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Why Active Metabolic Assessment?

With Anika Christ, CPT, RD

life time talks metabolic assessment

Season 7, Episode 14 | November 14, 2023


Editor’s note: In the two instances during the episode in which carbon monoxide is mentioned, it is intended to be “carbon dioxide.” 

The Active Metabolic Assessment, often referred to as an AMA, is a test that assesses your current fitness status and provides data that can inform your fitness program and make your workouts more efficient. Anika Christ, CPT, RD, explains what the AMA is, the data you get from it, why that information is important, and how to use it to tailor your exercise regimen.


Anika Christ, RD, CPT, is the senior director of weight loss and nutrition at Life Time. She’s known to many as “Coach Anika” and leads a number of digital programs at Life Time each year.

The Active Metabolic Assessment test at Life Time involves using a medical-grade device to measure how much oxygen you’re taking in and how much carbon dioxide you’re expelling as you work out at different intensities. From this test, you’re able to gather data around you’re the following factors:

  • Personal heart-rate zones. If you want to get as much return on investment as you can from your workout program, it’s necessary to know what your individual heart-rate zones are so you can ensure you’re exercising at the appropriate intensities at the appropriate times.
  • Anaerobic threshold. This is the point when your body shifts from predominately using fat as fuel to primarily burning carbohydrates.
  • Aerobic base. This is the zone when you’re burning fat most efficiently.
  • VO2 max. This data point offers one of the best markers of mortality and health; the lower it is, the higher your mortality risk, and vice versa. The AMA results show how you compare to others in your age group and how well you’ve been conditioning your heart.

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Transcript: Why Active Metabolic Assessment?

Season 7, Episode 14  | November 14, 2023

Editor’s note: In the two instances during the episode in which carbon monoxide is mentioned, it is intended to be “carbon dioxide.” 

Jamie Martin:
Welcome to Life Time Talks, the podcast that’s aimed at helping you achieve your health, fitness, and life goals. I’m Jamie Martin, Editor-in-Chief of Experience Life, Life Time’s whole-life health and fitness magazine.

David Freeman:
And I’m David Freeman, Director of Alpha, one of Life Time’s Signature Group training programs. We’re all in different places along our health and fitness journey, but no matter what we’re working toward, there are some essential things we can do to keep moving in the direction of a healthy, purpose-driven life.

Jamie Martin:
In each episode, we break down various elements of healthy living, including fitness and nutrition, mindset and community, and health issues. We’ll also share real, inspiring stories of transformation.

David Freeman:
And we’ll be talking to experts, from Life Time and beyond, who will share their insights and knowledge, so you have the tools and information you need to take charge of your next steps. Here we go.

Jamie Martin:
Welcome to another episode of Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin.

David Freeman:
And I’m David Freeman, and today’s topic is all about active metabolic testing. In this episode, we’ll explain what active metabolic assessments are, the data we get from it, why the data’s important, and how we can use this data to actually see what we should be doing in our workouts. Today’s special guest Anika Christ is our Registered Dietician, Certified Personal Trainer, and is our Senior Director of Nutrition and Weight Loss at Life Time.

She’s known to many as Coach Anika, as one of the original virtual coaches, who continues to lead a number of digital programs at Life Time each year. She started with Life Time in 2008. Has spent her entire career helping build Life Time’s nutrition and fat loss programs. When she’s not at work, she enjoys reading, lifting weights with her husband, and playing with her two daughters. Welcome back, Anika. How you feeling?

Anika Christ:
Good. Thank you for having me.

Jamie Martin:
All right. We have had so many great discussions with you, and in this mini episode, we want to know, what is an active metabolic assessment, which we often refer to as an AMA?

Anika Christ:
Yes. So, it’s probably something, if you are a member at Life Time, you may have seen, probably more frequently pre-COVID. That’s where you would see them on the floor all the time, but it’s basically an assessment at Life Time that we use a medical-grade device, which you’ll see people are usually wearing a mask. It has things called umbilicals kind of hooked up to the mask and up to what we would call an analyzer and a laptop, but simply put, it is our way of measuring how much oxygen you’re taking in as you are working out at different intensities or different heartrates, along with how much carbon monoxide you are expelling during that same workout.

David Freeman:
So, this is a passionate topic for me, but I know that a lot of times, what happens is people are correlating a great workout to a feeling, right, or how many calories they ended up burning. The benefits of the active metabolic assessment breaks down a little bit more of the data and why it’s important, how we should apply that data to the workout. So, you kind of broke down what it looks like. What are they gathering from the actual test?

Anika Christ:
Yeah. So, there’s a few different metrics that they’re going to take away once they’ve completed the test. So, simply put, we’ll say you’re going to learn your personal heart rate zones, and that can mean a lot of different things for different people.

But the reality is, when you’re burning two different fuel types, fats and carbohydrates, we’re going to measure at different heart rates or intensities, when are you burning the most fat, are the most efficient, or burning most efficiently fat versus carbohydrate, and those are two markers called the anaerobic threshold and your aerobic base, and your aerobic base is when you’re mostly burning fat at your most efficient rate, where anaerobic threshold is where you’re predominantly burning carbohydrates. So, your fat efficiency or fuel utilization significantly drops at that point.

We’re also measuring something called a VO2, which some people have heard about before. It might be, oh, that sounds really familiar, but that is probably one of the best markers of just mortality and health, and what people are probably most surprised about, if they have been basing it off of feelings or the workouts that you’re kind of talking about, they usually get shocked by that number, because they think it should be so much higher than what it is.

And we’ll look at, hey, how do you compare to other people in your age group, and really, how well have you been conditioning your heart? And that’s kind of the magical piece behind that, that we all really kind of need to care about that, especially when it comes to mortality, but when we talk about VO2 specifically, the lower it is, it’s almost as bad as having diabetes or smoking and other markers that we tie to mortality, as well.

Jamie Martin:
Oh, that’s so interesting. So, you’re going into…let’s talk a little bit about which zones we’re burning which fuels in, because that’s really what, with the AMA, we’re trying to identify, to your point, that we want to be exercising at our most efficient. So, you mentioned, like, in the aerobic base zone, that’s primarily when we’re burning carbohydrates, right?

Anika Christ:
Actually, fat.

Jamie Martin:
Fat. Fat.

Anika Christ:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jamie Martin:
And then we switch to carbohydrates…

Anika Christ:
Yes.

Jamie Martin:
At anaerobic threshold…

Anika Christ:
Yes.

Jamie Martin:
Primarily. The fast-burning fuels.

Anika Christ:
Yes.

Jamie Martin:
So, let’s talk a little bit about why that matters, and I will say, just from experience, I remember the first time…this was years ago, I did my first AMA, being shocked at thinking, like, Zone 2 didn’t feel like I was working hard enough.

Anika Christ:
Oh, yeah. Zone 2 is kind of having a moment right now, too. So, that’s where I feel like I love it because I always…I keep telling the trainers, too, that we work with on a regular basis, like, cardio is having a major comeback. When I got into fitness, and I even think when I joined Life Time, cardio was still really…like, people came to Life Time to work out their heart. That’s what they were doing. Then it kind of swung, which, I always love and hate this in the fitness industry, because we always become extremes on each side, and then realize it’s kind of a balance of both. It’s kind of like eating, where it’s like carnivore versus vegan. It’s like, well, it’s probably a little bit of both for most people.

It just kind of depends on the person and their metabolic individuality, but with cardio specifically, people overdo it or they underdo it, and it’s like, kind of finding that nice middle, for most people, which you would think is so hard, and I always…sorry, I tie it back to eating. It’s kind of like the word moderation with eating. Very simple, but hard to do for a lot of people. So, Zones 1 and 2 are usually, predominantly, fat-burning zones, and 2 specifically, there is this big push that we see all over the internet right now, which is pretty cool.

You have a lot of really great voices in metabolic health that are like, people are not spending enough time in Zone 2, and we generally tell people, through the AMA testing, when we figure out what their conditioning program is, we’re saying 80% of your time should be in Zone 2, which is really hard, and we always tell people Zone 1 kind of feels like a walk in the park, but it’s not necessarily just walking, either, because a lot of people are like, well, I did 10 thousand steps today. I’m like, you’re probably not even in Zone 1 yet, but Zone 2, usually, you can still nasal breathe.

And so, I always tell people, if you feel like you have to open your mouth to breathe, that’s a Zone 3 or above, but Zone 2, you should be able to nasal breathe. You should start sweating. It should feel like you’re working, but it’s not like your extreme classes that you might be used to where you’re like, oh, I’m not kicking my butt as hard as I usually do. It doesn’t feel like that. That’s what’s so cool about it, but the other zones, so Zone 3, Zone 4, and Zone 5, our fat utilization starts to go down, and it’s kind of right at Zone 4.

That’s kind of what we highlight as the anaerobic threshold, where it significantly drops, and you just start burning sugar, and I always tell people the difference of burning fat and sugar, you want to be as best of a fat burner as possible, and that comes from eating. That comes from stress management and sleep, and that can come from your conditioning program, and what we tend to see, I would say most often is we have really great sugar burners, and that can come from a lot of different things.

Maybe they do a lot of high intense classes or they have a really high intense program because they’re going after feeling like they’re kicking their butt, feeling like, you know, they went all out, they’re burning a ton of calories, and that might not be matching what their goal is. So, I always tell people, well, what is your goal? My goal, for most people, is to become a really good fat burner and as high as a VO2 as possible. That’s what we want to measure. If we’re not there, it’s thinking about, well, what are you doing fitness for?

And that’s what’s hard, because we all love the adrenaline rush, and Zone 4 training can feel really good, right? It really can, and so, people want that feeling as often as possible because there’s so much associated with it, but it’s like, hey, if you want to get as much return on investment as possible with your conditioning program and your workout program, let’s do it as smart as possible, and it’s usually restructuring what that can look like, but I want people to feel good, too.

So, sometimes it’s like, hey, if you can do 1 or 2 of those workouts a week, but you’re doing all this other stuff that’s better for your heart, that’s better for your goal. A lot of people still have fat loss goals. I would say 80% of the time, people are like, I want to lose fat. Okay, well, then I’m going to bring your zones a little bit down, and I’m going to put your protocol really mostly in Zone 2, and it’s hard, and it’s figuring out how do people do it? What are some great podcasts to listen to? What are things that can keep the time going? But it’s a struggle for a lot of people. I’ll say that.

David Freeman:
Yeah, it goes back to the knowledge being the power, and I like that you ended up saying that when you’re associating, once again, a feeling to a great workout, but then the diminished results that you’re getting over time. So, if you can now sit in that 80% window that you were speaking of, then you’ll probably start to see those results, but complementing what you’re doing in the work outside, you talked about the nutrition, how you feel in your body, how you’re recovering, how you’re managing your stress.

The part that I love is we have these group classes, whether it’s Signature Group class or the large group class, and what I like is you have now this personalized approach that you can attack within that setting, and if you and I are both in a class right now and now we’re seeing each other work out, but I’m seeing you go a little bit faster, the competition element starts to come out, too.

Anika Christ:
Oh, yeah. For sure.

David Freeman:
Now, you’re racing, in a sense, versus pacing, is what you’re speaking on. So, can you walk us through, once again, how this kind of keeps you at bay, if you apply it, because, once again, if you have all this information and not applying it, then it’s just information. So, if you’re now in a group setting and you’re now aware of where you should be at, whether you’re using a wearable or if you have it up on our screens, our LT Connect Screens, and we have visibility around heart rate, why that is so beneficial when you’re in a group setting.

Anika Christ:
Yeah. You’re right, and I think a lot of us have that competitive nature, and also, a lot of us are athletes first, and so, I think you have to be real with yourself to understand, like, okay, if I’m in a group setting, am I going to go, like, all out, or can I pace myself? And I do like wearables or watches, because I think that’s going to be your best trainer, per se, to your body that’s going to give you accountability to what you’re doing, and I’ve had a lot of clients…because they’re like, well, do I have to quit this class now?

I’m like, well, no, let’s talk about it. Let’s figure this out for you, because if you now have a device that’s going to read those intensities and you’re going to know, okay, what’s my goal? What am I supposed to be doing? That’s your first check to say, hey, what have I been doing? That’s always my first goal with people. That’s why I actually love devices, is wear it for a week and see what the reality…that’s happening. Don’t assume that you know, and for some people, they’re surprised. They’re like, oh, I’m not even in that zone. Like, it felt really hard, and it’s like, hey, well, you’re conditioning your body.

So, eventually, those zones might change. A lot of those metrics do change. I’m in that position right now where Zone 2 is really hard for me, and I’m like, oh, my zones have probably changed. It’s time for a reassessment, because that actually makes more sense. I’ve become very efficient, that I need to actually reassess to see where those levels are at, but I always say, just wear something.

And I love class, because I think what our Signature does with the small group classes is there’s smart programming already involved in that, right, with that tune of, like, hey, we’re not going to just hit it every day or do high intensity every day. There’s really smart programming in each of those formats, whether it’s Ultra Fit, GTX, or Alpha. That can count, as well, but knowing what is my body actually doing the best way? You can’t change what you don’t measure, and if you don’t have a way to measure it, you got to start there. I like the heart rate strap around the chest.

That’s still the gold standard with device, because it’s the closest to your heart for measuring that information, but that can go on a lot of the screens with the classes, but I also love the wrist watch, because at least you’re starting somewhere, and you’re getting some sort of information. I kind of have a love-hate, right, with that device because I think you have to, like, talk to yourself, too, or you’re going to get obsessed with it. Does it have too much information? And for people, you just have to be real with yourself.

But I do think it’s smart to wear it, if not a week, at least a couple weeks to get that information back, get an assessment, share it with your trusted trainer or coach to say, hey, now looking at this, what I’m actually doing, what could I work on? How much is that falling into my plan? I always think, way back in the day, we used to have a format called Boot Camp that was, like, plyometric, high-intense stuff, and through other assessments at Life Time, I had a couple clients that had something called adrenal fatigue, or HPA axis dysfunction is kind of how we talk about it now, and they’re like, what do I do?

I go, you just got to, like, balance it out. If you really like that format, you can’t do it five days a week. Let’s talk about a couple, but then what are you doing on the other side to send the right signals to your body? So, everyone’s different. I want everyone to walk away with there’s not one right way. Different things work for different people, but metabolic individuality. Assess, look at you, get feedback, get smart people and coaches around you that can help you steer the right program for you, honestly.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah. Yeah. I want to go back, because you mentioned, at the very top of this, what it looks like having somebody do this, but what does it feel like when you’re doing an AMA test, because, having done this, I remember the first time I went in. I’m like, oh, this was hard, and it can be done on a treadmill. It can be done on…you’re cycling or rowing, right? So, tell us a little bit about how you get us to determine the results. Like, what’s the process look like?

Anika Christ:
So, we use…so, we’re measuring oxygen and carbon dioxide. So, that’s what’s the best, is we can actually know. We know when you’re burning fat and carbohydrate and at different, varying intensities. For some people, we are going to use a little bit of received rate of exertion, as well, so that you know, hey, at a scale of 1 to 10, how are you feeling with each of those, but we prefer to measure the whole thing. I will say, pre-COVID, people had a hard time with the mask because it feels a little bit claustrophobic.

We have these really nice neoprene masks, and that’s the one thing we make everyone buy their own of for sanitation reasons. Everyone’s got different facial structures. So, the right size has to fit the right person. It also helps us with making sure the data is as accurate as possible with the oxygen and carbon monoxide that we’re measuring, but I always tell people it’s going to feel a little bit uncomfortable, and that’s okay. You kind of need to do that, right? We all need to do that. That’s why I love, like, the cold plunging and stuff, too. It’s good for our bodies to feel a little uncomfortable.

But don’t confuse it with something called a VO2 max, which takes you to your absolute max. I have a lot of clients that are like, oh, I did this in college in a science lab. I’m like, it’s not going to…we’re not going to do that, but we’re going to pick the device that you’re going to do most of your conditioning. So, if you’re going to walk, if you’re going to run, if you’re a rower, we figure out what equipment at Life Time and then what modality is going to be the best for you for most of the time. So, I would say a lot of people do, like, the walking at an incline.

That is a preferred conditioning…a modality for most individuals, and then we’re going to take you through at your starting point and where you actually think what could you do for 30 minutes? What could you easily do? So, people will say, oh, I could walk at an incline of five, or I could run at five miles an hour. So, the speed kind of determines a little bit of that approach, and some people don’t know, and that’s okay. So, if you’re coming from ground zero, I would still say the test is good, because you’re going to figure some stuff out about you, and why guess when you can know?

I think of that mindset, too, but so, if you’re doing a walking protocol, I’m going to continue to take you up in 1- to 2-minute stages at different intensities. So, you’re going to stay walking at the same point, but your variable is going to be the hill incline, because that’s going to get harder and harder, and so, for some people, if they have been doing conditioning for a long time, I actually might change what they think they need to do, because they’ll be like…I’ll be like, you can’t get past, like, a 20 for a hill for the incline.

You can’t go higher, and if you’re not even getting to Zone 3, that’s going to be a problem. So, they might need to do a jog or a light run, but each stage, we’re going to keep bringing it up, and then we’re going to continue to measure that oxygen and CO2 at the same time so we can see it, and I’m going to ask you, hey, Jamie, how are you feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, to make sure that matches that feedback loop that I’m measuring, and then we’re going to get you to AT.

So, that’s where…that dropping point, where, all of a sudden, fat goes in the tank and carbohydrates are in full swing as far as measuring, and that sometimes, depending on the individual, can be very varying, because some people are not great fat burners. They just aren’t, and again, that goes back to the nutrition stress. That’s why we ask those questions, too. Like, what did you eat last night? How was your sleep? And again, it’s really good education, because a lot of people are like, well, does that matter? Oh, yeah, it matters a lot, actually, and then we get into just, like, cravings when you don’t get sleep and why we become sugar burners.

So, for a lot of people, that helps me as the practitioner, the technician, to understand, okay, where do I think this person’s going to go, especially if their sleep is crap, they’re high stress, they’re eating carbohydrate-dominant food? And then, for other people, we’ll just start talking about stress, because maybe they’re eating well and getting sleep, but I’ll say, like, how are you managing stress in your life? Why are you asking that? Well, because you’re a really bad fat burner, honestly, and you’ve been conditioning.

You’ve been doing all these things. So, the more information, the better of the why this is happening, but we’re definitely going to capture the what. We’re going to know what stages, what intensities, how good of a fat burner you are, and literally, are you predominantly burning sugar or not? And sugar, you know, again, it’s all about the heart and conditioning the heart, but then, if you’re constantly hungry after class, it opens a lot of doors for people of what to do with everything that they’re doing.

That’s what I will say the most, is people will be like, is that why I can’t, like, ever get full? Is that why this? And I’m like, yeah, we might need to, like, fix your conditioning, just your workout programs, period, because that doesn’t feel good, right? If your goal is fat loss and you’re coming and kicking your butt, then craving sugar the rest of the day, can’t manage it, your stress is high, not sleeping, then the exercise isn’t the right drug. You need a different exercise to help it be the right drug for you, honestly.

David Freeman:
Yeah. I want to go to this question that has been challenged in this space a lot. So, I want to throw it at you so our listeners can tune in on this. You kind of just said when we facilitate the test, it’s usually on a fixed modality, right, whether it’s on the tread, bike, Stairmaster. So, that’s one piece. A lot of these individuals are probably doing mixed modalities within their training when it comes to conditioning. So, somebody who is doing barbell cycling or kettlebell cycling or body weight exercises, how does that now relate to the heart rate as far as the data? Because I feel like that sometimes is like, well, I’m not lifting a barbell during the actual assessment of my active metabolic assessment, so how does that now relate to this barbell? So, how would you respond to that question for the individuals out there who are doing mixed modalities?

Anika Christ:
Yeah. So, that one’s tough for me, because I always say, when you’re doing the mixed modalities, we like that, and for a lot of people, it’s what gets their conditioning in. It might just not be as accurate as when you’re doing, like, straight conditioning, and it’s hard…so, for me, a lot of the people that I’m serving are trainers, right? Like, I kind of, by proxy, help members, but I’m serving the trainers first, and they’re a tough audience because these guys kind of come in. They’re usually pretty young. Maybe they haven’t had metabolic issues yet.

And a lot of them are like, I don’t do cardio, and I’m like, well, why not? Well, because, through nutrition, through strength training, physique wise, I look pretty good, and I’m always like, okay, you don’t care about it yet, but you will later in life, right? Like, things shift. Hormones shift, and that’s always the hardest part where…and sometimes we have the old school bodybuilders where they’re like, I just do the stair climber, and I’m like, well, that’s good. So, that’s, like, the list of cardio.

But again, when you measure their VO2 and then you show them and say, you know, the lower this is, that’s, like, a risk for, like, your health, your long-term health, and they’re like, oh, okay. Maybe I need to care about my heart, and that’s why I was laughing, because I go, cardio went out of style, I think, for the last, like, 8 to 10 years, as long as I’ve been at Life Time, and I will be there for almost 15 years, and now I feel like it’s kind of swinging back and we’re being like, oh, I need to care about my heart. I need to care about oxygen in the body, and COVID kind of did that a little bit, too, right?

Like, people started to pay attention to their heart, and their friends and family that were having, you know, cardiac instances that were happening, which can be pretty scary, but I always tell people it’s not going to be an exact science, and I know that, too, because I have…I do kind of full-body strength right now, and I end it with kind of a conditioning-like protocol, but it’s hard to actually…it’s hard for my wrist monitor to measure it accurately, and it’s not going to be the same. So, I actually do conditioning on top of strength.

So, even if you’re throwing conditioning in your strength, kind of keep it separate as much as you can, and know that measures on the test, if you’re doing it that way, see where is your VO2? Where are those certain factors at, but it’s not going to be a perfect science there. It’s perfect in the cardio, walking, running, cycling. So, I always tell people, I would prefer you do that type of protocol, because it’s going to be hard, and it doesn’t need to be as exact in that, and the science hasn’t shown to do the same thing as what conditioning can do.

Jamie Martin:
Makes sense.

David Freeman:
So, the value, I hear you correctly, obviously. More of that one monostructural piece is going to be more accurate, being that you were tested on that protocol, but for those doing mixed modalities, is there still a benefit to actually see it up on the LT Connect Screens when they’re in those classes?

Anika Christ:
I would say so, because at least it’s measuring that. I have a workout trainer, you’re going to interview her later, Sam. We work out with each other every day, and we kind of laugh because there are certain times when we’re doing kettlebell swings, and I’m like, it’s as if I’m in Zone 1, and I am out of breath. So, that’s where I’m like, sometimes it’s just like, it’s not as accurate, so it’s tough. So, I don’t want people to be like, think of this as Bible and just, like, this is exactly the exact science.

But I would say…so, I would say if you’re not…the protocol I’d probably pick for most people then is to walk, do the walking at an incline, and if you’re, like, a dual athlete…so, if you’re, like, a triathlon person or anything like that, I might say bike and walk, like, to do two different tasks, because that has been shown, through research and just through subjective feedback, that their beats are, on average, 10 beats lower on a bike than you are walking or running.

So, that, I would say, if you’re doing it for sport and for competition, you might need to do it on a couple different pieces of equipment, and we’ve done it on the Stairmaster for a number of people, too, because that is their thing, and that is more my power lifters, bodybuilders. I love them. So, it just depends on the person. The walking / jogging / running, I would say 90% of people end up doing that protocol.

David Freeman:
Awesome.

Jamie Martin:
You mentioned when to retest. So, let’s say that I get this information. I do my first AMA, and I’ve been applying the knowledge. You know, when do I come back and retest? How often should I do that?

Anika Christ:
So, I always tell people, if you can do it every 12 to 16 weeks, do it that often. If someone hasn’t been paying attention to their conditioning, it might be earlier than that. If they’re like, oh my gosh, I’m feeling like I went from A to Z here, I’m actually actively doing this conditioning program, they might need to do it sooner, at least every six weeks, at the bare minimum for most people, and you will see a difference.

Jamie Martin:
Yeah. Years ago, at Life Time, I did a…I think it was a 12-week program that I did, and it was all based on heartrate training. I had never done it. I was brand new. I was pretty much a new team member at the time, and I remember thinking, okay, is this really going to work? And I was shocked by the results I got when I actually paid attention to my heartrate. I was using a heartrate monitor consistently, and I do see that trend happening again. Like, bringing those heartrate monitors back. So, it’s kind of fun to see that, like, making a return.

Anika Christ:
It is fun.

Jamie Martin:
And like, really paying attention to how efficiently our bodies function.

Anika Christ:
Yes. I agree with that, and I think we’re going to bring it back in a more balanced approach, which is great. I think sometimes we overdo stuff, and it’s like, get that away, and now people are like, no, I need to care. I’m that person, honestly. So, I’m like, okay, Anika, let’s…we’re all competitive by nature. I’m like, I need that VO2 as high as possible. So, that’s my goal.

Jamie Martin:
Anything else you want to add before we sign off?

Anika Christ:
I don’t think so. This was great.

Jamie Martin:
All right. Well, that’s it for this mini episode. If you want to follow Anika, where are you at if people want to catch up with you?

Anika Christ:
They can find me @CoachAnika on Instagram.

Jamie Martin:
All right, and then you also have content and articles that are happening…

Anika Christ:
Oh, yes.

Jamie Martin:
At ExperienceLife.Lifetime.Life.

Anika Christ:
You can always find me there.

David Freeman:
Appreciate you, as always. Thanks for joining us for this episode. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our conversation today and how you approach this aspect of healthy living in your own life. What works for you? Where do you run into challenges? Where do you need help?

Jamie Martin:
And if you have topics for future episodes, you can share those with us, too. Email us at lttalks@lifetime.life, or reach out to us on Instagram at Lifetime.life, @jamiemartinEL, and @freezy30, and use the hashtag #LifeTimeTalks. You can also learn more about the podcast at ExperienceLife.Lifetime.life/podcasts.

David Freeman:
And if you’re enjoying Life Time Talks, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like what you’re hearing, we invite you to rate and review the podcast and share it on your social channels, too.

Jamie Martin:
Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time on Life Time Talks. Life Time Talks is a production of Life Time Healthy Way of Life. It is produced by Molly Kopischke and Sarah Ellingsworth, with audio engineering by Peter Perkins, video production and editing by Kevin Dixon, sound and video consulting by Coy Larson, and support from George Norman and the rest of the team at Life Time Motion.

David Freeman:
A big thank-you to everyone who helps create each episode and provides feedback.

We’d Love to Hear From You

Have thoughts you’d like to share or topic ideas for future episodes? Email us at lttalks@lt.life.

The information in this podcast is intended to provide broad understanding and knowledge of healthcare topics. This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered complete and should not be used in place of advice from your physician or healthcare provider. We recommend you consult your physician or healthcare professional before beginning or altering your personal exercise, diet or supplementation program.

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