Rebuilding a Life After Abuse: Lynn Weimar's Incredible Journey

Have you ever wondered how one finds the strength to rebuild their life after facing years of emotional and spiritual abuse? Our latest episode of "Life-Changing Challengers" brings you the extraordinary story of Lynn Weimar, a resilient woman who transformed her life against all odds. Lynn, an accomplished author, weight loss coach, and nurse, opens up about her tumultuous journey, from her challenging childhood in Seattle to the empowering moment she chose freedom over an abusive marriage.

Lynn's story is a profound exploration of courage in the face of adversity. Growing up in a complex family dynamic, Lynn faced emotional battles that followed her into adulthood. We uncover the heart-wrenching details of her marriage to a controlling husband, the protective role of her middle child Megan, and the critical decision her mother made to ensure the safety of her older children. Lynn recounts the excruciating yet liberating experience of leaving her husband, navigating the fears and obstacles of starting over, and the inspiring path she took to rebuild her life from scratch.

But Lynn's journey doesn't end with survival; it soars with triumph. Post-divorce, Lynn pursued her passion for nursing, earning a master's degree and excelling in her career. She later shifted her focus towards empowering women over 50 through fitness and entrepreneurship with her venture "Be Fit Beyond 50." Listen as Lynn shares how she rediscovered her zest for life, conquered Ironman triathlons, and inspired others to pursue their dreams, no matter their age. This episode is a testament to the incredible power of resilience and the transformative impact of setting ambitious goals. Don't miss this riveting conversation that promises to inspire and uplift!

Contact Lynn
Instagram: @befitbeyondfifty
Facebook: @befitbeyondfifty
BeFitBeyondFifty.com

Contact Brad @ Life Changing Challengers
Instagram: @bradaminus
Facebook: @bradaminus
X(Twitter): @bradaminus
YouTube: @lifechangingchallengers
LifeChangingChallengers.com

Chapters

• 0:26 Life Challenges and Transformations
• 11:42 Family Dynamics and Escaping Abuse
• 19:15 Surviving Emotional Abuse and Marriage
• 24:39 Leaving an Abusive Marriage
• 32:13 Finding Freedom After Divorce and Abuse
• 41:13 Nursing School, Family Support, Career Success
• 51:02 Empowering Women Over 50
• 1:09:05 Healthy Lifestyle Choices and Motivation
• 1:12:24 Achieving Goals Through Transformation
• 1:25:06 Late-Life Ironman Journey and Transformation
• 1:30:09 Rediscovering Passion Through Ironman Journey

Transcript

Brad: 0:26

And welcome back to Life-Changing Challengers. My name is Brad Minus and hopefully you already know that by all the other episodes that you've listened to. I am really lucky to have Lynn Weimar with me today. She's an author, weight loss coach. She's also a nurse and has a master's of nursing as well. So, lynn, welcome. How are you today?

Lynn: 0:47

I'm doing great, brad, thank you for having me on your show.

Brad: 0:51

Oh, I'm thrilled because, as you'll find out pretty soon, we have a lot in common, so I'm really excited about that. Lynn, I ask the same thing to everybody. I'd just like to, if you can tell us about your childhood, where you were born, where you were raised, what was a compliment to your family, what was the environment like while you were growing up, and give us just a little insight.

Lynn: 1:13

I was born and raised in the Seattle Washington area and I have one brother and one sister. I felt like my family was pretty stable and I felt fairly secure, but I had this situation of Glenn was loved, terry was ignored and Greg was hated. And I was the oldest, so I felt like my childhood was pretty good and I knew I needed to walk on eggshells around my mom, but I didn't see it fully from my brother's perspective or even my sister's perspective, and so just hearing that and connecting with that as an adult it colors my view of my childhood and my growing up, and I was very close to my dad. But it was just something that I look back on with mixed emotions, so I'll leave it at that.

Brad: 2:26

Hindsight's kind of 20-20 when we start looking with our adult eyes right.

Lynn: 2:32

Yeah.

Brad: 2:34

So you were in Seattle. So you went to high school. Were you a jock? Were you one of the cheerleaders? Were you one of the popular kids?

Lynn: 2:42

I was not one of the popular kids. I was very quiet. Wallflower wanted to be invisible and just blend into the background, and that's pretty much what I did.

Brad: 2:56

Articulars no.

Lynn: 2:59

I tried track a couple of times and I knew I was slow. I did it once in high school and once in college and I would overtrain and get injured and my injury of choice was shin splints. And it was because I was very tall. And one of the coaches told me later that it was because the muscles hadn't caught up with the bone so it would tend to separate and cause me a lot of pain and cut short my hopes of being a runner. I never thought I would be a professional not professional, but competent runner, a fast runner or anything like that. I just wanted to run, I just enjoyed that activity, so that was pretty much. It never lasted long. The one time I tried it in high school and the one time I tried it in college, the same thing happened both times and I dropped out. That's not a very good pedigree there. That's what happened.

Brad: 4:03

Reaction from a coach. But now that you've had this training in the human body and as we just said, about looking back with adult eyes, do you think he was right? Do you think that was a pretty good diagnosis.

Lynn: 4:19

Of the muscles and the bones.

Brad: 4:22

Yeah.

Lynn: 4:24

No, shin splints happen to beginner runners, oh yeah, because they're so gung ho. You just need time, your body needs time to adapt and adjust. And so I would say the flaw in the system was OK, go run, or just go run five miles, go run 10 miles out on the pavement and that's how you build up. And if you want to keep up and not be the slowest one which I didn't particularly want to be the slowest one I figured I would be. But I'll tell you what really. The shin splints were excruciatingly painful. But here's what was more painful for me was the track coach, was also the math teacher and he one day we had to run we called them 880s back then 880 yards. We had to run something like 8, 880s after a pretty big warm up, and I didn't know how I was going to be able to do that. That seemed really hard to me. So I ran my 8.80s and my last one was exactly four minutes, 4.00.

Lynn: 5:46

And so we all meet in this classroom, maybe the next day or that day, I don't remember. The coach has it on an overhead projector. He has all of our times for all of our 880s, for the boys and girls were together because it was title line and he had all these numbers up there. Guess who had? The only one that had a four in front of it, it was me. I was the slowest one. Now I of the guys in the classroom there really good runner looks up at that overhead projector screen and says four minutes. Who ran it in four minutes? And I, just I was. I could have just fell through the floor. I was devastated and that was my last. That was my last day of track. I was putting up with the shin splint pain up until that point and then I never looked back until I tried it again in college.

Brad: 7:08

But yeah, Kids are cool. We were just and I look back at it now and I and so I'm a I'm a high school cross country and track coach. Yeah, the kids, even they're better than they were when I was a kid. But of course, I coach at a private school, not a public school. But they still can be, even when they think they're just kidding around. They could still be pretty cruel. I don't feel bad about that. So did you go to college right out of high school? I did.

Lynn: 7:43

I majored in English and I would have maybe gone toward a healthcare career, but I considered myself to be very bad in math and science. So that's what.

Brad: 7:56

I did. You tried track in college. That didn't work. You got through college, graduated. Then what happens to Lynn?

Lynn: 8:04

Got married before I got an English degree, which I had been told. Anytime anyone would ask me what I was majoring in college and I said English. They would say, oh, you're going for your MRS degree. Actually, that was not my intention, but that is what happened. We had six kids. We went into Christian ministry. You had six. Yeah, oh, okay. I homeschooled them up in the mountains of Idaho for the last 20 years of that range.

Brad: 8:44

Oh, okay, we're getting whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on. Where did the planterist end out? Here it was. She's talking about being a wallflower. She's got going on thinking that her life's kind of dull and all of a sudden, whoa, six kids moves to Idaho in the mountains and homeschools. There's got to be some stuff uncovered here. We got to talk. First of all, tell me about the compliment of the kids.

Lynn: 9:09

I have the most amazing, brilliant kids Okay.

Brad: 9:15

Three boys, three girls, four boys.

Lynn: 9:17

I have five boys and one girl. Five Boys were the mellow ones and my daughter was known as the wildfire of the family, but she's very precious, sweet, very compassionate so so that by you saying that you got married, probably she was I'm thinking college sweetheart I met him in college.

Brad: 9:38

Yes, all right excellent listen you did, and you said christian ministry. So that's great. So, yeah, no, that's fabulous. We need more of that. I wish we could. I. It's one of those things that I believe is things that we're missing here, in this environment that we're in right now, is good nuclear families that really take pride in either serving God or serving some other cause.

Lynn: 10:03

I had my ideals of what it was going to be and I had all my dreams and just this godly Christian family and we're homeschooling and we're raising kids to reach their full potential and all of these kinds of things. But unfortunately, it ended up being all about appearances and reputation, because my husband was not a pastor per se, but it was a faith support ministry ministry and he had the idea that in order for God to provide for us, we needed to be perfect, and so things looked very different at home than they did when we all went to church on Sunday, than they did when we all went to church on Sunday. It made it a very difficult environment, I would say.

Brad: 11:17

All right, can you expound a little bit on that, just so we get an idea of what's when you step into or when you step out of this, where you were going, what you're coming from?

Lynn: 11:36

If people want to, that's fine. No, no, I'm happy to share it all I'm.

Brad: 11:38

Yeah, I don't know sure what you're asking, but so you had a public persona and a private persona, and the public persona was perfect. It was this perfect christian family, right? What's going on? Because you mentioned that it was very different within the country of your home.

Lynn: 11:49

Yes, thank you. Yes. So a lot of, a lot of lengthy lectures. That would be very cutting to a child's psyche psyche.

Lynn: 12:09

And me being a more withdrawn type of person, not liking conflict being, I was more closed off in myself. I'd see a lecture coming, or even a discussion, and I would retreat, I would leave because I didn't want to hear it. I got to the point where I knew I couldn't do anything about it. I would say one time I said to my husband I don't believe that you should be disciplining the children in anger. That you should be disciplining the children in anger is what I said and he says I disagree. And it was very much emotion driven, which was so different than my ideal of what, of how to raise children, and they were always in trouble. They were always getting spanked or scolded for very minor things, and the religion was used against us.

Lynn: 13:18

I will include myself in with the children. If one of the children expressed an interest in spiritual things, which was of course, expected of us, it would be. And then there's some infraction. You said you wanted to follow God, you said, and it would be hung over our heads and I went very underground in my relationship with God. It was like I don't even want to go there, and so it was very much the opposite of what I had envisioned Christian marriage to be.

Brad: 14:04

It sounds like he weaponized religion to cause emotional abuse.

Lynn: 14:09

That is what it was, and I went into protection mode, trying to protect them as much as I could and trying to protect myself as much as I could. And my daughter I hope I can even say this she loved and loves her brothers so much and one of them getting in trouble for her was worse than herself getting in trouble and she was a fireball and she was not afraid of standing up to him, to my husband, share her father, and I just knew every time I just knew it was going to get ugly because he was not going to back down. But she was going to tell it like it is and it was scary. It was scary, yeah, yeah, I still. Just I have to let her know that she was right, she did the right thing so uh for it.

Brad: 15:17

Yeah, what was her name? Again, I'm sorry her name was.

Lynn: 15:21

Her name is megan megan.

Brad: 15:23

So where did megan lie in the span of six? She's third, yeah, okay, so she's Okay. So she's a middle child, so she's got. So I go, megan, between having younger, younger brothers and older brothers yeah, she's got both sides. That she's that she wanted to protect. Yeah, good for her.

Lynn: 15:43

Yeah.

Brad: 15:44

But okay.

Lynn: 15:45

So this story's turning out a little different than you first expected. When I said no-transcript.

Brad: 16:16

Same situation right now and now. You just talked about that, which is where I want to go, because I want to know, I want people to know and us to know, and I'm curious myself is what happened for you to get out of that? Was that something that you initiated or?

Lynn: 16:31

Yeah, I actually. Yeah, I I actually encouraged my older kids to leave home at younger ages than I normally would have, and so my oldest went to college at age 17. My next one joined the military at age 18. And then Megan was 17. Nathan was actually 15. He left at 15? He went, and he because we lived out in the mountains and he was going to college. He started college at age 15 what? And so his older siblings had a house in, or they were renting a house near the college there in boise, and so I let him go, and maybe it was when he was 16 that he did that. I don't know, but he started college at 15.

Brad: 17:31

That's incredible.

Lynn: 17:33

Yeah, yeah, and I just didn't like them being in that environment, and so I know a lot of people who were raising their eyebrows and saying why are these kids leaving home so early? And I wanted to facilitate that, but and I don't know if it was the right thing but your public persona was perfect.

Brad: 17:54

Yeah, your public persona, you were perfect. Of course, to everybody else. They're thinking why are they leaving home so early? If they're such this perfect, christian loving family, why does she want to kick them out so fast?

Lynn: 18:06

and so I. I had my two youngest sons still at home and they were 14 and 17 at the time and I'd had people saying to me because I was starting to share more what I was going through as a wife, and they were saying when are you going to leave? At what point are you going to be done being treated like this? And I laid out some criteria for myself. When he starts doing this thing that he used to do, because we've been the gamut of working through this if he starts yelling at the younger kids the way he used to treat the older kids, or if he starts treating me the way he used to treat the older kids and he starts calling me names and yelling at me, I won't be able to handle that. I will need to leave and and yelling at me I won't be able

Brad: 19:15

to handle that I will need to leave. And I have a question, and this is and I'd like you to take a just a step outside of yourself just for a second, and it's just something I'm so curious about. Okay, and again you don't want to answer not a big deal, oh no, so in that, in that, in that environment. Okay, and again you don't want to answer not a big deal, oh no, so in that, in that, in that environment. Okay, so you know that you're basically being emotionally abused, you're being a name called and all that, but you married this guy. You must've. You married him for a reason.

Brad: 19:40

There had to be some point. It's not still? And that's my question If you still love this person, do you look past all this? Wait a second, that's still the man I love. I still love him, I just what I don't love is his actions. Do you separate that, or is? Was there a point where I'm in this for the kids? I want to make sure the kids are safe and this is the only way that I know how the way we were treated for so many years and did not want to despise him.

Lynn: 20:21

I really that was important to me, but I was just surviving. I was really just surviving and I reached a point where all of the things I could think of to try to heal the marriage I had done. I had tried them all, and every single time it only served to make the situation worse for me, because in order to do something about it, I would have to step forward and actually say my point of view of what was happening, and that was extremely scary for me and I was punished for it. It was not something that I should be saying. It was very disrespectful, very ungodly, and I was asking for divorce. I was asking for it.

Lynn: 21:24

And so when I reached a point of, okay, I've done everything, I've tried everything, I've gotten help from other people, advice from other people and I've tried their advice, I've tried everything and nothing's working. That's a mild word that it's just not working. But I wasn't looking for anything for myself. A lot of marriages end because the needs aren't being met or there's not good communication or the love has fizzled out something like that. For me, no, it was not any of those things I just wanted to survive, any of those things I just wanted to survive. I just wanted to hang on and hold it together. That was all I cared about and I reached a point forward to is the next 40, 50 years of just hanging on, just trying to fly under the radar of marriage that other Christian couples had, and he started accusing me of a lot of things but of putting up walls against him, and so I could not win. I could not win. I was in a no-win situation.

Brad: 23:10

When you realized that, was that the turning point where you were just like hey yes, yes, except those things that I alluded to started happening more overtly.

Lynn: 23:23

And so I woke up one morning it was the day after Mother's Day. Actually, to him, I was still in bed and he's standing there yelling at me and saying he didn't actually say you are a liar, you are evil, but he's saying what you say is lies, what you're doing is evil. And he's yelling this and I'm going. I just woke up like what I. I don't even know what you're talking about and I'm laughing now. But I was terrified, I was shaking, and then I thought, after things had he got, he went to work and all this, and and I thought, okay, this is it. I said that this was the line and I'm going to leave, and I couldn't do it. I could not make myself do it. And then it then, a couple months later, this same scenario happens again. And then a month later, it happens again and I still I couldn't leave. My resolve was growing stronger that I needed to. Finally, so, seven months almost after that, that first day after Mother's Day thing, I said to my sister done, I'm just really done. I cannot do this anymore. And she had no idea. She saw the happy Christian family. She didn't like my husband, but she saw this front and that's all she knew. And so it was a bit of a shock, for she and I went out to coffee when we were, we were actually on vacation with them and I just said I just cannot do this anymore.

Lynn: 25:23

And just a few days later, when we returned home from vacation, I actually fled. I actually we were, we'd gone to church and I told a friend of mine who was she was going they were mutual friends that our kids, the two youngest, were going to go over to their house after church and visit and so, since they were going to be doing that and we were going to be kidless, my husband says, okay, we need to have a date, we're going to have a date. And I knew what a date meant and I knew that I was done, I wasn't going to put up with, I wasn't going to play the game anymore. And I told this friend yeah, I am one altercation away from leaving and he wants to have a date after church. And her eyes got really big because she had known, she knew what was happening and it was just the two of us and we were in this, his place of ministry, and he read a couple of chapters from the Bible to me, a couple of chapters from the Bible to me, and you could probably guess what one of the chapters was Ephesians 5.

Lynn: 27:01

And he went on and read Ephesians 6 too, so as not to just single out Ephesians 5, about how I should be behaving as a wife. Basically was the idea. And he pulled out a book that he had given me for Christmas on marriage, because he really wanted to work on our marriage, and so we read together the first chapter of this book and it was about this couple and the husband was very much like my husband, except that he was also physically abusive. And the big climax of the chapter is the husband picks up the wife and throws her across the room. I don't remember anything else of this chapter of this book, but he asked me what I thought of the chapter and I said this is very much how I'm feeling, this is very much how I feel how the wife was portrayed. And he says I've never thrown you across the room. And I said no, you haven't, but this is how I feel I'm being treated. And he says can you give me some examples, some recent, specific examples? And I had almost 30 years of this.

Lynn: 28:29

I was done trying to give examples. I was done trying to explain. I knew the consequences of that and I, just I stood up and I said I can't and I won't and I opened the door and I walked out the door and I closed the door behind me and I ran down the steps and we were on a college campus, because it was a college ministry, and I just ran. My running skills came into play. I was darting between buildings so that he wouldn't be able to just drive down the street and see me running, and I got to this thing that we called green belt in wasea, idaho, and I knew then that he wouldn't. He would not be chasing me on foot.

Brad: 29:28

He knew better than that and this is seven months after mother's day. This is january in this is january. This is january 3rd 2010 in idaho and you're running outside. It's got to be 20 below.

Lynn: 29:51

It wasn't 20 below, no, it wasn't that bad. And fortunately I had my coat on. I probably never even took off my coat I don't know, because I know I didn't stop and grab my coat. I must have already had it on. I never thought of that.

Lynn: 30:10

Yeah, I already had my coat on and I had these refugee friends, a family that I had befriended, and they lived just off of the Greenbelt, and I ran to their house and they took me in and I was just sobbing.

Lynn: 30:26

I was so devastated.

Lynn: 30:29

It was just the hardest day of my life, the hardest thing I ever did, but I just had to do it, and so I basically left with nothing and my oldest son drove me back home that evening to pick up some things for myself and my husband.

Lynn: 30:51

He was furious, he was just furious, and I just didn't even talk to him and just got some stuff and stayed at various friends' houses, various places, for about six months and I was working on getting my CNA certification, because I had already started the journey of trying to get prereqs to go to nursing school even before I left, and so I was in the midst of that, and so once I finally was able to, I got the CNA thing and got a steady job that I could tolerate as a CNA, that I liked that job actually, and and then I was able to take my two sons to live with me in an apartment in Boise, so yeah, that's a that's tough, that is a tough story to listen to and but it's a show of strength and, yeah, I commend you for getting out of there and then just finding your way.

Brad: 31:55

I guess you're spending six months. I guess the kids call it couch surfing nowadays so you were able to do that. You had a good support system at least I did Some support system so you get your CNA and in this month, in this, in, in this month, where did you, were you able to like legally take care of the marriage?

Lynn: 32:13

Yeah, and it's still in these very conservative Christian circles. And the pastor and the counselor or therapist that I'm trying to—I'm still hoping that me leaving would put enough pressure on this image and this ministry and things like that that he would want to look and address the problems. But he was very busy making sure that it was all my fault and that everybody agreed with him. That's what he would say if we were together in a counseling setting. Everybody agrees with me, everybody thinks you should come back home and I had a few friends and I would tell them that and they would just laugh and they would say no, lynn, anybody who knows you knows that's not the case.

Brad: 33:30

Yeah, I can imagine Even people that are deep into their faith and are very. The only synonym that I can use right now that's coming to my head is very hands-made tailish. I don't know if you saw that series or not, which is basically a cult, but they're just that doubt Even. We'll see as they look, they'll still see that.

Lynn: 33:51

Yeah, I'm bare to watch stuff like that. No, I don't blame you.

Brad: 33:54

I just can't, don't even. Yeah, I would definitely suggest don't watch that, all right. So let's move on. Let's get out of this. Let's move on because you're away. You got your two kids. All the other kids are safe and sound living, going to school. They're thriving. And I said that you had a 17 year old who was with you, so that son was pretty much on his way to school too. Or did he go a different direction?

Lynn: 34:17

or he actually still lives with me to this day. And then the 14 year old has gotten into they. They both are heavily into the tech world. Oh, both both very brilliant and very functional adults.

Brad: 34:33

Yes, I I gotta tell you so the way that I make money. I I gotta tell you so the way that I make money, real money is I'm in a tech, I'm in, I'm in the tech world as well and I have been for about a little over 22 years. And I gotta tell you some of the people that I worked for and worked with I actually I worked with this one guy who, if big company like fortune 500 company, and if they would have lost this kid, there was going to be a lot of painful cybersecurity stuff going on that they would never be able to manage on their own, turns out.

Brad: 35:05

turns out never graduated high school yeah and he and he did most of his learning just by books and trial and error and the whole bit. And heuk if they would have lost him out of all these other execs that have got like double and triple degrees and they got doctorates and the whole bit. This is the kid that basically was keeping 60 different facilities from being hacked. So I got nothing against it and I worked with a bunch of people that didn't have degrees in tech, that were big into the tech industry. So more power to them, more power to them, all right. So you've got your CNA and did you start nursing school like right away? Did it take a little bit?

Lynn: 35:50

Let's see. I was admitted to nursing school in fall of 2010, I believe. And yeah, oh, and the divorce was actually final two years later. I waited two years and I will say that was also a very difficult thing because it went against what I felt were my values. I just came to realize and I'll just throw this out for anybody who's in this world the thing that really nobody taught me this I just all of a sudden felt doesn't say woe to you, tax collectors, or woe to you who get a divorce, woe to you who get angry. He says woe to you, religious leaders.

Lynn: 36:56

And that when I realized that it was like I'm not the one that killed this marriage and there's compassion for me. It went so much against everything that I had held dear, but I'm not the one that did it. Had held dear, but I'm not the one that did it. And it was this guise of religiosity that did it. And what finally helped me to cross that line and seek the divorce was that he hadn't moved one single inch in my direction in two years, because he would have to admit that he was wrong about something and that would mar his reputation and therefore the only thing that ever mattered to him, from my perspective, was his reputation, his ministry.

Brad: 38:04

Isn't that amazing? Yeah, isn't that amazing how far some people will go to keep up with guys. You say that so he won't admit that he was wrong ever, but not even so. We have this public persona and this private persona. That public persona can remain constant. But if he was able to say that in the public side, in his private life, sit there and say hey, listen, that was wrong. Blah, blah, blah. Let me make it up to you blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? Yeah, even then, if he would have just done it at that point, so he marred both sides. That's what it sounds like to me. I'm just giving you what I'm getting from yours.

Lynn: 38:39

Yeah, there was one day, right after I left, there was one letter I got from him that said things will be different, you should come back because things will be different. But then he completely did an about face realizing that incriminated him, just that statement. He had to make sure that nothing was ever different, which, okay, that's fine. Fine, now I'm glad. Now I'm glad that things got to the point where I had to leave. I knew I had to leave because I could have just stayed and could have just kept surviving and just hanging on and just taking it all.

Lynn: 39:37

And now I have this amazing, beautiful, incredible life and I get to live my life and I get to love my life and I get to talk, yeah, without being afraid of being in trouble for whatever I say.

Lynn: 39:57

It's incredible to me. It's just that we probably take the whole episode talking about the negative and the hard story. But really I'm so grateful to be in this place now and it gives me so much compassion for women who are stuck, much compassion for women who are stuck not even I don't even talk about the marriage thing so much, but they're stuck in their own mind, in their own circumstances and their own habit patterns and their own addictions and all those things, just so want people to be free to be able to live their life and find that life, even if they're over 50. Because it all happened for me after 50. When I, in my late 40s, I thought my life was over, I really thought, really believed that my life was over and no, actually it was just starting. That was like being in the little cocoon and the butterfly came out.

Brad: 41:09

And yes, it did All right. So some of the fun stuff. So, at 50 years old and you walk into your first nursing class, what did that feel like?

Lynn: 41:22

Fortunately it was a community college and so there were more adult learners. I was one of the oldest in my nursing class, but probably not the only older person. There were a couple of us, but I was very much. It's weird. I did this time warp thing where that high school student who just wanted to fade into the background and hide and just be quiet and just do her work was there again 30 years later.

Lynn: 42:09

There she was being ignored and being treated the way I had been treated in high school, and this was a major revelation to me because it made me see this is what I'm projecting out and people are treating me according to what's coming out of me. According to what's coming out of me, they don't know me from anybody, right? I don't have this history of having gone through elementary and junior high and high school with them. They don't know me. But here I am living this all over again and that was crazy to me, that, okay, I'm the one that did that all along. I didn't have to be that Major revolution. Okay, yeah, exactly, I learned this at 50 years old.

Brad: 43:19

It runs around the same route that I've been trying to, that. I've been trying to get across in a different platform. Is you realizing that? Hey, you know what? I'm getting ignored because I'm putting out into the world that I want to Please ignore me. Yeah, you're asking. You're literally saying please ignore me. It's the same thing Right now.

Brad: 43:38

What's the big, what's been going on over the last three, four years? What is the biggest saying that's been going around on socials and in the papers and all that? Oh, that's offensive. That's one of the biggest lines right now. That's offensive.

Brad: 43:53

And I've been preaching for the last three years. I've been like you know, offense is in the eye of the offended. So 95% of the times and I'm using this as an example, but 95% of the things that people say are not meant to be offensive. They're putting something out, they're trying to make a point and a little tiny piece of that someone decides to pick out, oh, that's offensive.

Brad: 44:20

The way you said that Now're all on eggshells, now we can't communicate anyway, but offense being in the eye of the offended is what's going on with you that you're taking offense to that? What's going on inside of you that you're taking offense? Exactly that person. You're being offended not because of that person. That's saying that it's because of something going on inside of you. And it's the same, literally it's the same thing. You went in, you portrayed that, okay, I don't want to, I want to be left alone. So they did, because that was something inside of you that you now realized. And the same thing with this other thing. Whereas, hey, before you start telling people that you're offended, you better figure out why you're offended, because most likely you should be looking in the mirror if you want to find that answer.

Lynn: 45:04

Exactly, exactly, and it's I've used the analogy of it's like a radio receiver. If your dial is turned off, old fashioned radio is what's in my mind. If it's turned off, there's nothing to receive. All those radio waves are still out there. They're the same. You turning on your radio has not changed a thing, but now you've got your receiver on and you're receiving it. That actually helped me to release. What I had been through all those years in my marriage was realizing, okay, it was mine to receive. I received that and I don't know that I would have done that I could come back and do it any differently than I did, or anything like that. I'm not beating myself up over it, but it's I'm still the one that that had my receiver turned on to that frequency to receive that yeah, yeah.

Brad: 46:18

And then you didn't. You, you received it, but you didn't transmit anything. You, that's what it sounded like to me.

Lynn: 46:26

You took it yeah, I got a. If I gave my opinion, I was in trouble.

Brad: 46:32

So right, right, right I kept it to myself yeah, but that makes sense, but again we're past that now yes you're divorced. You're in in nursing school. Did you find nursing school? Oh yeah, because you said that you went to school early. You got a degree in English because you thought that the math and that wasn't your science.

Lynn: 46:54

Yeah, my dad was a mathematician, so I thought I was terrible at math.

Brad: 47:00

So when you got into nursing school, did you find it difficult?

Lynn: 47:06

I was very good academically in nursing school because I had homeschooled my six children for all those years. All those years I got really darn good at math and I got good at them bringing their textbook to me and saying Mom, what does this mean? And I could just read this paragraph and explain to them what it meant. And I realized okay, I can read a textbook, I can understand what it says. Therefore, I can understand science because it's written in English that I know how to read. It doesn't take any special talent.

Brad: 47:57

What a revelation. It was a revelation. It was like no, but if you think about it, you got repetition. Because you got it, you had to do that six times, six times over six.

Lynn: 48:09

Yeah, yes, I actually the compass. I think it was called the compass exam or something like that you had to take to do prereqs or whatever it was. I scored the highest they had seen in a long time on that math exam because it cuts you off if you've missed something like five in a row, you're done. And so some people go in there and maybe they're taking this test for five minutes, 10 minutes, and then they're done. It increases in difficulty as you go, and I think I was in there for about two and a half hours and part of that was me needing to relearn. Okay, so what was that? How did that go?

Lynn: 48:57

And I'm myself again yeah as I'm going through this and just figuring everything out, but yeah, I got a really high score on that math exam nice yeah all right.

Brad: 49:14

So you were in. So you're in nursing school three years, yeah, and you graduate. Got pinned so excited. So graduation from nursing school was your whole family in the audience.

Lynn: 49:27

All my kids? Yes, for my. I think they were all there for my pinning. I don't think they all met. That's for my graduation.

Brad: 49:34

But yeah, oh see, now that's got to be a huge, freaking memory. Oh see, now that's got to be a huge, freaking memory. Do you feel like that's a memory like a I would think, like a breakthrough memory? You know what I mean? Look at all that you survived. And now you came up on top and there are your kids. You're getting pinned with your nursing badge. That's just got to bring. Look at you smiling. I could tell You're not only smiling with your mouth, but you're smiling with your eyes too. So yeah, okay, I don't even have to go farther than that. Yeah, it was good, that's good, that's good.

Lynn: 50:11

So where did you get your first nursing job? It was at a rehab hospital and so I was in the ortho and neuro rehab in the ortho and neuro rehab so orthopedic and brain injury and stroke and things like that. Rehab from those things Did you? Enjoy that it was good. Yes, I felt like I was very much cut out for that kind of work, and it was way better than being a CNA, me tell you oh, yeah, yeah my hat is off to all the cnas and absolutely caregivers.

Lynn: 50:47

I did it. It's a tough job.

Brad: 50:49

They don't yeah you know, and yeah, been around it for a very long time. Yeah, no, definitely, and especially during the pandemic, obviously definitely hats off to all the all the hospital workers and and stuff.

Lynn: 51:02

But yeah, you got to a point where they would tell you to go strip beds and clean this and clean that, to you saying, in my opinion, or at least I felt like I was- always willing to get in there and do all those things, because I had been there and I know what it's like and I just always wanted my patients to be comfortable and well cared for and I never felt like that was above or below me.

Brad: 51:42

Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen it where I've been for a while because I've worked at hospitals and everything else. And yeah, you can tell the difference between, like, a new grad or someone that came and went to school, got their nursing degree, walked into the hospital, versus somebody that had their CNA then had a patient tech, then became one, because a lot of the nurses not everyone, a lot of them are good. I'm not just causing dispersions on everyone, but those ones that come in with a little bit of a, with a little bit of something on their shoulder, they're like okay, they go to the CNA going hey, can you go strip that bed? Can you go take that? Can you go take that bed pen out? Can you help me clean this up for me with me please? I definitely a difference.

Lynn: 52:31

So, ok, how long did you stay in that unit? I was there for about four years and then I started getting my started on my master's degree and I felt like I wanted to try something different. And so I worked in the emergency room for about five or six weeks and realized I was not cut out for that at all. I had my heart set on that and I had to be told yes, this isn't going to work for you, but what you can do is go work in a telemetry unit and that will give you a lot more of this type of experience, and then you can work there and then you can come back. After you've had a year or whatever of experience there, you can come back to the ER.

Lynn: 53:24

And I really sound that I was not particularly good in the telemetry either. It wasn't really my. I'm such a caregiver, really my I'm such a caregiver, and you need a different kind of mind than what I've been blessed with to do those kinds of jobs. I think probably both the caregiver and the English major side of me was coming out and I was a good nurse. But you need to find where your niche is and what I had in my head as my niche. Really wasn't it, and that was a hard realization for me. But as I was going through my master's degree, I chose her education and leadership route, and so I came. I left telemetry and came back to the same rehab hospital that I had worked at previously as a nursing supervisor, because I had that degree then Nice.

Brad: 54:33

Yeah, and how long did you do that?

Lynn: 54:37

Only about 18 months. That Only about 18 months. So this is the whole. Other facet of the story is that while I was a CNA, I met this man who was a paraplegic, and he was so much the opposite of what I had come out of Just so simple, content, grateful, even as a paraplegic, and we fell in love. After he got out of the care center that I had been working in as a CNA, we started dating and we got married in December of 2012. So I'm yeah, I married a man in a wheelchair and he was very strong, healthy, independent. But about a week after we were married, he started getting sick and he was diagnosed. A few weeks later, when I finally dragged him into the doctor, he was diagnosed with end stage renal disease and had to start on dialysis immediately. And so the nine years that we were married he was on dialysis and the last seven years of that I was doing it at home and he had a lot of severe problems that put him. He was a very complicated patient and he would have to go to the hospital for months at a time and he almost died so many times over.

Lynn: 56:12

And we were living in the Boise area and we decided that we wanted to live up in the mountains. That had still been my heart to be out of town and be more in the country. And so at the time that we moved from the city out into the country, I still had it in my head that I was going to be able to do dialysis at home with him. His father came to live with us, so I was going to be able to manage this whole household and have a full-time nursing job and something was going to give and that was going to be me. That's when I decided that this little fledgling business that I was trying to start, I would just try to make that go and do that full time. And that's when I left nursing. So that's a long answer to your story, to your question.

Brad: 57:12

Yeah, yeah. So when did that all right? This fledgling business, what was it? How did you come up with the idea? When did you come up with it?

Lynn: 57:25

One of my sons started a business that was for people like me just wanting to start a business. I probably shouldn't get into all of that right now, I don't know, but I was at a conference that he was putting on for his company needed to do my own thing because I had always had this entrepreneurial bent and my son got that from me. But I had put it all on the back burner a long time before and I just started thinking, okay, what is something that I could do that encapsulates me and my passions, that I can really help other people. And I went through a whole bunch of ideas, but the thing that really stuck with me is what I ended up calling Be Fit Beyond 50, which is my business name name and just for women over 50, like I was saying earlier, to find their life and find their passion and be set free.

Lynn: 58:51

My focus became because, as I was going through my master's degree, I kept going toward obesity. I kept wanting to research obesity pandemic in America Because, as a nurse and as a CNA and caregiver, this had broken my heart to see these people at the end of their life having a much shorter and very low quality life because of thousands or millions of tiny little choices that they had made for so many years. I really wanted to do something about this, and standing at the bedside as a nurse, handing this person a little cup of pills here, take your pills I knew I wasn't really doing anything for them. As much as I cared about them, what I could do for them was so insignificant, and so I wanted to do something that could possibly make a difference in women's lives before they got to that point of being in that bed, and they're never going to get out of that bed. So I want them to be set free from emotional eating or the food addictions or all these things, whatever it is that's keeping them stuck in this cycle that leads to obesity and so many other things.

Lynn: 1:00:36

Break out of that. Transform your thinking, because it's not about the diet, it's not about the exercise. It's here and it's here. It's your identity, your view of yourself, and I mean that. It brought together so many things for me and that's why I'm here. Basically, that's that's how I got here. Um amazing.

Brad: 1:01:05

so you just happen to, because obviously anybody that takes a look at your pictures or you're, you're very, you're thin, you're not like, you're not anorexic, you're not, you're not, you're just you're perfect. Pretty much, you would think you would think you're just, you're perfect pretty much, you would think you would think that. So for most people they're thinking like oh, I lost 140 and I've got people on the podcast that have I lost 140 pounds and it took me a while. I had. I took several different journeys to get there. So because of all that, I gained all this knowledge. So now I can impart to other people, which I say fantastic. Yes, yes, yes, you went more of a scientific route because you were learning through academics and sounds as you were going through that, looking at it in a way Okay, tell me about it please.

Lynn: 1:01:54

Yes, so in my 30s, when I was really struggling in my marriage, I allowed my mind to go in a direction that ended up being really detrimental to me van with all the six kids buckled in behind and my husband's driving, and I'm feeling this stress and all of these things. I allowed my mind to wander and imagine what it was like, what it would be like to be in a warm, loving relationship and just be loved. To be in a warm, loving relationship and just be loved, and that felt good, all those feelings. And I remember consciously thinking in that moment. Nobody will ever know. I can think whatever I want and nobody will ever know. And it feels good. And that probably went on in that delusion for I don't know how long, until I realized I was stuck and I couldn't get out of it. And I came to realize it was an addiction, and the harder that I tried to get out of that it was an emotional. I call it an emotional addiction. It was the emotion that I was addicted to, the feeling, and the harder I tried to get out of it, the worse it. I was so ashamed and felt so helpless because I had this vision, this idea of myself, that I was very self-controlled and all of a sudden I wasn't and I just could not get out of it. Finally I had to call a friend and confess to her what was going on, what was happening, and that I was powerless. And her first words to me were and I was shaking, I'm sure I don't remember exactly, but it was so hard for me to get these words out because we had this facade of being perfect. There's nothing wrong here. And so for me to confess that to her was a big step. And her words to me were to me, were you're human. And I just felt this just relief come over me and that was my first step out and it was a very important step.

Lynn: 1:05:05

But I learned a lot on my journey out of being addicted and so fast forward. I have so much compassion that I never would have had for anybody who is caught in an addiction. I can't sit there on my high horse and say, oh, that's so sad, that's so hard that you're addicted. I'm so sorry and be superior to that in any way, Because I was just as out of control as anybody. It's just mine was easier to hide than a lot of others, and meanwhile there are so many women living in so much shame. I talked to so many women who they've never told anybody that they're struggling with a food addiction or emotional eating or anything like that. And it can be obvious sometimes. But then we tend to say, oh, I'm big boned, oh I don't know why I can't get out, it's my thyroid, it's this or it's that, but they're so ashamed and they're eating in secret and they're covering over so much and they're suffering, they're in a prison. So I can't say no, it was just academic.

Lynn: 1:06:37

And then in my 50s, I hit this very stressful period of my life and I had gained weight. After having been very fit in my early 40s. After having been very fit in my early 40s and menopause, nursing school, taking care of a sick husband all these things working full time I gained probably 25, 30 pounds and I was trying to diet. I kept trying to diet and realizing this is hard and it wasn't working. I was really trying.

Lynn: 1:07:18

I did not like that extra weight hanging around my middle and it was. I had never thought I would be in that position and there I was and I didn't know how to get out of it. And so it's my journey out of the first thing, and then my journey out of that extra weight and finding the answers in unexpected places that are not being addressed in the diet industry or just in the normal dialogue of society, that I just really wanted to be able to share what I found, because really it's a path of freedom. It's not a path of having to deprive yourself and exert a whole bunch of willpower and all those things. It's finding a freedom within yourself and a healing from the addiction and then living your best life. It's not okay forevermore. Now I have to abstain from all these things that I love or I'm going to gain all this. No, it's completely different than that, and so I just wanted other people to experience that.

Brad: 1:09:05

I joined Toastmasters because I just wanted to do something different and I had to do a research. I had to do a research speech and I called it Goiba. I was like Goiba, get off your butt, america, over what you were going over and, of course, including exercise and stuff and basically giving statistics on how many people are like spending, how much time is spent on the couch, how much spend is watching TV. And two years later I was at a conference, a Toastmasters conference, and one of the guys came up and this was after this was a competition that I had done the Goiba speech. And he goes ah, you, goiba. And I was like it resonates.

Brad: 1:09:38

But you started talking about like you've got to abstain or you've got to get rid of this stuff or you've got to diet. And I have always been a proponent to replacing. You don't get rid of it, you just replace it with something that either tastes better and is more nutritious or just something that's more nutritious. For instance, if people are finding that they're heavy on starches and they love their mashed potatoes and everything else and I'm like mashed cauliflower it says, make it the same exact way, put a little of this and that it's a lot less calories. It's a ton less calories and it tastes just as good, if not better, sometimes, depending you know what I mean.

Brad: 1:10:09

Little things like that. I'm like all right, if you have you got mashed potatoes three times a week, twice a week have mashed cauliflower, the other time have in mashed potatoes, and all of a sudden they've just saved like 3500 calories a freaking month just by just that one little, tiny little choice, right, which is probably something that you have a million different examples of. But so, so, basically, is that's that revelation to you? Is that all these few women are being stuck, just like you? You understood that and you turned it into, you went into the weight loss portion of that and decided to hone in on. Is that what I'm hearing?

Lynn: 1:10:49

Yeah, it just resonated with me so much and just seeing, in my master's program I could have chosen any number of topics and yet I there were two that I really gravitated toward all of the time. Any possible way I could fit in obesity in America or something along those lines. That's what I was going for.

Brad: 1:11:17

Yeah, yeah, and you and I have two in my other way and this is what I always talk about is that there's always those times people are obese and then they are like just not fit, they don't feel fit, so they always like the one traditional. They don't feel fit, so they always like the one traditional way. Right, all right, I need to lose weight, diet, exercise, want to get fit, gotta go to the gym. But there's so many different ways to go about that now and mine always waves and I'll just give this because that is that I I state to find a big, giant challenge, find something that's so far to your comfort zone and it doesn't matter how far it is let's go crazy and let's say all right, you've got somebody that's 5'4 and 250 pounds and somewhere in the back of their head that they learned a lot going to go. God, they really wow, it would be like to climb Mount Everest, which is doable. So I always say that and I and even when I did, when I coached group zero to 5k classes, I'd be like the first class was like tell me what? Tell me something you've seen on television or something you heard about that just really resonated with you.

Brad: 1:12:28

You'd always love to try, but because of finances, because you don't feel like you're fit enough, you don't believe in yourself enough, you don't just that it's something that's just a pipe dream. And people would come up with these crazy things and I'm like, and I'm like there's no reason why you can't do that. You probably can't do it tomorrow, but somewhere down the line, put it out there. And if you want to lose weight and get fit, go after the goal weight and get fit. Go after the goal. Don't worry about losing weight and getting fit. Don't even worry about it. Go after the goal. Find a training, go after the goal. You're going to lose weight and get fit on the way. It's going to be a benefit of going after the goal instead of being a goal.

Lynn: 1:13:06

Yes, it's so true. That's exactly what I teach. Yes.

Brad: 1:13:26

Great, great, thank you. What I teach? Yes pound women, 220 pounds. They've been a nurse all their life, blah, blah, blah. And because of the eating and everything else. And then they realize that they're not really that fit. They're sitting behind a desk a lot of times, or in the nursing station they're not moving around as much as they did. They find themselves gathering stuff and then all of a sudden they're like oh, I can't do this, I can't do that. And I'm like no, I'm personal trainer. Whatever you need, or do it your own, do it yourself.

Brad: 1:13:52

There's plenty of freaking information out there. Pick something that really resonates with you, decide to do it and go after it. Don't put it, and you're going to find these little tiny goals. That's going to mark your way on the way there. One of those goals is not to lose weight and one of those goals is not to be able to bench press 350 pounds, or that's not what it is.

Brad: 1:14:16

The goal is okay, I want to get to Everest. All right, the first thing I got to do is I got to. My first goal is Mount Rainier, and Mount Rainier has got, or the not so steep side of Mount Rainier, because Mount Rainier goes up. You. You're right there, you am I talking, you're the one that you're there. Yeah, so you've got. There's one side where you can snake up and there's another side that's that they trade forever as dawn. Yes, exactly so.

Brad: 1:14:39

Your first goal is I want to be able to get up there. And then the second goal is I want to get up there in a certain amount of time. And the second goal area, but at any place, if you're in Arizona or whatever, you find that one rock face and you're like all right, I want to be able to get up a quarter of it. I want to be able to boulder it. I want to be able to do this. Those are your little goals. Yes, you know, and that will get you all those other little things that you're thinking about. You'll find weights dropping off. You'll find you're getting fitter. You're finding that you're getting. Your energy is starting to skyrocket and because you've got to fuel the workouts, you've got to fuel those goals. You're going to be learning about it. Nutrition.

Lynn: 1:15:20

Yeah, you don't want to put junk in your machine. Why would you put bad gas in your beautiful, expensive car?

Brad: 1:15:29

That's a great analogy. I'm going to start using it. That's fantastic. I have not used that. Yeah, and it's in the, it's in my trailer.

Brad: 1:15:37

But I talk about a woman that was, unless she was, 260 pounds and she was 5'1 and and she set her after failing at dieting and little things. And she looked on television, saw Ironman World Championship at Kona and got inspired. So she found out, she learned a little bit more, found out that she lives out here in Florida and Ironman Florida, so she says I'm going to do that race. And then, 18 months later, she's 120 pounds, standing at Panama City Beach in a very small wetsuit, ready to take on Ironman. And it wasn't because she wasn't thinking about carbs or fats or blah, blah, blah. She wanted to eat a celery stick instead of a taco. Yeah, exactly, she wasn't thinking about any of that stuff. It's no, I need so much of this to be able to fuel my workout. Tomorrow morning that's a 20 mile bike ride and an hour run and I need to figure out. What am I need to? What fuel do I need in order to get through it? Yeah, so where did you come up with the five pillars? Is it pillars?

Lynn: 1:16:57

Five stages. It's all just evolved over time and just something that, after talking with somebody on the phone and seeing where they are, the life that they're living now, it gives them hope that there is a different way. There's something else besides. Okay, keto didn't work for me, now I got to find the next diet. I start so many conversations with women where they're saying, yeah, I haven't found the right diet plan, I need another diet plan because these diet plans haven't worked for me. And then we dive a little deep. I probe and it's not really the diet plan that's not working, it's the pack of Oreos every night in front of the TV. You can go to every nutritionist and dietician and doctor and say your diet plan's not working. It's not going to work because you're the one sabotaging it.

Lynn: 1:18:15

So those five pillars are a way for me to explain very briefly that this is about a transformation. This isn't about finding the next, latest and greatest eating plan, because it would be like me in my 30s, at that very low point in my life, and somebody just saying you shouldn't think those thoughts. Just stop thinking those thoughts. I couldn't, and so that's the framework that I'm coming from with these women. They've got all these people telling them what to do and what not to do. They're not following it. If they could follow the plan, they wouldn't need me. And there are plenty of people that don't need me, and that's great, I'm glad. I'm glad for them that they don't need me, but the ones that do, I'm here for them. And so those five pillars that I talk about are just hooks to hang those kind of smaller transformations within the big transformation.

Brad: 1:19:31

Okay, and so, basically, so, basically, you're telling me it's experience, it's what you went through, plus nursing, plus plus everything that you've gone through is come up with your five, what, the five shifts. That's what it is. The five shifts. Yeah, I have to say that this is yeah, it's a relevation that there's actually someone out there that's like yourself, that's out there coaching and saying one you're replacing, going for a goal, that stepping out of the mindset that you've got to either do keto or paleo or you got to do intermittent fasting or anything like that. It's something that's a little bit more entwined that you need to be able to manage, turn off, however you want to go about it.

Brad: 1:20:13

I'm not giving away the five shifts, so I'm going to leave that alone, but I am going to give you the URL If you guys all want to know it. It's, and I'm going to have it in the show notes. So Lynn's. Lynn's site is be fit beyond 50.com and that's where you can find out all about her and her programs. But if you go to BeFitBeyond50.com slash webinar, slash view, you'll get to see her webinar, which I've gone through it Amazing stuff. So if you want to learn how to get from being stuck from bio dieting and why you're having that relationship with food. Check out the webinar and check out these five shifts, because I think it's really going to help you out if you're in that position, and a lot of people are. Obviously, we've got a what is 77 percent obesity rate in America, which is crazy.

Lynn: 1:21:07

And 80 percent of Americans start a new diet every year or are on a diet. And if we have that kind of statistic, why do we have 70-some percent overweight or obese?

Brad: 1:21:22

Yeah, and that's nationally. We can even dig deeper into 15 to 25 teenagers and then young kids, I have to tell you. So I live just an hour and a half from disney world and I've got a. I've got a yearly pass, an annual pass. So I'm there quite a bit and I can't tell you the amount of times that I'm looking around and these kids are like but mommy, I just want to sit down, can we just sit down for a little bit? Oh, but here you are in the magical, most magical place on earth, and what I think is normal is the kid yanking on the hand of the parent oh, we got to see this, we got to see that. Oh, my God, we got to do this, we got to do that. Now you've got these kids going. Can we just go see a show? Can I go sit down For me?

Brad: 1:22:15

When my parents, when I went to Disney World the first time, no, oh, we're going to go see a show, honey. No, I don't want to sit. No, we're going to ride rides, come on, we got to ride. And I'm like that, from the moment we woke at 6 am to 9 o'clock at night and I'm like, no, I don't want to leave, blah, blah, blah. And these kids are like, can we just go back to the hotel?

Brad: 1:22:33

I'm like, really, are you kidding me? Very sad, yes. But then you look at the parents and you see why and you're like, oh okay, so it used to be hold on to the hand right. And you're like this little kid holding onto the hand. But no, now they're grabbing the hand of their parent who's riding on a scooter. It it is. I have to tell you, lynn, don't get me wrong. It's not like you're seeing like wheelchair scooter gangs walking through and you end up behind them in line. It's not that it's not that bad, but the number has definitely increased and it's sad. So if we can get to a certain percentage, at least a small percentage of those people, and sit there and say let's find out what is the underlining thing which you cover in the five shifts, then we're going to make a dent in that.

Lynn: 1:23:24

Yes, I hope to make a dent, love to make a dent.

Brad: 1:23:29

Well, you and me, both, you and me, both, you and me both yeah so super excited about that.

Brad: 1:23:34

So, yeah, so that, and that's my whole thing. Yeah, and that's my model, because my model is by the race. So you're like somebody wants to lose weight, pick a race. You want to get fitter, pick a race, pick an event. Pick a race because I am. Pick a challenge, which is why this is called life changing. You challenge yourself to get out of a marriage and then make something of yourself. Do what you were passionate about doing, and you did it right. And then you found that maybe that wasn't quite what you thought it was. So you shifted again and now you're. Would you say that you're in a place that you love and care for and that you're doing things that you're passionate about oh yeah, I drive myself crazy sometimes with my passion.

Lynn: 1:24:19

I'm thinking where does this even come from? I don't even know, why do I want this so badly? But in a funny way it's humorous to me to see this in myself. And then I think of that woman me, however, many years ago now 15, not even that many years ago who just thought her life was.

Brad: 1:24:42

So you see that 10 years ago you thought your life was over. Now, happy, healthy, teaching other people how to be healthy, and it's through service, and that's what I that's one of the biggest things that I try to impart on is okay. Once you've hit that goal, what are you going to do with it? You need to.

Lynn: 1:25:06

Yeah, and and the and I'm sure you're trying to wrap this up it was thought that the Iron man that's what I'm passionate about is Iron man and I thought I was just doing that for me and I'm realizing, no, this is really an inspiration to other people.

Lynn: 1:25:29

It's just now dawning on me in these last few months that that because I would keep that quiet you do you. You find your thing, my thing's over here. You're probably not going to be interested in that thing, but you do your thing. But in the process of me being so passionate about Ironman and reaching this level of fitness that I have now, which I and I'm I just turned 64 years old that I started Ironman, my Ironman journey, in my 60s and now I'm literally going all over the world doing these things that is inspiring people. All right, they don't have to think that they're going to do an Ironman, but it's inspiring them, like you said, to find that spark within themselves of the thing that they want to do and realize it doesn't matter how old you are or how, what your starting point is. You find that thing and you go for it.

Brad: 1:26:42

Yeah, I can't tell you how many people I've started. They've started with 5Ks, gone to 10Ks, then halves, then fulls, then ultras. I've got a woman that's been with me for about five years who barely could run a mile. Then she got to 5K, 10k, half. Well, now she's getting ready for Western States. Oh, half. Well, now she's getting ready for Western States. Oh, wow, you know what I mean? It's found something you loved and just decided somewhere down the line that, hey, you know what, somewhere down the line I'm going to do 135 mile race and I'm like, okay, that was three years ago when she decided she was going to do that and we're just getting to the point. It doesn't matter how far it is out, as long as you got it in your head and you're going. You know what? We didn't even cover that. When did you start your the fitness side of this whole thing?

Lynn: 1:27:35

because now you're a triathlete you've done you've been a actually started with me coming out of that period of feeling out of control, and we lived up in the mountains and so everything was either up or down. And all of a sudden, my youngest son was old enough that I could leave him in the care of the older kids and I had a freedom that I hadn't had before to actually step outside by myself and I thought, oh, I'm too old to run, my running days are over, but I can go outside by myself and walk. But coming out of that period that I described, I realized that my little baby steps toward running were a metaphor for finding control again, having something that I was in control of, and I started running up these big, two, three mile long hills and realizing, if I can do that, that I can control my mind too. I found so much inner strength from becoming a runner in my late 30s, early 40s, and I deliberately crossed it over into the thing that I had been struggling with to find that inner strength, inner drive, motivation, passion in a positive direction instead of in the negative direction that I had chosen earlier. And I became quite the runner in my early 40s and I found I became very strong very quickly. Because of these massive hills that I was running all the time, I started doing very well in my age group After having been very sedentary for at least 16 years prior. That really was a transformation.

Lynn: 1:30:09

And then later, 40s to mid 50s, all of that stress and life upheaval, all of those things I thought it was gone. I thought I had lost that and I'd put on the weight. And I thought I thought I had lost that and I'd put on the weight and I thought, okay, now maybe it really is too late, maybe I really can't, but I just remembered what that felt like in my early 40s to be so fit and so strong and finding all of that joy of running. I wanted that back of running. I wanted that back and I set in my later fifties I set a goal for myself of a four hour, a sub four hour marathon, which I had done in my early forties, and I never could get that same passionate back again. I never could train at the level that I had done. And maybe it was because I didn't have the resistance of somebody telling me no, that's unspiritual.

Lynn: 1:31:18

And then me deciding I'm going to do this anyway, I don't care what you say and I didn't have that anymore. I didn't have anything stopping me and I didn't have that anymore. I didn't have anything stopping me, but I didn't have any resistance and I couldn't develop that passion again. I couldn't find it. And then one day, when I was 61, I got an email from the Ironman Corporation talking about that they were doing a legacy race one year only Ironman Coeur d'Alene. They were bringing it back and that's not far from about a six-hour drive from where I live, and that thing that you talk about, that I talk about. That little spark ignited inside of me when I read that email and I thought that's what I want to do, that will inspire me, that will make me be consistent. And I have to train consistently to be able to do this. That's what I want to do and it's still. It took me a few years to actually complete my first Ironman and I still haven't done it in less 17 hours.

Brad: 1:32:38

It doesn't matter, you covered the distance.

Lynn: 1:32:41

I covered the distance. Yes, I was 15 minutes too slow, but but anyway that that's what did it for me and that has never left. That has just continued to grow and my passion for that sport just keeps getting bigger and brighter.

Brad: 1:33:04

Welcome to the club. It's a bug, let me tell you. I haven't done a full in a while and I'm about to do a full and but yeah, so I'm excited. So you, you finished the course of cordelaine on my second try of cordelaine.

Lynn: 1:33:22

I yes the race. Yeah, it was 2020 that I got that email, and so it was 2021 that I attempted. Yeah, I attempted in 2021. And then I finally completed it 14 minutes after the 17 hours in 2023. But I got an email from the Ironman Corporation congratulating me on my Ironman finish and counting me as an official finisher there you go Maybe the clock was off.

Brad: 1:33:56

Maybe the clock was off, and you know what? Coeur d'Alene is the reason why they took it away? Because it's one of the toughest courses on the circuit by far. So here you are going after an iron, an iron man goal, and you're going after the one in the toughest court, one one, one of the toughest courses on the full iron man circuit yeah so no more power to you.

Brad: 1:34:24

I got it. You what I mean? The was the last year of the year before the iron nun. She finished Kona and she was, she was at. She didn't make the cutoff. Nobody cared, because she'd done it so many times before. Nobody cared. And she's 96. She came across that finish line at 1708 or something like that, 1799, something like that, and they brought her across finish lines. You're a great company, you're in freaking fantastic company. I you got more pod too, so you're so your bike's in your office. So I assume that the training is continuing oh yeah so what's on that?

Lynn: 1:35:01

yeah, that's my trainer bike that this one is out to pasture. I just use it for training.

Brad: 1:35:07

I've got one of those too. Yeah, I gotcha. What are you? What's on your race schedule?

Lynn: 1:35:12

Oh, less than two weeks ago, a week and a half ago, I competed in Ironman, texas, and I was a very brutal headwind out on the spy and there were a lot of crashes, yep. And I was coming to the scene I don't know if it was a crash or somebody just being ill because of the harsh conditions and I was going the opposite way of the, where the aid station was, and a fire truck had or emergency vehicle had pulled up and there were paramedics. There was a paramedic standing right by the side of the road, on the side on the shoulder, and I'm just cruising through. They hadn't told anybody to stop or anything. And just as I get up to him, he steps right in front of me without seeing me, without looking at all, and I figure okay, he's looking northbound because he's expecting all of this traffic to be southbound. He didn't have awareness of the scene, what was really going on here, that there was two-way traffic and I crashed into him.

Lynn: 1:36:35

Fortunately he was in the full fireman garb and so he absorbed some of the impact of me hitting him, but amazed that I could be on this podcast and I'm fine now, but I had this very purple eye. My whole side of my face was road rash. I dislocated my finger, I looked down at my finger and it's pointing in the wrong direction and I snap it back into place there on the scene and so I actually sprained two fingers and I got some abrasions on this arm and so the medics patched me up. That was at mile 50. They patched me up and I got back on the bike and I completed the bike. I also got a flat tire unrelated and I also stopped to help somebody else who was really struggling and I missed the bike cutoff by 10 minutes. So I completed the 2.4 mile swim and I completed the bike, the 112 miles of the bike, and I was not able to keep going for the oh man, so the so sorry, that stinks.

Lynn: 1:37:51

It stung, but I was proud of myself for getting back on that bike and completing that course.

Brad: 1:37:59

You took the words right out of my mouth. I'm proud of you Because I got to tell you, because there's a lot of people that would not have done that. Most people would have crashed, dislocated a finger and said, okay, now there's an ambulance right there, thank God.

Lynn: 1:38:13

Here's what I have to say about this. I used to be a master excuse maker. I would pull any excuse out of the book not to have to do the hard thing because I was so afraid of failure. And that continued into my adulthood a lot when I gradually grown out of that. But somewhere along the line it was when I really started running in my 40s I realized I had such a passion for it. I wanted to run so badly that what I would have taken as an excuse to not run it was more.

Lynn: 1:39:00

Okay, how can I do this? How can I figure this out that I can still run in this terrible weather? Do this? How can I figure this out that I can still run in this terrible weather? And I realized, okay, that was a big shift for me and it has carried over now. And so, being splatted there on the pavement, okay, is my race over, or can I keep doing this? And it's so natural now for me to think in those terms that it's. I don't even think about it If I'm able to keep going. I'm going to keep going because I'm very invested in this. So we'll see how far. We'll just see how far I can get 100% agree and that's fantastic.

Brad: 1:39:47

No, I'm proud of most people would not have gotten up. So I I am proud of you for doing that. As a fellow iron person, I am yeah, that's amazing. But that's yeah, that's great. Also, two weeks sorry that you were training fireman texas. Unfortunately, you came across some conditions that weren't gonna allow you to finish that. So so do you have something in your brain that you want to do for the world championships in Nice this year for the women?

Lynn: 1:40:31

And that's a long story, but it's easy for women. Now this is one of the rare times in the history of women's athletics or athletics that it pays to be female, because it's very easy to I shouldn't say it's very easy, but to get into the world championships as a female it's much easier than as a male at this point in history. And so I was counting on being able to finish Ironman Texas, to have my first sub 17 hour finish and to be able to claim a spot at the world championship in nice, and so that hope was thwarted. And my coach is saying there's iron man 70.3 cord lane. You can still there are ways to still qualify for the full distance championship if you do that race.

Brad: 1:41:28

Yeah, because it's so hard, that's what I'm saying. Because it's so hard, they're like, if you could do the 70.3 at this level, we'll send you to do the full world championship. Yeah, yes.

Lynn: 1:41:43

World Championship. Yes, and part of it is they need warm bodies to fill that race, because there aren't that many women in Ironman and not that many that are keen on going to France for the World Championship. Kona is the holy grail, and they're going to wait the opposite year and go to kona instead of going to nice yeah, I can see why that's going on.

Brad: 1:42:10

That's, I don't know why nice is france really, but yeah, it works. I don't know if I agreed. I do not know if I agreed with that move of them doing opposite on opposite. They've been doing kona both, both the men and the women, both age group and pro, at the same time for a year, for decades, and they shifted this because of the pandemic.

Lynn: 1:42:38

Let's get less people out there no, actually they wanted to do a men's race and a women's race and I appreciate that because it gives women, it opens the door of opportunity for women and I like that. But they did it one year, two separate races. It wasn't a full women's race, it was still more men than women on one day and all men on the other day. But Kona or the island of Hawaii could not handle double the influx because you've got double the participants, double the support people, even though it's on two separate days. They didn't have the infrastructure to be able to handle that that many people coming in, double the people.

Brad: 1:43:33

And so then they decided at that point that they needed to alternate um years yeah, but the idea, because the idea stemmed, it actually stemmed from covid, just so, just so you know, the idea was because it actually stemmed from COVID, just so you know.

Brad: 1:43:46

The idea was because they went with the world championships for 70.3 because that they could sustain, so that was successful. Then they decided that okay, maybe we can do the same thing with the world championships for international, because they had done that, they had put age group women and pro women on Saturday and then they put age group guys and pro guys on Sunday for the world championships, and it was amazing and the viewership like shot through the through for both days. You know what I mean. So they were like whoa, ok, this is successful, it just stemmed from there. But World, that Ironman's owned by the World Triathlon Corporation and the headquarters is down the street.

Lynn: 1:44:36

Ah, okay.

Brad: 1:44:37

From here.

Lynn: 1:44:38

You've got an in. Yes, you've got the in.

Brad: 1:44:42

Yeah, yeah, it's down the street, yeah. So Andrew Messick I've run with him a few times. He's a pretty good guy, but yeah, but great, but no, there's obviously there's some political stuff around Ironman. I'm not so crazy about that. Leave that alone. But I think that's one of the best things that they've ever done is have separate women's and men's races for those championship races, because they're so exciting. They're so exciting when it's just that You're not like the coverage isn't bouncing back from. Okay, let's go look at the women and let's go look at the guys. What's going on over?

Lynn: 1:45:12

here. Yeah, I've seen the YouTube videos of those, the coverage of those races, and it's so heavily weighted toward the pro men.

Brad: 1:45:21

Yeah.

Lynn: 1:45:22

Way once back in the day.

Brad: 1:45:25

Zach knows still is For, like Boston, if you watch the Boston Marathon, it's the same thing. Of course it's only a couple hours versus eight, but yeah, it was that way. But I'm from Chicago, so any excuse I get to go back to Chicago, I'm excited for so. For the longest time I just kept doing the marathon. I just kept doing the marathon. And for the longest time, until the year before the pandemic, the Kona would be on Saturday and Sunday would be the Chicago Marathon.

Lynn: 1:45:56

Oh, okay.

Brad: 1:45:57

But literally I'd sit in my hotel room and I'd get up in the morning, have a good breakfast, blah, blah, blah, go out, do a two-mile run, shake it out, do my stretches, blah, blah, blah. And then I know I have to put my feet up for the rest of the day. That's what I would do. Laptop sits on my lap, I'm watching freaking. That's. That was like the ultimate weekend Freaking. Get inspired as all heck by watching Kona the day before getting up at oh dark 30, having breakfast, going down and running a marathon.

Brad: 1:46:27

Oh, it's inspiring, yes, oh outstanding weekend, love it Just absolutely. Just crazy about it, but yeah, but anyway, all right, I hope you find another one, I hope you find another race and if you can do the 70.3, I hope you do.

Lynn: 1:46:41

And I will throw in that that I did qualify for the 70.3 World Championship in New Zealand this December. So I am doing that.

Brad: 1:46:52

Nice. Oh, you know what my cousin's running, that I should put you two together. Yeah. Yeah, she's got her into the sport and she's like the only athletic person in our family, like truly athletic person in our family, and she's 44 now and it was like five years, six years ago she got heavily into it, like she really got started and she went to world championship 70.3 her first year. I was like I've been fighting for this thing and she walks in. I think it was either her first or her second 70.3 and she qualifies and goes in. I think was her. It was either her first or her second 70.3 and she qualifies and goes yeah, before they made it super easy back when it was hard.

Lynn: 1:47:33

Yeah, we meant to qualify it was.

Brad: 1:47:35

It just starts going out and it is. It was crazy. We did north carolina together and that was fun, it was a blast. We did it. Did it twice together. Of course one time I DNF'd.

Brad: 1:47:46

But yeah, two flats on the bike, yeah, I had a 38 and a 44. And of course I only carry one tube. So I'm trying to flag a sag. Blah, blah, blah. I ended up running back three and a half miles to a gas station barefoot. Oh no, trying to find a get, trying to find something, as, yeah, it was very tough, so that that point you're paying.

Brad: 1:48:12

Yeah, I moved to tubeless. So I'm like, screw this, I'm gonna go tubeless and forget this. So with tubeless, at least it's got to be a gash. It's got to be a gash in the thing, otherwise to be a gash in the thing, otherwise it'll seal itself. So I'm like, well, I'm going to go tubeless and forget it. And if it's tubeless and it does have a gash, then you can put a tube in it if you really have to. So I'm like all right, it's still take a little bit long to get it Cause you got to unseal everything, but on the whole, but I'm excited about it, but anyway. So listen everybody, this is again. We're going to wrap this up. Be fit beyond 50 and com and befitbeyond50.com slash webinar, slash view All those will be in the show notes. And is there another way for people to get a hold of you, lynn, if they want to ask some questions or talk to you about your programs?

Lynn: 1:49:12

Yes, I think the best way. If you watch the webinar, you can actually schedule a call with me. But also there's Lynn L-Y-N at BeFitBeyond50.com and I just want to add 50 is spelled out. Don't use the numbers, because I'm not a numbers person, I'm a word person actually, and are you active on Facebook and or Instagram? Yes, I'm there, lynn Weimar, on Facebook. You can find me there. There are not too many Lynn Weimars out there.

Brad: 1:49:45

And I will have all those links in the show notes. So please go ahead and check that out. So yeah, so again, befitbeyond50.com and check out. Thank you so much.

Lynn: 1:49:58

No, thank you. Thanks for letting me tell my story. That was so much fun.

Brad: 1:50:04

Yes, I don't know if it was fun, this is what you call it but it so much fun. Yes, I don't know if it was fun, it is what you call it but but it definitely was. It was inspiring the way you came out of it. I think it's going to it's going to show people that they can do the same, so I'm very excited about this. So, anyway, you have yourself a great one. And being that today is May 8th 2024, I do keep things evergreen, but just for this version it's May 8th, so I'm going to tell Lynn to have a great Mother's Day this weekend, because she has six kids.

Brad: 1:50:35

Six kids and six kids For the rest of it. I will see you in the next episode.

Lynn: 1:50:39

Thank you.