175. Claudia Zapata's Advice on Eating Well, Staying Active, and Living Healthier in San Antonio

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Welcome to Big City Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Brevard. Joining us in the studio today is Claudia Zapata, a registered dietitian who also is certified by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in Adult Weight Management. I've known Claudia since we first met in spin class at the Concord Athletic Club many years ago. She was a health and wellness columnist at the San Antonio express news from 2001 to 2013. And for most of those years, I was the executive editor. So we have a long history. One more thing about the Diplomacy Diet, which we'll talk about a great deal here. Everything I just told you about on the website is free, so avail yourselves of Claudia's free consultations. You're one of the best known people in San Antonio, blogging, television appearances, speakers, and you're regularly on San Antonio Living and Great Day sa. And you're the current TV host for Spectrum Simply San Antonio segments. So you're staying pretty busy. I am staying busy. I also just want to mention because Go spurs, go. You're married to the former spurs great Sean Elliott, whose number 32 jersey hangs from the rafters at the Frost center, and he was part of that 1998 spurs that defeated the Knicks in five games. Mayor Mondami, if you're listening, that was the first of our five NBA championship trophies as we move toward the sixth one now. Sean, of course, now works as a broadcaster for the Spurs. So this is a very busy time for you guys. And both of you together, Claudia, serve as health ambassadors for Methodist Healthcare, which we love. And they have been on our podcast and will be on again, promoting preventative health care and active lifestyles. That's right. That's great stuff. And because we're all about children and pets here at Big City Small Town, I'll add that you and Sean are the proud parents of three grown children, three rescue dogs and two rescue cats. The cats are gone. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, they can be replaced. We also have a grandson, though now we have a one year old grandson. Well, we have that in common, granddaughter, so. Well, welcome to Big City Small Town. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You're my pick as the number one advocate for living, eating and recreating healthily and San Antonio. I've long measured my own progress on those fronts by following you and trying to live up to your high standards that you and Sean set. I like that you promote health and wellness, but that you also allow for a glass or two of good wine or a delicious dessert, as long as it's in moderation. Moderation seems to be your North Star. You're very generous. Thank you. You're actually not going to. The moderation thing, I think, is a tricky one for dietitians. And we don't love the moderation, everything in moderation mantra. And here's why. Because when you say everything in moderation, it puts all food on the same playing field. So Cheetos in moderation, vegetables in moderation, pasta in moderation, salad in moderation. So I prefer to think of this as what you do most of the. It's what you do most of the time that matters the most. And so the wine, the desserts, those are occasional things, but everything in moderation sort of levels all foods. And so we like to kind of focus on. No, this is what you need first. Focus on your needs first. Focus on the protein, focus on the veggies, focus on all the good for you foods. And then it always leaves less room for the stuff that maybe isn't as great for you. I can't wait to tell my wife, Monica to stop telling me everything in moderation. Bob, you just gave me. Love it. Do you feel positive about the impact that you're having in San Antonio, Claudia? And maybe I ask myself that same question all the time. To me, eating healthy is like voting everybody do it, but everybody doesn't do it. As a matter of fact, most people don't do it. And I wonder whether or not you wake up going, the glass is half full or half empty. Well, I don't know that I take on the health of the city on my shoulders. I work with individual clients, and I do find it really rewarding when you change one person. I feel that then you change their family. And I've certainly done that. A simple broccoli recipe. Husband refused broccoli, now loves broccoli. So. And then you start, it just kind of grows from there. So I think working small and eventually having that ripple effect is really important. I think, yes, San Antonio can be challenging. You know, we love our fiestas, we love our. Our good food. But I think if people kind of change their perspective and that's what I try and do, the diplomacy diet is kind of change your perspective to that. All or nothing. We're either all in on health or not. I think it's really important to realize that every moment presents an opportunity to choose health. And because you may have woken up today and had a pandulse or a bean and cheese, which I know we're going to talk about later. A bean and cheese taco doesn't mean the rest your day is shot. Or if you've had a lousy weekend or perhaps you've fallen off the health wagon Monday through Wednesday doesn't mean you wait until next Monday. So I think changing people's perspective that every day you can choose something healthy and it's always there for the taking is a better perspective than thinking you have to dive all into this health routine. That is perfect. I told you earlier about Chef Elizabeth Johnson from Farm Table coming onto the podcast, and she created quite a stir. We got a lot of reaction from her condemnation of the bean and cheese taco, which she said was an unhealthy merger of ingredients never meant to be together. She wasn't very flattering of the flour tortilla and its impact on our collective diets either. First of all, I love Chef Elizabeth. She's amazing. So I'd rather see you have an egg taco on corn, perhaps because you really want to prioritize that protein. But again, it's about what you do most of the time. How often are you having that bean and cheese? Are you having it after the spurs win a finals game? Are you having it every morning? Are you having it on weekends? Are you having three or four of them? So I think that matters. Portion matters, how frequently you're doing it. If you're occasionally indulging in a bean and cheese taco, even on flour, that's okay. But I. I agree with her that it's not, perhaps the best choice. I'd rather see you have some eggs, even throw a little, like, turkey bacon, chicken, sausage, something like that in there. And I think, yeah, corn is a little bit superior. Also, we have those almond flour tortillas, which are healthy, which we buy in my house. Oh, I haven't had one of those. Have to try that, the almond flour. And then there's a great, actually new flour tortilla that I saw. I can't remember if it was at heb, Central Market or Whole Foods, and it's made with avocado oil, salt, and flour, so that's a healthier choice. I saw avocado oil on the shelves of Central Market the other day and looked at it and thought about buying it, but I don't know what it's for. Is it a healthy oil? It's for higher heat. So if anything, you're doing anything in higher heat. If you're roasting at really High heat or if you're, you know, pan sauteing at a high heat, you want avocado oil because it has a higher smoke point than olive oil. Grapeseed oils like that too. Isn't it grapeseed oil as well? Yeah, I don't know that. But a dietitian, another dietitian, told me that. And I was also told that when you go into a Mexican restaurant here, a Tex Mex restaurant in San Antonio, and they serve you chips and salsa, that you should imagine a tortilla cut into triangles and that's the maximum number of tostadas that you should have chips, that you should have one tortilla's worth. Yeah. Four chips. I don't know, maybe you can make more triangles. Four chips. The chips and salsa is the tough one. If it's in front of you, you're gonna eat it. The more people that around you, the more you're gonna eat. So there are a lot of different factors that go into having that chips and salsa on the table. Are you going somewhere hungry? I always advocate for having a little snack, a healthy snack, protein forward snack before you go out. I think when you arrive to a restaurant or a party or anywhere and you're starving, you're famished, you're definitely going to reach for the chips and you're going to have more than you want to. I'd have the wok, I'd have the salad first. I'd have something else first to kind of get your blood sugar even. What do you eat at the Frost Center? What do you and Sean have off camera and a little hungry? I don't eat at the Frost Center. Is that bad to say I don't eat the Frost Center? You have your pre game meal at home? I have a pregame meal at home for sure. Let's talk about the diplomacy diet a little bit. And first of all, educate us a little bit on the word of diet. Because when we use the word dietary, we think about healthy initiatives. But when people hear the word diet, they. They're like, oh, is there a new gimmicky way I can lose weight quickly? And they end up, you know, doing stupid things and just ballooning on diets that aren't good for us and don't work well. First of all, diet encompasses so much more than the food on our plate. You got to think about your diet in terms of everything from movement to relationships, joy in your life, your career satisfaction, your sleep stress level. So I think your diet encompasses so much more than just the food on your Plate. I think that's an important concept. But going back to the Diplomacy Diet, so my undergraduate was at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and my dad loved to travel. My parents loved to travel around the world. So he really had his heart set on my becoming a diplomat. You were going to be an ambassador or a spy? I don't know about a spy. I don't have a good poker face. That's where I took up running. And I was always interested in sports nutrition, and I was running some marathons and long distance running. So sports nutrition really became paramount for me. I decided to pivot and move to San Antonio, and I went to University of the Incarnate Word for a master's in nutrition. And I was teaching fitness at the time, which is how we met. And my dad was a little bit upset. He said, I spent all this money and you jump up and down for a living. And I said, dad, I'm an ambassador to good health. And so that's when the Diplomacy Diet idea launched, and I trademarked it long before I launched the business. But the Diplomacy Diet is, I think, that we make negotiations with other people, with our food environment, but the negotiations that we make the most are with ourselves. Are you going to have the glass of wine? Are you going to have the bread? Are you going to have the dessert? Will you have another glass of wine? All of those things come into play without you realizing it. And so the Diplomacy Diet really makes people pause and assess what they're doing and develop some awareness and realize again, that you still have choices and trying to make the smarter choices. So the Diplomacy Diet is a kinder, gentler way, because I think it's, again, about perspective. It's also, I'm very adamant about not doing that fat talk and that fat shaming that we all tend to do, or just we berate ourselves constantly. That's not helpful. We judge others, we shame others. So that's a big part of it. But then it's about making negotiations with ourself and our environment and realizing that we have choices, most of us anyway, if we're fortunate enough to have choices about what we consume. How do you avoid judging and shaming people, which we all agree is, number one, not very effective. Number two, it's simply not nice. It's not good. But at the same time, we're a city with obesity problems in our adult population and increasingly adolescent obesity in our juvenile population. And those are. Those are really serious things. It's not good to be obese. It's not healthy. We don't hear our elected officials and civic leaders talking out loud about that very much because it is an awkward thing to talk about. You can talk about drug addiction or mental illness or other things and homelessness in a much more frank way than you can about people's weight. How do we address what, what is really a. An epidemic in our city, but at the same time, avoid judging and, and shaming people. I'd lie if I say, if I didn't look at people's carts at the grocery store and do. And do a little judgment in my head. I mean, that's just. We all do. I think we all do. I go you that. Why are you buying your kid that soda? Why are you buying your kid that chips? Last thing he needs. I will say that in my head. I think it's a matter of education. I really, truly have learned that people do not know. They really don't know. They don't know about protein. What is. What is, you know, I should anchor my meal with protein. What is that? They don't even know what that is. And then there's the, the idea that healthy food is expensive. It doesn't have to be. Beans are wonderful. Going back to the bean and cheese, beans are actually something we should all be putting on our plates weekly. That's really affordable. If you buy fresh and you buy in season, those vegetables are really affordable. Frozen vegetables are a great alternative. That's affordable. So I think that educating people and it's going to be really hard. You know, Sean was recently at an HEB the Spurs and h E B generously donated money to buy people's groceries. And so Sean was at an HEB on the south side, a very poor area. And he came home with literal tears down his face because he said people don't have any money. They were hugging him, crying, when they were covering a $30 and $40 cart of groceries. He also, because he's been married to me for 25 years, noticed what people were buying. He said, somehow we need to go in there together and teach people that instead of buying the giant box of cereal, that's not going to fill them up, that's going to make them hungry later, that's going to make their energy dip. Maybe they should be buying the peanut butter, they should be buying the beans, they should be buying the eggs. So it's. Education is a key piece. And you're right. The city could do more to educate people without shaming them. I think there's some positive messages I like to tell clients. I mean, it's about what you put on your plate first as opposed to trying to take food away from people. I like the idea of encouraging them what they should be having so they feel their best. Eventually they'll look their best. When with clients, I don't focus on the scale. And eventually one client was like, I thought you were going to tell me exactly what to eat. And two weeks later I'm like, how are you doing? She's like, I lost eight pounds. So it's a. Small choices add up too. That's really key. People don't realize that small choices every day add up to a lot more than some giant overhaul or one big movement. Yeah, just reducing your unhealthy calories a little bit every day can make an enormous difference over a period of months. Absolutely. And it's not just calories in, calories out. It can be small things like getting enough sleep. When you don't get enough sleep, you're going to be hungry. Those hunger hormones are going to be elevated. You're going to be hungry for the wrong foods or you're really going to be craving those carbs. You can take a simple walk after meals, 10 minutes after a meal. How about that's a great city message? 10 minutes after dinner will make a remarkable difference. Not only how you sleep that day, the goal is to kind of keep your blood sugar even so you prevent that insulin spike from rising. That's when people gain weight. That's when people develop chronic diseases. So the 10 minute walk is an easy one. Wake up in the morning and have a glass of water. Exercise, snacks. People can do small little things throughout the day. Take a phone call and walk while you talk. Sit down, do 10 squats an hour, 10 air squats an hour. There are small little things that people can do that will really add up and I think that will surprise a lot of people. Talk a little bit more about affordability because I agree with your website has several things on it just today that I looked at like the bean soup, the carrot soup, the beet salad. Those are all very affordable products that are based on affordable vegetables in the grocery store and they don't require hours in the kitchen. A lot of what you do is based in the kitchen. You're a good cook and that's where healthy eating starts. Right when you prepare your own food. With cooking is the number one key to better health for you and your family. And even regardless of what you're cooking. Cooking is you control the ingredients, you're controlling the oil, adding color to every meal. Is a really easy and low hanging fruit, low budget item to add color to a meal. Even eggs. I tell people, add some color to your eggs, add some zucchini, add some spinach cut into ribbons, add some tomato and peppers. All of that adds up and is really affordable again. So it doesn't have to be complicated. All of my recipes, I like to just say I'm a master assembler. I really assemble, assemble fresh foods. When you start with something fresh, doesn't have to be a lot of fuss to it. I think fresh food should taste flavorful, should be delicious, and it doesn't need a lot in order to please you and you want to enjoy food. Food is to be enjoyed too. I feel like people think, oh, healthy and delicious don't go hand in hand. But they very much can and should. Going back to Sean's reaction to seeing the grocery carts, there's so much, there's so much marketing of bad food for us. One of the few things I watch on television all the time are sports and you get new automobiles and you get junk food. Those are the two commercials and they're just relentless at you all the time showing people happily consuming vast amounts of crap food, junk food. It's terrible. I mean, it absolutely is terrible. And it's enticing. And they make it cheap and they market it to families. And know Sean sometimes like, wow, that looks really great. I think that's where like I have some non negotiables. For me, junk food is a non negotiable. I will not have junk food. I will not hit a drive through. I made that decision a long time ago. Once you do that, then it doesn't even appeal to you. You know, people said, oh well, put the cookies at the, you know, on the top shelf. Well, you know, if you have a, you have a stepladder, you know where the cookies are. So kind of out of sight, out of mind. But I think that you have to kind of make a decision. Are you the kind of person that's going to have junk food and fast food or not? And again, if you have we talked about this a minute ago, if you have the healthy food on hand, you're not going to be wondering what you're going to have for dinner and perhaps hit the drive through on the way home. Making the healthy choice, the easy choice, the accessible choice when you get home is going to solve a lot of your problems. Otherwise you are going to be calling now and makes it so much easier. You don't even have to get out and Hit the drive thru. You call doordash, you call Uber eats, and there it is. But if you have the healthy food on hand and you've done a little bit of prep work ahead of time, that'll be a game changer. I heard you, Claudia, use the word cheeto earlier in this broadcast. Do you swear off all processed foods or do you engage and indulge a little bit in here and there? There's a difference between ultra processed foods. And then nowadays, obviously we have some processed foods we might have, for instance, a potato chip that has avocado oil, salt. You should recognize every food on an ingredient list. People tend to focus solely on calories or solely on the protein grams that they see at the front. Or maybe it's gluten free. And no kidding, because it's a product that never was going to have gluten. So, you know, you've got to be careful about the front of package marketing and really look at ingredient lists. If an ingredient has just a few ingredients, there are good crackers out there those are processed, but they're minimally processed. So, yes, I do leave room for some processed foods. And the kids are in town this week for my grandson's birthday and one of them is a huge potato chip eater. So I bought a bag of potato chips that had avocado oil and salt. But I learned during COVID that I cannot keep potato chips in my house because I like them more than I realize. You know, another great, great thing to do in the kitchen is to encourage your children to be in there with you while you're preparing meals and let them help and let them learn that that cooking can be and is fun and rewarding. And I know a lot of people will, will say I'm too busy. Both my wife and I or my husband and I work. We come home, we're tired, and they want to defer to doordash or going out for food. My wife and I look a lot at recipes that are published that talk about, here's a dinner that you can prepare in less than an hour. Yeah, they're 20 minutes. Their meals in 20 minutes or less or, you know, 30 minutes or less. So I think everything takes time. You have to set a little time aside. What is your priority? If your priority is for a healthy family, then take some time on Sundays or Saturdays or perhaps it's Fridays, I don't know what day that is. And wash your vegetables, have them chopped up and ready to go. Have a couple of proteins on hand, maybe make a pot of beans or some quinoa or some rice, even have it, have that on hand, ready to go. And again, making the healthy choice, the easy choice will be the default. And stop thinking that cooking has to be so complicated. Have some go to meals, it's okay to repeat some recipes. Have some easy go to's and then have fun with it. As you just mentioned, kids, have them pick a recipe with you. Have them go to the grocery store. Maybe you have a little game where everybody chooses a new vegetable that no one's tried. Or you go to the farmer's market on Saturday morning and someone picks, hey, let's find something that we've never tried before as a family. Let's look it up. How was it grown? Maybe you ask the farmer some questions. So I think there are ways to make food and cooking fun for kids. And the sooner we start teaching our kids how to cook, the better off we'll be as a community and a society for sure. Our two adult sons both cook and cook well. One of them actually was professional for a while. I remember that. But they tend to cook in the beginning of the week, very smartly. They'll cook four or five meals or basic ingredients like the protein that they can pull out during the week so that they don't have to spend as much time every weekday night after work cooking the cook once, eat twice, they'll say, cook once, eat twice. Always make enough for leftovers and you can repurpose those leftovers. You're going to roast some chicken. Maybe you don't have the roasted chicken again the next day or the day after that, but you might shred it and make some tacos or healthy tostadas or something else. Empanadas, Empanadas. I like empanadas. Are they not healthy? I don't know. Going back to that flour. Oh, okay. Discos. Are those flour? What's a disco? That's, you know, if you go to like the Latin American market, you buy these things called discos. And they're pre made empanada shells that are soft but they bake when you put ingredients in them. Oh, I haven't seen those. Oh, they're wonderful. But there's a new product I saw and it's the tostadas. And they're baked and I don't remember the name of the brand, but they're everywhere now and they're just baked with salt and a corn chip. And Sean does not because he says it's messy, but, but they're healthier because they're baked they're baked. You just throw on some beans, some, some chickens. I mean, again, easy, easy can still be delicious. It doesn't have to be complicated. You know, a lot of us now at some point in our lives have hired a registered dietitian the same way. Maybe we've hired a personal trainer to oversee, see our, our workout regimens. Right. So you do that. You have private clients, one on ones. I do. Do you find yourself teaching them to cook or, or. Absolutely. Really? Absolutely. I had a woman who I was in school with back in Laredo and her son was one of the best comments. She said her son commented, mom, you're a cook now. And this is in her, you know, in her mid-50s. So it's never too late to learn how to cook and you can teach people basic cooking skills because again, there's that stigma. So complicated. It's so time consuming. It doesn't have to be. One of the things you could teach some of us is how to become better shoppers. And one of the things that I've learned is to stop going to the grocery store when I'm hungry. That's true. Just like before you go out to a party, before you go out to dinner, have a little snack, a protein forward snack going when you're hungry. Also going in with a plan. You know, we haven't talked about that, but planning is key. Before you go to a restaurant, I like to browse the menu before I go in there. I know exactly what I'm going to have. I'm not going to leave something to chance. Sean is awful about over ordering, so that's always tough. We need to get Sean in here. He's taking a beating. I call him saboteur. But he's gotten a lot better. Pretty physically fit to me now, even behind the microphone instead of behind the basketball. 25 years of training with me, he does well. Going back to your personal practice. So somebody can go to the diplomacydiet.com and they can avail themselves of everything that you have on the website. But how does it work? If somebody decides, you know what, I'm going to take the leap and I'm going to call Claudia or somebody like Claudia and see whether or not that makes a difference in my life by bringing in some professional help. I think it can make a real difference. And I work with all kinds of people, anywhere from women and menopause men, people with GI issues. I have an offering where we go to the grocery store and I teach you how to shop for healthy food. So we have a Supermarket tour. I can revamp your kitchen and your pantry and, and get rid of the Cheetos and replace it with something healthier. And then the one on one is really great. You know, food is something, I think it requires people to be very vulnerable, to let people in on what they're eating and why they're eating. There's a lot of emotion involved also, obviously a lot of culture and history and what we're used to. I don't like to take any of that away, but I think the one on one is really important. When we open up to, you know, they open up to me and we make some significant changes. I'm really proud of all the clients. It's been so rewarding. I never actually thought it would be. You know, one of the reasons people need a Claudia Zapata in their life is a lot of us grew up in households where there wasn't regular meals at dinner time or whether our parents didn't teach us about either recreating and exercising smartly or eating well. There might have been too much drinking or drugs in the house, depending on the family that you come from. We don't teach it in schools. And interestingly, Claudia, I know that public school districts in Texas, probably everywhere, they employ registered dietitians. And yet when you go to a school cafeteria, you see that kids can go to a vending machine and buy a Pepsi or a Coke. They can buy chocolate milk in the line. Why, number one, aren't we teaching good nutrition in schools? And number two, why are we giving kids access to processed foods and unhealthy choices like sugary drinks in school? One great question. I mean, that comes from, I think of a federal level, and we need to make some, some difficult choices. People say, I don't want the government telling me what to eat. They already do marketing the this, that, the commodities, so they already tell you what to eat. You just don't realize it. And I think, yeah, people, I don't think kids should have access to sodas and, and junk food at. I think they should have home cooking as best you can. Batch cooking in our schools. I think that's the least we can expect. Also for a lot of kids, it might be the only meal they're eating that day. You know, there are a lot of hungry kids in our community, so it might be their only meal. So we ideally like it to be a healthy one, a nutritious one, a filling one, as opposed to chips and a Pepsi and a soda. So we have a lot of work to do on that front, it comes from again, that goes back to education. And we have to educate the parents. It comes from our leaders. I think where we have, we definitely need to go back to having those campaigns. I feel like we used to have those campaigns back in the day and then people made the mistake of thinking, oh, that we're shaming our population. But it doesn't have to come from a place of shame. It can be a positive, positive teaching experience. I had a surgeon general once tell me that who was involved in the era when they put the notices on cigarette packages that they were a danger to your health, that more adults probably quit smoking because of school campaigns where children came home and said, mommy and Daddy, I'm worried about you. Because we learned today that cigarettes kill. And that was a very powerful message to come from children. But we don't seem to do that with healthy eating anymore. Any kinds of, you know, federal initiatives on that scale that we did when, in the 60s and 70s when we really, really went to work on people smoking. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that could be a campaign on sodas. I mean, sodas are. It's liquid candy, plain and simple. I remember back in the day, my son wanted to have orange juice in the morning. And instead of the orange juice, what I did is I. And this is the dietitian in me, sorry. And I filled his glass with actual teaspoons of sugar. And if people realized how many teaspoons of sugar. And I've done demos in schools too, where I have a soda and I filled it up with actual white table sugar. And people are shocked at how much sugar is in certain things that Starbucks coffee. It's a lot of sugar. Would you add that many teeth of sugar at home? I doubt it. People are really shocked by the amount of hidden sugar in our foods. I digressed a little bit to sugar because I think that's one of our big problems. I think it is too. And I don't know how many tablespoons of sugar are in a Coke or a soft drink. How many are. For every four grams is one teaspoon of sugar. Okay, so if you read a label and they're 24 grams, that's six teaspoons of sugar in that one. I think that's a soda's about something like that. I try to read labels. Labels. You know, food manufacturers can use labels to deceive people as well. The word organic has become ubiquitous and products that never had any wheat based products in them at all, they announce them that they're, they're Gluten free like this is an exception to the rule when it's actually, it's deceitful advertising to make people lead that something's better for them than it might otherwise be. Turn the box around, turn the bag around, read the ingredient list. And don't just focus on what the front of the package says. People think. There are these protein cookies that people used to have at my old gym and it was just, I don't know, I think it's called a protein cookie. What else is in there? So, sure, you're getting 12, 15 grams of protein, but what else is in there? Turn the package around, read the food label. There's a bunch of junk in it. I was a power bar eater. I was too, back in the day. But I've since learned that they're kind of dessert. Yeah, power bars. And I don't even know how we chew those. They're pretty terrible. I like an aloha bar now and I do that as kind of an emergency thing. If I know I'm running errands and I don't have time to grab something, if I have errands after the gym, I'll grab a quick aloha bar. I want to change topics a little bit and ask what has been your reaction in the last year or two to the proliferation of GLP1 drugs and how many people are using injectable drugs to, from my perspective, lose extraordinary amounts of weight? You know, there's, I guess, some debate over whether or not you can keep that weight off. There's obviously affordability issues for people that can't claim diabetes or some other condition that allows them to get the product on an insured basis. They're very expensive and I'm not familiar with all the side effects, but I take it some people do have serious side effects, but most people obviously don't. And they're using these drugs to significant effect. I think they're great, honestly, with one or two, as long as one, you're willing to consume enough protein and two, you're willing to strength train. So if you're taking somebody who's obese, who's on the couch, who's never set foot in a gym, never lifted a weight, I would not advise them to take a GLP one, you have to lift weights, you have to eat enough protein because otherwise you're going to lose muscle. And when you lose muscle, that is your metabolic currency. Muscle is the number one thing we all need to be focusing on as we age. And for someone who's overweight to lose whatever little muscle they have on their body by the GLP1. That's really bad advice. So unless you're willing to strength train and eat protein, then you should not be on GLP1. People with a little more money, they tend to take it a little too far. They take those GLP1s too far, they start losing weight and they can't seem to stop and they keep going and going. And again, that muscle wasting is a big thing. Muscle is key. So I'm a baby boomer in my 70s and it isn't easy for me to figure out how to conduct myself differently than when I was in my 40s, 50s and 60s. One of the things I've learned is I can no longer keep up with people in their 30s on road bikes. And, and that it's silly to try and I should stop. I've learned to stop trying. Are you still cycling? Oh yeah, I am still cycling, but I only cycle off road in places like the Mission Reach now or neighborhoods. I've gotten much more conservative because unfortunately we're a city that has just not adapted itself to pedestrians and cyclists and, and people are just in such a hurry out there and, and it's unfortunate, but it's not safe, particularly when you're not in a group. We're not a bike friendly city. No, we're not. So I'm, I'm more careful about it. But you know, when I look at my exercise regimen, I find that there's fewer and fewer classes that I want to do in a gym. I cannot do CrossFit. It's hard for me to keep up with certain, even kinds of yoga or Pilates classes where there's, there's like fast transitions and so forth. And so I think as you age and your metabolism slows and you get less return on the, you know, the time investment that you have to think about different ways of changing your diet or what you eat and changing the ways you recreate. It's not different from the GLP1 advice I just gave. I think you need to, you can need to continue strength training because again, that muscle is really key as you age. So I would not in the CrossFit kind of scenario, perhaps because it is tough and injuries are quite frequent, but I think that, and people can start lifting weights at any age. It makes a remarkable difference. You know, you don't want to be the oldest person in the room, but you want to be the oldest, healthiest person. You want to be the healthiest person in the room. So I think smart aging as opposed to anti aging is key and you want to consume more protein as you age. Another thing going back to the fitness is mobility. Mobility is so important. Remember my dad in his later years couldn't get off a curb that was this big and it was just terrible to watch or getting in and out of a car was so difficult. So that strength training, being able to get up out of a chair, off the sofa is so key. In and out of a car, strength training. I would advise anyone to continue as absolutely long as they can at their, at a good pace and not this, not some of these crazy paces that some classes may require. So maybe that is a popular population that we need to target for sure. At gyms and things to make people of all ages feel welcome. But mobility and strength training are absolutely key. And then I would say for people who are older, keeping up those, those friendships, those walking with friends is really key. It's something I look forward to. I do it several times a week. We have a

bunch of girls who meet out in front of my house at 7: 32:43

15 in the mornings and we take some great walks and it's therapeutic and it's wonderful for us and it's something that I hope I will be doing in my 70s and 80s. Well, our rescue dogs think they should be walked two to three times a day for a couple of miles. But actually my wife and I wonder would we walk that much if we didn't have the dogs? And so I find that the dogs are a really good partner in us staying active and, and just walking is really good for you. Walking is key. Walking is simple. Everybody can go for a walk. And yes, I'll always have a dog greet me at the door when I go home. So I hope to be walking with them. Well, we're running out of time, but I wanted to ask before we go about the work you and Sean do as, as public ambassadors for Methodist Healthcare. They're such an important institution in our community, both the, the, the hospitals but also Methodist Healthcare Ministries is probably one of the most important and far reaching charitable organizations in the state. Absolutely. What's been fascinating for us to realize and we've had partnership with them for about eight years now, we absolutely love it. Is that for a hospital group they're trying to keep people out of the hospital. So they, all of their campaigns that we do are all about prevention and that's pretty remarkable. I don't think there's any other hospital who would do that. So everything we do from breast cancer screenings and lung cancer screenings, healthy pregnancies, summer safety. We've done so many different things recently. Healthy cooking is a big one for them. So I love that they care about the community the way that they do, because they really are invested in the health of San Antonio. Well, I know they sponsor a walk and a run at the zoo, Alzheimer's walk. They're always big on the Alzheimer's walk as well. So they care about the whole lifespan, which is really key. So they care from. We haven't talked about it, but older people need to get out of their houses, too, particularly people that are widowed or divorced living single, how important it is to get out and socialize. And. And one of the ways to do that is not go to a bar and you may not go to a church, but you can go to a walk or you can go to a run or you can go to some of these, you know, public exercise. People do yoga in the park, things like that. And I think those are really good activities that you meet new friends and run into old friends and, you know, you sort of force yourself to get out of your routine that may not have enough exercise or activity in it. Absolutely. Again, like we said, said, your diet is about more than what's on your plate and certainly the connections. And we've learned that connections with other human beings is. Is absolutely vital to our health. All right, well, the diplomacydiet.com that's a great website to go to. And if you're interested in doing even more and talking to Claudia, you can get in touch with you through the website. One of your Instagram handles is Cook with Claudia, and that's sort of a. A regular opportunity. Opportunity for people to learn how to cook affordably, cook fast, and cook healthily. And there's a lot of fitness on there, too. I'm a big fitness still a big fitness advocate, as you know. All right, well, ghost spurs go. Ghost spurs go. Claudia Zapata, Diplomacy Diet. Thanks for coming on to Big City Small Town. This has been great. What a treat. All right, y', all, thanks for listening to this episode of Big City Small Town. If you enjoyed the conversation, please do share it with friends, subscribe and and colleagues who might find it interesting. You can also keep up with our newsletters, Bob Rivard's Midweek and my own San Antonio Something. You can find those linked up@bigcitysmalltown.com Our show, Big City Small Town is made possible by Westin Urban building a city our children want to call home. Geekdom, where startups are born. And smart ideas become businesses. And now swbc, the San Antonio based financial services services company that has been putting clients first for decades, serving individuals, businesses and financial institutions across insurance, investments, payments and more. If you're part of a business or organization that believes in strengthening San Antonio's media ecosystem and you'd like to explore a partnership with us at Big City, Small Town, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out through our website or connect with us on social media. All right, y', all, thanks for being here. We'll see you next time.