226: Cody Rigsby Debuts on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ plus our interview with Gabby Brauner

Peloton Medical Student

 

We do a deep dive on Week #1 of Dancing With The Stars.

John Mills joins us to discuss People Magazine’s Sexiest Peloton Instructor.

We hit the highlights of John Foley’s Goldman Sachs’ conference.

Dr. Jenn – Getting back into a routine following an injury and/or depression.

Peloton looks to expand to hotels and other commercial spaces.

Shape Magazine writes about Peloton Yoga.

PopSugar has the best scenic rides.

Morning Brew sings the praises of the Peloton app for the cost-conscious.

Peloton wins round #1 with Mad Dogg.

Angelo joins us to discuss what exactly is metabolism?

Well And Good writes about Mariana Fernandez.

The Matty/Jess prank war rages on.

Review Journal sits down with Jess King.

Robin Arzon talks to WBEZ about how to change careers.

Selena Samuela has a special HIIT workout for Well And Good.

Robin Arzon joined Tunde for an IG Live.

SPEAK presents an IG Live series with Tunde and Mel Robbins.

Becs Gentry, Susie Chan, Jermain Johnson had an IG Live on 9/23.

Also Becs Gentry and Matty Maggiacomo had an IG Live about the Tread on 9/23.

Yoga Journal had a live chat with Chelsea Jackson Roberts.

Adrian has a new signature class – Bootcamp Thunder 45.

Mirror founder Brynn Putnam steps down as CEO.

SoulCycle enters the “artist series” fray.

Beachbody delays the release of BODi.

Hydrow gets funding from Lizzo and Justin Timberlake.

Birthdays – Leanne Hainsby (9/28) and a belated happy birthday to Erik Jager (9/19)

All this plus our interview with Gabby Brauner!

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Cody Rigsby Debuts on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ plus our interview with Gabby Brauner

We were recovering from our busy week. We’re old. We accidentally went to three shows in four days.

When we say accidentally, it really wasn’t an accident.

We bought all these things years ago pre-pandemic, and they got all rescheduled back to back to back. At the end of it, we’re so tired.

There have been interviews every day in between. Oh my goodness.

At the end of the day, it’s a good problem.

I wouldn’t even call it a problem.

We saw Doobie Brothers, Alanis Morissette and Marc Maron.

Alanis Morissette was the best.

She was amazing. If she comes to your town and you have any desire on any level to maybe see Alanis Morissette, you should see her. I know because she turned down an interview request.

We tried.

Swing for the fences. For every Alanis Morissette that says no, and trust me, there’s a lot of them, you get a Snuggie or an Andrea Barber or an Elin Hilderbrand. You give it a shot. Marc Maron, not even about The Marc Maron show, although it was also wonderful. You had to be vax and show a negative test. We got there and we didn’t realize that they wanted you to wear masks. We get up to the door and they’re like, “You’re supposed to wear a mask.” We’re like, “That’s fine. We’re not those people. Do you have masks? Because ours are all the way back in the car.” They were like, “We don’t.”

Tom, you forgot to mention that we were running late because we had done an interview, and it had gone a little longer than expected.

The show started at 7:30 and we’re walking to the door at 7:20. We book it back to the car. I’m a child of the ‘80s. We said, book it. We get our mask and then we book it back in. It’s probably a quarter-mile walk each way that we’re doing and very briskly. As we’re going back inside, Crystal points out to me that a year ago with something like that, I’d be drenched in sweat and severely winded. I was like, “This is no big deal at all.”

We were power walking. Do you know how the power walks guys do like a 6 or 7? We were at a 6 or 7. We were booking.

I’m glad you could translate that into fitness because I couldn’t.

I mean effort not speed. We’re not power walking at 6 miles per hour. It didn’t even faze you. We had a full-on conversation while we were doing all that.

We never shut up. We happened to record an hour of it a week but we never shut up. I thought that was fascinating. Something like that would legit kicked my ass a year ago. It didn’t even click for me until you said it. Anyway, what pray tell do you have in store for people?

A whole lot of Dancing With the Stars. It’s coming from a lot of different angles.

We’re not going to go full Zapruder film on his dance routine.

It’s not that serious. Enjoy it but we’ll get to that. We have a whole lot of stuff to cover. There are expansions, all the instructors in the news, and Peloton in the news. There’s an update on one of the many lawsuits. There are instructors shenanigans.

There’s a visit from the Peloton Prophet.

Yes, there is and some interesting competitive news. Of course, we’ll cover instructor’s birthdays. We have a lot coming up.

Before we get to all that, shameless plugs. Don’t forget, we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Wherever you find a podcast, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure and follow us so you never miss an episode. Also, if you would be so inclined, maybe leave us a review. We got a bunch of new reviews.

Thank you so much. There’s so many that came in. I don’t know why but thank you.

Here’s a new review for you. This is from WoodyAS. It says, “Unabashedly addicting. Put succinctly, a must for anyone into Peloton. A plethora of great information and promulgated with clarity and humor.” That’s a big word.

I don’t know who this person is but clearly, they have a Thesaurus and they use it.

“I absolutely love the banter between Crystal and Tom. I’m glad I have this as I start my journey into all things Peloton.” Thank you very much. That was a wonderful review and a vocabulary lesson. We appreciate that. You can also find us on Facebook, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page and join the group. Check out our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/TheClipOut where you can watch this show in its entirety. We’ll be throwing a lot of articles at you.

There’s probably a lot of this Dancing With The Stars stuff that we’re not going to get line item by line item, but we will include the links in the newsletter. If you want to track all that stuff down and print it out and put it in your scrapbook, sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com. Finally, something easy you can do to help us out that doesn’t cost you a dime. You can share an episode on your social media channel, whether it’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or what have you. With Snapchat, I don’t think you can do that there but you could film yourself talking about it or something. There’s all that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

Joining us is John Mills. How’s it going, John?

What’s happening in here?

I love it. Bring in that energy. Are you two ready to dissect the hell out of this Dancing With the Stars thing? Are you ready to dig into that? Let’s do it.

Where do we start? There’s so much.

You should show John Mills the video because he pulled this from Dancing With the Stars. At any rate, so many articles were written about Cody, Peloton and all the things. We should dig into a few of these things. One of them was general information like Amanda Kloots did well. Jojo Siwa got top points. Apparently, she came in at 29 points. Cody came in at 24 points. Cody was solidly in the middle and he was told by Len who is usually pretty curmudgeonly. He said, “Cody, you are one to watch.” That was big praise from Len. That was big news. Everybody starts off a little rough on week one.

That was where that came from. I thought he was a little stiff but I would have no room to talk. Let me say that I couldn’t do this if my life depended on it. I feel bad judging anyone about their dancing. He was nervous and you could see it. He did not have his usual swagger where he’s like, “I’m the boss.” He didn’t have that but he did a great job of having his persona come across and his energy. He did a great job at that. He did a great job pushing past the nerves, which is not the easiest thing in the world.

I know that he is on camera every day but there’s a difference between being on camera for Peloton, especially at this point. There’s a comfort level there but he’s also on live national television. That’s a level that most performers never have to contend with.

You don't have time to work out, you make time to work out. Click To Tweet

With that, as you said earlier, I still felt that Cody energy. That is what the judges felt, which is why they were like, “We got to watch you.” I could still feel that but I agree with you, there was a component to what he was doing, which might be because he just learned a new dance and he’s like, “Let me make sure I get these steps right.” I would have been worse than stiff if I would have failed somewhere about 4 or 5 times. I was still impressed.

I wasn’t not impressed. When you’re up against all those other people, it’s hard not to have like, “You’re probably going to have to up your game a little bit to win.”

I know people made a lot of big deal about the fact that he has a dance history. This is a very different kind of dancing than he’s used to doing. He could benefit in weeks to come from this in that as a former professional dancer, as they give him critiques, he probably has a capability of incorporating those suggestions in a way that may be a non-dancer wouldn’t. He’s used to them saying, “Looser or tighter this. Do this on the fore.”

It sounded like you know what you’re talking about. One of the notes that they gave him was to work on the hips. He’s going to have to get his lower body a little looser. I found that interesting because with all the research I’ve done, I got my personal trainer certificate, I was just saying that to give the preface that I’ve read that when you’re doing a lot of biking and a lot of running, your hips get tight. That’s why it’s so important for everybody to stretch all the time. When you’re a cycling instructor, even if you do stretch, your hips are going to be tight. Even though he was a professional dancer, he has to probably overcompensate for that in a way that some of the other competitors do not.

That makes a lot of sense. I’m sure that’s a part of it. I do believe that as he gets more ingrained in this whole thing, gets to know everyone there better, and gets more comfortable being on that stage, who he is and his comfort level is going to come out. We’re going to see that.

That goes a long way on shows like this is a very large component of it. Ultimately, it’s a popularity contest. I’ve never watched Dancing With the Stars, but I watched American Idol and you would see a lot of people advanced where they maybe weren’t the best singer or there were better singers on the stage. There was something about that particular person’s personality that garnered fans in a way more than their singing voice.

Say what you want about Cody, not that either of you was saying anything bad, but he’s got a personality. He has a presence. That’s a good thing.

It’s probably going to be polarizing, but in today’s world, anything is polarizing.

Speaking of polarizing, one of the articles that I read was that Peloton’s Cody Rigsby is either the most obscure popular dancer or the most popular, depending on who you ask. It turns out there were tweets like, “Peloton instructors are considered a star? What?” I posted this over on the Gram. The Peloton community did not take kindly to the hate that came from pop culture.

That person who said that was hating on other people too. It wasn’t just Cody. He was hating other people. I was thinking about this. The artists that Jasmine would listen to, I didn’t know who they were. With the explosion of social media, there are still people that she follows that to her are big-time names. I don’t know who these people are. Considering that Cody has got some 900,000 followers, that’s a lot of people. That defines celebrity.

One of the things that I read about him is that he gained 50,000 followers since they announced he was going to be on Dancing With the Stars. Before the pandemic, he had 300,000 followers. He’s gained half a million followers.

He tripled his followers. The thing is as our society gets more and more fragmented from a media outlet standpoint, I don’t even mean politically. You have more people who are famous. Steve burns from Blues Clues talked about being famous-ish. You get a lot of famous-ish people. You get people who were very well-known to certain groups or communities, and outside of that, they don’t mean anything. You used to have three networks and that was it. If you made it onto one of those networks, your lowest-rated show 40 years ago would do better than probably your highest-rated show today. If you go down the list of Dancing With the Stars contestants this season or any season, there are always people that I’m like, “I have no idea who we’re talking about.” They are maybe a big deal to some people. It’s just not me.

That’s some of the intent of the show and platform.

It’s very calculated.

To me, that was neither here nor there. There was going to be the other group of people that will see him as a celebrity and the ones that don’t. Now they know who he is.

They do and they know who Peloton is because those Peloton bikes were on the stage the whole time. He was riding one, whenever he came out, big entrance.

Do you know where the Peloton wasn’t? In Tyra Banks’s mouth.

It sounds weird that you said that out loud.

It played out.

It’s not the way you thought that was going to go. When Tyra Banks did the intro, she tripped over herself to not say Peloton. It was, “That stationary bike he teaches on.” You know the one-year ride all the time.” It was the weirdest thing. I was like, “Just say Peloton.”

When the segment started, I instantly was like, “Is she not allowed to say Peloton for some reason?” He then comes out on a Peloton and he says it in his segment. I’m like, “Does she have a pending endorsement deal with Echelon or something?”

I hope not. That’s going to make this super awkward.

It’s got to be weird on stage. Does it give some greater credence or something if you described him as a celebrity fitness instructor?

I didn’t mind that she said celebrity fitness instructor, but then whenever you’re like, “He teaches on that stationary bike,” that should have been the natural place to say, “From Peloton.”

I get what you’re going for, John, when you said, “Does it may make him sound bigger to not limit him to a platform?” On the flip side, is there a bigger platform for that form of famous-ishness? Peloton is the 800-pound gorilla. I would love to know if there’s a backstory as to why she did verbal gymnastics in order to not say Peloton.

Maybe she didn’t know if she could say the word Peloton. Maybe it’s something nobody cleared one way or another.

I got to think she’s reading a cue card. She’s not out there doing ad-lib. It’s not an intro. It’s not like she’s chit-chatting with one of the judges.

That’s fair but it didn’t seem like she was reading because she stumbled over it weirdly. All I know is it was awkward.

We’ll find out in the next show.

We’re all going to be watching.

Everybody’s going to be listening, “She doesn’t say Peloton.” Everybody’s paying attention now.

It was a Twitter on Twitter because everyone was tweeting in real-time like, “Why isn’t she saying Peloton. Say Peloton, Tyra. You can say Peloton.”

When you say we all were watching, you need to pull up the next article because several of the instructors were having their own watch party. They were hyped. Rebecca Kennedy posted this, but Jess Sims was the one that originally took the video. They were watching it and then you hear one of the instructors go, “Be quiet so we can watch,” then the camera slowly pans over and there’s Rebecca Kennedy’s dog eating a piece of pizza while everyone else is glued to the television. She’s like, “Yes, I have been waiting for the pizza.” Rebecca Kennedy posted it and said, “Text Sunny to 215 because she stole the damn show.”

Who’s the person with the camera?

I’m pretty sure it was Jess Sims.

I heard her talking as if it wasn’t her with the camera. She’s in the conversation. Isn’t she the one with the camera as well while he’s zooming in on Sunny? It is hilarious.

I love that they were all gathered together, watched it and support their fellow instructor. When people talk about, “Is it real that they hang out and they like each other?” This is yet another example of, “Yeah, they do.”

TCO 226 | Peloton Medical Student

 

That dog doesn’t care.

The dog’s like, “Cody, that’s cool. I’m going to take this pepperoni slice quick.”

“Thanks for the pizza, Cody.”

It was nice to see John Michael in there.

I include him in the instructors because he’s onstage with them when he does his live DJ classes. In my head, he’s one of them.

There are a lot more Dancing With the Stars articles that I don’t think we will probably pound through because there are so many of them. If you want those, you can go sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com. They will be included in the newsletter if you want to go dig into those.

If you’re not sure if you want to go dig into those, let me give you a highlight. We’ve got a deep dive into who Cody Rigsby’s boyfriend is. We have five things to know about Cody Rigsby, which this crew probably already knows. This one I thought was interesting though, what is his worth and where did he get his wealth? I will tell you, spoiler alert, it’s all clickbait. They don’t know. They’re guessing. There was advice from Cody on the Today Show about how to keep your spirits up for working out.

One of them that was very interesting to me was the one that focused on the community. They talked about the Boo Crew.

That’s the Vox one. There were people that were interviewed and they talked about why Cody is the guy and why is he such a big deal? What was your take on that article?

I love that they talked to Tyler Moses about it. He’s an admin of that group. I love that he represents his idea of who Cody is, how he became a fan of Cody, and how authentic Cody felt to him. Everything that he said aligned with what you tend to hear from folks like me that have been fans of Cody. It also talked about things that the Boo Crew has done in his name towards social justice and equity. I didn’t know about those things. That was fascinating

Didn’t the article say that they had raised $100,000 for different causes? They’ve done a lot of good.

I’ve had that experience with them myself. I’ve been doing a lot of equity work. They reached out to me and supported me in that as well. I thought it was awesome that they highlighted Tyler and the Boo Crew, especially with my experience with them.

That’s awesome. Very cool.

If people want those, sign up for the newsletter at theclipout.com and you will get them delivered to your inbox on Sunday-ish. I’m adding that to everything now to minimize expectations. Moving along, other things did happen in the world of Peloton. People Magazine began their reader’s choice selection for the sexiest man alive. They always have different subcategories, not one for podcast hosts, which is why I’m not on it, obviously. One of the categories was sexiest Peloton instructor.

This started some arguments out there.

They pick five and they have more than five men instructors.

There’s a whole lot of people left off and judging by my very informal poll, it turns out that Adrian Williams is the man that overwhelmingly people feel is missing from this. He should be the one. Alex Toussaint, Dennis Morton, Cody Rigsby, Ben Aldis and Matt Wilpers are on this. Of this group, it’s looking like again for my informal poll that Alex is the winner with Dennis very close behind. The other three did not get as much attention. We shall see if it bears out in the People Magazine. Even though I wrote a long caption about how they weren’t included, people kept voting on people that weren’t there. I was like, “Guys, he’s not in it. He’s not there.”

I wasn’t intending to vote but I voted in this. I thought you click each picture and it would take you in to tell you more or something. I was clicking each one and it wasn’t going anywhere. The last one I click was Matt. I think I voted for Matt because that’s the last thing I clicked.

Was that an accidental vote? Are you sticking with that vote?

I love you, Matt. I can’t say.

I don’t know if you feel better or worse that you voted for Matt.

That sounds like a not on purpose mode. I’m not sure how he’s going to feel about that, John.

I going to leave it that I voted for Matt.

I wasn’t going to share who I voted for or not. You go ahead and put it out there, John. I’ll be looking forward to all the hate that you will get.

It’s interesting looking at this page, the order that they have the instructors in changes. I was on this page earlier so I could vote because this is very important to me.

Who did you vote for, Tom? Another accidental vote for Matt. That’s going to win now because of all the accidental votes.

They were in a different order. That’s nice attention to detail that everyone’s seen them in a different order so it doesn’t like everybody votes for the third one or whatever.

This has been the same order it’s been in for me.

When I looked at it earlier, Alex was all the way at the end.

The screenshot I took was from Alex and Dennis because it only showed two on my phone. Not everyone is happy about this. There are some people that feel that it is inappropriate and off-topic to be talking about Peloton instructors and who is the sexiest. Also, there are some people that feel, where are the women? Not only are they upset that not all of the male instructors are there. We have some people that are upset that the women are not on here at all.

People have been robbed of their opportunity to objectify female instructors. It doesn’t happen frequently enough. I’m sad that they’re not presented with a chance to do that.

I go and look at all the categories in this and I don’t know why I’ve taken this seriously. There is literally a people category of, who took the sexiest vaccine shot photos.

There’s also the sexiest silver thirst trap. ‘m like, “Would you want to win that?”

Is that even good anymore?

Also, people were upset that had Ben Aldis did not make the sexiest accent section. I say upset but not everybody who made comments like that was actually upset. Some people were just joking. Let me tell you, people, we’re not joking about the objectification of our Peloton instructors. There were people that were very offended by that. I see it like, why not? Why not our Peloton instructors? I’m not saying we should objectify our Peloton instructors, but I am saying if everybody else is going to objectify every other man on the planet and we have them in sexiest man alive in People Magazine, why not our Peloton instructor? Shouldn’t they get some love?

I feel like most of the people that say that are secretly mad that women complain about things like this. They’re like, “I’m going to be mad because you’re all hypocrites.” It’s just different. No one’s ever told their son, “When you walk to your car, put your keys between your fingers.” It’s just different because it is. You so suck it.

I’m a little bummed that there’s not the sexiest iFit, Echelon and Nautilus instructor.

Don’t worry, Echelon will come out with its own magazine. It’ll be Peeps or something. They’ll come out with their own categories for their bike instructors, their yoga instructors, and their fake mirror instructors, then you’ll get your chance to vote.

I’ll probably mess that vote up.

You’ll still accidentally vote for Matt Wilpers.

In that one, I’ll vote for Matt Wilpers on accident. It’s not an accident, Matt. I was voting for Matt Wilpers.

Finally, before we let you go, it has been a busy week. Real quick, you had an interesting take on John Foley’s Goldman Sachs conference.

He is working because they had that Tech Crunch that he was doing with Jennifer Cotter, and then he had this with Jill Woodworth. I didn’t do the Tech Crunch one because you had to pay for that.

That’s fair. I got to say your translations were the highlight for me.

John was coming out hard. The way I translate them is like a comical arrogance, but I didn’t see them that way. I saw them as definitive and confident about their strategy and their direction. He was very definitive. I loved it. I just translated it to how I would say it if I would have been John.

I’ll read the part of Foley for you and then you read your translation. “We’re calling fiscal 2022 and investment year. This will be a big year for marketing, productive product development and product releases. Next year, we plan to be profitable again.” Translation.

“We’re about to drop a whole bunch of ads and you’re about to see a bunch of new products.” We’ve seen that. We see Jess Sims showing, “I’m on this billboard. I’m over here.” We’re actually seeing this play.

You can obviously see what the downturn of health can look like if you don't take care of yourself. You know you're the best person for yourself. Click To Tweet

They told us about that during the last earnings call. They said, “You’re going to see our ad increase. Our spending is going to increase. They’ve told us that. We know products are getting ready to drop. Here’s another one. “We are already winning cardio this year. We are going to focus on winning strength. The tread is a part of that strategy.”

I saw this as him saying, “Bootcamps are part of our strength strategy.” Dumbbells are still going to be in the equation, which is good for me because I’m a dumbbell guy.

I know, you love your iron. “We have things in the R&D pipeline beyond the tread to help us win strength.”

I heard him saying, “If you’re holding your breath, I’ll see you in a rower in a couple of weeks. Stop holding your breath.”

I told you, 2022. This might be my favorite. You need to read your translation verbatim. This is Foley, “I get frustrated when I get questions like, “What about the low-cost copycat Pelotons that are popping up?’ These companies that are differentiating themselves on a price versus a better experience, we have now undercut them. We now have the lowest cost indoor stationary bike with a 22-inch screen. We basically close the door in the idea that there is another bike competitor that was by design.”

I felt like an “Um” at the end of that, then he was like, “Bye, bitches.” That’s how I read that.

He practically did a Z snap.

I feel like that would have been a good time for him to drop his microphone and walk away. Also, I feel like that was a little directed at Echelon. I feel you, John.

I think he was directing it to a few people.

I think so too. “We believe the bike is a beachhead into the household that allows us to sell additional products because if you get a Peloton, you don’t pay more with each additional product. Over time, households are going to want to scale their Peloton gym.”

This one, I found very interesting because he was adamant about that. He’s going, “It’s $39. It’s not changing.”

It is interesting because they set that signal so long ago saying like, “We’re probably going to up the price.” It’s fascinating to me that now they’ve completely changed that. That’s good to know. I’m glad he addressed it. Finally, “We believe we are playing chess when others aren’t even playing checkers.” I felt with you in this particular sentence, Tom. “We are playing the long game, increasing the value of your $39 subscription.”

I’m a hip hop head. I love hip hop. It goes way back. When I heard him say, “We’re playing chess while you guys aren’t even playing checkers,” the only thing I could think of was Nas’s song Made You Look. He said, “Like Pun said, ‘You ain’t even en mi clasa.’” You’re not even in our class. That’s what I felt so I wrote that lyric.

They’re not playing checkers. They’re playing sorry.

Those are pretty big fighting words though. I will be interested to see what comes next because a lot of these other competitors have been coming hard for Peloton. They’ve been throwing a lot of shade. They’ve been saying a lot of crap. It will be interesting to see what they do with that. Are they even paying attention? Are they watching that thing?

They’re watching. There’s no way that they’re not watching.

The way he was talking, by that $400 drop in the bike prize, he feels like he put the squeeze on some of these points and they’re feeling it.

When he was talking, did he have the smirk? You know the smirk I’m talking about. Was it a smirk or was he a more serious John?

He was a serious John. Jill Woodworth was very informative, smiling, and make you feel comfortable. John was like, “Look.”

“This is how it’s going to be.”

TCO 226 | Peloton Medical Student

 

I was with it. I was a fan of that.

I’m a fan of it. He needs to tell these guys, “You better back off.”

He’s like, “I’m here to drop some truth bombs.”

Now I’m going to have to watch the whole thing because I got to see the expressions for myself so I can feel where he’s coming from.

That was a good one. I loved it.

Thank you for joining us again. Until next time, where can everyone find you?

They can find me on Facebook, in my group or page, Run, Lift & Live. They can find me on Instagram @RunLiftAndLive or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Tom, do you ever feel like you want to punch something?

Something or someone? Yes.

I have an idea. You should try out the FightCamp because FightCamp brings the boxing and the kickboxing gym right to your home with full-body workouts that you’ll look forward to and a freestanding punching bag that can take your hardest hits.

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You can pay for your FightCamp over 24 months for less than the cost of a boxing gym and get it right away. Plus FightCamp offers free shipping with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Just go to JoinFightCamp.com/clip.

Joining us is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapist, and sports psychology consultant. You may know him from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn, 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 and Intimacy. It’s Dr. Jenn, welcome.

Hello.

Our next question comes from Kelly Ann Bacchus. You two need to meet because she has an adorable cat and you have an adorable cat. You guys would have kitty friends. Her cat is the only cat that we’ve ever had during an interview that crashed the Zoom. It came at the camera and knocked the computer over.

She’ll get along well with my cat who loves a good Peloton.

I think she does. Kelly has been struggling with an injury and a deep bout with advanced anxiety and depression. She felt like her doctors weren’t listening to her or helping her change her medications. Because of all this, she’s fallen out of her routine and she’s looking for the best way to get back into one. She starts up, she’ll have a good day, and then she’ll have a busy day at work, and then she’ll stop for a few days. She’s still doing standing yoga and stretching regularly, but when she wants to get into outdoor walks and riding 4 to 7 days a week, she’s having a lot of trouble getting to that point.

I want to congratulate her on doing the yoga, the standing yoga, the stretching. That’s wonderful. When you’re struggling with depression or anxiety, doing that can be incredibly overwhelming. She’s more ahead of the game than she gives herself credit for. She also may be at that place. I read an interesting study about people who exercise regularly. I know we’ve talked about this a bit. What they found was that the people who exercise regularly over time feel like they get endorphins when they exercise. They love the way they feel afterwards. They have joy while they’re exercising. It’s a positive experience and they love it. The problem is when you are coming off of an injury or when you’re depressed or anxious, a lot of the time, you don’t get that endorphin rush until you’ve been doing it consistently for a while.

She has that to look forward to. Right now, she’s got to assume that that’s not going to happen. It sounds like first of all, that she may be not aligning her exercise plan with her work schedule and that she may be overly ambitious. I’m a big believer in making small and manageable goals. I would much rather that someone say. “I’m going to do 20 minutes, 3 times a week,” and meet those goals than say, “I’m going to do an hour a day, 6 days a week, 7 days a week,” and then fail because it’s a set up to fail. Part of what we’re also doing when we set up goals is we’re working on our self-concept. When you see yourself as someone who meets their goals, you meet your goals and then you make new goals, and you meet those goals. It’s better that they are small and manageable.

I would rather you say, “I’m going to do 20 minutes, 3 times a week.” You write it and also give yourself room, “I’m going to do it Monday, Wednesday and Friday,} but then Friday ended up having a work project that ran late. I’m going to be able to do it on Saturday. You can still fit it into the week. Give yourself some wiggle room so that you can set yourself up to succeed instead of setting yourself up to fail. That’s a key thing.

It sounds like her doctors haven’t been taking her seriously. I’m a little unclear whether she’s found some new doctors who are paying more attention. I hear this a lot and it’s very important. I hear this in particular with women as patients even more so than men, a lot of the time. There is a bit of a gender bias that a lot of the time I hear this from clients and from other women like, “My doctor didn’t take my depression seriously. My gynecologist didn’t take this symptom seriously.”

It’s important that if your doctor isn’t listening to you, find another doctor. Find ten different doctors, like whatever you have to do. Go through your insurance list until you find the right doctor who pays attention and takes this seriously, and is ready to help you keep going. Being alone and feeling like people aren’t listening to your symptoms and taking them seriously can add to the depression, and the anxiety is exacerbated.

I would say also that might feel exhausting when you’re anxious and depressed. It might feel like, “Now I have to go find another doctor on top of everything else.”

That’s one more thing to add to her list.

It’s all the more reason to advocate for yourself. That is very helpful. Good luck, Kelly. We’re rooting for you and your cat.

Keep it small and manageable, Kelly.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to join us. Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me at InStyle Magazine, Hump Day By Dr. Jenn. I have a column that comes out every Wednesday about sex and relationships, and also on all social media @DrJennMann. I post all of my Peloton workouts on my Insta Story.

Peloton has made some interesting moves in the expansion realm of things.

They are specifically expanding their Peloton commercial. This is interesting and a long time coming, but it’s official now. Way back when they had a commercial bike and then it quietly went away. They started putting stuff in hotels. There was their partnership with Westin and then that grew. There was the Hotel Finder, but now since they have officially closed their deal with Precor, they are coming out and they are saying, “We are ready for commercial business.” They are specifically starting with hotels and they’re going to expand beyond Westin. They are also saying that everything from the Precor strength and cardio line is there. The original Peloton bike is part of what you can buy from the commercial chain. They also expect that further down the road, they’re going to be growing the commercial even more outside of hotel chains or perhaps something deeper within hotel chains.

It’s an interesting evolution of the brand that at the beginning, they wanted to be in hotels, then they reached a point where they thought it was doing more, not harm, but they didn’t want to give it away for free. Now they’ve reached the other side of that hill to where they’re like, “Now we want to be everywhere.” It’s fascinating to watch that transition.

I know that Peloton has long said that whenever people try it out in a hotel, that is a growth opportunity because those people that try it out often will go home and then order a bike. It will be interesting to see if they end up putting treadmills in hotel facilities as well because right now, it’s only the Peloton bike and it’s only the original Peloton bikes. I will be curious to see what they do with that.

Shape Magazine has an article about everything you want to know about Peloton yoga, including classes and instructors.

This is from the go-to girl at Shape. She calls herself that. I’m not being rude.

We’re not denigrating her by calling her a girl.

I am not. This is from Michelle Konstantinovsky. I consider this as a Peloton primer for yoga. It’s everything that you want to know. It tells you about how to look at each instructor. Which one’s going to be a good fit for you, how to filter through the app, and how to find the yoga flow that is perfect for you.

PopSugar has 12 Peloton scenic rides that will take you from your living room to places all over the world.

No need to dig deep into this one. It goes through each scenic ride that they feel is best. It describes them bit by bit. That’s all there is to it. I’m glad they’ve started to add some more though.

Morning Brew had an article about the best ways to a workout without spending a lot of money, and the Peloton app gets a nice mention.

They had to include it.

This broke not too long after we got done recording our previous episode, but Peloton has been in court fighting Mad Dogg over the usage of the word Spin. This isn’t about the actual usage of the word Spin that comes up later.

This was Mad Dogg’s countersuit to that. Was it that they did Spin as the countersuit? I can’t remember who sued who first. That’s what I’m struggling with. At any rate, this is about Mad Dogg saying that Peloton was using some of the things that they had patented a long time ago, not just the word Spin. This is bad news for Mad Dogg because the judge was like, “You’re not showing me any proof of any of this,” and threw the suit completely out.

It sounded like Mad Dogg was like, “We thought about putting a screen on a bike once.” They were like, “Are you kidding me? Get out of here.” They literally said, “Get out of here.” You got to think that is not off to a good start for them in order to try and keep the word Spin as one of their trademarks. We will continue to watch this space.

Joining us once is Angelo from MetPro. How is it going?

It’s great to see you again.

It’s great to see you as well. We had a general question that we wanted to run by you. This isn’t getting from any one specific person but we feel it helps everybody.

It’s a collective question. I’m in.

We hear a lot about metabolism and its effect on our weight. Can you tell us exactly what it is and why it’s important for our health and our body weight?

Metabolism is right above your belly button if you push it. No, it’s not there but wouldn’t it be nice if it was that easy? It’s this elusive concept of, what is my metabolism? Some people think, “I wasn’t born with a metabolism. I don’t even have one. I don’t have one on my body.” Your metabolism is a term that refers to the collective operations of your body. That’s chemical, hormonal, biological, and all the energy that it needs to sustain you. Here’s a little bit of a clue as to how it works. It does have a goal. It was designed to do something. That is to keep you in homeostasis.

What that simply means is your metabolism likes to maintain you. It knows that if you keep gaining weight, you will die. If you keep losing weight, you will die. Neither one of those outcomes are good. What it wants to do is prevent that from happening, which is why it acclimates to help your body regulate energy expenditure. Almost everyone will raise their hand and say, “I get it. When I eat less, my metabolism slows down.” Here’s what you may not realize. It works both ways. It’s a protection for you both ways. When you eat more, it does speed up.

Maybe some of you have heard me in some of my either podcasts or lectures. I always ask the audience a question. I’ll pick someone out and I’ll say, “What would happen to Julie in the front row? Julie is a young athlete. She’s in her mid-twenties. She weighs 135 pounds. She runs, she bikes, she swims. We changed nothing about her healthy routine except we add a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream every night before she goes to bed. What would happen to Julie?” The crowd will say, “She’ll gain weight.”

I’ll ask Julie, “You’ve lived in your body for 25 years. What would happen?” Invariably, Julie will say, “I’ll start gaining weight.” How much will you gain in 30 days? “Invariably, Julie will say, I’ll gain between 5 and 15 pounds.” Maybe so, probably closer to 5, but maybe so. Somewhere in there. “Julie, how much weight would you gain if you kept eating that pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? By the way, I use that illustration of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream pin because it’s almost exactly 1,000 calories.

“What happens, Julie, if you eat that Ben and Jerry’s ice cream every night for a year, how much will you gain?” Invariably, she’ll say, “Between 10 and 20 pounds.” I’ve had a few women say they’ve gained 30 pounds. I never had someone say more than that. I’ll ask the audience, “What do you think, is Julie going to gain more than 30 pounds?”. They’re going to say, no. Maybe 35. Now we have a mathematical problem. Let’s do the math, 1,000 calories a day. That’s 7,000 calories a week. How many calories are in a pound of body fat? 3,500 is what they say, so that should be about 2 pounds a week. Last I checked, there were 52 weeks in a year. How many pounds should Julie gain? Anyone here thinks she’s going to gain 104 pounds, almost doubling her body weights? No.

I did this lecture once in a room of nothing but doctors, physicians, surgeons. I asked them the same question and not one of them. I said, “Then the conclusion is Ben and Jerry’s speeds your metabolism.” There were chuckles but the room went quiet. It is true. Don’t try it at home if you’re not going to like the outcome.

That’s where it gets complicated that it’s not just calories in and calories out.

Correct. What I’m doing is I want to establish that the metabolism is this moving entity that moves predominantly not with, “My diet is healthy. I added this supplement or I’m taking this vitamin or I eat an avocado three times a week. I always get fish oil.” All of those are good things. Your metabolism doesn’t care unless there’s some sort of dysfunction that you’re trying to address. Assuming you’re healthy and you’re not deficient in anything, your metabolism’s job is to keep you alive, despite fluctuations in your intake level, which is why people can exist overeating and people can exist under-eating because the metabolism acclimates.

That doesn’t mean the person who eats a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream every night isn’t still going to gain weight. It’s still going to have a negative outcome. It’s just not going to happen at the pace that the math pencils out because in addition to, “I’m gaining 2 pounds a week,” the metabolism is going to kick into gear and do its job and start to rev up to try and stop that. If you keep gaining 2 pounds a week, you’re dead in less than two years so it’s going to stop that. The same thing works the other way around.

This, we all can relate to. “I dieted and I lost 10 pounds and then I stopped losing weight. Why? I was eating everything I was supposed to. I read the book and they said to eat more of these fruits and vegetables I read the book and it said, eat keto. I read the book and it said to eat only on days the start with the letter T. I read the book and it said, eat only after 1:00 in the afternoon. I read the book and it said that I should only eat foods that have this micronutrient in them.”

Anything you do, your metabolism has a job. That is to acclimate and get used to it and find a way to stop you from continuing to gain weight or continuing to lose weight. There may be nothing wrong with those approaches. Every one of them may work but if your metabolism is successful, meaning you survive the diet, it’s going to stop your weight loss or your weight gain at some point. That is why we named the company metabolic profiling because I found that’s the key. You have to understand where your metabolism is so you know, “I can cut a little farther and lose a little bit more weight because here’s where my metabolism is at,” or “No, I can’t cut anymore. My metabolism is on the bottom run. I got to climb up a little bit first, then I can do another cutting cycle.”

It’s not that hard. The problem is the industry is well-meaning and they do good things, but they show you this picture on the cover of Runner’s World. It’s the husband and wife jogging through the park and they have these beautiful bodies and they’re lean and they’re healthy and they’re running. It shows, “What do I eat? I’m eating broccoli and I’m eating this and I’m eating that.” We assume that eating this food or eating this way or doing this exercise equals this body.

It’s not a straight line. It’s that when you change your diet, good, bad or otherwise, you’re going to get a period of time where you will either gain weight in response or lose weight in response until your metabolism acclimates to your new environment, your new nutritional or lifestyle environment. Once it acclimates you plateau. I make this joke all the time, it’s not death and taxes, it’s death, taxes and plateau. That’s the way it works. It’s understanding a normal part of the process. Your metabolism is going to adapt. If you control your metabolism, that’s where you can take control and get the best possible results.

One of the things that you guys do is help us stay one step ahead of our metabolism. We should say that when we’re talking about speeding up metabolism, it’s all with regular food. There’s no pills or anything like that. This is all chickens and vegetables.

Particularly for Tom. It’s the same three things every day for six months.

It’s not your plan. That’s how I choose to execute your plan.

Sometimes you can go hardcore mode. It’s like, “That’s too easy. I want to make this harder.”

That makes it easier for me but that’s because you personalize these things. If people would like something like that personalized for them, where can they find you?

They can go to MetPro.co/tco.

I feel like it’s been a little bit since we’ve seen a Peloton article from Well And Good. Weren’t we making fun of them for having one a week for a while?

I don’t always include them, but this one got included because this is one of Peloton’s newest instructors, Mariana Fernandez. It talks about how she brings her Mexican roots onto the mat. I liked that they highlighted it. I’m sure that being Latin Heritage Month might have played into that. Who cares? That’s great because she’s new. She hasn’t been at Peloton for very long. Some of the newer instructors don’t get an opportunity to do the rounds.

It’s got to be hard. They have so many big names now. It reminds me of SNL. You have your big stars and except with SNL, they all want to leave to go onto the next big thing eventually. I don’t know that the Peloton people are going to be doing that because this is the big thing. It’s nice to see a new instructor getting some love.

She talks about teaching yoga in Spanish. If you haven’t checked that out, make sure that you do.

The Matty and Jess prank war continues.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Matty Maggiacomo and Jess Sims have had a long-running history with every Halloween, there have been shenanigans. Jess hates Halloween and Matty loves to torment her. It’s only September but Jess has been up to her own pranks because she has been feeding jelly beans to instructors that they have no idea that they are nasty jelly beans. She fills them and she’s gotten several of the instructors and she got Matty and he was not happy. He was being quite the diva about it. I’m not going to lie. His stories that he posted afterwards, he was being silly. He wasn’t bad but he was dramatic like his eyes, the expressions he was making. He was like, “I don’t feel good. I can’t believe that she treated me like this.” It was really over the top.

It’s like the black olives sliver onto one of my pizza slices.

He said his stomach hurt. He was laying down because he was recuperating from this horrible ordeal. He was like, “Halloween’s in 40 days, Jess. This ought to be epic. When he and Becs got Jess Sims with the giant costumes. It was hilarious. I can’t wait to see what they’ll do next.

Review Journal has five minutes with Peloton and Le Reve star, Jess King.

This goes through quick questions with her. You’d want to check that out. That is in the Las Vegas Review Journal. Tom, will be sending that out Sunday-ish.

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Robin Arzon sat down with WBEZ Chicago.

This is perfect for people who are wanting to change careers. She gives a seven-step guide on how to do it. She gets asked this question all the time, I’m sure. You’d want to check that out.

Well And Good making up for a lost time here with their second Peloton related article has a special full-body strength and Tabata workout with Selena Samuela.

I will note that both of these articles were by Zoe Weiner. I think she’s their resident Peloton instructor. Great workout over in Well And Good by Selena. You’d want to check that out. John Mills mentioned that John Foley was making the rounds. They had the Tech Crunch, they had the other thing that we talked about that he got to watch. I wanted to point that out because there was also an email that came out from John Foley and it talked all about the tread and it was talking it up. They invited you to the big tread event that is going to be on Thursday, September 23rd. By the time this is published, it will have already happened.

The point is I’m pretty sure that this is their big internal press junket that they are doing with the tread going on sale. You will also see, in addition to the big tread event, there’s going to be a Q&A and some people could submit ahead of time. There’s going to be an IG live on Thursday right before that. It’s going to be Becs Gentry. She’s going to have Susie Chan and Jermaine Johnson, our two newest UK tread instructors on as well. They’re all going to chat. The big tread event is going to have Becs and Matty. I believe that’s at 1:00 PM.

Some of the instructors have also been in other places like Robin and Tunde. They did one of those Facebook lives that I had talked to you guys about that there are rooms. I had said that Ally Love has been doing those rooms lately. Robin and Tunde did a room together. It’s called the Roots Live audio room. Tunde was hosting it and Robin was the guest. That was on the 21st at 2:00 PM, Eastern. As you can tell, they have been busy. They are hitting the press junket hard.

Tunde is going to be doing her SPEAK series. It stands for Surrender, Power, Empathy, Authenticity and Knowledge. It’s an Instagram live series. She has a special guest, Mel Robbins. That is also on Thursday, September 23rd, at 6:00 PM Eastern. You can see that at Tunde’s live tune to Tunde.

There’s more.

As if that wasn’t enough, then you have Chelsea Jackson Roberts. She is doing Community Compassion. YogaJournal.com is featuring a live conversation with her to talk about expanding yoga by embracing inclusivity, diversity and accessibility, which she excels at. She is amazing. It makes it accessible to everyone.

It’s not an Instagram live or a conference, but we should probably sneak in that Adrian has a new signature class that he’s doing.

People have been asking for it and it is now official. Bootcamp Thunder 45 is official. It’s going to be 45 minutes of his signature bootcamp. The first one is at 10:00 AM Eastern on Sunday, 9/26. You’d want to check that out.

There are quite a few interesting stories in the world of Peloton competitors. First off Lululemon says that the Mirror CEO is stepping down.

The founder of Mirror was Brynn Putnam. She is no longer going to be the Chief Executive of the connected fitness company. Lululemon is now looking to find a successor. Putnam will be continuing to serve as an advisor to Mirror until next July while they conduct that search.

We should say that these all come from John Mills of Run, Lift And Live. We just didn’t want to make him sit around for 45 minutes until we circle back around, but credit where credit is due. He also noticed that SoulCycle now has an artist series. It seems to me that’s becoming standard operating procedure for all the Peloton knockoffs.

They are featuring Shakira in that it’s Latin Heritage Month. That’s interesting.

Beachbody’s BODi has been delayed.

They were supposed to drop on the 21st. They decided not to. They’re saying it’s going to happen in the fall but they’re not giving a date. However, John did find the image to their pricing. No one knows what it means other than a person who is a coach that follows the stuff. There’s like BP, TV and PV and a renewal. It’s super confusing. There are like eight different choices. Even if I wanted to be a member, I wouldn’t because this is a mess. It is so overwhelming.

This is the stuff that made me drop out of college.

This is icky. It will be interesting to see because I don’t know what will happen. The feedback from our community is no one is going to buy this because this is too confusing. They’ve got to simplify it. One person mentioned, I can’t remember their name so I apologize for that. They mentioned that this was their concern with BODi from the beginning that they are taking an MLM approach. This is an MLM approach. That is what this is. It doesn’t look good. Hopefully, they get it together.

I doubt they will because I think this works for them. Finally, Hydrow got some new financing from the likes of Lizzo and Justin Timberlake.

People noted that since both of them are Peloton riders and they are financing Hydrow when Peloton is clearly sending signals that they will be releasing the rower in 2022. That’s fascinating.

We have some interesting rumors from the Peloton Prophet.

Apparently, the Peloton Prophet had an interesting conversation with a Peloton employee. This employee said that Peloton is working on some milestone gifts if you have 1,000-plus classes. Supposedly, an Australian studio is close to at hand. We just wanted to share that. They’re also looking at creating studio experiences in hotel gyms.

That’s the one that fascinates me the most. The idea is that they’re going to try and have certain hotels replicate the Peloton experience and not just put a bike in there.

Whenever I was going back to when they were expanding the Peloton commercial and there will be more to come with hotels. I think that’s where they’re talking about not necessarily going into other industries, but going more in-depth in hotels. It will be interesting to see where this all goes.

I almost wonder if they’ll take 1, 2 or 3 hotels and do a full Peloton make-over just to show people how cool it can be. Once they’re done, they’ll go, “For a small fee, we’ll do that for your hotel.”

You never know. That would be cool.

By small fee, of course, I mean large.

Finally, first off, we should say a belated happy birthday to Erik Jager.

We didn’t have him on our list. He’s new.

He celebrated his birthday on September 19th.

I’m glad you remembered that, Tom.

Also, coming up in a timely manner, Leanne Hainsby is celebrating her birthday on September 28th.

Happy birthday to Leanne.

Joining us is Gabby Brauner. How is it going?

How are you, guys?

We’re good.

She’s brave. She’s staring down at a hurricane.

She’s just chill.

They were like, “You need to evacuate.” She’s like, “Not until I do this interview with The Clip Out.” Don’t write to us. They did not tell her to evacuate.

They did not. She’s in preparation mode and she’s confident.

She’s sitting on a pallet of bottled water and toilet paper. She’s good to go.

Gabby, I love to find out how people came across Peloton and decided, “This is the machine for me.” What’s your story?

My mom and I do it together. My aunt had one a while ago. It seems so out of the world for us. It seems like this expensive machine that she had. We’re like, “You do you.” My mom’s gym canceled her 6:00 AM spin class. She was like, “What am I going to do?” The next day, she’s like, “We’re getting a Peloton.”

She canceled right back.

She canceled membership but I was like, “Absolutely not. We’re not getting a Peloton.” We switch roles sometimes where she wants to do things and I’m the mom. She was like, “I don’t need your permission. I don’t know why you think I need it.” I was like, “No.” She then bought the Peloton bike.

Did she ban you from using it? Was she like, “Absolutely not.”

She was happy to have it with me but I was in college in Boston, so I often come home to use it. I used it and it’s amazing. I was like, “I’m glad you didn’t listen to me.” I live 40 minutes from home so I was going home so often to use it. After the pandemic hit, I bought a fake bike because I couldn’t afford another one. That one broke and so I got one. Now, we have two.

Do you want to tell us the brand that you bought?

I went on Amazon and it was $300. I don’t know the brand but it was an easy thing to buy.

There are a lot of people that do that and it makes sense whenever you can’t afford a Peloton to ease into it by buying a different bike. There are all kinds of different brands that you can get.

There are good different brands and bad different brands.

I’m glad that you found your way to the real Peloton because it’s such an integrated experience. It’s nice to have all the metrics and everything too.

You told us that your mother was right. As parents, we have to know, did you tell your mother that she was right?

Yes. She knows. We talk about it all the time.

We hear it so seldom.

In our house, that’s rare so we just want to make sure.

She knows. We’re obsessed.

When did your mom get her bike? How long have you been using Peloton?

It’s more than two years.

You said that your mom was going to spin class. What about you? Were you doing any kind of workouts at that point before Peloton?

Yeah, I was doing the fitness classes at the gym and I still run. I got her into the spin. I dragged her to the gym. I was like, “You’re doing this. I don’t care what you do when you’re there. Slow down and take resistance off. You’re staying all the time.” I forced her hand. I was doing my own thing and doing group fitness classes.

I understand that you are a medical student. How are you even finding time? How are you so chill? Between being a medical student and a hurricane headed your way, you seem very calm.

It’s what you want in a doctor.

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I am sometimes calm but sometimes not so calm. I realized there were things to stress about and things not to stress about. A hurricane is a little thing to stress about because I can’t do anything about it. That’s one thing that Peloton has given me. I didn’t realize how much of a mantra person I was. Jess Sims said, “If you guys don’t have time to work out, you make time to work out.” I was like, “I’m waking up at 3:00 in the morning to workout because that’s my time.” 3:00 is a little rough.

Tell us your schedule. What happens on a crazy day?

In medical education, you do the first year and a half to two years in the classroom just like in school. The next two years are in the clinic or in the hospital. I’m in the clinic and the hospital. Every day is different. I’m on my pediatrics rotation so I was in the newborn nursery in the morning, then I was in primary care in the afternoon. I wasn’t going to get out until 7:00 and I had to be at the hospital at 7:00. My time to workout is in the morning. I wake up early.

Especially in medical school, that’s a lot. What kind of Medicine is your long-term goal?

I’m thinking of oncology. I like working with breast cancer patients. That’s what I’m thinking but I’m still open.

Did you always want to be a doctor or was there a point in your schooling where you were like, “I’m good at this stuff. I could go do that.”

I always knew. Since I was nine, I was like, “This is for me.” I didn’t have an awakening. I broke bones as a kid and I was like, “This is cool.”

Your own or were you a thug?

I fell.

It sounds like you were turning around with a baseball bat and you’re like, “I break bones.”

You’re like, “What’s that, mom? They canceled your 6:00 spin class. I’ll fix that.”

I have an older brother. I wanted to be like him. I’m running around, playing football and doing all those things, then it made sense to me. It was always the goal. I don’t want to be an orthopedist though. There’s no time for me now.

You got bored with doing it so early. You’re like, “That’s for kids.” There’s so much responsibility with being a doctor. I’m always fascinated by when someone makes that call. In a lot of ways, you probably almost have to make it young before you think about how much responsibility it is. At that point, by the time it clicks for you, you already have all the information in your head. You’re halfway through and you’re like, “Of course, I knew this.”

There are a lot of new medical training pathways. You can be a PA, an NP and all these things, which are great professions and have great benefits on their own. I had decided when I was so young and I’m like, “This is what I was doing.”

What made you go towards oncology? You said that you like working with breast cancer patients. Is that one of the rotations you’ve already done and it just clicked?

I went to Northeastern in Boston and we do a five-year undergrad program where you work for six months at a time full-time instead of going to school. You don’t pay tuition and you get paid. The idea was you would be able to pay tuition with that money, but the tuition rose faster than the amount that you get paid so it didn’t happen when I was there. The first one I did was with breast cancer patients. I don’t have any personal experiences with breast cancer but I enjoyed those six months.

That’s cool.

Hopefully, it wasn’t whatever came first. Thank God you didn’t do proctology first. Although the world needs that too.

We get to pick some rotations. I got to pick two sub-specialities and pediatrics and I was like, “Should I pick oncology?” I was, “No. That’s all I’ve ever done. I’m going to pick something else so I could see everything.”

That’s good and smart. It’s good to always try out a variety. I say that about everything. Peloton too. You don’t want to start with the first instructor that you click with. You want to try all the instructors so it’s smart of you to try.

It’s like dating.

You don’t stop dating after the first date.

What happens next in your medical in the long-term? I don’t know that much about it. I know that doctors have to go to school forever. How does it work?

Honestly, I didn’t know about it until I got here. Every time something will come up and be like, “You have to do this,” I’m like, “I do? I don’t know.”

They kept adding years on.

I added the extra year because I decided to get a Master’s in Public Health which worked out because COVID hit while I was on rotations. Because we’re medical students and we’re paying to be there, they pulled us out. They were like, “You don’t have to be here. We don’t know what’s going to happen to you. You have a mandatory six weeks off, but it may be six months.” It was unclear so I decided to hop into my Master’s year for a year. I interrupted it, which was honestly nice. I got to do Zoom school for a year, got to let the hospitals cool down a little bit. We didn’t want to be a burden to anybody. We wanted to get the best education we could.

All that to say, now I’m back on the rotation after fifteen months off. I’ll finish these in February of 2022. I will take 2 or 3 months off to study for two board exams. That will take me to April of 2022. You get to pick rotation and things that interest you that you didn’t get to see in your clinical year. I’ve got to do a Breast Oncology Elective. You apply to residency and you apply everywhere that you’re interested in living because you don’t get a say, then you just go wherever. My family lives on Long Island. I’m attached here. I don’t plan on going far away. I have friends who have no geographic loyalty and are applying all over and they’ll get an envelope in March of 2022 that says, “Congratulations. You are moving to California,” or wherever they end up matching.

Do you have a dream place that you would get to go to?

Not really. I like where I am now. As long as I’m under an hour from home, I’m pretty cool.

TCO 226 | Peloton Medical Student

 

Are there some places that are easier to get sent to?

There are and people don’t want to go there.

Besides St. Louis, where are those places?

It’s hard to get people to go to rural areas which are needed like primary care, where people aren’t paid as well. We have a lot of debt. Ideally, if I want to be that provider or if I like to have Medicine, I have to also make sure I can pay back my $500,000 in loans.

Is it that much?

Yeah.

That hurts.

It’s made-up money at that point.

I totally get that.

She’s like, “Sure. If these work out, you’ll never see $1 of it so let’s make it $700,000. Who cares?”

I’m going to pay it off or I’m going to die with it. Those are my options.

What’s another $20,000 at this point?

That’s why I added my Master’s here. Literally. I was like, “I’d rather get more learning and more experience and add a little bit more to this pile.”

It’s your time.

Time is going to pass anyway.

There are many steps to becoming a doctor where you go to class and residency. At what point are you a doctor? Do they say, “You’re a doctor now?” Is it a trick and you never really get there?

Once you start residency, you’re a doctor. I will be a doctor in 2023.

Are you super excited about that?

Yeah, because I did five years undergrad. I’ll do five years of med school. That’s ten years after high school to get here.

Does it seem real or does it seem surreal?

A little bit of both. I’ve worked so hard that it does feel like it makes sense that I’m here in a way. My family’s not medical. I’ve never seen anybody else do this. I’ve never been an adult. I’ve been a student my whole life.

I get that.

That makes sense.

I posted the other day on Instagram because it was my 3:45 wake-up day. I was showing people like, “I made time today.” I was like, “I haven’t folded my laundry in eight days.” There are definitely things I’m giving up to do this. It’s not all together.

Tom. It’s totally the same.

I haven’t folded my laundry so I feel like I’m pretty much a doctor now.

That’s inspirational that you’re putting your physical and mental health first at the top of the priority list. I feel like when I was your age, I didn’t even know how to do that. I wanted to be healthy but it would have never occurred to me to get up that early. I wouldn’t have known what steps to take to do that at that age.

That’s one thing that Peloton has given me though. It’s at my fingertips. If I’m on the app, I could download something. I can go on a walk or run. My bike is right here and there are many communities within Peloton that I can say, “Do you want to work out at 4:00 AM with me?”

Does that keep you accountable?

For sure. I met people in a Facebook group and we have a group text. We text all the time. We’ll send our stacks and say, “We’ll see you tomorrow.” We’re all in different time zones, but even if we’re not at the exact same time, I’ll be like, “I knew you did this class today so I’m going to do this class today.”

That’s awesome. I love that you guys have your own accountability group.

You guys understand but when you tell people who don’t do Peloton, they’re like, “Will you shut up now?” “No, I cannot shut up. I’m so sorry.”

The other people you’re going to school with or in rotation with, do they Peloton? Are they like, “You’re insane?” What do they think about it?

There’s a mix. Some people do Peloton but still think I’m a little insane. Some people are like, “I don’t get it.” I’m like, “You won’t get it until you do it.” When my aunt had the bike, my mom and I were like, “Let her do her thing,” and now we all do it together. We’ll FaceTime and do it all together.

As a medical professional, do you feel like you end up taking your personal health more seriously than you would otherwise?

It’s mixed. I see what the downturn in health can take if you don’t take care of yourself. In general, I know I’m the best person for myself, my family and my patients when I take care of myself. I also don’t know if my medical training is the main driver of that for me.

That makes sense.

I may have been like this before.

It was so long ago, you are not.

We do control a lot of our health. There are things we can’t control. I mentioned my mom a bunch. She lost 50 pounds. She has a new grandson and I was like, “Do you want to be there for him? We want you to be.” She has better eating and better working out and all these things. I was like, “This is what you have to do.”

Do you guys do the bike content or do you do other Peloton content?

We do it all.

She said that in a dreamy way. It’s like when you talk about John Stamos.

I love it.

Every Saturday, we’ll do Jess Sims bootcamp. I have a bike at home. I can’t go home every weekend now that I’m on clinical. It’s not feasible for me to drive 40 minutes each way and spend time at home. She’ll do it on our treadmill at home and I’ll do it on my bike here. I use my Power Zone to get the effort and we have a whole group where we do a scenic ride on the bike and put the boot camp on an iPad and have a whole setup. We FaceTime through the whole thing so I can yell at her and be like, “Mom, Jess said it was not a 54-minute bootcamp.”

I’m sure you’ll be able to be like, “I’m a doctor.” You’re waiting for that day, aren’t you?

My parents, because they’re not medical, do listen to me. I do not know everything, but I can look up things and be like, “This is what you should be doing.” We do bootcamps and I’m trying to get her into strength. I like the runs a lot. I don’t know how I ever ran without Peloton before.

Isn’t it awesome, the content and the way they keep you so engaged? I love running with Becs Gentry because she runs effortlessly and she talks and talks. I know some people don’t like all the talking. Especially during running, I love the talking because I hear the stories. I’m so involved in that, that I’m not thinking about running. I’m not thinking about the effort of running. It’s amazing.

I did the New York City simulation runs. I’ve done it twice and I almost cried both times. It’s so good. I agree. She’s my favorite to run with outside.

Have you done the Robin’s New York City Marathon simulation?

I did.

I haven’t done the Becs one yet but the Robin one gets me.

They’re so good. Honestly, I was never a yogi before Peloton. In March 2020 was when I got into yoga and I do yoga every day.

The stress might have pushed you that way. I could see that.

I like it. I always had trouble with my hips when I ran. I don’t have that anymore. I’m still not flexible, but it’s okay.

You do it every day. How are you finding time? How long are you working in the morning?

While I was in my Master’s year, when I had so much time, I was working out three hours a day. It’s not all intense. I would do 45 minutes of yoga. It’s like a big mix. Now, I have to limit myself. I max out at 2 hours and 5 minutes.

You seem sad about that.

That’s very exact.

I would love to have lots of time. It’s because I limit myself to two hours of a workout and five minutes of a stretch.

I was like, “It’s the five-minute stretch that makes it 2 hours and 5 minutes.”

That’s hyper-specific.

For most of my day, if I’m at the hospital or in the clinic, I have to come home and study. I have to do that. That’s why if I don’t workout in the morning, I’m probably not going to. I’m going to be too tired. For me, there’s a difference between morning tired and after work tired.

Your brain is tired.

My brain is not tired in the morning. I’m just tired.

Morning tired, you can get on the other side of that as you wake up. At the end of the day, you’re only going to get more tired. As someone in their 50s, that doesn’t get better.

That’s a true story. I have a question about that because I know everybody’s wired a little differently, but I cannot study when I’m that tired. I don’t even know how you’re doing that.

It’s not my favorite sometimes. Sometimes I’ll split it all up. I’ll work out for an hour in the morning to do yoga and some strength, and then study a little bit. I come home to get on the bike and study the rest. I can go from napping on the couch to getting on my bike and I’m much better. It’s the little jolt. It definitely depends. Sometimes I’ll save the easier studying or the more passive studying for the nighttime.

Maybe study the things that aren’t as important.

We call that low yield.

As your future patients, we want to say, study hard on the things that are important.

She’s like, “Podiatry, I’m not going to do any of that stuff anyway. You’ve got two of them. You can lose one.”

I skipped all the I’s. It’s not for me.

Gabby, how are you finding all these people in the community that you’re texting with? You have this accountability group. How did you bond with them?

I was thinking about this. I have four groups. For my texting group, we’re all big fans of Olivia so we met and Olivia’s Facebook group. One day they were like, “Do you want to have a group chat?” We were like, “Yeah.” One of them lives in Pittsburgh, and we have plans to go to Pittsburgh to spend a weekend. One of them is from my town at home, went to my high school, and went to sleepaway camp with my cousin. We got our wedding dresses at the same store.

Is that weird?

It’s so strange. We’ve met up a few times. We’re like the same person. We met on Facebook and now we’re good friends. It’s one of those Facebook groups. I’m also on Twitter. It’s a big medical community on Twitter so there’s #PelotonMedTwitter. I’ve been able to bond with many future healthcare professionals and healthcare professionals. Since I’m on my pediatrics rotation, the director of that rotation has a Peloton. She calls me by my leaderboard name. She sent me an email and she’s like, “My 1,000th ride is coming up.” It’s so funny.

People who are already in Medicine have a different experience right now than I do, but being able to bond over Peloton and also Medicine is different. That’s a nice thing we all have to share together. Other than that, Jess Sims’ Facebook group, the You Get To Crew, I went to the studio and I met up with a few of them. It comes out on social media. It has its pitfalls. Social media is not the best sometimes but I met many great people from there.

There are a lot of amazing people in the Peloton community. That makes total sense. I’m curious as a med student if COVID has changed your excitement to be a doctor at all as you’ve watched it unfold?

It has a little bit. It’s been deflating. In the beginning, everyone’s like, “Healthcare heroes. Thank you for what you do.” Now people are protesting outside hospitals.

They’re like, “Why won’t you prescribe us livestock medicine?”

I didn’t get to mention this but my dad’s a transplant recipient so he has no immunity. He got his third shot so we’re excited about that, but it was so scary waiting. My parents have done nothing since March 2020. They have not gone to outdoor dining. They’ve done zero things. They’re watching people do everything. People who know me and know our situation, it is very frustrating. The excitement drained out a little bit but I’m hoping it swings back. People say they trust you to make their life-saving decisions but won’t trust you now when you say, “This is your shot.” It’s been a little bit deflating. I’m in it. How much debt have I paid already? There’s no choice now.

You can’t be like, “That was a nice thought. I’ll change my mind.”

This is it.

I was looking at it like I feel I’m good about knowing what I don’t know so it’s like, “I don’t know how to fix my car so when it’s not working, I take it to the guy that knows how to fix my car. I don’t know anything about science so when I need to know something about science, I go to the scientists.” It seems a rational way to approach that. One would think and I’m sure I’ll get someone mad at me for saying it. I don’t give a crap.

It’s hard to be apologetic about it. To me, it’s factual. It’s not an opinion but at any rate, we do respect other people’s opinions and we’re not trying to start anything. I felt like that might be something that would be difficult. I put myself in your position and I see going through all that education, and putting yourself in that major amount of debt, and seeing everything that’s happened, I would be deflated. I’m a little deflated thinking about you doing it so it’s not me. I wanted to know your thoughts on it. To me, it makes perfect sense. You mentioned earlier that the director calls you by your leaderboard name. What is your leaderboard name?

It’s Fit_Happy_Gabby.

That’s cute.

I made a fitness Instagram a few years ago before Peloton. When I was applying to med school, I don’t know if you guys know, but the application process is terrible. I started training for a half marathon during it because I needed something to get my anxiety out. If you study for this big test, you get one chance. It’s not a good time.

You only get one chance to pass the test?

To apply to med school, you need this thing called a Committee Letter and Northeastern would only write you one if you took the test once. You could take it again but you had to wait a year. It was horrible. I made this fitness Instagram and I named it @Fit_Happy_Gabby and it became a thing where my fiancé’s friends call me FHG. It’s a thing now so I was like, “My Peloton name has to be that.”

That’s a good one.

Do you get shout-outs? It seems it would get shout-outs. It’s fun to say.

Sometimes. Shout-outs were easier to come by before the pandemic, which is fair. There are many people. It’s a little sad now because rides get purged. I’m like, “Bye, bye.”

“That was a good shout out but it’s gone now.”

It’s fine. I’ll log into Zoom because we’re half and half. Some of our lectures are on Zoom. She’d be like, “Hey, Fit_Happy_Gabby.” It’s fun.

Do you have a preferred instructor?

I have 4 or 6, maybe 10. I like Power Zone training. I’m numbers-driven and it makes sense to me. I finished the program. It’s my second time in the program. I like Matt for that, and Olivia to get my butt kicked. Alex and Cody on the bike are my top four.

That’s an interesting mixture on the bike because usually those who like that number side, that’s not their go-to to have the party people on the other end of their spectrum. I find that fascinating. That says a lot about you. You like to have fun but you like your structure, which is perfect for being a doctor. That is exactly what you want in a physician.

I was talking to somebody and one reason I liked the program was that I can get decision fatigue sometimes. I meal prep ten meals on Sundays. Lunch and dinner are done, but I have to make decisions every day about which questions I’m going to do and what I’m going to read that day. When I’m in the hospital, they’re asking me so many questions. I get home and I press OK Next Class in the Program. That decision is out for me. That’s why I feel like the Power Zone classes give me that structure, but the decision is made for me so I get both.

Do you have any prescriptions for people that are just starting Peloton?

It’s trying everybody. I took one German class, but it’s trying everybody and seeing what you like. Strength training is sometimes underrated. I feel like I’ve gotten so much stronger. Bike bootcamp is my favorite, but it’s being open-minded.

Thank you for taking time out of what is clearly a busy day and being flexible because the schedule got a little wonky. We appreciate your patience there. I get it because you’re going to be a doctor.

She’s like, “I’ve never heard that before.”

Before we let you go, where can people find you if you would like to be found?

My Instagram. It’s @Fit_Happy_Gabby. I post food and Peloton things like A Day in the Life of a Medical Student Who Likes to Exercise.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

I guess that brings this episode to a close at last. It was a long one but there was a lot to cover.

Next episode, we will be talking to Joey Ruggero and he is in Australia. We’re going to get the scoop from Peloton Australia.

He’s so Australian, they named him after a baby kangaroo. How about that? Until next time, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter, the bike and 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 and join the group. Wherever you get your podcasts from, be sure and follow us so you’ll never miss an episode. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep pedaling and running.

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