[00:00:00] Tracy: I said, okay, Tracy, you've got two choices. You can either be bitter or you can be better. What are you going to choose? And at that moment, my life changed and I said, I choose to be better. And I've been doing that now, 47 years later, when I was supposed to have died within 20 years. But every day I choose to be better and not bitter.
[00:00:20] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live The Width of Your Life podcast. My guest this week is Tracy Herbert, and at 17, she learned the importance of never giving up despite a horrific medical diagnosis. And for the past 47 years, she's been researching and applying strategies to live a longer, healthier life. She talks about how she has more energy in her sixties now than she did in her thirties, and she recently completed a solo, continuous 3, 527 mile bicycle ride from San Francisco to New York City to provide hope and prove her strategies work.
She really is focusing in on living a longer, healthier, happier life, no matter your age or setbacks. I really enjoyed learning more about her story. And she just really reiterated the point of you have to be your own best advocate when it comes to your body. And, even questioning those in authority sometimes.
She talks about just the importance of her mindset and really what it means to make healthy habits every day. So you can live that full life. I loved our conversation and I think you will as well. Take a listen.
Tracy, thank you so much for joining me. It's so nice to have you on the show.
[00:02:07] Tracy: Oh, It's so exciting to be here just to be able to spend time together. You and I, it's just such a joy.
[00:02:12] Aneta: I'm So exciting. And I was really looking forward to our conversation because you have such an interesting background and I love your philosophy around hope and just continuing to do amazing things into our later years. And so do you mind just sharing a little bit about your background? And I know that you had something happen when you were very young at 17, and it's kind of shaped who you are today.
[00:02:39] Tracy: At 17 years old and I'm lying in a hospital bed, ICU, and I'm fighting for my life. When you've been in ICU, you can hear those beeps of all the machines. And I had no idea what was going on because two months before that, I was perfectly healthy, an athlete doing everything, living life to the fullest, a senior in high school, making plans to go off to college.
And the doctor walks in, he puts his hands on his hips and he says, young lady, you've got juvenile diabetes. You're going to be dead in 20 years. You're going to die with horrible complications. You're going to go blind. You'll have your legs amputated. You'll be on dialysis and it's going to be a horrific death.
You're never going to be able to have any children. And as he turned around and walked away, he said, Oh, and by the way, you got to take multiple shots every single day for the rest of your life because there's not a cure. And he walked out the door, my parents, I, we couldn't even ask questions or anything.
And I'm sitting there for a few minutes we were all like, what did he just say? And so many times the people want to beat up the doctor that spoke to me in the hospital. But actually to me, I think that was the best thing he ever did because that tenacity in me started saying.
Let's talk about this. So after two weeks in the hospital, the same thing was being told to me. You're going to die in 20 years. You're going to have a horrible death. Your life is pretty much ruined. They even told my parents, don't even waste your money sending her to college because there's no return on investment.
Now, luckily my parents didn't do that. And we just kept going with what my plans were for my life. But I'd always wanted children and I thought wait a minute. This can't be happening to me. And so I started doing some researching as much as I could at 17 years old I would go into a local college medical school library and I would start reading and researching because this was before the internet and everything else.
And my friends and I were going on our first outing and I'm running out the door. My mom's, yelling, Tracy, remember you can't eat anything. Now she didn't say it because we didn't have the money. She didn't do it to be mean, obviously, but she was teaching me self discipline because back when I was diagnosed, we didn't have the abilities to be able to choose to eat more foods and what we typically have now, but now it's called type 1 diabetes.
So I walked into the movie theater with all my friends. And what do you smell? Okay, everybody smells popcorn. All my friends were in line getting the popcorn, the soft drinks, the candy and everything. And it was my turn. And I asked the concession stand clerk, could I just have a small cup? Because I want to get a cup of water out of the fountain. Because none of us want to be different.
And she looked at me like I was from outer space. And she said, no. And I said, I'll be glad to pay for it. And she said, no. And I ran out of the movie theater and I'm screaming and I'm crying and I'm saying, why me? And all the way home, I am just sobbing. And I got upstairs in bed and I'm still screaming and crying.
And I said, okay, Tracy, you've got two choices. You can either be bitter or you can be better. What are you going to choose? And at that moment, my life changed and I said, I choose to be better. And I've been doing that now, 47 years later, which I was supposed to have died within 20 years. But every day I choose to be better and not bitter.
And so back with my research and cap on, I was spending so much time in the library where all my friends were out having fun and everything and, back then we didn't have diet soft drinks. We didn't have bottled water. And you didn't have except drinking fountains. We didn't have the luxuries that we have today.
So, I would spend countless hours studying and I kept thinking, I've got to be able to figure this out because I'm going to live a long, healthy life. Anyway. I went off to college and started really digging deep in my life. Was married, had children, which everybody said wouldn't happen. Not only do I have children, but now I have six grandkids.
Yes! And I don't have any of the complications that was guaranteed for me to happen. Now, I still am on insulin and I will be until the day I die. But I chose to say, okay, I can eat certain things or I don't eat certain things. And so I tell myself, is this going to help me or is it going to hurt me? And I started that at 17 years old and I still do it today at nearly 65 years old.
Is it going to help me or is it going to hurt me? And so when you start really practicing those strategies and all my friends, we'd go out for pizza on Friday night, what all high school seniors do. And I would imagining, sorry, people if you're eating and you're getting grossed out. But I would imagine mice running over the pizza and using the restroom.
And the reason why I would bring that up is because, hey, if there's something that you really are addicted to, or you really choose to eat that versus something healthy, imagine something like that. I loved hot fudge sundaes before I was diagnosed. So I would figure, broken glass inside there inside my hot fudge sundae and I would start swallowing it to make sure, okay, it's going to really hurt. It's going to really hurt So those
kinds of visualization strategies have worked so well for me and all of my clients, because when we start realizing we are in control, we say, well, we can't, but we are, we just have to have the right mindset, which goes into so much more, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes.
Yeah.
I've always chosen to be okay, Tracy, you've got to be better, no matter what you're struggling with, what can you do at this moment? What can you choose at this moment? And then because of all these strategies I've started practicing, even in my thirties, I started feeling really Sick, really tired, really discouraged, and I kept thinking maybe the doctors were right. Maybe all these medical people were telling me the truth so went back to the medical school library and started researching again, even with my children and it was so interesting because things change all the time and I'm seeing people all over the world doing things so different than what we were doing in the United States.
And I thought, let's just try it. For example, one of the things, the healthy American breakfast I was eating was not working for me. So what I started doing is eating salads and leftover protein, with the protein from the night before, I would put that in my salad with a little bit of avocado, a little bit of olive oil, just like they were doing all over the world.
And I started realizing so much was changing. I was getting my energy back and my blood sugars, for those of you all that know anything about blood sugars, my blood sugars were pretty level, which is what you want because everybody, even people without diabetes, their blood sugars spike and then go straight down.
And it's when you're at that down cycle after you've eaten something that's highly carbohydrate, like pizza or spaghetti or something like that. It's at that point where you high and then you drop real fast. That's when you lose your energy.
So it was just remarkable. The things I started small little changes every day made a huge impact in my life and still do it today, which is why I have more energy in my sixties than I even did in my thirties. It's so easy, but we try to complicate it too much.
[00:10:14] Aneta: No. It's so important. And I can't imagine what it was like at 17 to actually hear a doctor come in and tell you all those things. Because you did have the resilience and the tenacity to say, you know what, I'm going to do things differently, but many people don't and they take that as a death wish and it really could go in the wrong direction when we're given that kind of diagnosis.
And also the fact that there was no internet and you had to do your research in the medical rooms. We know that even today in the medical schools, the doctors don't have many hours of nutrition education. So even what you were finding must have been limited in terms of what to do. And as you mentioned, what we are told to eat from an American diet perspective has actually made most of us sicker.
More people have diabetes, more people be overweight. So how did you find the access to the information that you needed to really say, let me test and learn. Let me try eating a high protein and higher fat diet and lower processed foods. That really does help, minimize the spikes and kind of keeps your glucose levels level.
[00:11:23] Tracy: I know my body really well because you have to when you live with a chronic disease. And I just started reading just a little bit of things, mostly in English, but from Japanese and Greek studies way back. I started reading, not realizing then Japanese people were living longer. People in certain parts of Greece were living longer. I didn't know that. None of us knew that until Dan Buettner came along,
[00:11:49] Aneta: Right. The blue zones.
[00:11:50] Tracy: I started I started seeing little things and I thought, okay, I was a huge addict, I guess is a good word to say it. I love my diet soft drinks. They came out, I don't remember what decade they came out, but so I started drinking diet soft drinks because they were healthy.
And I read an article. Wow. In the mid eighties to late eighties, there was talking about how unhealthy diet soft drinks were and switch it up with water. And so I started giving up diet soft drinks. That was the very first thing I did. And I started realizing, hey, I'm not as hungry as I used to be. And then I read something else down the road that said, drink a glass of water before you eat.
I have water with me everywhere I go. That is my addiction. But they start saying, drink a glass of water before you eat. You consume fewer calories, which even though I've never had a weight issue per se, I still am more important about what's going to help my body and not hurt my body. And then I started realizing, this decade that you drink water before you even drink coffee in the morning because you're dehydrated.
I mean, there's so many things out there and there's also a lot of snake oil sales people out there. They'll say, take this pill, do this, and you won't even need to do any of these stuff. That is not what we want at all. We don't want that because when we do that, it's just crazy because it just doesn't work. So what we're trying to consider now is, okay, is this going to help you?
Is it going to hurt you? Is it going to give you more energy? Because I don't know about you, but I don't want to live the last few decades of my life, tired, angry, sore, complaining about being old. I want to be one of those people that my husband and I met at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. They were, 86 and 84.
They hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon twice a year. And then, of course, hike back out. But, they were our role models back 20 years ago. The first time my husband and I ever did it. We just did it. I don't know, 3, 4, 5 months ago. We did the same, backpacking trip to the bottom of Grand Canyon and back out.
And we met a couple down there. It's like, y'all are kind of old to be doing that. And we're like, no. Then we tell people about our couple that we met at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. So we find people that we like to say, hey, what are you doing? How are you doing it? But the snake oil salespeople I stay away from.
That's why I always tell people when you're doing internet research, make sure it comes from a reputable source and not something that's just going to be. Just say you could take this pill and you're going to live to be 200 and you don't have to do anything because we want longevity, but we want our years to be good years and not years stuck with living in a bed the rest of your life.
[00:14:35] Aneta: Well, I mean, we don't have to go very far than even prescriptions for Ozempic from doctors.
[00:14:42] Tracy: And go to a great doctor now. My previous doctor retired and I've been with him the whole time I've had diabetes, but he retired about 10 years ago and I have a new doctor that thinks exactly like I do to the point now where she's asking me for research. She'll say, okay, I've got a patient with this. What are the options that you are seeing in your research if you'd share with me.
So I'm giving her ideas and that's what I love. It's because we're making the pharmaceutical companies extremely wealthy which I'm not complaining. It's keeping me alive without my insulin. I would die. I would die within a few hours but there's times that we don't need medication.
We can do things holistically by eating, sometimes taking supplements by exercising, which all goes back to my 3M formula, which is mind, you got to have the right mindset to realize you can take control of your health. Mouth, we have to learn to eat, to live and not live to eat. And move, we just have to get out of our chairs and move more.
And again, I've always been an athlete even before my diagnosis. And I do something every single day of my life. Exercise wise, it may be yoga. It may be riding my bicycle. It may be walking. It may be backpacking. It may be hiking because when you realize the importance of keeping our bodies moving and not just sitting on our chair and watching TV or sitting at the desk.
I even have a standing desk as you can see, because I'm such a proponent of moving our bodies. So they don't rust. I mean, rest is that real scientific term.
[00:16:18] Aneta: Well, I mean, it's worked for you, not only are you healthy and vibrant and have full energy, but you completed a 3,527 mile bike ride from San Francisco to New York city. Tell me a little bit about what sparked the inspiration to do it and what was that experience like for you?
[00:16:38] Tracy: Eleanor Roosevelt do something every day that frightens you. It's kind of been my motto in the last 20 or 30 years. And I started thinking about, I need to celebrate more. And so I am thriving. I have no complications that were guaranteed. So I thought. I'm going to go across the country. I'm just going to go for a bike ride.
I've been a long distance bicyclist for decades, not that long of a distance, but I've done 100 mile bike rides and those kind of things. My husband and I started talking and we got our kids involved. And then my daughter was like, you need to go bridge to bridge.
So I started at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and then I ended at the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and then finished up on the Dr. Oz show. But it's because I just wanted to do something for, I thought, I was doing it to celebrate and feel good about myself. And quickly I started realizing, no, Tracy, this is nothing about you.
It's to provide hope for other people. And I met so many incredible people and people always ask me, where was your favorite town? What's your favorite people? What's your favorite experience? But I have to share a story. I was in Sacramento, and I was waiting for the light to turn green. And at the corner of my eye, I saw a young lady and I had that gut feeling to go talk to her.
So I just walked over and I just said, how are you doing? And she said, well, I'm waiting for my brother. I'm so embarrassed. And I said, oh, okay. And she said, I can't walk home and it's a block away, or half a block away or whatever it was four or five houses away. And she was sweet, probably in her mid thirties, young thirties, I don't know.
But she was extremely overweight. And I started kind of making some recommendations, health coach, you know what that's like, you want to give people hope. And so I started giving her some ideas and everything she said was, I can't.
And I thought come on, Tracy, find something. So I said, could you walk to your, into your driveway? And just for a split second, she said, I think I can. And I said, okay, that's what it took. So then I gave her some strategies, walked you into your driveway, rest, and then walk back and then start repeating it. Small steps equals big changes.
By the time I was in New Jersey, riding into New York city, I got a message from her and she said, so excited. I just signed up for my first 5k walk.
That's 3.1 miles. She could even walk four or five houses to her own house. She said, I didn't even realize, you never even told me I'd be losing weight. I have more energy. She said, my life has just transformed. And I thought transformation without application is not good.
So you got to have the application, but she wanted to do it. We all need our why. Her why was she didn't want to put her family members out any longer. So she was just trying to do simple things. So when people struggle, I say, hey, it's not like you have to ride your bicycle across the United States.
It's just doing something simple every single day. And I met people, I had a flat tire in Nevada and I was on the loneliest highway in the United States. And it really was lonely. And I was just getting ready to change it. And this couple just pulled up out of their van and they're great because they're both bicyclists. They had their bikes with them and not only did he change my tire, she got me some food, which was so kind, and then gave me extra parts so I could finish up the ride.
I met people in Wyoming climbing up those horribly high hills because I'm a Texan and where I live in Texas, it's flat. I mean, it's totally flat. And so, people would be honking their horns and yelling out the window saying, you've got this, you can do it, you can do it. And so, so much of that was just along the route.
I mean, I was really nervous when I left San Francisco because I was afraid of Chicago and New York city, because even though I've ridden, thousands of miles on my bicycle. I've never ridden in that kind of congested area. And I kept thinking, because that was a big concern of mine. And I thought, let's just see when we get there.
By the time I rolled my bike into Chicago, I was like, this was so easy. And the same thing with New York city. So I kind of let my mind start having that game with me saying, it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard. And that's what another struggle I had was thinking, no, Tracy, next time you do this or next time you do something epic like this, don't think of what could happen.
Keep your eye on the prize. And when I would get discouraged, I would watch the Brooklyn bridge out of the corner of my eye saying, I'm going to get there. And it was the most incredible experience of my life. I highly recommend if you have a dream or a goal, anybody that you can do it, make it something that you want to do.
But the third or fourth day on my ride, I received a message from a mom that a social media message. And she said, I just want to let you know that my daughter and I are following your ride. And she's six years old and she's, lived with type one, the same kind of diabetes I have for now, two years.
So she was diagnosed at four and she's already wanting to give up hope. And she said, but what I did was I went out and bought a map of the United States and she cut out a bicycle and cut a picture of your head. And she is now moving that bicycle all the way on your ride. So when things got tough, those Mountains were so hard. Killer Hill, which there's a reason why it's called Killer Hill, because it's tough.
And, I kept visualizing that young lady on my mind, that little six year old girl being on the back of my bicycle, thinking I can do this because that little girl's looking for me, some help. And, when I was diagnosed, I had one person I knew who had diabetes and that was Mary Tyler Moore. And she was an extremely famous actress.
And I'd always say I'd visualize her throwing her hat up in the air. Like she did at the beginning of her TV show. And I would say, if she can do it, so can I. And so I started kind of visualizing, okay, maybe I can help more people. And not just about diabetes. Because what was so weird, what I thought was strange was people would stop me when I was stopping in towns or rest areas and they'd come over and start talking to me because, it's not unusual that the route I took that people do trans con rides.
But what was different about me was I went the opposite direction. What most people do because I fought the headwinds versus taking East to West and. It was very interesting because everybody kept saying, this is really an interesting route. And I said I always choose to go different than everybody else, but it would just come by and hand me money or give me water. Lady in Nebraska, who is blocking traffic, she was a construction worker, and I'm waiting.
I'm very 1st before all the cars. And she said, I'm going let you go. I'm going to slow down the traffic to get you going. Because in construction, it's hard enough driving a vehicle, but in a bicycle, it's really hard. And then she looked at her cooler and she opened it up and she got her very last water bottle out.
And she gave it to me and I said, no, you need it. And she said, nope, you got to keep going. And if I can help in this small way, that is success for me. And I thought that's the kind of thing when I left texas, I was feeling like hopeless because so many people were saying everything was bad in the world.
And now it's like, no, everybody I met, I didn't meet one person that scared me or I was negative. And I rode through some really tough times, some bad times, some highways interstates that could have been disastrous, but people were watching out for me and it was a great experience.
[00:24:08] Aneta: How long did the ride take? How many weeks? Months?
[00:24:12] Tracy: I could have done six weeks easily, but I did a documentary and I wrote another book. And so I was taking time every night thinking through things and everything. And then I did a lot of speaking and a lot of TV appearances. I'd already been on TV before with the release of my first book. And so I'd already had connections with people at different TV stations.
And so then I was going kind of different wacky ways so I could get on their TV shows and stuff. And then I got into Chicago and got the message from Dr. Oz's producers and that really slowed things down because they wanted me to finish live on their show. And so I had to slow things down because of their taping schedules,
[00:24:52] Aneta: Okay. So how long total then?
[00:24:55] Tracy: Three months,
[00:24:56] Aneta: Three months. That's wonderful. And I was going to ask that question is like, did you use the time to actually, because you're alone. I know you met people and you were talking to people, but you are alone with your thoughts and stuff. So did you write another book on this journey?
[00:25:10] Tracy: Yes, I compiled a lot of notes, but I didn't write until I got back. But what was interesting, people always ask me, what did you listen to? Because I love to listen to music. I love to listen to books on, audio or audible, you know, I love that kind of stuff. But I chose this trip.
First, I chose it for security so I could hear things around me, but then I started really enjoying getting into my own thoughts, like you were saying. So I never listened to anything. Sometimes I would sing, I didn't have anything in my earbuds, just so my ears, so I could just make sure I was checking everything around me and hearing the noises around.
And so It was a good self reflection for me because, we're all so busy and I had a goal. I know I left San Francisco, Colgate Bridge, I knew what the end goal was. And so all I had to do was take time for myself every day. I took rest days when I knew my body was tired, I'd be like, nope, it's time for me to stop and rest.
And so I did that and it worked out perfect. I couldn't have planned this trip any better, even if I had to try it. Because I didn't know what was going on. I was lost so much of the time. That was probably my kid's biggest concern was how did I get there? I knew I had to go East, but I'm challenged in that directional side.
And I got lost a lot, but I always told myself I was lost, but I'd always meet people that I would need to talk to, or need encouragement or just some ideas or health tips or whatever it was. So every day was a unique challenge. Most of the days it wasn't what I was expecting, but it turned out to be an incredible experience.
And I'm planning something again. I just haven't decided exactly. I haven't detailed it enough yet to make the public announcement.
[00:26:49] Aneta: I can't wait to hear what it is. Did you set out with specific goals of how many miles you wanted to bike each day? Did you sort of have a threshold of like, I'd like to get at least this many miles or maximum?
[00:27:01] Tracy: I did at first, and then I realized this is not what's good for your body, Tracy, because my kids actually made me sign a covenant that I would stop if something were to happen to me. And I felt really tired or injured or something, or my blood sugar problems, because those happened a lot along the way also, obviously.
But what was different was I started listening to my body more. And then once I got into the mountains, that really slowed me down for a while. And then Wyoming, every 76 miles, you stop because that's where the next rest stop is. So I would ride 76 miles on interstate 80 and then I'd stop at the next rest stop.
But the great news in Nevada and Wyoming and parts of Nebraska, not in Iowa. Yeah, just those three States. I think I was actually able to stay in rest stops. And that was really nice. I had people all up and down the country saying, hey, if you're running through this side of this area, you can stay at our house.
You can do laundry. I mean, really nice people. It's just amazing when you turn off the negativity about how bad people are and you start really seeing it again with your own eyes. It's like, no,
[00:28:09] Aneta: Well, I think people get excited when someone has a mission, a drive, something that they can get behind and it is infectious. The energy is so exciting and it's so infectious. And how old were you when you did that bike ride?
[00:28:23] Tracy: That's 57.
[00:28:24] Aneta: 57. Okay. And you said now you're
around six,
[00:28:27] Tracy: years ago.
[00:28:28] Aneta: Almost seven years ago. So you're thinking about doing something again?
[00:28:33] Tracy: Yes. I'm not exactly sure what yet, but I actually planned a trip, a bike ride from Seattle area and finishing in Florida. That was what my plan was. And that was going to happen the summer of 2020. Well, we all know what happened in 2020. so I didn't do that then. So now that the country's kind of opened up again, I'm just trying to figure out what my next move is, but I'll let you know what's going to be.
[00:28:57] Aneta: Let me know
[00:28:58] Tracy: we're, We're getting close to a decision. That's for sure.
[00:29:01] Aneta: So if we have folks that are listening and maybe they're like, you know what, I really would like to start making some changes my own life to live longer, to live more vibrantly, to have more longevity and enjoy life. What are some tips that you have, Tracy, that maybe you can share?
[00:29:15] Tracy: Again, don't forget the 3M formula. If you hear nothing else today, mind, you have to have the right mindset. It all starts with the mind. And mouth, again, learn to eat to live, don't live to eat. And move, just make simple strides. Get out of the chair, get off the couch. Maybe instead of binge watching a TV show, maybe get up and go for a walk first, simple things like that.
And the most important thing is sleep. We all need sleep. That's when our body really, especially our brains, really can rejuvenate and get back to where it should be. Get all the stuff out of the thoughts and all that. People worry about REM sleep. How much sleep do I need? Go to bed, sleep as long as you can. And then get up and make it dark. Make it cool.
Don't drink a whole lot of water. If you have to get up in the middle of the night, that's going to defeat the purpose, but turn off the TVs, turn off the screens, turn off everything, you know, everybody says an hour, I say, if you can, if the weather's okay, sit outside for a few minutes, if it's dark, that's great.
And then you can just enjoy the sky. Even if there's light pollution or just sit and go for a walk. Just a easy walk. Don't do anything aerobic or anything, but you got to get some sleep and then give up the sugar. I just met somebody the other day who he's lost 40 pounds and all he did was give up sugar because sugar is causing so much havoc.
People think, well, I don't have diabetes. I don't need to worry about sugar, but sugar is, it's going to kill you. I mean, eventually, because there's so many correlations between cancers, certain cancers now. Even cholesterol, even triglycerides, things like that. Eat whole foods, choose whole foods.
But also get rid of the stress. And I'm being transparent here. That is my number 1 problem is stress. So what I do is I ground. I ground in the morning and that's all I do is take my shoes off and I walk. I walk outside and I meditate.
We had massive storms yesterday, so I didn't get outside, but I meditate. I'm a firm believer in meditating because if not, then I may get stressed. And then just take time and be proud of yourself. I love listening to inspirational things. I'll listen to all sorts of music in the morning.
Every morning I read something inspirational because if I don't, then I'm going to start getting in that downhill spiral of, negative Nelly. And I don't want to be that person. So just simple things. And I'm not saying spend an hour meditating. I used to be afraid to meditate because I'd say, I can't do it right. I'm just going to stop.
No, take a few minutes. Just sit and relax. Don't think about anything when your thoughts come in, because they will then just say, okay, I'm okay. I'm going to keep going. I used to beat myself up because I'm recovering perfectionist, but don't beat yourself up and just say, okay, that was great.
And then try it again. And it's going to get easier. Because I was a world's worst, but those few things, mind, mouth, move. Sleep, get rid of sugar, and also reduce stress. I mean, it's really not that hard. Choose whole foods versus stuff you buy in the grocery store in boxes. If our grandparents, great grandparents, don't know the ingredients that's on the boxes, stay away from it, because our grandparents, great grandparents, our parents, we grew up, I grew up, eating much healthier than the average people do today.
[00:32:44] Aneta: Absolutely. Yeah. With all the advancements, there are still more products on the market and people get really confused, but I love getting back to the basics and talking about all those things. Tracy, so if folks are interested in reading your books or learning more about the programs that you have, what is the best way for them to find you?
[00:33:01] Tracy: My website's the best Tracy Herbert dot com. TRACYHERBERT.Com. But also, you can go to the bottom of the home page. There's a three and a half minute clip of just, this is my bicycle ride across the country. Everybody loves that. So just for three and a half minutes, you can watch the whole thing and enjoy the pedals with me or in the seat with me.
I offer free resources because yes, I do it as a profession, but my goal is really to help other people to take control. Because I don't want anybody lying in a hospital bed without hope. That's why I'm so such a strong believer in hope. Until we have our last breath, we can make changes.
Can I share a quick story? Research, there were only 10 people in the research. So obviously it's not a big group of people, but 10 people in a nursing home, ages 90 and over, they were all bedridden. 90 and over all bedridden 10 people.
They brought in some people just to start teaching them some training. I mean, in bed, like lifting weights, doing leg lifts and stuff like that, simple things that they could do, not what the books say to do, but what they could do. By the end of the three month study, they were not only seven of them were going to the nursing home dining hall by themselves walking.
So isolation is horrible, especially as we age. And then two more just, they were able to go down. They just had to take a walker or a wheelchair. That's incredible too, because they were able to get out. Only one person out of the 10 was still bedridden. And those odds are pretty good.
And those are the kind of things I tell people, because I hear people all the time in my age, and it's like, well, I'm too old to do it. And I'm like, no, you're not. I even hear younger people in their forties and fifties saying, well, I can't do that. Again, just like the lady in Sacramento, start small.
[00:34:54] Aneta: That's right. Great advice. What an inspiring story. Tracy, thank you so much. And I ask a final question of all my guests tied to the title of the podcast. What does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:35:07] Tracy: You got to stay focused on what you want and don't worry about the beginning or the end. Don't worry about yesterday. Don't worry about tomorrow. Think about what you can do right now to increase the width of your life.
[00:35:19] Aneta: So good. Such great advice. Tracy thank you continued success to you. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom and inspiration with the world. And I can't wait to hear what your next adventure is going to be.
[00:35:32] Tracy: I'll keep you posted.
[00:35:33] Aneta: All right. Sounds good. Thank you.
[00:35:35] Tracy: Thank you.
[00:35:36] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.