RESOURCES
- Visit Ariana’s website “Lunafit” lunafit.com
- Get the Lunafit App lunafitapp.com
- Get the Freebie “Health Made Easy: 5 Simple Moves To Jumpstart Your Journey” lunafitjourney.com
- Visit Lunafit on Instagram
- Follow Ariana on Instagram
- Follow Lunafit on Facebook
- Follow Ariana on Facebook
- Subscribe to Lunafit on YouTube
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- Listen to this episode on iTunes
TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 Intro Snip
00:00:39 Introduction Ariana Hakman from lunafit
00:01:45 What does your typical client look like?
00:02:36 What is the typical goal of your clients?
00:04:25 How sedentary is the population and why?
00:06:40 How does lunafit differ from a typical big box gym?
00:08:31 How do people figure out the real reason they are there?
00:09:49 How is it that someone knew goes to your gym, doesn’t know anyone, but ends up making so many friends?
00:11:29 What are some of the unusual pieces of equipment in your gym that they typically don’t use in other gyms but become part of their regular routine?
00:14:30 Why do so many people only do strength training and body building and neglect agility, flexibility, and endurance?
00:16:20 How do you incorporate competition in the gym?
00:18:50 How does the app help people that don’t have access to the gym?
00:22:06 Why Dr. Haley and Michelle Haley make yoga videos for youtube in 2020?
00:23:10 What made Ariana and Rich realize their Lunafit customers were in such exceptional condition?
00:24:44 Dr. Haley explains that their are different diets for what you are trying to accomplish
00:25:32 Ariana explains who their ideal food customer is and what they are trying to accomplish
00:29:30 What area does your meal prep company serve?
00:31:32 Why do we need to avoid the chemicals in the food?
00:33:36 What are the supplements you manufacture at Lunafit?
00:34:40 What is special about your pre-workout formula?
00:35:30 What is “Moon Shred” and how does it help you burn fat while improving sleep?
00:37:41 What are the obstacles that prevent someone from starting a fitness routine?
00:39:57 What are the five simple habits for people to start working on to get fit?
00:43:47 How many days per week do you recommend someone lift weights?
00:46:05 What is special about weight training as a form of exercise?
00:48:24 What do you see coming in the future in the world of fitness?
00:50:26 How do you see people going backwards to improve their health
00:51:05 How do people get “5 simple moves to jumpstart your journey”?
00:52:56 What advice do you have for peope that need to commit to a fitness routine?
TRANSCRIPT
it’s like a human nature thing where we feel like we have to start things on a certain day, and if we don’t, we have to wait till the next perfect day.
But there’s no perfect day. The perfect day is the day that you do it.
You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.
Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.
I’m Dr. Michael Haley, and you’re listening to the Dr. Haley Show podcast. In this episode, we’re going to discuss options for achieving health and fitness goals through some simplified solutions and meaningful connections. If your life is too busy to include getting healthy, we just might find a solution to your problem. Some of you have the time, but lack the motivation or have other obstacles.
Hopefully by the end of this podcast you will be inspired and have an action plan. Today’s guest Ariana. She is the founder and COO of Luna Fit, a cutting edge health and fitness brand that uses technology, nutrition, fitness and something that most programs lack. Community. Together with her husband Rich and a dedicated team, she’s built multiple businesses that work together, including a gym, a meal prep company, a supplement company, and an innovative app to help you achieve your goals.
Links to everything we talk about will be in the episode notes. Arianna, thank you for being on my show. We have a lot to talk about today. Who would you say this show is for? Who’s your typical client? What do they look like? Not only when they first get there, but even after being there for a period of time.
Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited. I’ve listened to many of your podcasts and I’m super excited to be on the show.
I think you talk about.
Great content, and I think it’s should be really helpful to a lot of people, so I’m hoping I can contribute to that today. We do end up with a target market based on people that are looking for us. So if you were to come into our gym, you would see a pretty middle aged population, spread out between men and women, more women than men.
But I think that’s just based on when people actually go to look,
our program is pretty much for anybody that’s looking to improve their body composition in any way they could be looking to gain muscle, lose weight, just tone up. I mean, we really do. We really do personalize things so we can pretty much cater to anybody.
Even injuries and things like that. And that’s pretty much the same in our mobile app as well. When you look at the fact that 50% of the US population is overweight.
You know, you got a pretty, a pretty big group.
Of people to work with.
You know, when you talk about just overweight. And I heard this on another podcast just last week, and I think they were saying something like, the average male, I forget the female stats. I’m a guy. So I that’s where I tuned in.
Of course.
They said something like 50 years ago, the average male weighed like 160 pounds. And now the average male weighs about 200. Now, I do think we’re getting naturally bigger as time passes too. And who knows? There’s something in the milk these days that’s making people big. But I’m at 250, almost. So I’m, you know, 100 pounds over, you know, just a handful of years ago.
We are definitely obese. And something else. I think this is interesting. My wife and I, we were watching a documentary from, like, you know, the 1920s. Okay. And the one thing that we noticed in this was there were no fat people on all of the movie clips from, like, the 1920s. It just didn’t exist.
Yeah. It’s, it’s crazy. I’ve,
seen articles like, with old beach pictures and how people looked on the beach then versus how people look now, and it is completely different. And I think it’s a lot to do with both lifestyle and kind of the systemic things that happen. Right. So I don’t think people used to sit as much as we do.
The average American sits seven hours a day. Even I fit into that category. Kind of moving out of the training and into more of the corporate side of running my businesses.
The average American eats more processed food than Whole foods.
And I just I think that we’ve lost
our desire and ability to always go out and move our bodies the way that people used to.
It is kind of the expectation. And then you look at how much money the food industry puts into marketing, you know, healthy foods that are completely the opposite of that, full.
Of sugars.
And unhealthy fats and all those things, and even move into portion sizes at a restaurant, right? Like no one should be eating that much. So I think there’s just so many things that have contributed to that exact, you know, thing that’s happened in our society. And you look at other countries, too, and it’s not it’s not the same.
It’s much more prevalent here for sure.
You know, if you consider what did they have to eat in the 1920s when those, movies were taken? Wasn’t packaged, processed food? I mean, maybe they had some, but nothing like we have today. Things that have been sitting on the shelf for months, even. Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, we actually had milk delivered to our door.
Now, eventually that got phased out and you would buy milk in the store, but it had at best like, one week life. And just barely beyond, you know, straight raw. And then they got to more pasteurization and hyper pasteurization. And if you buy a carton of milk now the date on it will be stamped like six weeks out.
They’ve essentially made everything last so long. And there’s a reason for that. The bugs won’t eat it because it’s not food and that’s why it lasts. Yeah.
It’s absolutely. Yeah. Which is.
Just.
It’s really gross when you think about it. None of our food is even fruits and vegetables and things like that. The nutrition content that we used to get, the way we farm things and how we do it today, it’s.
You know, it’s this huge, it’s this huge issue.
We are not living in the Garden of Eden, that’s for sure.
No, we’re definitely not.
Well, let’s talk about the gym first, because. Yeah, most people like, if I were to go find a gym, I would think I’m finding a building that has what people in it and they’re, you know, on machines that have stacks of weights where you set a pin and figure out how many, you know, weights you want to lift at a time, or there’s a free weights section, there’s some dumbbells and there’s benches and things like that.
And then maybe there’s a section where there’s some exercise bikes and there’s treadmills. But the space, the aisles are really the limited space between the machines. There’s really no floor space in a gym that I’m imagining. Yeah, but I know yours is quite different. And it may have some of the things I just described, but what’s very different about it?
Yeah, we do have all the things you described. So we can be classified as a real gym. But we do have a lot more floor space. We do a lot of
group fitness classes. We like to focus on that. We find that that’s where people get the most results that are looking to change their body composition.
But really, that’s not the hugest difference in our gym. I think the hugest difference is how people feel when they come in here. So we definitely built Luna Fit based on the community.
And a couple people have actually referred to us similar to Cheers, like the gym where everybody knows your name.
So when you walk in the door, whether.
You do classes or you do personal training, or you are just a gym member that comes in to work out and they just prefer our smaller, more personal environment, like we really do know everybody’s name. You know, we greet you when you come in, we’ll usually chat for a minute, see how you’re doing, how you’re progressing with your goals.
I think it’s just that we really care about the people that come in, and we want them to make progress and we want them to. We want what they want, you know, we want to help them get where they’re going and even figure out sometimes where they’re going.
Some people come in and they’re just like.
Okay, I know I need to be here, but I don’t know what I’m doing.
Or where I’m going or.
What I want, and just helping them figure that out. And it’s never it’s never the basics, right? Like everyone comes in and says, oh, I want to lose weight. A majority of the population, that’s what they’re looking to do. But it’s not really about that. It’s usually about, I want to be able to get on the floor with my grandkids, or I want to be able to fit in these, you know, amazing jeans that I bought, or I want to.
Outlive.
My parents. You know, there’s stuff in my family that, I’m predisposed to and I want to fight that, or I don’t want to have to go to the doctor. So, I mean, I think it’s always something much deeper than I want to lose weight.
And much deeper than I want to bench press 315 pounds or whatever the case. Yeah. Yeah, I do have a gym membership, and it is more of the typical gym that people would have a mindset. So when I go in the mornings, I do happen to know someone there, but I already knew them before I went to the gym.
And it just so happens he’s an early riser. So if I go at 5 a.m., he’s already there. And so I know one person in the gym. I haven’t met any friends in the gym. I don’t look forward to meeting people there. It’s not that kind of place.
Right?
You said you know everybody’s name when they’ve been a member for a month. How many other names do they know?
A lot. And I think that some of it is just naturally that they’re in a friendly environment, so they feel comfortable to be friendlier to people around them. We create a, an environment where people want to cheer each other on and motivate each other. And, but we’ve actually had people legitimately become friends, like they’ll hang out outside.
Of the.
Gym, they’ll do things together. So I think, I think the problem with the big box gyms is when you go in, you say hi to someone at the front, and then you go in and you do your workout and usually have your headphones in and you’re just not set up to meet people. It’s just not everyone has their own.
Phones and.
Yes, everybody has their headphones in. So I think it makes it a lot harder to be friendly. You have to be.
Really outgoing to walk up to.
Someone with earphones in, or a guy that’s hitting on a girl.
Right? That’s those are the two setups in the gym where people are actually friendly. Where that.
Happens. But, you know, the environment that we create, where it really is a friendly, open environment, people come in to talk to each other and have fun and get that motivation and, you know, have that workout buddy.
it’s a completely different feel. And it’s something that we’ve worked very hard to create and maintain.
Yeah, I think also the kinds of exercises people are doing in some of that open space, is more community oriented or people may not be familiar with it, and they see someone doing something and it’s kind of like, well, why are you doing that? And should I do that too? And how do you do it? Well, I would imagine you probably train your new members.
Yeah.
For sure. Things. Yeah. What are some of the unusual pieces of equipment that someone might find that maybe they’ve been to other gyms, but they’ve never used that kind of equipment. They never realized they had a need for it. But now every time they come, or at least once a week, they’re using it.
I think we have a lot of kind of, I guess you’d call peculiar. And you see it in gyms, but a lot of people don’t know how to use it. We have the Bosu balls.
They’re like, flat on one side, and they have that big rounded blue top. It’s usually blue. I don’t know why that’s their color.
I guess the blue top. We use those a lot for stability and balance training and just different things. We use them in our classes. We have a landmine. That’s, it’s like a big metal, plate that goes on the floor and you’re able to put a bar in it. You can do tons of exercises with that, both upper body and lower body.
Sleds. People are usually scared of sleds.
So we do stuff with sleds.
And, things like that. We have big tires out back, all different sizes, so we can teach people how to flip tires because that’s more of like a cool factor that people just.
Want to know how to do that safely. So, when.
You say out back, you mean outdoors?
Outdoors. Yeah. We have actually a pretty big area behind our, our gym that has, it’s turf in, and you can do a lot of fun stuff out there. So we like to have fun. We like to let people do different things. I think the gym can get exercising in general. And I feel this I’ve been working out for 25 years.
It can just it can get really boring.
Like it really can. It’s just, you know, sometimes it.
Can be a grind and there’s different seasons. Right? But just to be able to mix in something different, we even have like the sledgehammers where you can hit the tires. And it’s not like we’re doing that every class or every workout, but just to mix it in once in a while, and let people do something fun that’s different.
Once an hour we’ll mix in boxing. We have boxing gloves and a couple of bags. So just keeping up that variety, I think, is I think it’s meaningful for people, and it gives them a lot more than what they would do if they went in and worked out on their own.
I think variety is definitely important for a lot of reasons. I’m getting strength training at the gym and there’s some benefit in that.
Absolutely.
Hormonal benefit and, you know, strength training builds muscle. And as you’re
building more dense mass, your metabolism improves.
Yeah, you get to eat more you.
Start burning more fat Yes. But, the blue balls that you’re standing on for balance and coordination, where you’re getting some agility training, some real life things that you can use down the road, you know? Yeah, I want to be able to pick up my grandkids without falling over. Okay. Yeah. Let’s make sure you’re doing your agility and your balance training.
There’s probably I would imagine we haven’t talked about this. I would imagine you incorporate some flexibility training in there, some somewhere along the lines, there’s fat burning. yes, absolutely, there’s cardiovascular training. There’s more areas of exercise than just lifting weight. I think we kind of got stuck in this mindset of gyms are for like Arnold Schwarzenegger kind of people.
We’re just going to we want to make sure we look like him someday. And it’s not real life. It’s just not real.
Yeah. No. And I think like, you know, there’s a the big movement towards functional training, which is basically exactly what you’re talking about. It’s literally doing movements to build strength and mobility around things that we do in our daily life. So mixing in that functional training is meaningful. You know, as one of my, personal training clients, she was older, I think she’s in her 60s.
And, you know, she had gone to the doctor and she came in and she’s like, guess what? And I was like, what? She’s like, my doctor was so impressed with me because I got up out of the chair without using the handles. She’s like, I just.
Stood up.
And the doctor actually said something to her like, wow, that’s impressive that you can do that. And that’s amazing. I’m so glad she was so happy. I’m so glad that her working with me got her there, but that should not be impressive. Everybody should be able to get up out of a chair without pushing on the handrails, you know, because that’s meaningful in life.
Once you can’t get up anymore, that’s really where things start to decline at a certain age. So just things like that, that you can mix in, you know, that you.
Should be able to get off the ground without using.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
So I mean that was those kind of moments are really eye opening when you’re training people and you realize that you know, it, it is meaningful in real life.
Yeah. You know, I am getting older, but I still love competition and at any level. And it’s one of those things that kind of excites me and makes me want to have fun, whether it’s playing pickleball or whatever. You know, we all love to compete. Yeah. How do you incorporate competition into the gym?
We’ve done a lot of different things. We’ve done like, sometimes we have people compete against themselves. Right. So they’re improving. So we’ll do like big body movements like squats and chest press and different things like that. And we’ll show over time, like how they’ve improved. So you know what your PR is and things like that.
We have done tons of weight loss challenges. And, you know, we do it by body fat, not by weight, so that it makes sense for everybody. Everybody can lose body fat that has weight to lose. And it’s a much more fair, a fair, measurement. Right now we’re actually doing a training in our gym for a,
We’re going to.
Call it the Luna Fit Games, and we’re going to do different movements and we’re going to tie in everybody. We’ve actually done Luna Fit games in the past. Several times. We formed.
Teams of the coaches, and.
Then they compete against each other with teams and things, like farmer’s carries and rope lines and just, you know, you name it, how many set up so you can do them in a minute. So we try to do little challenges and competitions like that throughout the year because people do love to compete. It’s true.
it’s just fun.
And it I think it helps with the community feel that we that we always try to work on.
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Now you’re located in Orlando and for someone that’s not near there, what options do they have?
Yeah. So, I think what kind of spurred us on towards our app is exactly that question. And I think it kind of opened our eyes during C…d
Obviously all gyms got shut down. We are in Florida, so we got to only be shut down for a few months because it’s pretty relaxed here.
Overall, I think there’s lots of memes about us.
But when we got shut down, when we had to get creative,
so we took all of our classes online to our Facebook group, and we would stream 4 or 5 classes a day. We rented out our fitness equipment to our members so they would still have dumbbells and things like that at home.
And we did all of our nutrition and accountability coaching, you know, through text or zoom calls if they needed it, whatever they needed, we pretty much did.
And we were able to maintain a lot of our members that way. But it was also eye opening to, you know, we have a huge passion for helping people transform their health and fitness. You know, that’s why we started this. And that’s why we keep going. And so it was just kind of an moment of, man, we could build a mobile app, which is becoming so popular and we could reach so many more people, but we can do it in the Luna fit way.
So, you know, when we started the app, it was really important to us that we had a very holistic,
view of someone’s health, first of all. So it wasn’t just a fitness app or just a step tracking app. It was, you know, multifaceted and covered everything that we thought was really important to transform someone’s health, you know, nutrition.
And then we also added the coaching aspect. So my husband and I are both, avatar coaches in there. But in that experience, we’re actually coaching you. So we pay attention to what you log for your food. There’s a lot of AI
aspects in it. So if you haven’t logged anything and you go to do a workout, your coach is going to pop up and be like, hey, you know, how are you going to have any, you know, strength to do this if you haven’t eaten yet today, do you need to log your food or do you need to go grab a snack?
And just different things like that where we’re actually coaching you, how we would coach one of our training clients in the gym. So that’s been really exciting. And we’re actually beta testing right now. So
we’re getting ready to launch.
To the.
Masses. And it’s just it’s really exciting that we can give those options to people outside of, the Orlando area.
That is exciting. I love what you said about the changes that you made during lockdowns, even to the point of renting out equipment. Wow. outside of the box. That is awesome.
Yeah, we.
You know, I contribute a lot of that to my husband. He’s very out of the box thinker, very creative. I think we create a good balance because my background is actually in accounting and finance. So I have more of that, organized strategic.
Process.
Of getting things on execution. And he’s so great at thinking about those things. So he has these great ideas and then I’m able to execute them. And I think we, we take care of our people really well like that. And we’re both very caring about, you know, the people around us. So but yeah, that was very out of the box and it just worked so well.
Everyone was so happy. And they, they were able to maintain, because having weight and equipment is actually very important.
Yeah, I know for me, well, we didn’t miss a single day of work. We literally stayed completely open. I’m mostly e-commerce, shipping all over the world. I did get C…d
and out of respect for the other people at the office, stayed home for a few days. Yeah. And then we were, you know, back full strength again. But my wife, who also works with me in Haleynutrition.com, is yoga teacher and yoga got shut down.
All the gyms were closed. So we were in the backyard, creating YouTube full hour long classes every day. So she has probably, you know, 60 or more full yoga sessions, completely different, on YouTube now from that. And it was just one of those things where, you know, let’s just keep rolling and keep things yeah, moving along.
It was awesome, I love that.
Yeah. It’s the very much that like, let’s do it, you know, attitude.
Yeah. Super funny saying that.
So our style in the gym for classes is we call it large group training. So when we’re coaching a class or one of our coaches is coaching, they’re not, like you would see in some gyms where the coaches up front actually doing the workout and you just follow them, we think it’s much more important to demonstrate the exercise and then be watching and correcting people’s form and coaching in a motivating and adjusting weights.
And so I don’t really do.
Full classes most of the time now. I don’t really ever.
But back then, like it was very rare, I would do a full class.
Because I would.
Be coaching the class. So my husband and I are in the backyard coaching classes, having to do full classes on camera, and we were dying. We would take turns to walk off camera and like catch our breath and like we would end the class and we’d be like, our members are animals. Like, what’s wrong with these people? How do they come in and do this every day?
That is great. I love the transparency.
Oh, it was so funny. And we’re not out of shape people, obviously, but it was really comical that we were just like, we’ve created monsters. Like they were just you see them on camera, they’re doing it. They’re fine, you know, they’re sweating, but they’re, you know, breathing fine and having a great time. And we’re dying. It was it was a really honest, funny moment.
Yeah. That is great. I love it. Let’s talk about food.
Yeah I love to talk about food one of my favorite topics.
I got this disclaimer though. I gotta put it out there.
Okay, I’m ready.
Because I have a unique audience and some of them, a lot of them, either at one time or currently are fighting a horrible condition. Yeah, and they might have certain immune challenges. And when it comes to this discussion, plant food is medicine. And some people might be doing only plant foods. Yeah, because that’s what they need at this point in time.
Yes. Other people really thrive on animal foods and that’s their emphasis. So we recognize when it comes to nutrition when it comes to a diet plan that it’s very specific for that person’s needs and what they’re trying to accomplish.
Absolutely.
So with that said tell us about your meal prep company and what your focus is and who you’re trying to cater to in that space.
Yeah.
So meal prep.
All of our businesses actually have really come from.
Customers.
Expressing their wants or needs or our frustrations and trying to get.
Customers to do things because we know it will help.
Them and improve their journey and get them where they want to be. So, we have a very large focus in Luna fit. That’s another thing that makes it different on nutrition. No matter who you are or what you’re trying to do, any changes in body composition is 70 to 80% nutrition. You know, the phrases that abs are made in the kitchen and you cannot work a bad diet are all true.
And it’s actually to easier to maintain your health and fitness through nutrition than it is through working out both as, like the power couple. Right. Like that’s what you want. So we would continually be telling our people, you’ve got to meal prep. You have to be prepared if you, you know, get to a point and you don’t have food, you’re going to grab what’s quick and easy.
And those foods are never going to be the right foods. But it’s hard for people. Meal prep I don’t even like meal prepping. It’s very time consuming. It typically takes away your free time, you know, on your weekends.
And it gets very boring.
If you if you.
Aren’t a cook or you don’t know what you’re doing.
So eventually we, we just.
Telling them to meal prep so many times and they weren’t doing it. And I looked in the market for options that I would approve of from a macro basis, which is, you know, proteins, carbs and fats. And I just wasn’t thrilled with anything that I found. And so we were like, you know what?
let’s start our own meal prep company.
So we have and it helped a lot of our clients. We’ve had some huge transformations in the gym from it. We do focus on high protein. Definitely. I completely agree with you that
everyone’s on a different place and with what they need for nutrition. But the easiest way to change body composition, especially losing body fat, is high protein, moderate carb, low fat.
And that’s.
It just is what it is. That just is what it is.
But you can also do it many other ways. It just might be a little bit slower. You know, or, you know, whatever your body needs to stay healthy and not have inflammation is also, you know, key, especially with autoimmune things. So, we do basically fresh cooked meals once a week. We cook everything from scratch.
I think the only frozen thing we have used in the past, however many years is maybe some corn, some frozen corn. So and we make a big variety of meals, all lean proteins, a lot of ground turkey, ground beef, chicken. We definitely have always have some vegetarian options on the menu. Sometimes at different points, vegan options, depending on what we’re making seasonally and what our chef specials are.
And we just really want to help people have healthy, ready to go meals. Without all of the preservatives and extra fats and extra sodium that you get from takeout or,
some of the other, companies and things like that. So it’s food is my favorite part of health and fitness. So it’s definitely a passion project of mine to get people to eat healthier in general.
Yeah, I love eating well. It’s definitely time consuming.
Yes. So time consuming. My husband jokes that I started. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Well, tell me your husband jokes. What?
My husband jokes that I started the meal prep company so that I wouldn’t have to meal prep for us.
Anymore, because it is so time consuming.
Well, you are the one that, you know, does the books and all that stuff and figures all the things out. So that could be one of them. He might have a point. There.
Yeah.
How big of an area are you?
You might be.
Serving the food area?
Yeah. So we are actually are able to deliver right now up to a 50 mile radius. So I joke that in Florida that’s all the way out to the fishes in the sea. So we can basically serve the entire Central Florida area, basically. And I think in about the next, I’m going to say six months to be safe.
I like to under-promise overdeliver. We are trying to expand that out to 100 mile radius. So you could almost cover the whole state of Florida at that point. Then you see how that goes. And you grow from there. I’ve learned in business that sometimes small steps and testing it out, making sure you can fulfill it is the best way to go about it.
For sure. For sure. And it’s going to be your easiest business closer to home, so may as well develop it there first and then decide how far you can expand. It makes.
Sense. Yes.
Is that same day prep then meaning what you prep today is meant to be consumed today.
We actually have a 5 to 7 day, shelf life. So we actually do a either a one or a two day cook, depending on our volume that week. And people usually pick up or get their meals delivered on Monday and then they’re good for the week. And then we repeat that cycle. Most of our meals can also be frozen.
So a lot of people will keep out what they’re going to eat for the next 3 to 4 days, depending on their level of comfort with left leftovers or food that they have to heat in the microwave and they’ll freeze the rest and then eat those for the rest of the week. So we recommend that people order their meals for the entire week, and then consume those as, as they go so that they have food, because we also want to keep people from, you know, eating our healthy food on the week and then skipping weekends and eating out and ruining all the progress that they’ve made during the week.
So it’s consistency is so important. Not saying you can’t eat out, eat out, you know, probably at least once or twice a week. But just being very consistent in what we do is always the best way to make progress.
Yeah, it is definitely hard to eat out because you don’t know what you’re getting in most places. Yes, I especially.
With oils and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, we’re very, very picky about the foods. Mostly trying to avoid the chemicals, the preservatives, for instance. The things that are not meant to be consumed. They put it in the food to make the food last longer. Yep. And when the food can sit on a shelf for months and months, it is not food. I’ve said it many times.
I’ll yes, continue to remind people drive at home. If they won’t eat it, you shouldn’t eat it either.
It’s so.
True. Yes, absolutely. Because my, my.
You’re feeding your microbiome, you’re feeding bacteria and.
Bacteria.
Kinds of things that are living inside you. They have to eat that. And if it has chemicals in it, they kill them. That’s not good.
No it’s not.
Yeah. My chef actually came from another meal prep company, that we will not name, but, she literally did. No cooking there. It was all stuff that was previously frozen or was had a long shelf life, and they would just package it and then resell it as healthy, clean meals. And I’m like, that’s just mind blowing to me.
It’s and I just I was like, no, we’re not doing any of that. I can’t. And that’s one of the expansion problems, right? Because they’re a huge company that are, you know, across multiple regions. So really being able to figure out how to grow and keep our quality and not turn into that is something that’s super important to me, because I just can’t do that because I wouldn’t want to eat it.
So, I mean, I can’t ask anyone else to eat it.
Yeah, I could see that definitely being a challenge.
And yes.
contradicting the goal is contradicting the goals. No.
Yes, exactly.
Okay. So I feel like I’m missing something. We’ve got the gym, you’ve got the app. We’ve got the food supplements. Tell me about supplements. And when it comes to supplements there’s different kinds. There’s you know.
Absolutely.
Nutrient dense from food and there’s these bottles of isolated vitamins and things like that. What do you have?
We do. We have a very small line of fitness supplements. So we were keeping it to our market. Most of what we sell is
in our fitness center. And then, you know, in the app, we also have the supplements,
and the meals as well for people that are local. But we, we kept it simple.
We wanted to start small. We were just kind of exploring,
the market again, something that our customers were asking for because supplements have a very big trust factor attached to them. People are scared of supplements if they don’t know who made them or what they are, what’s in them? Are they clean? And so we decided to keep it simple, though.
We have a protein. Whey protein, clean. There’s not a ton of extra stuff in it.
Only what you.
Need. It’s got 25g for serving. We have a pre-workout.
It’s very big in the in the fitness world to take a pre-workout, but something that was important to us is to also make these products more meaningful than what they are at their bases. So our pre-workout has, your daily allotment of creatine in it, because a lot of people.
Ask you about creatine. Okay.
Yep, yep. And so, you know, creatine is one of the most studied fitness supplements out there. And there’s so many people, even doctors that are into fitness and things like that recommend that most people that are getting any type of workout exercise take it every day. And so instead of having just a touch in there like a lot of the companies do, we have the full daily amount in it.
So we do things like that. We also have
nitrous oxide boosters in they’re.
Just all the products that we know that people.
That take pre-workout take, we kind of put them into our pre-workout and said, this is your one stop shop, for a pre-workout. Then we also have a recovery product. So it’s BCAAs, EAAs and also hydration. So again, we wanted to create a product that was worth a little bit more.
And then our fourth product is a fat burner and sleep enhancer.
So something you take at night just boost your metabolism a little bit. Helps you get more quality sleep, which a lot of people struggle with. And tons of people swear by that product.
It’s called Moon Shred, and they’re.
Everybody’s like, that takes it is like, I slept so well. They didn’t wake up groggy. They felt great. So
that’s our whole product line, though. We didn’t want to go outside of the box on things that we didn’t totally understand. But we have someone on our team that has worked on the supplement industry for a long time.
So we literally made our own formulas
and everything.
So I’m going to have to look at the ingredients on that, because when I think of increasing metabolism, I’m thinking of things like, you know, green tea and things that kind of get you a little jacked up, but might interfere with sleep, maybe. Yes. Or is.
That. Yeah. No. Yeah. That’s very true. But
we found a formula based on a lot of research that
doesn’t, interrupt sleep at all. Like I said, it’s. People say it’s the best sleep they’ve gotten in a long time.
So.
Yeah, definitely check it out. I would love that.
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What are some obstacles that you see where people necessarily won’t get started? You know, they might be listening to this. They know they should take action. You could be like me, who? You know, until a couple months ago, I hadn’t been in the gym in years.
Well, I’m glad.
you got back
What do you see? Yeah. Of course.
You know, running into stops them.
Yeah. I think there’s two things,
that really prevents maybe three that really prevents people from starting a health and fitness journey or, whatever that looks like for them. One is I think that people think they have to be,
perfect. And so we get into this mindset that our kid woke up sick on Monday, and so we weren’t able to go to the gym when we planned on it.
And so now we can’t go Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. Now we have to wait till the next Monday and we get into the cycle that every time something bumps us, it bumps us long term instead of just for that day. So taking it just one day at a time and I’m guilty of that as well. I think it’s just, I don’t know, it’s like a human nature thing where we feel like we have to start things on a certain day, and if we don’t, we have to wait till the next perfect day.
But there’s no perfect day. The perfect day is the day that you do it. So I think we get caught in that cycle.
I think that people.
Are very scared of health and fitness. I think they don’t know what to do. And there’s so much info and misinformation out there, but I think it’s a really complicated thing to do on your own. I think it’s confusing and overwhelming. If you’re really getting started and you don’t have someone to guide you. But the third thing, and I think the thing that we like to focus on a lot and again, something that we, you know, are doing well with the app, is people think it’s going to be really hard and no one likes to do hard things all the time.
So I think we over oversell what people have to do, and they think that the food is going to be really hard and they’re never going to be able to have their favorite treat again. And the fitness is going to be really hard, and they’re going to have to go to the gym six days a week or it’s not going to work.
And, you know, they’ve got to run five miles every day, to be considered active. And it’s just seems.
Like, have you told me that I wouldn’t do it either? I’d be like, I’m out. This isn’t for me.
So I think making it simple, makes a big difference. And we really try to focus on five simple habits that people can start working on. And we even say one at a time. You don’t have to do all five at the same time. But we try to pick something. And so we have five pillars in our app.
And that is based around the five simple steps. So the first one is we track steps. We call that being active. Because it takes you out of sitting basically. But it could really be anything you’re doing to be active. But when most people sit just trying to get them to track their steps. So first thing, try to hit 7 or 10,000 steps a day.
You know, if you’re hitting two, try to hit five, you know, whatever it is. But just being active. And it’s interesting, we’ve found that in body transformation and losing weight and fat loss, that’s actually more of a factor than them working out
three times a week in the gym.
So just being active every day is the first one. The second one is tracking your sleep. Anything less than six hours.
Will.
Affect your body composition.
Cortisol.
Levels. Just so many things happen in your hormones. Plus you don’t have energy. So you tend to move less and it just creates this dynamics of sleep. The third one is hydration. So how much water you’re drinking. So looking to get half your body weight in ounces is a great start. So we’ll tell people to focus on that.
And then the two more obvious ones half.
Your body weight in pounds and ounces. So if you’re 100 pounds 50oz.
Yep.
And that’s a great place to start. And you know there’s all kinds of other things that you can throw into the calculation of if it’s hot you should add 10%. If you work out you should add 10%. But it’s a great place to start, especially for people that are drinking coffee all day, or not drinking any water or drinking juice or whatever it is.
It’s a it’s a really good base goal. And then fitness, you know, just trying to lift weights three times a week. Again, it’s not a two hour session. Start with a 20 minute session, if that’s what you can get in. Start with something small and work up to, you know, maybe 45 minute sessions. But it doesn’t have to be this extended thing where you can’t get it in.
If you have to split it up into two sessions a day, do that. But just aiming to lift some weights, and then nutrition. We usually tell people to start.
With.
Focus on your protein. So again we give them a basic goal. Aim for one gram of protein per pound of desired body weight. So if you your goal is to weigh 150 pounds, try and get 150g of protein in as a baseline goal. So we really try to start people with those five steps and say again, one at a time, if that’s what you can do, build on those habits.
But it doesn’t have to be super complicated to start. It can be very simple.
When you were saying people would maybe wait for the next perfect day to start, I’m thinking, yeah, that’s like what we would do. Like if we forgot to brush our teeth, right? Wait for the next perfect day. Right? Just go brush our teeth.
Yeah, yeah I actually yeah.
And again I like I said like I’ve even done that. So I’ve mentioned a couple times I love the nutrition side. The nutrition side is much easier for me, which is not the norm for people. I understand that I’m a little a little odd man out on that one, but the working out is actually harder for me. And so I even get into that cycle, and I miss my workout this morning, and I’ve already told myself and I missed it yesterday.
So now I’m.
Two days into the week and I’m like, I will not fall into this category. I’m going to go this afternoon.
I know I can carve out an hour and I’m just going to make today the perfect day, but I think there’s different things that are hard for, you know, for people. And we all fall into some of those cycles where
we just need to reset our minds to not making it so hard.
Yeah. How many days a week are you in the gym personally?
3 to 4.
Okay. And you as? As an owner of a gym? Yeah. I know you have people that are in there six days a week.
Definitely. Yeah.
Technically, I’m in the gym six days a week, too. I’m just not working out. Right.
But yeah. No, we definitely have people that are in her six days a week.
They we have a.
Lot of people that hated exercise. And then they come here with us, and they love it so much that this is actually where they want to be. We actually had a member go through, you know, this horrible time where, her husband was injured and he passed away and.
She didn’t.
Tell us until months later. And she said that this was just. And she’s coming in every day like she always did. And she said that this was just the place that she wanted to be because she felt so comfortable and knew that she could just come in and be herself.
And yeah.
It’s literally what got her through that terrible time. So, you know, we have people that just develop a love for exercise and our community and what we offer, that are in here.
You know, every.
Single day in the class. And I think that’s amazing. I think that’s a great habit to have.
Yeah. So is three per week kind of like the target.
I would say minimally three.
Days a week is really what people should aim for, especially if they’re trying to make any kind of real change. If you’re maintaining, you might be able to get away with a little bit less, but ideally you really want three. And I think part of the reason for that too, is once you fall off three and you’re at two, it’s.
Almost you’re almost getting too close to none. And then it just.
Kind of keeps falling off. So I think three days a week is a big enough number that it it holds people accountable for actually getting it done.
Yeah. I might throw in some caveats, like if you are playing tennis three times a week also, and maybe you. Yes, go for run once a week and do sprints twice a week or whatever. You know, you’re, you’re in the pool or you’re doing laps, you’re swimming. If you’re doing other things, okay, you can probably get away with less in the gym, but you got to be doing something.
You got to stay active, use it or lose it.
Yeah. And you know, I yes. And I’m a very firm believer in weight training. I think that you age so much better. You know, women need it for bone density. You know, you mentioned earlier just hormonally and things like that. I think that people tend to lean towards cardio and, and if you’re doing activities that you love, and that’s how you’re getting your exercise in, by all means.
I think exercise should be something that people enjoy if they can find something that they really connect with. I think that’s an amazing way to make it, you know, a part of your lifestyle. But the importance of lifting weights is something that I, I preach a lot. It just has so many benefits and as people age, the more muscle they have, the better they’re going to age.
And you just can’t get that from cardio. So you really do have to be doing some sort of weights at some point. And if you’re super active, like, yeah, I mean maybe a couple times a week would, would make that happen. But I just think it’s so important.
If I were to.
Pick one, I would tell people to lift weights over cardio.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I want to break the podcasting rules here for a minute and see if I can talk my wife into coming around the corner here, because I heard her just come upstairs. I’m at the office Michelle Did she turn around and go right back downstairs?
Did she run away?
She might be hiding on the other side of this wall here,
Well, I’m going to talk about her anyway. It was it was yesterday
that we were driving in the car and she reached down and she said, my goodness,
my calves are getting bigger. What’s going on here? We’ve been playing pickleball. I love that.
A few times a week and it’s a different activity. And there’s going to be sure some, you know, balance and coordination and some endurance involved. There’s going to be some strength aspect because there’s a lot of explosive movements.
explosive
Movements. Yeah.
You can be changing your fitness as you’re having fun. So that’s all have to be done in the gym. no what changes do you see coming in fitness for instance? Ten years ago, who would have thought of having a fitness app? So now we have the app. Do you see other additions coming to your line of businesses related?
Yeah. I do think that will incorporate a lot more. A I don’t think I know. I mean.
We already have things on our roadmap that we’re so excited about. and my poor like
my poor CTO of my company, like so we’re kind.
Of odd for an app. So, you know, my husband and I started it and we’re not tech people most times tech people start apps and they go find subject matter experts.
We’re subject matter experts. And we went and found tech people. And so
my main man, his name is Guy. So I can’t.
Say my main guy, but my main guy.
He, he reins us in constantly.
He’s like, we will never get this app out if you.
Keep adding things. But we’re like, we have all these exciting ideas and these cool.
Things we want to do. So I think apps, ours and other apps in general will become more and more AI based. So, you know, we have some really cool things that we want to do with,
even form correction and being able to tell what people are doing,
you know, what people are eating and really like sensing, what’s going on from a phone, which is insane.
And coaching that way without people ever having to actually enter into a fitness center. And, you know,
we heard a lot of people that told us that all the gyms we’re going to close and no one was ever going to come back. And that’s not true. It’s just like, you know, I still read real books. I like the paper my mom reads on a Kindle, of all things, but I read paper books.
I like the touch, and there will always be people that want to come into a gym and have that experience. But I do think people are trending more towards apps and AI and even, like VR, you know, like there’s some crazy stuff that’s coming out with that. So I definitely think there’ll be a big tech trend. I never.
Thought about that, but yeah, sure, it, the VR could certainly be used for fitness purposes. I’m sure it’s already to some extent.
Yeah, exactly. So I think there’ll be a lot of that.
And I think outside of app, as far as fitness trends, I really do see kind of a trend. We’ll call it back to the basics, but back to the kind of cleaner side of things. I think that you find people that are looking for more natural ways to, you know, heal themselves.
And going back to some functional fitness and, you know, some of those things that we know are better for us getting away from the big pharma and all that stuff that’s been pushed in our faces for so long. I think that we have a lot of people right now that are ready to push and fight back against all that stuff that is really hurting us as a, as a.
As the human race, as a population.
You know, that’s just not it’s not good for us.
Yeah, yeah. You have an audience give away, five simple moves to jump start your journey.
Yes.
How do they get that?
Absolutely. They can find that at LunaFitjourney.com. So keep it simple right. So L u n a f i t J o u r n e y .com. And we are always looking for well currently looking for more beta testers but then always looking for people for the app too. And you can find out more about the app and how to sign up as a beta tester at LunaFitapp.com as well.
So those are the two places to find out information about us and really join us for your health and fitness journey. We’d love to help.
A beta tester for the app. Now that does sound exciting.
Yeah, it’s fun right now too. It’s, it’s basically getting in on the on the ground level. We’ve used a lot of feedback we’ve gotten from our group. So something that you come up with might, might end.
Up in the app and you.
Could be your own.
You know, celebrity in our app. Oh poor Guy, I yeah. Oh listen, he’s ideas. He is a saint of a man.
He puts up with so much from us. He’s wonderful.
We wouldn’t we wouldn’t be where we are without him. So. Yeah. But.
Yeah, we would love for people to, you know, to join us in that journey of actually helping us build our app and lock in some discounted rates and things like that. So a lot of cool offerings are around that right now.
You know, I kept you for almost an hour already. We haven’t even talked about what got you involved in health and fitness. I would imagine there’s some information on your website about that possibly Lunafit.com. Is that a good place to find out more?
Yep. Lunafit.com yep. You can definitely find out more about us
and everything we do. The whole universe.
I’m going to keep you for just a little bit more. Yeah. What advice would you have for people listening as far as best way to get started? What action steps should they take today? Obviously get the, you know, the freebie. Yes.
So, you know, I want people to be able to do it on their own. But I think.
If you.
Start and stop too many times, you get to a level of frustration where you really do need help and whether that’s, you know, looking for someone,
like myself or my husband, personal trainers or, a there are other gyms, like, you know, if you’re in our area, obviously come see us, but, there are gyms like us, you know, in your area, I’m sure if you look for them.
But sometimes you just need help. It’s like you know, some people do their own taxes, but then some people go get help with their taxes. And I think you kind of have to look at it like you would look at anything else in life, if it’s something that you are really struggling to do on your own, to me, like you get one body you.
It’s the only thing you have to live in.
So health and fitness to me should be a top priority for everybody, just from a quality of life perspective. So if it’s something that you’re struggling with at a certain level, you got to go get help. And you know, you can download our app. That’s why.
We did it so that we could.
Help everybody and not just the people local to us. But if even there if you need more help than that, then I would always recommend that people at least find someone
to help them jumpstart that journey. But hopefully we can do it with our guide and the app, and that’s our goal.
So awesome. Ariana, is there anything that you wish I had asked?
You know, I heard you asked that on another podcast and I was like, man, that is a great question. It’s kind of like when you’re getting, interviewed for a job and they hit you with a question that you’re.
Like, oh,
You know, I just always want to emphasize that. I hope that people do start. I think that the importance of taking care of yourself, is so important. And I just, I hope that there’s something, you know, out there that motivates them to start and try and doesn’t stop them. Yeah. So I just I just like to emphasize, like, just start even if it’s.
Just.
Do it, you know, even if it’s.
Ugly, even if it’s a.
Mess. Yeah. We’re still in.
It.
Even if it’s ugly, even if it’s a mess, even it’s not how you imagine. Just take that first step. Do one thing differently, starting today or tomorrow, that will get you on the on the right path to improving.
Yeah, yeah. Even if you’re under do it. Just don’t overdo it. Just get started.
Exactly. Under doing it is still better.
Yes.
Exactly.
All right. And I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to share with us all that you’re doing. I’m going to make sure that we have links to everything that you had mentioned. In fact, I noticed this. If you go to LunaFit.com, there’s links to.
Yeah, you can find.
Everything at Lunafit.com
to the Meals. It’s all there.
Yes. And you can even.
Get the show notes. Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. And you can even find some of our gear there. We make funny t shirts for our brands and stuff like that. So if you want to represent us, you always can. But yeah, you can find everything you need to at Lunafit.com. And thank you so much for having me on today. This was, this was a blast.
I had a really good time talking to you. I think it’s great when you can find people that are like minded to have conversations with. It’s always a great time.
Thank you. Ariana.
I hope you enjoyed that episode today on the Dr. Haley Show. Make sure to hit subscribe on whichever platform you are listening to this. If this episode made you think of someone, go ahead, take a screenshot and share this exact episode with them. You can catch the show notes for this episode on drhaley.com. If you want to geek out with Dr. Michael Haley on other radical health topics.
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