ve got this and this going on. These are going to affect you in these ways. Here are some things we can do to change it, but you’ve got to take it seriously.” I did. I took it very seriously on the gluten piece. I didn’t take it as seriously on the rest.

When I started researching Hashimoto’s and how much food affected it, then I made the changes. One of the things that is hard to see when you’re in the middle of it is that you don’t realize how much better you can feel. You think, “I’m not going to cut out dairy,” but when you get on the other side of it and you feel this much better, there’s no way I’m eating that now. The cost is too great. It’s not like a hangover. If it was a hangover, if it was one day of whatever, sure, I’d probably eat some things I shouldn’t eat. When it’s a long-lasting thing to your body and changes so many things chemically, you don’t.

If you did that, if you were like, “I’m going to go and get ice cream,” or “I’m going to have a glass of milk,” how long do you feel the aftereffects from something like that?

There’s a lot of science behind that. I would love to get some feedback on that question, Tom, from somebody that’s a doctor, but for me, there are a lot of things with leaky gut. Depending on what you read, the autoimmune disease causes a leaky gut, or you’ll read that the leaky gut causes the autoimmune disease. Leaky gut comes when you get perforations or thinness in the lining of your intestines and things because of what you eat and it creates an opening. Now these things that should be flowing through your body are not. They’re flowing through your body but coming out and these biles and toxins and things that you’re eating and are floating through your system, which is what causes a lot of the problems.

My understanding and working with Minnie is that I’m healing my gut at the moment. If I had dairy, I’d be in brain fog by tomorrow morning. That would probably last at least a week. I don’t know on the inside all that’s going on at the same time. Did that affect the leaky gut? Did that tear down a little bit of lining? I’m not sure. There’s not a direct correlation that I can say if I drank milk, I’ll feel it for seven days, but I will feel it for a while. If I drank milk and then have ice cream and then have cheese, and then it builds up and then the brain fog will build up.

It sounds like it’s also cumulative. The more that you have, the worse that the symptoms are.

I was going to ask outside of the Facebook group and reading the labels, what resources do you utilize to discover what doesn’t affect you?

There is a doctor named Dr. Izabella Wentz, and she wrote a book called Hashimoto’s Protocol. That’s been my bible in a lot of respects. One of the things that she does, Crystal, which might be good for you to check out if you’ve never done it is there’s an autoimmune protocol elimination diet, think of Whole30, but a little bit stricter. You eliminate stuff and then you slowly bring them back in to see how they affect you. Her program is a 90-day program and it can turn your symptoms around. She has one that focuses on the adrenal and then she has others that focus on different things. That was a very fascinating thing for me, Tom, to go through and learn. One of the key things that’s fascinating that I learned was when you eat something that bothers you, a lot of people will clear their throat a lot afterwards.

She was like, “Is there anything that you eat?” I’m like, “Milk.” It does that. The other thing too is that you don’t always feel anything when you eat something that’s not good for you initially. I can probably go and eat tons of lima beans and kidney beans, and not notice anything, but there’s damage that’s being done. Some things are immediate. Your stomach hurts. If I eat chickpeas, I’ll be doubled over. That’s the worst thing ever I’ve eaten. That was pure pain. There’s something where I might itch a little bit or I clear my throat a little bit, or my stomach might hurt, but then there are some things that they’re doing stuff on the inside that you don’t feel symptoms for. That’s the stuff that’s scary because you think, “This doesn’t bother me. I can probably go ahead and eat this.” The good thing is there are so many great groups out there, whether you are autoimmune. If you’re like, “I want to eat Paleo or I want to eat Paleo autoimmune, or I want to eat vegan Paleo.” There’s something out there and there are cookbooks and recipes out there. Once you get rolling, then there are a lot of resources to help you.

If you could rewind back to the beginning of this whole process, what do you wish that you had known then? What’s the biggest thing?

I wish that I would have ever even heard of Functional Medicine. Functional Medicine for me, it’s a life-changer. I will tell you, it’s not cheap. It’s about $6,000 to go through what I went through. My process was that I hooked up with Dr. Minnie. We went through the testing and then she got me on a very specific program. I take two medicines. She got me off a lot of medicine. I was taking water pills because that’s what I thought that the inflammation was from. I thought it was from retaining water and it wasn’t. She put me on a six-month program on the computer where it slowly went through foods and why we need to eliminate them and different things. Now they’ve got even more specific getting into like your skincare and your makeup and what cooking utensils you use and microwave. I haven’t gotten that deep yet. I wish that I would have known about Functional Medicine earlier to know that all these symptoms building up were something important and something big. It wasn’t that I was turning 50 or you think, “I’m 50 pounds overweight. That’s why I’m tired.” I would have loved to have started the Functional Medicine journey a lot earlier.

What do you wish that other people would know about things like this that they don’t?

They’re not crazy. If they go to their doctor, if they know something’s wrong like they’re extremely tired for no reason. They’re getting their normal sleep. Obviously, if you’re a mom and you’re getting 4 or 5 hours sleep a night, you’re going to be tired. If they’re getting what they feel like is their normal amount of sleep that they should feel pretty rested or they’re itching like crazy, or they’re irritable a lot when they’re not or they’re losing their hair. That’s a big one. They’re not crazy and they should go and get tested and to try to find a Functional Medicine doctor to test with. They’re going to understand these symptoms and then the nutrition side and how food affects things a lot differently than your normal doctor. I’m not giving up my normal doctor. I pair them. They’re both very important.

I’m curious, and you might not have an answer for this, but with the functional doctor, how often do they run tests and then say, “You’re good, eat what you want?”

I would love to have that. I get tested every six months and I have another test coming up. The first thing that we did was we got my TSH levels, which are related to the thyroid because it was too low. She adjusted that and I got on what’s called compounded medicines. That makes a big difference. With Synthroid, for thyroid, that is a synthetic medicine. I have a compounded medicine. That’s better for you and it’s better for me. Also, I’m on a compound what’s called naltrexone. If you look up naltrexone, it will show that that’s taken by people who have drinking problems. If I mentioned that, people are like, “Are you an alcoholic?” “No, it is good for people with autoimmune diseases.” There won’t be a point, Tom, that I don’t think that I’ll ever get to like, “You’re good now. You can go ahead and eat all of that.” There may be a point in time where I get my leaky gut fixed. Maybe I can have beans every once in a while or I could have tomatoes every once in a while. I can never have gluten.

I didn’t mean in terms of yourself like, “You’re fixed.” I meant that by virtue of definition, I don’t think that everyone has an autoimmune issue. How often do they do these tests and find like, “No, you’re good?” Not like you’re now good and whatever you’ve done has rectified yourself.

The percentage of people they test in general, what’s the rate of people who are having autoimmune disease who get tested from a functional fitness doctor. How often do those come back as you’re okay? That’s what Tom is asking.

That would be good to know. I don’t know.

I was curious because if everybody’s got it, then you’re going to look at it sideways. If everybody goes to the doctor for an X-ray and they all have broken legs, you’re like, “Maybe you’re breaking them.” You don’t work there, so I don’t expect you to know. I thought you might’ve had some insight there.

That’s a very fascinating fact. It was one of the things when she initially told me I had Hashimoto’s and Celiac, I was like, “Is this lady a quack?”

If you didn’t think anything was “wrong” then that would be pretty shocking to hear those results back. I can understand why you would question that. When you made changes, you saw that there were results that changed. I’m sure that made you feel like that was legit.

It did. The itching was the biggest, Crystal, because that was like every night it would be my head and my face and my ankles. It would itch for 15, 20 minutes. It was miserable. I know my husband, he never said much, but I know he had to be thinking like, “What is wrong?”

Do you feel now that you’ve started doing this, how does that pair with your fitness level? Do you feel like your fitness level is better or do you feel like they’re relatively unaffected?

I feel like my fitness level is better. I’ve always been an endurance person, but I feel like I was more of a solid zone three. Whereas now, more and more I get up into the fives and the sixes then sometimes hit the sevens. I do fit. There are days that I feel powerful and I didn’t have many feeling powerful days before this. I do feel like that has changed. There are still some days, like on the weekends, I’m still going to sleep twelve hours a night on Friday and Saturday night. People say you can’t catch your sleep up. Yes, you can. I need that. My body has to have that because I push it pretty hard. We have a challenge going on at work right now and we’re competing for steps and there are like 130 teams and my team is second. There are no rest days, nine weeks and no rest days, for sure.

You said you worked for a big corporation. My first thought was like, “I hope it’s not Archer Daniels Midland.”

It is not. Crystal and Tom, you were talking about members of different groups and there’s definitely one I want to call out. One of the things that is another piece of advice that I would have for people that are getting their Peloton is I’m a co-admin for the Texas6AM Tribe. This tribe was started years ago by GravelGirl, Swanky57, BostonGirlInTexas and JayTheBarbecueGuy. We’ve all been riding together for years. It’s nice because all of us mostly ride at 6:00 AM, hence the name of the tribe. Back when we started, Robin was in the mornings and Jess King was in the mornings. Steven Little was in the mornings and Nicole Meline was in the mornings.

You had JJs ‘80s ride on Friday, which was massive. It was my favorite ride of the week. We all ride together. There are a lot of times now because people are all in different challenges, and some are doing the Power Zone challenges and some are doing the Peloton challenges. We don’t ride as much together as we used to. Get that person, get that buddy, get that team because like JayTheBarbecueGuy and I, we have ridden together every Monday or at least once a week doing a Power Zone max ride for years now. I hate that they’re not coming out with them very much anymore. They’ve started a little bit, which is great, but it was down to like seven of them after they did the great purge.

I won’t miss that ride because I know Jay is getting up to be on that ride with me. Get your partner, get your person. I’ve had some friends that have bought Pelotons because of me. The funny thing about it is that both of these people are hard bodies and one of them is a marathoner. They get on the bike and they’re like, “How are you beating me?” I’m beating them bad. It’s all-new muscles, it’s all-new breathing. It’s all new different things, which I got to be humbled, Crystal, because I got my Hydrow and I am at the bottom of the leaderboard.

Don't care about what other people are saying and about competing against somebody else. Share on X

You’ve got to remind yourself, “All new muscles.”

I didn’t believe that when I told them that.

You’ve got to be careful of the Hydrow because if you’re at the bottom there, you might drown.

I feel like I’m drowning. I’ve gotten humbled because it is all new and I am so slow and then I’m learning new techniques.

You threw out all these leaderboard names. What’s your leaderboard name and how’d you come up with it?

My leaderboard name is SuicideBlonde. I picked that name because I love ‘80s music and I love INXS and they had that song. I am blonde and I felt back when I was going to get a tattoo of either concrete blonde or suicide blonde. I never did get it, but it stuck with me. That is my leaderboard name on both. It’s on Peloton and on Hydrow, I was able to get it on both.

Maybe your husband can be Dagwood.

My husband is like you, Tom. He does not get on the bike. He does not get on the rower. He does not get on the tread. The only difference is that he will go to a gym, but right now with no gyms open, he’s not doing anything. I don’t have to share. At first, I wanted him on that bike, but then I’m like, “I don’t want to have to adjust the bike. I don’t want to have to get on and the seat’s not up.” You’ve talked about that, Crystal, where you’re like, “I know if Tom rides that bike, I’d get to have to get over there and then I’d have to change all the settings.” I would too. I’m like, “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that he didn’t get on the bike.”

She gets frustrated when I have to drive her car.

He had graduations too. He was like, “Do you have a minute to talk?” I was like, “What’s wrong with my car?”

I was like, “Nothing. Why is that your go-to?” Do you know what I was going to do? I was so close to doing this. I was going to lay down on the ground and have someone take a picture of me and then have my boss text it to you and be like, “Tom fell but your car is okay. We’re taking Tom to the ER though.” Do you have any advice for people that are now getting a Peloton?

The thing is, some of my advice is advice that you’ve given before. One of the things is that don’t care about what other people are saying and don’t care about competing against somebody else. The first time I took Matt Wilpers’ ride, I literally said, “I will never ride him again.” He started calling out those numbers that he hits and I thought, “I will never hit that.” Of course, I’m never going to hit that. We’re at a totally different fitness level, size level, weight level. In my mind, I was so disappointed that I couldn’t hit those numbers, which was silly and I wasn’t going to ride him again. I got past that and now of course I love Power Zone training. Robin is my favorite. Robin will always be my favorite. Robin is my, “I don’t want to workout,” ride.

I get up, I’m feeling sorry for myself. I don’t want to work out. She’ll get that out of you in about one minute. You cannot be feeling sorry for yourself on a Robin ride. She’s going to talk about what a privilege it is to be there. You get that and you do start pounding on your chest on that ride. I’ve done that more than once. The other thing is to try an instructor more than once, and you’ve said that. Cody is an instructor that never jelled with me. I rode him once. His vibe didn’t work for me. I took his Britney Spears ride and that was literally the funnest ride I’ve ever had. I loved that ride. You’ve said that. Try out an instructor more than once if they don’t work for you because sometimes it’s a different feeling or that I had so much fun on that ride.

A quick PSA that I wanted to share for one second was that when I was training for my first 10K I had an issue with my eye. In a nutshell, I lost all of the vision in my right eye within an hour. It was the scariest thing that I ever went through. I had a small tear in my retina and I was running on it and I didn’t realize that I had that and it hemorrhaged. All the blood had flowed to the back of my eye and I couldn’t see. The reason that I share that is if you are having any floaters that you haven’t had before, or you’re seeing flashes of light, you need to get to a retina specialist fast. If I had understood what I was seeing, because I was seeing floaters, it would have been a simple procedure in a doctor’s office with a laser in ten minutes, but because I didn’t and I was running on it and it hemorrhaged. It was a $50,000 difference. I had to have surgery in a hospital and so forth. I wanted to share that because it was something that was pretty dramatic for me. Luckily, it’s fully healed now. That’s been a good thing. The thing about Peloton is that they get better and better and they never are complacent and they’re never content.

They are always striving. You look at Crystal at what they had on that bike. When we got our bike, they didn’t have high-fives, they didn’t have more music versus more instructor. They didn’t have this Power Zone grid. They didn’t have many of those features and they don’t sit still. They don’t say, “We are so awesome. We’re the number one. We don’t have to make any changes.” They keep getting better. They ask for feedback from the community on a regular basis of, “What else can we do? What are some things that we can do?” They continually strive to be better and they listen. Literally, they have the best customer service of any company I’ve ever dealt with, bar none. They’re fantastic. I have thought a couple of times of what if they ever had a moment where you could send in something, maybe you donate to a charity, but you could have them do a call out for you like a shout-out ride. For example, Crystal, it’s your anniversary with Tom and he’s paid them to have Jenn Sherman do a shout-out, “To Crystal from Tom.” I thought that would be a neat thing.

Radio stations do that sometimes. They’ll play a song, maybe even a song that format doesn’t normally play. That would be a cool little fundraiser. That’s a good idea. Where can people find you on social media, if you would like to be found?

You can find me on Facebook. I am on Instagram, but I don’t do much on there. I’m pretty sure I’m the only Stacey Rivere on Facebook. I have looked a couple of times and haven’t seen anybody else. If somebody wants to reach out, maybe they’re having some symptoms and they want to ask some questions, I’ll share what I know. If they want some more information about the doctor that I used or her practice. She does stuff virtually. I can share information about that. If they think that some of the things that I’ve said have resonated with them, I absolutely encourage them to check out the Peloton Auto-Immune Warriors because they go in there and ask that question. You never see somebody post something and nobody responds. Usually, it’s responded to very quickly and I’ve gotten a lot of help through there. I’ve asked, “Have you guys ever seen this?” and then someone’s like, “Yes, I had xantham gum and it was what caused hives.” It caused hives for me.

It’s great to be able to crowdsource stuff like that.

Especially when it’s something like that, that you’ve never even heard of. What the heck is xantham gum? You find out it’s in several different things. Definitely reach out if you want to ask me any questions or if there’s any way that I can share my story or motivate somebody, I would be happy to.

Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Stacey.

Thank you, guys.

—

That brings this one to a close. What pray tell do you have in store for people next week?

We’re going to talk to Rich Peyton. He is a member of the Peloton app group, as well as some other Peloton groups, but he does not have a bike. However, he has made use of the Peloton classes and had a major weight loss. He has changed his entire life. I can’t wait to talk to him about that.

We have that to look forward to. Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me at Facebook.com/CrystalDOKeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter, on the Bike and of course the Tread, @ClipOutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter, @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/TomOKeefe. You can find the show online at Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut.

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