Episode Highlights

• Katie Toomey’s post production background
• A day in the life of Katie at work
• Coping with raised anxiety levels when people are in the room
• Life as an editor at an agency
• Katie discusses how she began this journey to better health
• Needing surgery for a collapsed lung
• Katie’s small steps to better health
• Getting in shape and how to make permanent change
• How to succeed by doing what works for you–trying still means you’re succeeding!
• How Katie use MyFitnessPal to reach her health goals
• Katie’s editing environment and hacking her workspace

Useful Links

• Katie Toomey
• Cell Dwellers – “Unshakeable” — animated music video on YouTube
•    Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXi_d0yGSkw  
•    Film website: https://karmiccourage.wordpress.com/films/
• Creative Cow link to article
• Public FIP facebook group link

Karmic Courage Film: Ingenue

Transcript

Zack Arnold: So I am here today with Katie Toomey, who is an editor that I found through an article on Creative Cow recently. Kylie Wall, who I’ve had on the podcast a couple of times in the past, talking about health-related issues as well as sexism. You guys did an article on Creative Cow that was all about your own personal journey with your health, and the title of it was “Editing Yourself: An Agency Editor Tells Her Fitness Story. So I’m very, very excited to have you on the show today because I think it’s a really inspiring article. I will put a link to it in the show notes for this episode because I want people to read it as a companion piece to this podcast. So thank you so much for being on the show. Oh,

Katie Toomey: Thank you for having me. It’s a real pleasure.

Zack Arnold: So, before we jump into all the nitty gritty of your journey and your story and everything that happened to you along the way, I just want to get a little bit of background around what you actually do during the day in the world of post production.

Katie Toomey: Well, right now I am editing for broadcast at an advertising agency, but it’s not just broadcast. It it’s internal projects, web, new pitch videos, everything for the agency. And before that, I was a freelancer, which technically I’m always still freelancing, so you never really stop. It’s just more on the side right now.

Zack Arnold: Right, exactly. So, kind of give me an idea of what a general day looks like for you in your specific world of broadcast editing.

Katie Toomey: Very unpredictable, I’ve come to find my day could technically be from nine to 530 or six, but very easily when there’s a new pitch, it’s pretty much you’re there until it’s done, so it could include weekends, evenings. It’s very, very sudden and very unpredictable.

Zack Arnold: And are you getting a lot of fast turnarounds, shorter projects, a lot of people kind of sitting in the room, or do you just spend a lot of time kind of you in the dark space doing your thing?

Katie Toomey: It’s actually a mix of that because I that was actually the first time I did, I guess you would say you would have like live editing where everyone’s behind you, creatives, producers, everyone, and you’re cutting and other projects. You’re just on your own in the dark, just doing your thing. So it it really depends on the project. Obviously, the bigger the project, the more people involved, the more hands and eyes need to touch it. But generally, it’s about I would say mostly me editing in the dark, and then the rest is having people there. Right. So

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that one of the the worst experiences for me as an editor is just that feeling of being in that room. There is that pending deadline, and you have four people sitting on the couch behind you that are all drumming their fingers. You want to talk about just an absolute cortisol injection right intravenously into your body? Like it just doesn’t get any worse than that for me, and spiking anxiety levels.

Katie Toomey: Oh, it’s it can be very stressful, especially the first time that it happened. I I didn’t know that it was going to be one of those edits. I’d heard about people cutting with the creatives and the count people in there and everything, but the first time that happened to me was like jumping into the cold end of the ocean or something. It was definitely stressful. A lot of pressure. You suddenly forget the easiest shortcuts that you know. It’s so silly, but it’s just something you do when you’re nervous. But now I’m very. After a few years of it, you get used to it, kind of, depending on the project and what they want done with what we have can be incredibly stressful, though.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I remember. I mean, basically, for most of my life, since I was maybe 1011, 12 years old, I knew that I wanted to edit. And when I was that young, I didn’t really understand that editing was a real profession or a job. I just wanted to make movies. And then when I was in college, I had an internship, and I sat in on my first digital edit session, and it was basically an editor sitting in an Avid, and there were two producers sitting behind him at the table, and they just handed him tapes and went to time codes, and basically he literally was the definition of a keyboard monkey, where they said, “Okay, now go to you know four minutes, three seconds, and eight frames. That’s my end point. Now put in the out point, and I looked at that, and I said, “I never want this job.

Katie Toomey: That’s understandable. I I definitely think there’s more to editing than just hitting the buttons, and I think that you would lose a lot of the passion if that’s all you were doing all day every day.

Zack Arnold: Yeah,

Katie Toomey: That would be pretty terrible. And that’s

Zack Arnold: One of the reasons that I’ve really gravitated towards long form narrative because on a TV series, let’s say that it’s five, six weeks per episode. Of those five weeks, maybe a grand cumulative total of two days or three. There are actually people in the room at all, and the rest of it is all done. By sending something, getting response, sending something, getting response, but nobody wants to sit in the room with you except maybe the showrunner or the director for a day or two. But those are people that you know, so it’s not like having this random client come in that you don’t know and there’s pressure and they’re sitting there on their phone all the time. And so that I just I walked away from that that agency world because I lived in that world for a while, and I’m like, there’s just no way that I want to do this because it’s too stressful.

Katie Toomey: It’s yeah, it’s my first agency job in that realm in editing, and it’s definitely a lot of short projects with very fast turnarounds, and and you know this is a common problem where the idea is born, and then the script is supposed to be coming. And oops, well, today it was supposed to come, but they are still sorting out some problems. But all the while, with all those hang-ups, the deadline never changes. Yeah. So you you go through these different stages. I thought about writing this out once, and I, you know, maybe one day I will, but there’s these different stages of anxiety and stress you go through just waiting. It’s a bit like production, you know. That’s why I don’t do production because it’s very hurry up and wait, right? Well, that’s the same thing with the script, and and you can just see the time ticking away, and the more demands happening, and your little window is growing shorter and shorter, and sometimes I don’t know how it got done. You know, you ever finish a project and you just think, I have no idea how this got done.

Zack Arnold: Oh yeah, I mean, I look at television and I go through the guide on DirecTV, just looking at all the different channels and all the shows, and I say, how does anything ever get on television? Ever, I don’t understand how this happens because when you see how the sausage is made, you say, I don’t know how the sausage gets in the store. It’s just a miracle. I really don’t know how it happens.

Katie Toomey: Yeah, it’s like a blissfully unaware kind of feeling for it. And when I started at the agency, it was definitely different than freelance. I mean, everything’s going to be different than freelance, of course, but it was certainly like a whole new realm that I’ve had to navigate, and I’m still navigating because it’s always changing, and it’s always it’s very high turnover projects and high turnover deadlines. Yeah, so it’s it’s definitely interesting. We’ll call it that.

Zack Arnold: Well, we’ve gone off a bit on a tangent, but I don’t think it’s too much of a tangent because it’s really good idea to give people a sense of your just lifestyle, your environment. So now that we kind of get a picture of the the world that you live in, let’s talk about where this journey started, which I’m assuming is going back to the worst point, and then I just kind of want to walk through what led you to where you are today and sharing your story. But unfortunately, to do that, we got to go to the beginning, which is always the worst part. So let let let’s start there and kind of tell me a little bit about where you were when you said, “All right, something’s got to change.

Katie Toomey: That would have been back. I felt I first began, I guess, the fitness journey when I was still in college, which must seem like a long time ago, but really it’s not. I was in my senior year, actually, just finishing out, and that was the first time I kind of woke out of the haze because you know you’re getting ready for the job market, which actually the economy had crashed right before then, and they’re just kind of like, oh, by the way, guys, when you graduate, good luck getting a job. So I was already dealing with a ton of stress from that, feeling like, well, when I graduate, there’s not going to be anything out there for me, so that was definitely depressing. And one day, I just you know you have this self-realization where you’re suddenly aware of where you are in your life right in that moment, not where I was yesterday or where will I be tomorrow. It’s just kind of like, whoa! Where am I at today? What has happened? And that was kind of a really bad day. I was probably 90 pounds overweight by that point, which is a lot, especially for me. And I was just noticing I would do various internships or anything I could get my hands on. I started working on independent film set that was there in Indy, which I didn’t even know existed before. You think you’re not in a film-centric area that there’s nothing there, but surprisingly, there is if you look hard enough. So I’d be there peeing, lifting heavy equipment and all this other stuff, and and you start to notice you start to notice just how tired you are all the time. It’s not. I’m just not tired from working 10 hours on the indie film set. I’m tired because I feel terrible, and that I guess was kind of the first. Real wake up call for me that from myself. Just it wasn’t like someone sat me down and said, you know, stop eating hamburgers. You know, look at yourself. No one does that, or very few people do. No one’s going to sit you down and tell you that. So that’s where it really began, and that would have been about five years ago, I guess, looking at that was the first day, I guess, that I decided to face

Zack Arnold: It. Right. Well, and one of the reasons that that intrigues me and why I wanted to have you on the show is because you’re still very young. You’re somebody that looked at your situation and realized that your health wasn’t in a very good place, and you were still in college. And there are a lot of people that are gravitating towards this fitness and post program that are now getting up there in their 40s, their 50s, and their 60s, and they’ve been sedentary in their edit bay for 20 or 30 years now. And they’re like, “Oh my God, I’m going to have grandkids soon, and I want I want to be able to play with them, right? But it’s so much harder talking to a younger group of people because you know they can down five Red Bulls and they can have a bag or Doritos for dinner and they’re like yeah man 16 hour days I love editing and they they don’t really see the tidal wave coming and I was kind of one of those people where when I was and I was never you know a partier and whatnot I literally have lived in the edit suite since I was about 16 years old, but you know I didn’t eat well and I didn’t really exercise that much when I got out of college. When I was in college, I was pretty active and taught martial arts and practiced martial arts, so I kind of had the athletic background. But as soon as I graduated and moved out here, I just became a machine and I’m a workaholic. And I just thought, well, I’m 22 years old, like who cares? I can work 1820-hour, days. What’s it going to matter? And it took less than two years before it almost literally killed me, like literally. And that was kind of my wake-up point. And I’m, you know, I’m, I’m certainly not happy to hear what you’ve been through, but I am happy to hear that there’s somebody else that has experienced this at a very young age because I’m trying to show people that are still very young and new to the industry. That you can’t start thinking about this stuff when you’re 40. You know, you want you want to invest in this stuff now, so when you are 40, you don’t have these problems to deal with.

Katie Toomey: It’s really difficult because you think that this must go on for a long time. Honestly, I would say within one year, I was already feeling pretty bad. Like I knew there was a problem. It’s not like I just was like in la la land the whole time. I mean, you you kind of feel it on your shoulders while it’s happening, and you know it’s happening, but you can’t. You feel like you can’t stop it because you have so much to prove, especially coming straight out of college, you’re like ready to do pretty much anything, and that’s kind of a problem, I guess, at the same time because you’re just really hungry to prove yourself, but you’re also ready to sacrifice a lot of your health inadvertently or even on purpose because you’re like, well, I have to do this. So even though I’m sacrificing this, I I feel like it’s supposed to pay off, right? But unfortunately, I when you were talking about that, like you know, experiencing feeling really bad and almost dying, that makes me think of just this past October. It’s actually a frightening thing to think about. I still haven’t. It’s been months since it’s happened, but every time I go into work, I still experience a bit of anxiety about it because I had been working on I think several projects back in October. We were fairly busy, and I was working on this brand new one that needed. It was again on an ASAP. Everything’s on ASAP deadlines. We’ll just put it that way. And I was under immense pressure. And I came into work. I I hadn’t slept well the night before, and I was feeling a little strange, like not normal tired, just like actually really poor. And I was trying to shake it off and begin this project. And I felt this like tightness in my chest, which you know could be a number of any things, right? And I’m you know working. I’m trying to piece together all the the assets and organize things, and I’m having trouble concentrating and focusing on it because there’s this pain and tightness in my chest, and of course, I’m entertaining the idea. Like, I wonder if the stress has just finally gotten to me, and I’m having like some heart attack. I’m trying to remember: is it you know it’s on the left side? Am I feeling more that on the left side? Am I getting tingles or something? What’s going on? And as the morning progressed, you know, I finally reached out to people around me, and I was like, “I’m I’m having some tightness in my chest. Like, I’m actually not feeling very good. I don’t know what’s going on. I actually, one of my exes that I dated a long time ago had full-blown panic attacks, and I think through being with them, I developed a bit of that. But I kind of got it under control. So when they. Mentioned, you know, you might just be having a panic attack. Of course, I was like, “Yeah, that’s that’s got to be it. You know, I’m sure that’s what it is. But it kept getting worse. Like each hour was magnifying it more. And I’m sitting there trying to work, and I’m getting really concerned. I I would tell you, I was maybe 10% invested in the project at that point. I’m trying to work and go through the motions, but I feel awful, like I might be dying. And finally, by let’s see, early afternoon, I finally broke down. I went to my boss’s office, and something I rarely do, I I broke down crying and said, “I something is wrong with me. I think I need to go to the doctor. So I rush off to the doctor. They run an EKG and all this and that. Come to find out that my lung was collapsed, and I got I had to admit into the ER, and then suddenly it wasn’t just collapsed lung. It was you need surgery right now, on your lung, and I mean it was it was very scary. I still look back at that and wonder if I hadn’t, if I had just listened to it being a panic attack, or just continued to push through and work for the pressure of getting a project done, pressure that I put on myself, what would have happened?

Katie Toomey: And I don’t like to think about that at all because that’s kind of scary to me. Nothing is worth that. Like whatever would have happened from that. Yeah. So when I think about you know people sacrificing their health, I can easily look to that event and say that is not worth it. Like that wasn’t worth it. I should have. If you were at think about it. If you were at any other job, working a warehouse, retail, anything that isn’t life saving you would just stop and have gone to the doctor and I I wonder to myself why I didn’t why did I wait so long so if I’m not awakened to that yet I think I am now

Zack Arnold: Yeah I mean that’s that that’s certainly an intense wake up call and I mean I I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced a collapsed lung, so I’ve never been down that path. However,

Katie Toomey: Feels very bad, and and it it’s a very tight feeling in your chest and pain while you breathe. And you might think you’re having a heart attack, but it’s not because they’ll do an EKG and they’ll figure it out, and they get an X-ray done, and suddenly you realize you have a collapsed lung. They don’t always require surgery, but in my case, I needed surgery. And did they give

Zack Arnold: Any indication as to where it came from? Like, did you poke yourself with a bobby pin and you poked a hole in your lung, or like, how did that happen?

Katie Toomey: Well, interestingly enough, they told me that normally collapsed lungs happen in tall, lanky men, and they were very perplexed. It’s a spontaneous collapse, so it’s just known as that. It’s unexplainable. They told me that people, everyone has little tiny air bubbles on their lungs, and these are normally harmless. And people like me, I guess, sometimes those little air bubbles pop, and then bad things happen. They have absolutely no idea why. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think that just being stressed can cause it, but at the same time, it’s kind of like it’s a little scary. They did the surgery. I guess I should at least say that I had a previous collapsed lung from many years ago, and it happened when I broke my foot. It was only time I ever broke a bone. Long story short is that I did have a previous collapsed lung, also spontaneous, and they think it might have happened when, like, shortly after I broke my foot. They think maybe the fall, but they don’t know, so they just labeled it spontaneous. So since I already had a popped lung, they always told me that it could happen again, but I never thought that this would happen again. So this is like at least seven years down the line. When so, of course, when I got that feeling in my chest, it didn’t really mean a lot to me. So when you have a collapsed lung, every subsequent time after that is an increased risk for it to happen again. So you, so you get to feel like a walking time bomb, a walking lung time bomb. Yeah. So they did the surgery because I was at such an increased risk. They basically said, “Well, we’re going to put a chest tube in you. Either way, we can put one in, and you could be out in a few days and have an increased risk, or you can get the tube put in after we’ve done surgery that will supposedly-I don’t want to jinx myself-supposedly limit my risk greatly. So of course, I was like, “Well, obviously, I don’t want to go through this again, and so then they did the surgery, and both times spontaneous.

Zack Arnold: And you had mentioned in your article that you were actually worried that being laid out like that was going to kind of undo all of the kind of the work that you had done for yourself, bettering yourself and whatnot. So let’s let’s kind of get ourselves to that. Point by telling me what was your journey as far as you hit that low point. You had this moment in October, but what was the space in between? Because you obviously grew so much because you went from saying I’m not 90 pounds overweight and I can’t even last a day on set to I’ve just had the spontaneous health incident of which you have no fault whatsoever, but you were so concerned that all of your progress would go away. So what was what was the in between there that got you to that mindset of not wanting to give up all your progress?

Katie Toomey: Oh gosh, well, so after after college, I decided that I was going to start small, and that was with things like reducing smoking and completely getting smoke free, and cutting out soda and/or liquid calories in general. From there, I went on to start doing high-intensity interval training, the HIT stuff, which I found really great to do. Mainly because I’m a broke college graduate, I need something accessible to me that’s pretty much as free as possible because I know people can get into shape using their body weight, using other means other than expensive gym equipment. So that’s the route I chose to go. So doing the hit was pretty much me in a mat using a backpack with with books, anything of weight if I needed it, and starting to slowly adjust my eating, which wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t great either. My biggest problem was going all day, like I would go all day without anything to eat, and then by the time I got done with classes and all that other stuff, and even later on after I got done with work, I had gone all day with just like caffeine and cigarettes. And then when I took out the cigarettes, it was like just coffee all day. It was not a good decision. So I adjusted the eating. I wanted to start eating more often because my I think my metabolism just completely tanked and why wouldn’t it you know I was putting myself under tremendous stress running around like an energizer bunny with no fuel and I am assuming because I was young I got away with it but it doesn’t mean it was right so I knew I had to make myself start eating on an actual schedule and not just three meals a day, I just I wanted to do something that would help my poor metabolism like wake back up. So that’s why how I came to eating every few hours, not big meals, but like lots of smaller, almost like grazing every two to three hours. Some kind of protein and some kind of fiber, something to fill me up, and lots and lots of water, like way more water than I think I’ve ever drank for many years. Well,

Zack Arnold: You mentioned in your article that you carried around a gallon jug, right?

Katie Toomey: Yeah, that’s correct. I got myself. I think it was at the dollar store. You know, it was like a mini water jug with a big handle, and you can ask people everywhere I went. I had that thing with me. It was always a conversation piece, and people were always curious. Hey, is that like all your all-day water right there? Yep, that’s to make sure no matter where I am, if I’m stuck in a really heavy edit, and you know you’re so deep in the edit, you know you should take a break, but you know you’re ignoring it. That water is right there, and that trained me to drink enough water every day. I was going through a lot, a lot of just plain water that I wanted to start at ground zero with it. I didn’t drink anything flavored. I just wanted to say, you know, this is the liquid that’s here. You need to drink it. I still drink coffee, obviously, in the morning. But aside from that, just water, and it worked really good. And

Zack Arnold: That’s one of the most profound changes that you can make if you have a really poor diet: is just eliminating liquid calories, eliminating the unhealthy sources of caffeine. And I think the caffeine can be an incredibly healthy substance when used properly, in the right moderation, in the right substances, but having caffeine in Red Bull is not one of the best options. You know, but if you’re doing a nice clean coffee and you’re not, you know, throwing in all kinds of store-bought horrible creams and sugar and all these other things, that’s what gets people in trouble. But just a combination of a nice clean coffee and water-I mean, that’s that’s it, and it’s essentially free. You know, like it’s actually going to save you money because everybody says, “Oh, being healthy just costs money, and I don’t have the money. It’s like you’re cutting things out. You’re saving money by doing that.

Katie Toomey: Yeah, it was really helpful because it’s there’s an overwhelming amount of information when you first look into, “Hey, I want to get into shape. What is some ways that I can incorporate this in my life? And part of the problem is there’s so much information. It’s like a double-edged blade. It’s a problem, and it’s great because you can you have all this vast knowledge to read through and try to make sense out of and actually put to use, but you can get really overwhelmed. And it’s easy to get confused. So I wanted to make this something that wasn’t just something I did for three or four months or the year. I just wanted to completely overhaul my life. I knew that from the beginning that I hadn’t been going a good direction for a really long time, and you know I went from being really underweight growing up during my teens, I actually did pretty good. Like that was probably the best shape. I maybe it is that way for a lot of people, you know. But for me, that was the best point. I was right where I should be, and college is where everything kind of went downhill, which is also very typical. But for me, it hit me even harder, and I just felt like I was so off track that I had to just do something little small steps, and I knew it was going to be annoying because it would be slower. But at the same time, it was something that I could slowly bring in every single month, every single week. Something that isn’t going to overwhelm me because if I get overwhelmed, I start to feel like there’s no finish line. I can’t see a goal. It’s just so far away that it doesn’t feel attainable. So when I started, I cut down things like I didn’t just stop smoking. I just cut that down, and it doesn’t work for everyone. For me, though, it was a more, let’s say, graceful way to move out of some bad habits. Same with replacing liquid calories. Same with when I started to eat every few hours, and there was a lot of margins for errors because it’s gonna happen. I think that’s something that’s hard to wrap your head around at first because you’re like, okay, I’m gonna get into shape. I’m gonna do everything perfect. No more sweets. No more of any of this. I’m never going to make any mistakes. And the problem with that is, well, we’re human. We’re not machines. You’re going to mess up. The good part is that you know that you’re going to mess up. It’s going to happen. You learn to deal with it better. You learn that going into it not expecting perfect results on a new adventure, like trying to change your habits, is is going to save yourself a lot of mental stress. Just saying, okay, I’m going to go into this knowing that there’s no way I’m not going to mess up, because I think that’s why a lot of people give up is they get really excited to start changing your life, you want to get into shape like tomorrow, if you could, and you tend to take failing a little bit worse than you should. You should look at it like we do in the industry. It’s good to make some mistakes. You learn from those mistakes, and those stick with you a lot more than just you know being able to hurdle every problem without any trouble. So I, that’s something I definitely, definitely worlds have dealt with better over time, and it did take me a long time to find the right way for me. That’s that’s another problem that people make the mistake of. Well, this person did these exact things at these exact times, and I’m not getting the same results from that. I had a lot of problems. The first year was probably my toughest. I began this five years ago, but I wouldn’t say that I really began this until maybe a year and a half ago. That’s where I really finally found what worked for me, and that’s where I saw the most weight loss and the most muscle building. Finding something not only I would be consistent at, would somewhat enjoy at parts like with weightlifting.

Katie Toomey: I actually enjoy weightlifting, but it took me a long time to get there, and that’s the part that I think a lot of people have trouble with. Is you can’t just follow the exact same thing someone did. Sometimes you have to adjust for your own body. My body is different than someone else’s, and if they eat this certain stuff, you know, you might see results from that. But you have to remember, hey, if I don’t, it doesn’t mean I suck and I’m bad at this. It just means I have to adjust stuff. So that was definitely something I had to learn.

Zack Arnold: Well, I can say for sure that if you’re if you’re saying that over the course of five years you didn’t figure it out for three or three and a half, you’re light years ahead of me because it took me eight and a half years to finally crack the code and figure it out, because I had kind of my you know that that one moment where you hit rock bottom and say to yourself, “Well, this is it. It’s like this is the worst it’s going to get. I can either let it get worse and be dead, or I can fix something about it. And that was in like October of 2005 for me, and I really didn’t crack the code, and I was trying for 10 years, trying all these different things and different foods, different exercise programs, and there were ups and there were downs. But it wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that the light bulb came on, and I said, “I figured it out, you know, like I nailed it. But it took me over eight years to get there, and that was kind of the genesis of where this program came. But what I love that you’re saying, and like you’re now the the new you know billboard for fitness and post, is that you said I didn’t want to make these short term decisions. I wanted to make lifestyle changes, and that’s really what I’m trying to to push on people is that you can’t say my ultimate goal is that I want to lose four pounds on my waist in 90 days, and if it happens in 90-one days, I fail. And if in those 90 days I eat birthday cake, I have failed. That’s not going to help your health at all. What you’re doing is you’re making a very pointed decision about one aspect of your life, but you have the mindset of I just need to push and I need to be miserable and I need to not eat these things that I love. But then on day 91 I can put my hands up in the air and say I did it, and then you go back to living the horrible lifestyle you did before. And I was in that cycle for years, where I would be healthy for 60 days, 90 days, maybe even a little bit more. I’d achieve a certain short term goal, throw my hands up in the air, and I’d sell great by eating a bag of Doritos. And three months later, all the way, it was back. I was back in a deep depression. I was back having attention issues, and I’m like, “How did I get here? And I realized it was short-term thinking for the most gain, and I should have been looking at trying to transform my mindset. And that’s when everything started to click. Is when I said, “I don’t care about the weekly goals. And yes, having those weekly goals is all part of a bigger master plan, but they can’t be the end game. They have to be, you know. I always equate it to a game of chess. Like you can’t play a game of checkers with your health. You have to play a game of chess. So yes, you have to move the pawn in order to end up getting checkmate. But you can’t say, “Oh, my goal is to just move the pawn. And to me, getting three inches off your waist in 60 days-that being the ultimate goal-well, you moved one piece on the board. But what does that have to do with winning the game? And to me, winning the game is transforming your mindset, so you don’t want to make the bad choices, and you consistently, 80 to 90% of the time, are making healthy choices because you want to make them. And it sounds like that’s what you’ve done.

Katie Toomey: Yeah, because you get really tired of being in a vicious circle of trying what you feel like is your hardest. That was definitely my second year. My second year was really rough. I I don’t know how I made it through that year because I was doing the high intensity interval training, very low to almost no carb at points, and I truly thought that if I came at it from both sides, like with really controlling the eating and really working out hard, that I would see results, like really big results. Unfortunately, all I did was drove myself absolutely insane. Like not only just by not having any carbs, which is very not good for me, but also it’s almost like a punishment for yourself. Well, I’m unhappy with myself, so I’m just going to punish myself by working out way too hard, like well above where I should have been, it was kind of like seeing way out in the horizon and trying to climb some giant mountain you haven’t even trained for. But that’s how desperate you get to, and and it’s great to hear that I’m not the only person that basically might be seen as messed up for a few years. But that’s I always felt like no matter what I was doing, whether I was succeeding or failing, I was at least doing something, and to me, that I think was more helpful than the point I was at before I decided to do something about it. Because you’re unhappy either way, but at least you’re trying to do something, and I think that’s inspiring. Oh

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I was just going to say exactly the same thing. That if you’re trying things and they’re failing, at least you’re trying. It’s the people that are too afraid to try that are saying, “Well, nothing works for me, and I don’t feel like doing this or that. Like they’re the ones that are failing and they don’t have any momentum. But if you’re saying, “I’m trying all these things and I’m miserable and they’re not working, but you’re trying, that to me is forward movement. Anyway, even if you feel like you’re moving backwards, you’re still moving forwards because that’s shifting your mindset. And I’ve also been through the exact same phase that you went through of just punishing myself with exercise and fastidiously counting calories and looking at macronutrients and micronutrients and just the the whole mentality of eat less, exercise more that everybody talks about in the media, and one of those things that just about killed me. That I said, there’s no way that I can live my life like this. And then I discovered a book called The Calorie Myth, and that was one of my first eye-opening experiences to why nothing was working because eat less, exercise more doesn’t work. And the book is basically 300 pages of science that proves that definitively beyond the shadow of a doubt. So that’s when I realized I need to stop doing this because I’m anybody that listens to the show or works with me, and I’m speaking to you, Natalie, my assistant. You, I am massively OCD. I’m very detail oriented. It’s part of the reason. That I feel like I’ve gotten where I have in my career is that I just keep pushing and pushing until I get it right. And I was doing the same thing with calorie counts and micronutrients and macronutrients and the amount of time I was exercising. And if I missed one day of P 90x I was punishing myself. And where could I make it up? And it made me miserable. And it’s when I finally realized that that’s not what this is all about. It was about the lifestyle change and just making the healthy choices. That’s what made all the difference in the world. But I want to use that to segue a little bit to another thing you specifically talked about because I want to talk a little bit about the the specific tools. And one thing that you mentioned in your article is MyFitnessPal. So talk about how you integrated that to kind of help you reshape your diet.

Katie Toomey: MyFitnessPal is definitely something I would recommend anyone. You know, if you’ve decided tomorrow I’m going to start changing my habits, that’s something to incorporate for sure. It’s not only a way to kind of set yourself a mental goal, like you can put your weight, and and you can kind of see what your goals are, and that’s already like kind of hey, you know, like where you’re just opening a fresh book you haven’t even written yet. That’s what that is. It’s it’s a really nice tool to put your meals in, especially a lot of people are creatures of habit. Like I tend to eat the same breakfast fairly often, depending on whether it’s summer or winter. I’ve already got an input, and I can easily adjust that. It does take a little bit to get used to, and I think it goes without saying that everyone goes through a bit of a period where they’re inputting every single thing they eat, like down to the last drop of of mustard. I like to joke about that because there was a time in my life where I did that, and it was a little bit too much. You will find your own balance with it, but it’s incredibly helpful because I think the most notable thing I first noticed using MyFitnessPal was inputting an apple, and then the next day, looking at what if I ate a little handful of M&Ms, and seeing that 50 calories would either be I could eat a whole apple or just this little tiny thing of M&Ms was kind of mind blowing. I was like, wow, you just don’t know this kind of stuff. It seems easy, but it’s not. And when you physically can put that out, that information out, and in your hands, and imagine an apple or just a couple M and M’s, like 10 of them is 50 calories. I mean, that’s kind of crazy. And when you’re starting to count your calories just to keep an eye on things without hopefully going overboard, you start to realize where things add up and where they don’t. And it’s really great to use when you’re just trying to get a feel for how many calories am I even eating? How many calories do I need to just sustain my day? And how many calories do I need if I’m actually working out pretty hard? And there’s a big difference between them all. And then there’s lots of little rabbit holes of the macros, as you were talking about, which I’ve definitely looked into before, and they are helpful. It gives you like that little pie chart of your carbs, your fats, and your proteins. It’s very good to kind of get familiar with all that, so that you can understand how you should be eating for yourself. So I use that to track my meals. Every time I was eating, I put in the snacks. I put in if I had a diet coke that day or water, whatever it was, coffee. I put all of that in there, and then we just kind of adjust it from day to day. And it’s very good for tracking yourself. I’m at a point now where I only use it when I feel like I’ve kind of gotten off course a bit, or I’m feeling like, hey, you know, stuff’s starting to fit a little tighter, or it’s feeling a little fluffier. I’m gonna keep an eye on things for like, say, the next two weeks, and then I don’t need it for a little while. You know, I just go back to, as I call it, playing with fire, which I quite enjoy. I mean, you should learn to enjoy that process more than inputting everything you eat every day forever because that’s terrible. Yeah, and I think

Zack Arnold: That’s a trap that a lot of people fall into, where they either do that and think that the only way I continue to be healthy on a daily basis is I have to input, input, input, always keep it balanced. It’s got to be like a scale where you know, oh my God, I have you know 300 more calories than I have you know calories that I’ve exported through activity, and they just freak out about it, and that to me is the wrong way to approach it. But I think the right way to approach it is by developing awareness, understanding what you’re putting in your body, looking at the breakdown of it, and over the course of 30 to 60 to 90 days, understanding what’s going in your body, but more importantly, correlating that with how that affects the way that you feel and the way that you function, because I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, I ate really healthy, and then I started using my Fitness Pal, and I would look at the pie chart, and it was like 80% carbs. I’m like, “What the what? Like, where did this come from? Right, and then I started trying to reshape it, and I remember the first few weeks, I’m like. It is impossible to get all of these carbs off the pie chart, but as I started doing it, I started learning and educating myself about other foods that I could use to satiate myself and feel full and have energy and realize that I don’t need 80% carbs because everybody thinks, oh well, my body burns glucose for energy, so I need to be eating bread and pasta, and well, number one, you’re not a marathoner, most likely, so you’re not an athlete, and you don’t need those things. And on a tangent, even athletes and marathoners don’t need those things, and science is finally starting to prove that. But really, you just you need to focus on developing awareness, understanding how it’s affecting you, and then once you kind of get a hold of it. You don’t need it anymore, but I love that you kind of revisit it whenever you feel like you’re getting off track because it’s almost kind of like this little babysitter on your phone.

Katie Toomey: Yeah, it’s it’s really nice. It gives what it gives me the most is that peace of mind of I don’t have to wonder: Am I going completely off course? Have I completely screwed myself? All I have to do is just if I start to get to feel fluffy at all, all I have to do is just say okay, just continue normally. You know, keep keep your brain on trying to eat clean 80% of the time. Don’t freak out and start like micromanaging everything and feeling like I can’t like everything is off limits because that’s a terrible mindset for especially when you’re struggling to tell yourself that these things are off limits. It’s not what got you. Generally speaking, it’s not what got you there in the first place. It’s a combination of a lot of things. It’s not just the brownies or the Doritos, which I always joke still taste good to me to this day. I always hear like when you eat cleaner, you shouldn’t like certain things anymore. But that’s not true. I still love birthday cake. Doritos still taste absolutely as good as they ever did to me. But let’s say Mountain Dew, for instance. When I was drinking, especially while I was working, while I was gaming, all that-the typical Mountain Dew drinker-I have actually had a sip of it, and it tastes really vile to me. Putrid, right? I

Zack Arnold: Was a Mountain Dew addict in high school. I lived on Mountain Dew, and I try. I don’t remember a couple years ago. Was at some birthday party, whatever it was, and I didn’t even get a can. It was just I don’t remember how I came upon it, but I had one sip and I spit it in the garbage can. Like I don’t even want to swallow this. It’s so putrid, and I lived off this stuff.

Katie Toomey: I don’t know how I drink things like that all the time. I honestly don’t. But there are certain things that still taste just as delicious. Don’t fool yourself into thinking all of a sudden you’re going to hate cookies. If you like cookies now, you’re still going to like them. So keeping that in mind is just hey all right just track yourself for a bit. It’s not like I mean you’re kind of your own how to put it like your own master of your health. So I mean you can’t really lie to yourself. You can and you might do it sometimes, especially while you’re tracking. You’ll be like well, you know those couple M&Ms don’t really count. You know you’ll kind of feel the tug of war in your mind with that. Like one side wants to be super honest, the other one’s like, “Oh, you don’t have to tell it about that cookie. No, you do. You probably do, just for that short period. But that’s the beauty of it. It’s just for a little bit, and then you stop, and then go back to eating. You don’t need to track every single day of everything that you eat,

Zack Arnold: Exactly. Now I’m going to transition a little bit. We’ve now talked a little bit about some of the choices that you made as far as things you’ve removed from your diet. We’ve talked about MyFitnessPal as being a really useful tool to kind of build awareness. Now I want to talk about your environment because right on the front picture for this article on Creative Cow. You’re at a standing workstation, and I can see a stability ball. So talk to me a little bit about how you’ve kind of modified your workstation, because this is really my wheelhouse, and where I could geek out for hours is all the different tools and tricks that I’ve used to kind of turn my edit suite into like a home gym, basically. And people walk in and be like, “Is that a kettlebell? And is that is that a foam roller? And wait a second, are those resistance bands? I’m like, “Yeah, because I live in this room and I want to stay active. So, and I actually Creative Cow related. I actually do have an article on Creative Cow that’s like the the top 10 things that you can do to kind of transform your edit suite into a gym, but I want to talk about how you’ve transformed your edit suite because it looks like you have kind of a similar setup.

Katie Toomey: I do well. If I start from back when I was a freelancer, when I was starting to make those small changes, I can’t remember how I came across it at first with this stability ball. But I decided that I was sick of sitting in chairs that didn’t fit me right anyway. I’m not like especially short, but I am kind of short, and most of the chairs weren’t just didn’t fit me right anyway. My feet were dangling. I didn’t feel like my back was supported, and so I was kind of fed up with chairs, like especially sitting in them that long. I really hated it. So I decided to get a stability ball, and I was like, I’m going to trade out the chair for this because it’s going to force me to sit up straight, and at least you know you have a little range of movement. And it just felt better from the first day I sat on a stability ball. It was just kind of like I was like, yep, this is the right decision. I was so done with chairs. I didn’t even look back. I, in fact, when I started at that the agency, the first thing I did was wheel my chair out and go up the elevator with my stability ball, because I was just done with chairs. They are uncomfortable, and they weren’t helping me in any way. I was slouching completely in them, hunched over the keyboard. That is not a pretty sight, you know. Years after years of doing that, I’m sure. So I started with the stability ball, and then at home, when I was editing here, I got a box. I pretty much, you know, very cheaply with like very little money, decided I was gonna make myself a stand-up desk, which basically could be crates or boxes, whatever you need to balance your keyboard or computer, whatever it takes. That’s that’s I was ready to do it. And then when I started there, I had a regular table and my stability ball, and then there came up in conversation that they were going to update some of the furniture, especially for the editorium. And that’s when we decided, me and Evan, were talking about stand-up desks. And I was like extremely excited. I’d heard about them. I was like, “Is this something we can really get? Because I would love that. I I didn’t like sitting so low to the ground, so now we insert the stand up desk, and I immediately was like, as soon as it comes, I’m just gonna dive right in. Now we we do have one of those like anti fatigue mats, which there’s like a whole variety of them, and when you first look at them, you think there’s no way that’s gonna make my feet feel great by the end of the day, but you would be surprised-the anti-fatigue mat and the stand-up desk you get used to pretty quickly. If you are used to, I guess, standing, or if you’ve already started to make some changes with your health, like with fitness, if you haven’t, then my system was stand up an hour, sit on the stability ball, not the chair, for an hour, and every other hour rotate, or you know whatever works for you. If you want to stand for two hours and sit an hour, the beauty is that you can change that around as much as you need. There might be some days where you’re really tired and you just maybe you did a workout and you’re sore, and the last thing you want to do is stand. Well, at least use a stability ball because then you’re at least engaging some form of your muscles, and it’s better than just slouching in the chair. That’s the way I look at it. So that’s kind of how it evolved from start to today.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that all those are really, really good changes to implement. And the the most important thing that I think you mentioned beyond any one specific thing is the fact that you’re constantly changing your position. Because one of the lessons that I learned the wrong way, and I’ve been a standing desk user, I think for about eight years now. I was doing it, and before anybody had it in any of the offices, I had actually bought one in my house as well. And people were like, “Oh, that’s what Walter Murch does too. And I’m like, yes. Me and Walter Murch were the only two people in America standing at their desk, and now, you know, now everybody is is starting to do it, which is great. But I was standing for 12 hours a day, and I was completely immobile in front of my computer, and that caused a whole host of new health problems. And that’s when I started to look into the science behind standing and other ergonomic options, and what could possibly be done? And basically, the answer is there isn’t one answer. The answer is that you have to do multiple different things throughout the day, constantly stay active, be in different positions. So, like you, I’m constantly moving around, and I tell people a lot on the show or in person. I’m like I’m like a squirrel in my room, where you know I’ll be on the treadmill for I’ll do like 40-five minutes on, 15 minutes off, 40-five minutes on, 15 minutes off, and then I might be on my stability ball chair, or I have this thing that’s called a mogo, which is basically it’s M O G O. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, but it’s basically like this little looks like a bike seat that’s on just this little pedestal that you just stick under your, you basically sit on it, but you’re still standing. So it’s almost like a lean. It’s like a leaning seat. So you you take the the pressure off of your feet and off your lower back, but your legs are still pretty much straight. So you’re not constantly in flexion with your hip flexors because when you sit all day long, you get really tight hamstrings, really tight hip flexors, and that’s why you have mobility issues and lower back issues as you get older and sit all the time. So I’m never in one position for more than 45 minutes ever, and that’s what’s made all the difference in the world for my energy levels, for my lack of pain, because I did the standing for years where I was just immobile. And there’s a recent article that actually just came out, and I’ll link to it. I just posted it on the Fitness and Post Facebook page like a week ago, but it’s called “All the Science That We Know So Far About Standing Desks, and it had all kinds of research cited for all these different studies about standing and all the effects that it has, both positive and negative. But again, the basic takeaway was: don’t do just one thing. Find different ways to be active throughout the day, and it’s really great that you’ve kind of implemented that and found ways to just constantly be in different positions. Because stability ball is exactly where I started too, and it didn’t take long before I realized that rather than my lower back hurting, now my neck hurt and my shoulders hurt because I was hunched over all day long because they say, “Oh yeah, it’ll help you improve your core. But by 4o’clock or 5o’clock in the afternoon, you’re not sitting in an upright position. You’re hunched over just like you are in a chair. So you can’t just pick one thing. You have to do different things and vary it up, and that’s really what makes all the difference in the world.

Katie Toomey: Yeah, and it is really nice when you’re switching from sitting on the ball to the standing, when you’re standing, you have that freedom to kind of turn around. I like to stretch my shoulders out using because I mean it could have three people on it while it’s you know lifting up into the standing position. So you can put your weight and kind of stretch out your back, stretch out your shoulders. You have a bit freedom of movement that you don’t have while you’re sitting. So it’s kind of like when you’re sitting, it’s kind of nice to just take a break and just worry about sitting, sitting up as straight as you can, and just you know, it’s kind of like a relax moment. And then when you put the desk up, then it’s like, okay, let me shake around my leg, let me twist around, let me move, put some movement in my poor shoulders because that’s where I put all my stress is like right, right past the neck, right there on the shoulders is where everything goes. So if I don’t stop and flex them around, I definitely suffer for it later. So I definitely think that when I first started standing, I made the same mistake of standing. I was like, “Oh, I’m just going to stand all the time. I’m never going to sit because you know that sitting too much is bad. But also, I do think that I made the mistake of not being at the right point to be standing for so long, especially when you’re not used to it. Again, you’re I’m making the mistake of jumping into the horizon when I haven’t quite assessed the path there, so I learned my lesson pretty quick. I had a little foam mat. I didn’t have any fancy mat. I just had my like you know those little yoga mats that I was using for the hit, and I put it over by the computer, and that’s where I stood. And eventually, I went okay. Maybe I don’t need to stand all the time. So I learned my lesson definitely. Well,

Zack Arnold: That’s great, and I really think that all the things that you’ve done specifically, all these different tools and modifications, I think are very inspiring. But I want to implore my listeners again to actually take the time, sit down, and read your article because I think it’s way more in depth as far as all the specifics. And you know, we we kind of touched on a few of the points, but once again, I’ll put a link to the show notes so you guys can can go to that article directly. But last thing before we go, if somebody’s listening to this that was you of five years ago, and they said, “I’m there now. I just feel like I’ve lost all hope, and I just don’t know where to start. Like, what what would be the two minute elevator pitch to kind of help them understand that just about anybody can can make this change if you know they they look at it the the way that you did. So, kind of you know what kind of how how would you help out yourself five years ago?

Katie Toomey: I wish I could have helped myself out with what I know now versus when I started, but of course that’s hindsight. Let’s see if I’m thinking of editing and post in this industry. I would not only examine the way that the industry is right now. There’s kind of this reward program, maybe unsaid reward program for basically killing yourself with stress, working long hours, you know, going with no breaks-it’s almost like it can be a bit of a toxic environment, and you have to be aware of that before, before rather than later, because that’s where the problems arise. It’s not just the person; it’s also the environment, and it’s and how do you change that? You know, you may not be able to change the industry on the whole, but you can start small. Like you can start with your own edit cave and branch outward. There needs to be a more encouraging environment to not put ourselves at such a risk in the first place, because if it is industry related, that’s where it needs to be addressed too. But I would also tell myself to steal your steal all your courage because you will need it. Because most days are going to be difficult. It never actually gets easy, and I. I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make in the beginning. Is they they want an easy path, and the unfortunate answer is it doesn’t matter how in shape you get. I think that it’s a fair statement to say that you still struggle. There’s still a daily struggle, you know, finding the will to work out, getting up to prep your food when there’s so many easier options, like just go out to eat, or oh, I could just get my workout. There are so many temptations and so many excuses, and and life is very busy, and it will find those excuses for you if you don’t put your foot down. But you also have to understand that if you are making this change for the rest of your life, you need to give yourself a very big time window. It’s not just going to all happen in the even the next year as bad as you want it. It won’t, but if you’re trying and you keep your motivation and determination to not stop, because let’s face it, what happens if you stop? If you’re miserable and unhappy, you’re going to stay miserable and unhappy. Plus, you you have no outlet. There’s nowhere to even try to change it. So you have to go into that understanding those points, specifically for the industry. It’s got to. There’s got to be some change that happens there and within yourself. It’s not just one or the other, and I think that’s something that I’m still dealing with on a daily basis. It’s never going to get easy. I’m never. Some days are great. Some days, I I prepped my food the night before. I didn’t have a terrible long day at work. I got in my workout. You just can’t expect that to happen every day. The norm is going to be avoiding some of the things that you don’t want to, that you don’t feel like eating. Not that they’re forbidden. It’s just you have to learn the difference, and it’s an everyday choice. And fighting the excuses and and being too busy is gonna be hard to balance. So it’s really hard. It’s very hard to sum that up because it’s you’re never gonna stop needing to adjust. You’re never going to stop needing to care about your health because it’s that’s your life. So and if you’re doing this for your life, then you’re always going to be constantly changing things up to make sure that you don’t have that happen again. I know that was something I said time and time again in the past five years. I’m never going to get to that point again. And you know, I say that not just because I don’t ever want to be fat. It’s more like I don’t ever want to experience that again, and I will rally for myself before anyone else will. That’s just a fact. You have to look out for yourself, whether you’re an editor or you work at a warehouse. It doesn’t matter. You have to be your own champion for that because no one else is going to do it.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that one of the things you said earlier that sums it up best, and I’m just going to blatantly steal this analogy from you from now on, is that you said that you know your fitness is kind of like when you’re an editor. If you said to yourself, “Well, I can’t make a bad edit; all of my choices need to be perfect, you never get anything done. But as an editor, I would venture to guess, and I don’t know the research behind this, but you probably make 70 or 80% of your choices in a 12-hour day are wrong. They’re bad choices, but you cumulatively make 20% of those choices good, and you end up with a really good product, right? And I think that you know, kind of the analogy of fitness to editing, you just have to jump into the timeline and understand that you’re going to make a bunch of mistakes, but you’re going to fix those mistakes. And at the end of the day, you’re going to look at the piece of work and say, “This is really, really cool, and it’s cut out when I wanted. And I really think you can do the same thing with your health. So I’m just putting that on the air. I’m stealing that from Katie Toomey.

Katie Toomey: Well, it’s it’s a great way to look at it because you don’t know that going into this. You know that the. I suppose you know that the entertainment industry is going to have some long hours, and it’s not to say that. I mean, there’s lots of jobs that have a lot of challenges, high stress environment, long hours. But should that be okay? Like to a point, should that be okay? Like shouldn’t we also have time to prep food and work out, and and also have a little balance because it seems like right now it’s more of a positive praise to overwork yourself and to basically kill yourself. And you may and maybe that’s fine, like at the finish line of a film or something else. But should that be the normal all the time? Should everything be ASAP? Should every I mean, is that really? That’s where it feels like things have gotten to on my end. Like from my experience, it has just been a bit of a toxic environment, and I’m a direct result from that. And thankfully, I have found some way to navigate through it. It’s an. Incredible challenge, and that could be why a lot of people are overwhelmed or they give up because it just it feels too hard. It feels too hard. It feels like something’s got to break somewhere. And if it’s not, if I can’t sacrifice any work hours, well, then I have to sacrifice balance in my life, like with friends and family, and also taking care of myself. And that’s just been the promise I’ve made myself since that day. Is just there is nothing more important than that. There just can’t be. And if I, if I sometimes give in to that, which it’s happened because you’re not perfect, it’s going to happen. Then you just have to remind yourself that hey, I need to be aware that I’m getting over stressed and overworked, and I’m not able to work out. That stresses me out. I’m not going to do my job as well. So it’s just something interesting to think about. There’s no way that you can look at tomorrow and boom, suddenly everything has changed in the industry. But I do think that it could do with a bit of change. Absolutely. In that

Zack Arnold: Department, and that’s that’s that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. Is you know there are a lot of tips and tricks and hacks and tools, but at the end of the day, it’s just about changing the level of awareness in our industry that this is something that needs to change. And I can sit here and beat my head against a wall and against a microphone three times a month and spread this message. But it’s it’s people like you that are starting to do it as well, and it’s becoming a mindset. And people are emailing me and contacting me and saying I’m starting to do these things, and I’m noticing a difference. And it’s it’s just this slow movement that’s going to happen over time. There’s going to be just this slow general shift. You know that that’s kind of what this is about. But to go off on a small tangent, just to bring out the productivity side of me, what you can do is you can create an email filter where any email that has the words ASAP it just goes directly to your trash folder. And when the producer is like, “Did you not get that email? I’m like, “I’m sorry, but anything with ASAP is filtered to my trash, so stop sending it to me. Because I had a producer that everything was ASAP every day, and I’m like, if you keep sending that to me, I’m just not going to read it. Have you ever heard the story, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” Well, stop it, because we’re not curing cancer. It

Katie Toomey: Doesn’t have much meaning. I hate to say this, but that word has lost all meaning to me. When I see ASAP, I almost break out into an uncontrollable nervous laughter because I’m like, I’ll be knee deep in like one project, another work order will come in, something like DVD or anything. It could be anything, and then something else will come through, and it’s just everything’s ASAP. I guess it’s it’s kind of crazy, you know. And I think it’s not. It may not just be the industry. Maybe it’s also people not in the industry, like account people or someone else that they don’t understand exactly what they’re doing. Like when everything is ASAP, it’s it’s kind of crazy. Sometimes I wonder, like if they ever go back and maybe type in ASAP and see how many times they have written that to people. Yeah, and that’s where some of the, I guess, the toxic comes from. It just you get to the point where you’re like, well, everything’s an emergency, so nothing is. And you know, Evan, every day I walk by his desk to get to mine in the back, and it’s it’s a little sign that says your your lack of planning, on is not an emergency on my part.

Zack Arnold: Yeah,

Katie Toomey: Like it’s essentially like that. Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part, but technically, that’s you know that happens a lot. That works. Yeah, that’s very

Zack Arnold: Very common. Yeah. So well, I’m gonna let you go because you’re you’re in a much later time zone than I am, and it’s late to me. But I just wanted to tell you it was a tremendous pleasure to have you on the show, and I think you’ve really shed some light on the fact that this can really be done by anybody if you just put your mind to it. I think it’s really inspiring the way you just said, “I need to change, and you did it. It wasn’t, you know, it really was that simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple, you know. And I,

Katie Toomey: It’s a simple, it’s a simple start. I and I think that just talent, just finally coming to the realization yourself. Not having, if you do have someone in your life that is one of those people, they’ll be like, “Oh, you need to gain weight. You need to lose weight. They’re like micromanaging everything you do. Whichever situation it is, just the fact that you are doing it is, I think, the key. It’s not your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your partner. It’s or your family or friends, it’s yourself. You’re you’re the most important element to that recipe. Let’s call it because we all like food here. Let’s just call it a recipe, and you are the key ingredient. And if you don’t want to do it, and you’re doing it for any other reason than yourself, then you’re gonna definitely have more challenge than someone that decided it on their own. That could be why you fail. So if you’re having trouble, ask yourself how invested are you in this? Because even if you feel like you’re putting all of yourself into it, you might be surprised how many different ways you’re sabotaging yourself. It’s it’s very sad. I definitely. Struggled with that myself. You think it’s kind of like you’re trying so hard that you’re sabotaging yourself in a myriad of ways between eating and workouts. It’s just all a part of the learning process, though. Really, I mean, if it happens, it’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s it’s just one little piece to the larger picture, just like editing,

Zack Arnold: And I think that that’s what they call in our industry a really good out.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Kristin Martin, and the show was executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.

The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.