Rita Black: Osteoporosis affects millions of people worldwide with estimates varying by region. In the United States, approximately 10 million individuals have osteoporosis, and around 44 million have low bone density, putting them at risk of developing the condition. Today on the Thin Thinking Podcast, I have a powerful interview with Kevin Ellis, known as The Bone Coach. In our discussion, Kevin will walk you through what’s important to pay attention to, to improve your bone health as you age, and how we can start building stronger bones today. He also dispels some common myths about our bones and bone health along the way. I think if you value your powerful bones and their future, then grab your vertebrae and come on in.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, bestselling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieve long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the thin thinking tools, skills, and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long-term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Well, hello everybody. Top of the morning to ya. We’re coming at ya in the middle of March. And happy St. Patty’s Day to ya all. If you’re Irish. I’m so sorry! Oh, I just had to do that. Okay. And you know, and what was that? Irish Spring Manly. Yes. But I like it too. Oh, the good old days. Anyway happy Spring! Happy St. Patty’s Day and all of those green things. I hope you are enjoying the weather, which hopefully it’s getting warmer where you are. And the first signs of spring.

Rita Black: So in November of this year, I was told that I have osteoporosis. So here I am minding my business, a healthy 59-year-old who exercises daily, eats really healthfully. And yes, I have osteoporosis. The doctor who told me seemed perplexed as well. And as most doctors, even though he was perplexed, he just wrote me a prescription, told me to take calcium and Vitamin D, which by the way, I already do and have for years. And I would be able to have another DEXA scan in three years and we’ll just see how things go. Okay, so sorry, what? You know? Hey, I’ve got osteoporosis and that’s what you’re gonna hand me. That’s it, that’s all I get. I wanted answers, but as I was defined, many doctors don’t have many answers about our bones. So I did what any smart thinking person with a podcast does. I looked for a podcast on the subject and I found the most amazing resource. Kevin Ellis, the Bone Coach. I’ve learned more about my bones and how to manage osteoporosis with his show and resources. And I feel like I can now understand my diagnosis, have some peace around it, and you know, knowledge is power, how I can get better and take steps forward and take action and I can empower myself and my bones. So I said I have got to get this guy on my podcast.

Rita Black: And so after much trying, ’cause he’s a busy, busy man, I’m super excited to share him with you now. Hey, and before we get started with Kevin, I just wanted to remind you that these last couple of weeks we’ve been running a review contest of sorts, where if you write a review, when you write a view review and of the Thin Thinking Podcast, upload it or write it on your favorite podcast platform. Take a photo of it, send us that photo to support@shiftweightmastery.com. You get a free hypnosis download. We’ll give you a coupon and you go right in the store and pick out whichever hypnosis or coaching session you like, sometimes their coaching and hypnosis session. But just check out our inventory and also you’ll get the chance you’ll be put in a drawing for one lucky winner is gonna win a free shift Weight mastery process, our 30 day event, plus seven days prep coming up at the end of April is led by me. It’s an online course, but I lead everybody through it altogether. It’s an amazing transformational experience and daily hypnosis, meditation and coaching. So send us that review, get in the running for a free shift weight mastery process.

Rita Black: And now let me introduce Kevin. Kevin Ellis, known as Bone Coach, is a Forbes featured integrative health coach podcaster YouTuber, and is the founder of bonecoach.com. After an osteoporosis diagnosis in his early thirties, he realized just how challenging it is for the average person to get the right stronger bones plan in place today. Not only has he transformed his own health and made continued progress on his own journey, he’s now dedicated his life to helping people with osteopenia and osteoporosis gain clarity and confidence that improving is possible.

Rita Black: Through a unique three-step process and a world class coaching program called Stronger Bone Solution, Kevin and his team of credentialed experts have helped people in over 1500 plus cities around the world get confident in their stronger bones plan. His mission is to help millions of people around the globe build stronger bones and help our children and grandchildren have the education resources and nourishment needed to prevent osteoporosis and other diseases in the future so they can lead long active lives.

Rita Black: Welcome Kevin to the Thin Thinking Podcast. I’m really excited to have you on. I know you’re a hard man to get ahold of, so I am really privileged to have you here sitting in front of me.

Kevin Ellis: Well, Rita, thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Rita Black: Yeah, I mean, you have such an interesting job helping women particularly. Would you say women are the primary makeup of your, the people you serve?

Kevin Ellis: Yeah, predominantly about 90%. Yeah.

Rita Black: Okay. I’ll ask you that. Why later, or unless you wanna answer that now before we hop into it things, but yeah.

Kevin Ellis: I’m, I’m happy to. So bone health is typically not something that most people are thinking about as they’re going about their daily lives. They think of their bones as these static structures that carry them through life and, you know, help them do all these activities that they wanna do. But what they don’t realize is they’re actually living tissues and they respond to different stressors and are affected by hormones and toxins and all these different things. And our bones are being affected, being built up and broken down throughout our lives. And this affects both men and women. But what I’ve come to find, and what is true is that primary osteoporosis typically occurs as a result of a decrease in estrogen. In postmenopausal women, estrogen has that protective effect on bone. When those levels decrease as they do during menopause, that causes an increase in the activity level of these cells that break down bone. And then there are other causes of osteoporosis though which are, which is porous bones. And those causes can be medications, diseases behaviors, conditions. That’s where we start to see women have these conditions too. But men can also have some of these different conditions as well. So we have a couple hundred thousand people in our community. I would say 90, just over 90% of them are women, and the remaining 10% approximately are men. And then there are some practitioners and physicians and things that are in the mix too.

Rita Black: Wow. Fascinating. So how did you get started? Like, what was your, the beginning of your journey with helping women with both osteopenia. Is it pina or penia?

Kevin Ellis: Pena. Osteopenia, which is like a precursor to osteoporosis. Yeah.

Rita Black: Right. And then osteoporosis, like how, how did it all start for you?

Kevin Ellis: Well, so for me, my, I would take it back to before I was even born and my, when my mother was five months pregnant with me, my father was told he had cancer. And two months after I was born, he passed away and he was 35 years old at that time. So my entire life, I had this fear that I was gonna follow in his footsteps to an early grave and not be there to experience the joys of being a father. Like he didn’t get the chance to be for me. So you know, I was worried about all these things and then I ended up going into the Marine Corps to follow in his footsteps. I came outta the Marine Corps, I had a lot of different health issues. I had poor digestive health, high stress, wasn’t sleeping well, low energy. Some days I could barely even get out of bed.

Kevin Ellis: And then I was diagnosed with celiac disease. So celiac disease is an autoimmune condition where when you ingest gluten found in things like breads and crackers and all that stuff the villi, these tiny little nutrient absorption centers in your small intestine that are responsible for absorbing nutrients from the food you eat, they become blunted and damaged to where they can’t do their job. So my villi, my nutrient absorption centers were damaged and blunted. They couldn’t do their job. They couldn’t absorb these important nutrients for my bones, calcium magnesium, some of the other nutrients too. And my body still needed these nutrients to execute its daily functions. And from muscle contractions to nerve impulses, your body is gonna need calcium for these things. And if you’re not absorbing it or taking it in, your body’s gonna go to the largest reserve of minerals it has, which are your bones that will pull from there and lead to bone loss and osteoporosis.

Kevin Ellis: So I talked about the different kinds of osteoporosis, primary related to estrogen decline in postmenopausal women, secondary related to conditions and diseases that can lead to bone loss, celiac disease, and gut health issues. Those are secondary causes and contributors to bone loss and osteoporosis. So that was the, that was the, the thing, or one of the things that was the contributing factor to me developing bone loss and osteoporosis at a young age. And then I realized along the way, as I was doing the research, getting the plan in place, improving my own health and bones, I realized it’s not the 30-year-old male that this typically affected by this. It’s the woman 50, 60, 70 plus that gets this diagnosis. And they’re presented with, take some calcium, take some vitamin D, go for a walk. Here’s your bone drug. We’ll see you in two years for your next bone density scan.

Kevin Ellis: Right? That’s the standard recommendation for most people. And it’s woefully inadequate. And it’s for that reason that I said, you know what? I’m gonna take the same energy, enthusiasm, leadership, those kinds of things that I had in the Marine Corps, and I’m just gonna apply that to this, the health space and osteoporosis. And I went and I built out a team. I became a health coach. I developed a program with a lot of different experts. And now we’ve got a couple hundred thousand people in our community. Thousands of people have come through our Stronger Bones programs and we have 2018 members at this point. We’ve helped a lot people.

Rita Black: Good for you. Yeah. That’s exciting. You know, I, so I mentioned to you briefly, I have just got a osteoporosis diagnosis. I’m 59 years old. I, you know, when they did my DEXA scan or whatever, they were like, what the heck? Why would somebody like your age, I’m really fit, I exercise, I eat a really healthy diet. Ha. You know? They, they ran all these blood tests ’cause they didn’t know, but ultimately they were like, here’s a pill. Take more vitamin D take, you know, we can’t see anything, you know, in your urines or you in your blood that tells us anything other than, sorry, you’ve got osteoporosis and we’ll see you in three years for another DEXA scan. And I was like –

Kevin Ellis: It’s almost exactly what I said. Right. I hear that 90% of the time from people.

Rita Black: Oh my God. And that’s when I found your podcast. ’cause I was like, I am not taking no for an I like, and, and your podcast is awesome. It’s, it is just like, what a great resource center. So if anybody’s hearing this, it’s like his, you got to check out Kevin’s podcast ’cause it is a really, really thoughtful and, and well created podcast. And, and for somebody like me, it was just like, oh, I found somebody who’s sane and knows what they’re talking about. I mean, it’s not that they’re, the doctors are, you know, don’t want the, I just don’t think that they have the answers in their, you know, most of them don’t even like you. I think you said in one of your podcast, they don’t even know how to read a, the doctors themselves don’t even know how to read those DEXA scans. They have to have a specialist reading one of those things.

Kevin Ellis: Couple a couple things there. Yeah. I would say with physicians too. These are people that they went into their field because they wanted to help people like genuinely wanna help people. And they have a lot of knowledge and experience and expertise, no doubt about that. At the same time, the model that they are in is not designed to help people achieve their best possible health outcome. Especially when things are driven by insurance. And it’s just a really inefficient, not effective model, at least for chronic conditions. It’s great with acute care. Hey, I broke my arm. I need help immediately. It, it’s great with that. But when it comes to chronic conditions, they need more than acute solutions. So in, in the case of osteoporosis, the doctor, when you get that diagnosis, the bone density scan is what, what you’re gonna get that diagnosis from bone density scan is a DEXA scan.

Kevin Ellis: Dual energy, x-ray absorption geometry, painless test, kind of like an X-ray, very low levels of radiation. You lay down on a machine, it does a scan, it tells you your bone mineral density, the actual mineral content of your bone. Then it generates a score. If your plus one or minus one, they’re gonna consider that normal and healthy. If it’s minus one to minus 2.5, they’re, they’ll consider that osteopenia. We would call that low bone mass. It’s like a precursor to osteoporosis. And then osteoporosis is minus 2.5 and lower. So minus 2.6, minus 2.7. And the greater that negative number becomes the more severe the osteoporosis. And when you get these scan results, the doctor is gonna have 15 minutes to sit down with you, maybe 30 minutes to sit down with you. And they’re not gonna be able to walk through every single thing that you need.

Kevin Ellis: They, they see multiple patients every day. These patients come in and say, Hey, I’ve got this list of tests. I found this on Google. Can you do this for me? Can you do that? So a lot of times they just block that stuff out and they just say, this is my protocol in this situation. And they just stick to it and they follow it. And that’s efficient for that model. But again, it’s not designed to help the patient achieve the best possible health outcome. So there are quite a few things that you as the patient in that situation can do. And I’m happy to walk through how you even have those conversations too.

Rita Black: Hmm. Well, fantastic. I mean, maybe for our listeners, what is the difference between well, you just mentioned what the difference is, but, but how do you know that you have it? Like, I, I mean, honestly, I had ao DEXA scan a few years ago and I think I had osteopenia. My doctor never even brought it up, you know, and never even said, oh, by the way, you have this score. I just saw on my, my chart that it came out low. And I said, Hey this was pre pandemic, post pandemic. And I was like, I’m gonna be 60 this year. Can I get another scan just to see? And, and, and they kind of begrudgingly set me up for what? So like, how would, if I didn’t know, like if I was just like walking around in the universe and I didn’t, how do you know that you have osteoporosis or osteoporosis or osteopenia if, if you didn’t have a, you know, a doctor who was tuned into you?

Kevin Ellis: Well, so the diagnosis comes from the scan, right? So you get the bone density scan, the, the scoring of that scan is what’s gonna tell you what that diagnosis is. At the same time that typically most people only have part of the picture, when you get the bone density scan, you only get, for the most part the bone density, the mineral content of the bone. What most people don’t get as part of their scan is bone quality. That’s the structural integrity. The micro architecture, how the bone is organized. Those two things, bone density, bone quality combine to create bone strength. So oftentimes you only have part of the picture. Now, there are ways to understand your bone quality. You can call a facility ahead of time, ask ’em if they have TBS technology, trabecular bone score technology. If they do at the same time you get your bone density scan done, you can get that piece of data.

Kevin Ellis: If they don’t, and they may not, then there is another technology that is, it’s trying to make its way into the US. It’s more prevalent in Europe right now. It’s called echo light. And it’s or REMS technology, radio frequency, echo graphic multis spectometry technology. And it’s like a, it’s an ultrasound. The bone density gives you a measure of bone quality and it gives you a five-year predictor of fracture on some of the machines. So there are ways to find out your bone quality too. The other part of the picture that most people don’t have when they get these bone density scans is they don’t know, am I still losing bone right now as we speak? That’s, that’s an important piece of information to have. ’cause If you’re still losing bone, that is reducing your bone density, reducing your bone quality, increasing your fracture risk.

Kevin Ellis: And when we have fractures, most people, when they think of fractures, they think of their mother or their grandmother or grandparents or aunt or someone like that that they knew and they saw how it significantly impacted their quality of life later on or maybe even led to, to death at some point. And that’s, you know, not to be scary or fearmongering. That’s, that is a reality. You know, sometimes for some people, the good thing is once you know and you get that early information, there’s so much that you can do to prevent that from happening. So one thing that you can look at to understand if you’re still actively losing bone right now are bone turnover markers. Bone turnover markers are tests that look at the activity level of cells that are breaking down bone and building up your bone. And this is something that you can ask your doctor for, right?

Rita Black: Oh, really?

Kevin Ellis: You get the, you get the diagnosis. You can ask your doctor. They may or may not order bone turnover markers because if a doctor doesn’t understand the interpretation of a test, they may not order it. But they may refer you out to an endocrinologist or a rheumatologist or someone else who may understand that. Or they’ll send you to somebody like our, like us and our team who looks at these things every day. So with these kinds of markers, there’s the serum ctx. And that is a CT lopeptide test that test looks at the activity level of cells that break down bone. And if that activity level is elevated or even really high, that can be an indicator of active bone loss and a root cause issue that needs to be addressed. So that is a starting point for a lot of people is figuring out, am I losing bone right now? And if I am, what needs to be done to address that underlying root cause? It’s, you know, oftentimes it’s not just hormones, which is what the doctors will say, oh, it’s just hormones, or it’s a natural part of aging, or this is, it’s gonna happen at this point in life. We’ll just monitor it and then give you a medication once you get to the point where you have osteoporosis. Right. You don’t have to do that. Right. There’s, there are a lot of things that you could do there.

Rita Black: Yeah. So, so if that is, is low or high, then that’s going to, that’s going to tell you how you’re gonna take action with regards to if you choose to take a medication that, I mean, I know we haven’t gotten to medication yet, but whether or not you need to just work on stalling out this bone loss that’s a different protocol than building bone.

Kevin Ellis: Great question. Okay. So if we are still actively losing bone and something is contributing to that loss, we need to address the something. What is the thing contributing to bone loss? And then we go after that, or oftentimes it’s multiple things, right? So we’ll go after those underlying root causes. One of the challenges with just going to the doctor and getting a prescription for a medication and taking that medication saying, oh, I’m good. But one of the problems with that is the medication does not address those underlying root cause issues of bone loss. So you can still take the medication and if you put all your faith in just that and you don’t do anything else, you can still lose bone. And that, I’ve seen it happen before with people. So where people come to us and they have been on a medication for years and they’re still losing bone, it’s because there’s something else still contributing to that loss that has to be addressed.

Kevin Ellis: So that has to be the starting point. So when you see that that’s elevated or high, then we go into exploring, well, what are the reasons why, what are the things contributing to that? How do we bring that CTX down? Some of it could be bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, if that makes sense for you and your situation. That can help. But then also that’s still not necessarily addressing the underlying root cause issues too. So then we gotta go even further and figure out is it digestive issues? Is it autoimmune conditions, is it chronic inflammation? Is it X, Y and Z? And we, we figure these things out, address them, and now we get to the point where we can start moving in the right direction.

Rita Black: Okay. Right. Wow. It’s fascinating. You figured this all out. I mean, you know, you took it and you, you dissected it down. Now I, I don’t know if this was you, but I have a feeling it was and this is something for our audience because of weight management and is that our bones, you know, it’s kind of like our brain we reaches its height of like ability when we’re about 30, you know, it, it fully matures and then, and then it kind of starts to fall apart, our bones, I think I could be wrong, but from 18 to like 30 is when they’re at their height. And so like, if we’re doing things like bulimia, like using laxatives or throwing up or doing you know, damage to ourselves by, you know, just trying to you know, like crazy dieting you know, eating nothing or drinking only caffeine or whatever, that in that period of time where women, especially our generation where, you know, in the seventies and eighties it was like, be super skinny and you know, like conform to this aesthetic.

Rita Black: A lot of us in this audience probably did a lot of damage to our bones at that time. Is that ’cause I’m thinking about, ’cause I’m a former bulimic, so I’m wondering if that might’ve contributed to some of my bone loss, you know, currently, because I never had a DEXA scan that said you’re normal. It always, it was like osteopenia and then osteoporosis.

Kevin Ellis: Yeah. So the reason people, one of the, the ways that, you know, someone has osteoporosis is they, they either have excessive bone loss, they’re not building enough bone, or they didn’t build enough bone, or they didn’t reach peak bone mass in their younger years. So just like we were talking about, or you were talking about a second ago, 90% of that bone mass is put on by the time you turn age 18, the remaining 10% fills in by the time you turn 30. So if when you were younger, you had poor diet nutrition, you, and, and by the way, listen up if you have kids or grandkids too. Don’t just look at this or listen to this through the lens of your situation. ’cause Yeah. That is important you want to address for you. But if you have kids and grandkids that are in that zero to 18 window, they need to be doing the right things at this time.

Kevin Ellis: ‘Cause If we lay the foundation right, when someone is young, it could add an extra 10, 20, 30 years to the end of their life. Think about that 10, 20, 30 years. If you build a strong, solid foundation from a really young age, that’s only gonna help you the older you get. So if, when we were younger, we have poor diet nutrition, we’re not getting enough calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, vitamin K two, if we’re eating a bunch of processed packaged foods, chips, just eating a lot of chips and crackers and and stuff out of the box and not focusing on prioritizing protein, protein first for kids at meals, right? Getting that protein in your bones are 50% protein by volume. And we need the minerals that come into that too. So that’s, that’s how you’re gonna build a strong healthy bone structure. If we’re drinking a lot of sugary soft drinks or, you know, eating a lot of candy, those kinds of things are not gonna lead to a healthy bone structure from a young age.

Kevin Ellis: If we had an eating disorder or if we took certain medications like glucocorticoids, prednisone, or if we were leading a sedentary lifestyle, we’re not moving our body and our bones in these short, sharp, dynamic movements while we’re playing sports and doing gymnastics. Those kinds of things can help create a really solid bone structure. If we weren’t doing them, then it’s, it’s gonna affect your ability to reach that peak bone mass. So that, that is, those are some of the contributors that people just have to be aware of. And, you know, you’ve got kids and grandkids, you wanna pay attention to that now too.

Rita Black: Right. So, but some, you know, gut health you mentioned digestive. How much of that plays a role? Like for somebody like me currently? So like, making sure my gut is, like you said, that if, if once you get some of the things that you’re looking at, if somebody’s continuing to lose bone would be their digestion. Is that a leaky gut thing? Is that, how is that, is that usually.

Kevin Ellis: So there, there are two ways, or at least at least two primary ways that your gut and your bones are connected. The first one I gave an example of, which was if you’re not absorbing your nutrients, right? So you have a condition like celiac disease, the autoimmune condition, the damages, the villi, or if you have a condition like ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s or you just have chronic digestive issues, bloating, belching, burping, gas, constipation, diarrhea, IBS, loose stools, perpetually ongoing, doesn’t stop, absorption is an issue, right? So, that is one bucket of a contributing factor to gut health and bone health connection. The other is that I talked about this right at the beginning is that your bones are living tissue right inside your bones. You have something called bone marrow. Bone marrow is this soft spongy material that’s responsible for producing 95% of the blood cells in your body.

Kevin Ellis: So if you need help with preventing bleeding or clotting, platelets are gonna help with that. If you need help with carrying oxygen to the body’s tissues, carrying carbon dioxide away from the tissues back to the lungs, red blood cells are gonna help with that. If you need help with fighting infections, healing wounds, anything related to the immune system, white blood cells are gonna help with that. The cells that break down bone are a form of white blood cell. So anything that’s stimulating the immune system is speaking in the same language as the cells that break down bone. Where does 70% of your immune system reside in your gut? So if you have digestive issues, it’s not just a matter of are you absorbing your nutrients, it’s, are those digestive issues stimulating the immune system speaking in the same language as the cells that breakdown bone and then causing that bone loss leading to osteoporosis.

Kevin Ellis: So, you know, there, if you have digestive issues, you, you have to resolve those things. And a lot of times that starts with getting some stool testing. And you’re probably, it’s probably not gonna just be the stool testing, you go to your conventional MD to get, you might need to go to a functional practitioner or, you know, we do that kind of stuff too. But you need to probably start there and then you gotta focus on getting the right diet, nutrition, bringing in the nutrients that you need to support stronger bones, but also bringing in things that can still support good digestive health too.

Rita Black: So if, if given that, what would be, if I wanted to work on building bone the best diet for that, like what would, I hear you saying protein. So is protein still even though I am far past being young?

Kevin Ellis: Well, let’s, let’s talk about No, no. I mean, protein is so important. You know, Dr. Gabrielle –

Rita Black: And does it matter what the protein source is? Because, you know, we have, there’s vegans, vegetarians, carnivores, like –

Kevin Ellis: Yeah. Great question. So Dr. Gabrielle Lion, I’m sure a lot of people have heard of her. She talks about too, how the muscle is or is the organ of longevity. And protein is such an important macronutrient that we need to incorporate for bones specifically, and this is something we’ve talked about for a long time now, is you have to have enough protein, not just to build bone, just to even maintain your bone, because your bones, again, they’re 50% protein by volume. So you need amino acids to support that structure. You also need good, healthy stomach acid production to break down the protein into amino acids too. So if we’re talking about quality of protein, animal protein is fantastic quality, good quality protein to get plant protein with vegans and vegetarians. It, I often find they have a really hard time reading, reaching their protein requirements and what they need, number one.

Kevin Ellis: ‘Cause The volume of food that needs to be consumed to reach those protein requirements is significantly higher than if somebody is on an animal-based protein diet. Or at least incorporating some of that doesn’t mean you have to be full carnivore to get your protein needs, but incorporating some of those animal proteins can be really helpful. Now we have people that are strictly vegetarian, strictly vegan. They don’t want to change, they don’t wanna make any adjustments, that’s fine. We’ll still support them and, and help ’em get, you know, the best possible outcomes with what they’re doing. But at the same time, if, if we’re gonna incorporate animal products, that’s a great, that’s a great addition to have. So yes, you want good quality protein. And then you also wanna make sure you’re getting the right minerals and nutrients and things like that.

Kevin Ellis: So what your doctor is gonna tell you is take calcium, Vitamin D, yes, those are important nutrients. And if you’re gonna take vitamin D, just understand that you need to get tested first to understand where your levels are at. So make sure you get a 25 hydroxy vitamin D test done. It’s a blood test. Your doctors, they may or may not run that initially you may have to ask for it. See where your levels are at the range is about 30 to a hundred NGML. If you’re at 30, they’re gonna tell you that’s normal. But that’s not normal. We need to move that closer to center or maybe even a little on the higher little high center, right? So that’s, that’s where we need to be in that range. And then from a calcium perspective, try to get as much as you can from diet nutrition first, close the gaps with supplementation if and when necessary, don’t supplement with more than 500 milligrams of calcium in a day, if you can, that’s gonna increase cardiovascular disease risk.

Kevin Ellis: That’s gonna increase your risk of kidney stones. And the studies that show that you know, calcium supplementation is not good for you. Oftentimes they didn’t have, they didn’t have the nutrients, the co-factors, the other things too that go there. So go with calcium and vitamin D. So if you’re taking calcium and you’re taking vitamin D from in supplement form, you need to be getting enough magnesium. Because as calcium intake increases and vitamin D intake increases, so too does your need for magnesium and you need to be getting enough vitamin K two also. So those are some helpful nutrients to be incorporating. Vitamin C is also really important. Now we know this is important for our immune health and just about every other aspect of our health, but vitamin C is also important for your bones because that protein structure we talked about, is that bone structure.

Kevin Ellis: It’s a collagen protein matrix upon which these minerals are laid. Vitamin C stimulates pro collagen, it enhances collagen synthesis. So we want to have that vitamin C, and if you don’t have enough over time, that can increase your risk of fracture too. So incorporating those nutrients. Very, very important. And I wanna circle back one, one last note about protein, because weight management is the, the focus of your audience too is Yeah. You know, if, if you’re focused on managing your weight too, you need to have a healthy protein intake and it need, you need to be not just so much focused on just the weight loss, it should be focused on building muscle strength..

Kevin Ellis: In order to do that, we have to have adequate protein intake as well. So making sure you’re getting enough protein is not just gonna be good for your bone health. It’s gonna be good to make sure that you’re, you’re doing that for weight management. Now getting at least 30 grams, 30 grams or so per meal could be a little bit more even on the, on that first and last meal of the day could be a little bit more protein. Those are great targets to aim for.

Rita Black: So like 90 grams per day for a woman.

Kevin Ellis: Yeah. 1.2 grams per kilograms of body weight or 1.2, 1.6. That’s where most of the research is for the best benefits. So that’s a good target, you know. If, if you’re just like, okay, well I don’t have time to calculate this and, you know, figure all this stuff out for each meal, 30 grams is a great target to at least start with and then you can make adjustments from there.

Rita Black: And that’s doable. That’s definitely 30 grams is doable. I mean, I think you have to make it a priority for sure that it’s doable. You mentioned building muscle mass. Is that another protocol that you know in your healthy bones plan? You know, would you get people doing resistance training, weight training?

Kevin Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. So you can, you can take in all the nutrients you want, you can get enough vitamin C and vitamin K, two and D and calcium. You can be absorbing those nutrients too. You could resolve all those digestive issues and you can actually be taking those nutrients in. If you do not provide the stimulus that your bones need to become stronger, they will not become stronger. So oftentimes people are told, Hey, just do some walking, do some walking, do some weight bearing exercise. I can tell you right now, walking is not enough to build muscle, to build bone strength. Walking is good for your health. You should be doing it and it’s a great thing to continue doing, but it’s not enough. So the different types of stimuli you need for your bone or you need muscle pulling on bone and you need impact.

Kevin Ellis: The most effective interventions use one or both of those things in combination. So when it comes to weight bearing exercise, these are activities that your body and your bones are working against gravity to keep you upright. They’re things you’re doing on your feet. They’re placing good healthy stress on your bones. This would be walking, jogging, hiking gardening, playing with the kids, with the grandkids outside in the yard. Could be tai chi, yoga, Pilates, shi, qigong. All of those are weight-bearing exercises. Then there is non-weight-bearing exercises. This is where your body and your bones are not working against gravity to keep you upright. They’re not placing good healthy stress on the bones. This would be like swimming and cycling. Swimming, especially because if the only exercise that you’re doing every day is swimming, you’re getting in, you’re doing some laps, you’re like, gosh, I feel great.

Kevin Ellis: I got my exercise in. No, you didn’t. You may feel good, but you didn’t place the stimulus that you needed on your bones and you haven’t incorporated the next type of exercise that you need to incorporate at least a couple times a week, which is resistance training and muscle strengthening exercise. This is so important. And I know for weight management for years, people were taught do some cardio, right? Cardio jazzercise, you know, all that kind of stuff. But there’s a lot more that you need to be doing there and we need to incorporate some heavier resistance with that. So when we talk about resistance training and muscle strengthening exercise, that’s where you bring in the barbells, the dumbbells, the maybe it’s the weights the, the machines at the gym, if that’s where your comfort level’s at or that’s what you have access to.

Kevin Ellis: Or what I really like too is variable resistance bands, right? Heavy variable resistance bands can be really good. And then some of the movements you want to incorporate, and I know some of these may sound intimidating if you’ve never done ’em before, but that’s okay. You don’t have to start at a, at a really high level of weight when you do ’em squats. that’s an important one. It’s a foundational movement. Deadlifts. I know that one sounds scary. I’m gonna talk about that in a second. Overhead presses too. So deadlifts specifically. Those are, those are great movement. I know they sound intimidating. And most people, if you go look that up, you’re gonna see some bodybuilder lifting something heavy off the ground that doesn’t have to be you. You can start with a weight that’s really low that you’re comfortable with, that you get your form down, right? You have somebody look at your, maybe it’s somebody that you work with that looks at your body mechanics. Make sure your form is good. And then we slowly work you up to where you’re providing the stimulus that your body and your bones need, right? That’s how we should approach this. You don’t have to go in the gym and just start throwing things around really heavy. ’cause That’s gonna lead to injury. Injury leads to setbacks, and that’s not what we want.

Rita Black: Is the deadlift great because it’s an overall all body movement, meaning like you’re starting down and you’re bringing it up and then you’re bringing it up above your head. I, I like, is that why it’s powerful as far as bone building and muscle building?

Kevin Ellis: It works the whole a lot of different muscle groups too. You’re grabbing that bar down low. You’re getting a lot of work in, in your legs and your posterior chain. So all up and down your back, all up and down your spinal erectors which is really, really important to work. So you’re getting a lot of different muscle groups that are moving and being engaged at the same time. Those kinds of lifts are, are foundational. Same thing with squats, right? That is a, there are a lot of different things that are working together to move that weight. Overhead presses are great. That’s where you actually bring the weight overhead is those can be great as long as you don’t already have a vertebral fracture. Right. Then you would proceed with caution with something like that. Right. But if you don’t, then those can be a great addition too.

Rita Black: Wow. I know we have to be mindful of your time, Kevin, and this has been so great. I know you have a masterclass, like if people wanna learn more and you go in depth, obviously you can tell everybody he, this guy goes in depth about things and he really cares. Tell us about your masterclass. ’cause I will have the link in the show notes for people to access that.

Kevin Ellis: Fantastic. Yeah, I’d love to give this to your audience. So this is a free Stronger Bones masterclass. It, it’s gonna take all the pieces that you’re like, what do I even do? Where do I even start? I, I just got this diagnosis or I’m concerned about my bone health. You wanna prevent fracture and injury? Watch this masterclass, click the link down in the show notes wherever that’s at. And you’ll get a bone healthy recipes guide just for signing up for it. But it’s gonna walk through this three step process that you need to follow to start building stronger bones. So it’s gonna uncover a lot of missing pieces. It’s just gonna help you get confident in the things you need to do. And it gives you the opportunity to, we have full coaching programs centered around building stronger bones and we’ve had thousands of people come through these programs. You can actually follow through after that masterclass if you want, and apply to work with our team and some of those programs. So lots of options there, but you can find that and you can always find us at atbonecoach.com too. But I would say that the stronger Bones Masterclass in the show notes is probably gonna be the best starting point.

Rita Black: That sounds fantastic. Well, what a joy it’s been to have you on. This has been really educational. Great for me. I hope it’s been great for the audience, but I know it has been. But it was great to meet you Kevin, and take care and thank you. We’ll look forward to having you back on to talk about Bones more.

Kevin Ellis: Thanks so much, Rita. Take care everybody.

Rita Black: Thank you so much Kevin. And please don’t forget to visit the show notes for that link to Stronger Bones Masterclass with free healthy recipes, free bone healthy recipes, I should say. And just get into Kevin’s world if you are or somebody you love is struggling with osteopenia, osteoporosis, or just wants to build healthier bones. And just a reminder, these last couple of weeks, I am running a review offer where if you write a review for the Thin Thinking Podcast, which is really gonna help other people find our program. So you’ll be doing other people a really great service. Please go ahead and write a review on your favorite podcast platform and send take a picture of it, send it to support@shiftweightmastery.com, and we will send you a coupon code for a free hypnosis download from our shift store. And we will also put you in the drawing for a free 30-day Shift Weight Mastery process live led by me coming up at the end of April, 2024.

Rita Black: So please write us that review and send it to us. We will be looking out for it at support@shiftweightmastery.com. And have a great week. And remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door of the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it.

Rita Black: You wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to www.shift.weightmastery.com. That’s www.shiftweightmastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking. Unlock Your Mind for Permanent Weight Loss.