Zack Arnold

Let's create things that matter. Together.

How to Stay Healthy at Conventions & Events

About Episode

For many in the post-production industry, traveling to conventions & events is just part of the business. Whether it’s NAB in Las Vegas, Editor’s Retreat, or any of the multitude of educational conferences worldwide, those conventions can be treated like paid vacations which means leaving your healthy habits at home. And if this is your choice, fantastic! More power to you. Enjoy yourself and live life.

But for some people, attending large conventions like NAB can be difficult because they prefer to maintain their healthy habits so they have plenty of energy and focus to get the most out of their experience and education. But between the meet-ups, the parties, and the drinking, it can be nearly impossible to even stand upright by the final day.

For those of you looking for helpful tactics and strategies to make your next convention or event a healthier one, I have an in-depth discussion with Katie Hinsen who created the #HealthyNABChallenge, taking it upon herself to make her visit to NAB this year as healthy and productive as possible.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Katie Hinsen, originally from New Zealand. She’s a New York-based award-winning finishing artist. She’s worked as an engineer, editor, visual effects artist, stereoscopic 3D artist. I mean, she she has a resume of so many different things that she’s done. But the reason that I have Katie on the show today is that she is the first member of the human species that has made the attempt to try and be healthy at NAB. So welcome, Katie. Hi. So the reason that you and I kind of connected a little while back is you had emailed me and said, “Hey, I’m going to NAB this year. I really want to try to do it in a healthy way, and I want to write a blog post about my journey, and I of course jumped all over this idea and said, “Oh my God, I would totally get behind this, and I would love this. So recently, you created this thing called the Healthy NAB Challenge, and for anybody listening that is unaware of what NAB is, it’s just this giant convention of hundreds of 1000s of people that go to Las Vegas every year. It’s the National Association of Broadcasters, and it’s just a free for all of technology and post production people. And from here, I’m just going to let you talk about the experience of NAB because I’m still an NAB virgin and have never attended. I really wanted to go this year, but I couldn’t. So yeah, so I I’m doing my best to try and get there next year, but this year the stars did not align. So where I’d like to start today is just talking a little bit about where the idea came from to do this, what your why is for doing it, and then what what some of the preparations were that you had in advance of it, knowing what you were getting yourself into.

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, so I’ve been to NAB a few times before, and and IBC, which is the one in Europe as well. NAB is it’s a it’s a lot of fun, like you say, it’s it’s huge, and it’s in Vegas, and basically it’s like the whole film and television community from all over the world comes together and has a huge party and geeks out and hangs out and learn stuff, and mostly just kind of hangs out. It’s it’s really intense. It’s actually it’s it’s kind of like an ultra marathon for the body and the mind. You know, but you cram it all into a few days. You barely sleep. You drink a lot. You party hard with everybody, and then you get up in the morning and you learn stuff all day. So you know it’s it’s this really super fun, intense experience that I recommend everybody tries to do at least once. Anyway, I kind of so knowing that I was going to go again this year, I realized a few months ago, that things might be different this time. I actually hadn’t been for a couple of years, and last time I was at NAB, things were things were pretty normal. It was before I started my my journey to becoming healthier. So a couple a couple of years ago, you know, I I actually did want to start getting healthier, and I was kind of starting to get healthier. I was, you know, inspired by listening to the podcast and thinking, you know, I’m going to try a few of these things. I had my whys already worked out, which was cool. You know, I I work full time at a company called Light Iron, and I also work full time as a volunteer running the Blue Collar Post Collective, which is the largest post production industry nonprofit, and that’s a huge amount of fun, and I’m really passionate about it. I also run a few other nonprofits and do a few other bits and pieces like that, and every single one of those things that I do, I’m super excited about, and I’m majorly type A and competitive with myself. So I only want to win at everything, and so you know, I had this, you know, I wanted to be healthier, right? So and then why? Well, it was to avoid burnout. It was to be able to perform at my best all the time, and not burn myself out. I’ve burnout before, and it’s not nice. So I really wanted to be able to push myself to the limit and do all these things that I was so passionate about, without grinding myself into the ground and failing at them. So I did start all of that, and then not long after I started trying to you know walk my 10,000 steps and do all that sort of thing, I actually got I got really really sick and and was diagnosed with celiac and had a massive amount apparently a massive amount of damage to my system from having lived my life without knowing that I I had celiac, so I actually was told that you know that I’m I might have cancer and if I don’t have cancer now I’m going to have it later and you know it was a huge eye opener. So I really you know I knew that that more than just I had to do more than just 10,000 steps a day. I had to change my diet completely, and I had to focus even more. On being healthier, and and I realized that as I got healthier, that wow, you know, I didn’t realize how unhealthy I was before because I just felt like you know 200 400% better than I had before. So it was you know it was this great. I guess it was a catalyst upon a catalyst, and I really started focusing on that. And my partner Bernschen, who’s also in the industry, you know, really joined me on that journey, and we both decided we we should probably get healthier, and we should probably do better. and And the more we started getting healthier, the better it felt. So we kept, you know, we kept pushing it, and and I think, you know, so now we’re both living a really healthy lifestyle. We’re exercising. We’re eating great.

Katie Hinsen: My diet is very, very restricted because of medical necessity, but hers is really just because she wants to be healthy. So to get back to NAB, when we realized that we were going to NAB, and that we we also realized that things were going to be really different this time around. You know, we couldn’t do NAB like we used to do NAB. So our first thought, you know, both of us was to freak out a little bit, and we were wondering just how we were going to do it. And then our second thought was, let’s do a challenge. We, you know, let’s make it a challenge and let’s do an experiment and see if it can be done. You know, we we love a good challenge and it’s a really good motivating factor. So yeah, we started doing a lot of research into how we were going to cope and how we were going to manage and whether it was something that could be done.

Zack Arnold: Well, before we move any further, I’d like to go backwards a little bit and I want to give the listeners background and what celiac actually is because this is not something that until a few years ago anybody had ever heard of, and now it’s become very popularized because celiac and gluten go hand in hand. As soon as you say the word gluten to anybody, their eyes immediately roll, and they stop listening to you.

Katie Hinsen: Right.

Zack Arnold: So, give me a little bit of background of what celiac is and how it factors into a normal diet.

Katie Hinsen: Well, I actually have celiac in my family, and I spent the first 30-five years of my life thinking that I was the one who escaped without it. You know, I was happily munching down on my sandwiches and and you know gloating to the rest of my family. But you know, so celiac is actually an autoimmune disorder. It’s something you have, you’re born with, but a lot of people don’t know until later in life, that they have it because if you’re like me, unlike my fam, other people in my family who have it, I don’t have any symptoms. So it’s not like I eat a sandwich and feel terrible. I actually eat a sandwich and feel just fine. But what’s going on in the insides of a celiac is that any gluten, any wheat, any anything with the the gluten enzyme in it is actually permanently damaging your entire GI tract. So it’s basically like it’s like eating away at me, and it’s irreversible damage. So it’s it’s pretty serious that if a celiac eats gluten, it’s in some people they get a reaction, but in a lot of people like me, you don’t. So it’s not like I you know break out into hives or start throwing up or anything. It literally you know nothing noticeable happens except for the fact that when they actually looked in to my stomach and my intestines, my my stomach lining was completely gone, and all the the little parts, so like they call the cilia and parts like that of my GI tract that help me absorb all my nutrients, were actually destroyed. So I was not actually absorbing. One of the symptoms of of celiac is that you don’t absorb the nutrients in your food because you’ve got this damage to your GI tract. So yeah, I had a lot of that, and also it’s really common for celiacs because of the damage that you have to also become lactose intolerant and allergic to other foods because you just don’t have you know with all that damage you don’t have the ability to digest food properly, so for me because of you know all all that damage that it incurred over my life of eating wheat and and not knowing that it was actually really really hurting me, it was pretty serious. I had to have some minor surgery and a very very strict diet. From that moment on, I had to completely cut out all gluten containing foods, and which is actually for me it was easier than for a lot of people because it’s in my family, so I kind of already know, you know, what foods to avoid and how to eat, but you know you’ve got to watch for hidden hidden gluten. You know if you’re just deciding to follow a gluten free diet because you know you want to be healthier or for a non medical reason, you pretty much just avoid the sandwiches. But for people who are celiac, you’ve got to be careful. It’s hidden in a lot of things. It’s hidden in in sauces, and it’s hidden in preparations of things that you wouldn’t even expect. You know, it’s hidden. It’s hidden in potato chips. It’s hidden in all kinds of. You know, if you eat if you eat meat, you never know that. You know, they might have coated it in flour. So you got to be super super careful about that sort of thing, and also I can’t eat any dairy or any eggs because I just can’t I can’t digest those things, and I have to be very very careful to make sure that I get all the nutrients and and more than most people, or my nutrients or as my micronutrients as well as my macronutrients because I’m not absorbing everything properly, so I got to make sure I’ve got lots and lots of goodness in my diet.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I’m glad that you went through all of that. Because again, like I said, whenever you say the word gluten, people stop listening and they don’t realize that for some people, gluten it’s not poisonous. Like they’re going to eat a piece of bread and they’re going to keel over and die. Although for some people, it is that serious. And I’ve heard stories of people with celiac disease where you can take a little piece of bread, you can just rub it on their arm, and their arm just like explodes immediately and hives, and so so it is a very very serious condition. And there’s a much larger spectrum of people that don’t have celiac, but if they have any type of gluten, they are somewhat intolerant, and it causes inflammation. But the problem is, it’s it’s not enough that people actually realize and say, “Wow, there’s something really wrong with me, and I have to see a doctor. It’s more like, “Man, at 3o’clock every day, I just really need to take a nap, or I’m just having a hard time concentrating. And there’s this thing called brain fog, and that’s directly connected to gluten. And until you’ve eliminated it for a certain period of time from your diet, you don’t you don’t see the world without that fog in front of you. And then you’re like, whoa! I may not have celiac, but man, this stuff affects me a lot. Like for me, I’m not gluten free, but I am very conscious of the foods that have gluten in them, and I try to avoid them when I can. And then when I go on a bender and like have a you know a cheat day or something, and I’ll have a pizza. I’m useless for like 48 hours afterwards, yeah, because of the brain fog from the gluten. So it it affects a lot of different people, even if you’re not celiac. But now that we’ve seen that you clearly are, you know, you’re celiac, you have severe reactions that not that you are aware of, because you’re not feeling them, but it’s severely affecting your body. So knowing that, it should surprise people even more that you’re going to try to attempt something like this at NAB. Where I mean, you can go into this in more detail, but I would assume it’s not terribly easy to make healthy choices at this event.

Katie Hinsen: It’s really not. You know, one of the first things that that we did was look up, like you know, what what foods are there, what foods are available, because we were aware of, I guess, what most people see at, you know, when they go to NAB, when they go to Vegas, which is, you know, all the the fast food places on the Strip. You don’t have a lot of time when you’re there. You know, there is sort of sort of food at the convention center, but it’s not very good. They have, you know, they have food trucks, and you can get pizza and all that sort of thing. And you know, so we started looking into the options, and it was a little bit miserable, to be honest. Even the so-called healthy options were really not healthy, you know. So we then we started looking at well, are there any supermarkets around? And the answer was no, not really, because they don’t want you to leave the strip. The other thing that was that I I knew was going to be a big issue was that of course I had to really cut back on my drinking because of my stomach condition, and I had previously been quite a quite a big drinker, actually. You know, with all the sort of stress of my of my life, and also just a lot of social events. I was a I used to love you know getting home and cracking a bottle of wine, and then before bed having a having my night whiskey and and so when I went to events, you know, it was you know catching up with friends from all over the world, especially like at NAB. You know, I was really you know I’m so used to going to these things and just having a whole lot of free drinks and getting wasted and then kind of getting up in the morning, stumbling into the convention center. Like that’s pretty much what you do at these things, so you know that was I knew that was going to be a little bit of an issue for me as well. Just to you know having to, I guess it’s a trigger for old habits in a way when you go to something like this, and so I was a little bit afraid of how how that was going to go for me, and the other yeah, the other thing was I was afraid that I was gonna starve to death for for Boonch and you know she’s she’s joining me on this journey of being healthier by choice. So it’s not like you know if she falls off the wagon and she eats a piece of pizza because it’s the only thing around, it’s you know it’s gonna be fun. But I didn’t have a choice. I don’t. I can’t do that. So I was a little bit concerned that I would starve to death and then get drunk.

Zack Arnold: And that’s not a good combination. Not eating anything and then drinking with the celiac digestive system. Probably not the best combination.

Katie Hinsen: Exactly. Yeah. So we we decided that we’d take on this challenge, you know, and because I think part of it psychological, you know, if you if you make it a challenge, especially if you’re total Type A and massively competitive like we are, then if you make it a challenge that you’re kind of competing, even if it’s against yourself, then it’s a lot easier to stick to these things. You know, I don’t like to fail at anything. So if it’s a challenge, then that I’m going to succeed or fail at, then you know it’s going to make it a lot easier.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I’m exactly the same way. Where as soon as I quantify something or I look at it as a challenge, or somebody says, “Ah, you can’t do that, that’s when the spark goes on. Like, oh yeah, I’m going to figure this out. Don’t don’t you worry. Yeah. So I’m I’m Type A in the same way. So, going back to the blog post, we basically broke it down into three main areas. Some of which you’ve alluded to, but I want to get a little bit more specific because the takeaway I really want is for somebody listening to this that says, “You know what? I struggle with this too, and I wanna I wanna try to go to my next convention because there are all kinds of conventions and events, you know, all all throughout the year, so it’s not just NAB that just happens to be the big one. But if somebody says, “Well, all right, I want to make an attempt, but I don’t know what to do, I want to give them some concrete steps. And as a caveat to that, when you had posted the blog post, your healthy NAB challenge, I got some some backlash from, and not anything mean or vitriol, like just a couple of people saying, “Well, dude, NAB is my vacation every year. Lay off. I want to have fun. And I will just say they have a point. If that is your cheat week and you want to enjoy yourself, by all means, go ahead. I’m not trying to say when you go to NEB you have to be healthy. What I am trying to say is there are people that are saying, “I want to go to this event, but I don’t want to just be a total glutton. I don’t want to get drunk every night, and I don’t want to eat total garbage. So what I want to do is show that there is an alternative for those that are already interested, but not say the people that don’t want this. Well, you shouldn’t be doing that. If you want to go to NEB for a week and you want to just dive in and do the drinking and the food and the strippers. Like by all means, be my guests. I just want to provide a roadmap for the people that are looking for an alternative. So the three things that we brought up were food, activity, and alcohol. So I was really intrigued and, frankly, incredibly impressed by the amount of preparation that you put into the food category. So let let’s go there first because I would say that of the three, for me, food would be the the largest challenge. Activity is not that big of a challenge at NAB. The alcohol for me would not be for other people. It is, but food that’s the one where even I would say I’m not really sure how I would handle it. So, so let’s start at challenge number one, which is food. Sure.

Katie Hinsen: I mean, I just wanted to say there is one caveat to it, and and this is something that you know was was really important to us. Is that we also totally see NAB as a vacation and a party, and it is definitely the time that we get to see all our friends that we haven’t seen in years, and you know, and and so for us to do NAB, the challenge was to not go to NAB and be healthy, but to do NAB and be healthy. And by doing NAB, that includes all of that stuff. And what we really wanted was to be able to still be healthy, but basically have nobody else even notice, and to not miss out on anything. So that was, you know, I think for anybody who questions, because a lot of people questioned us about that as well. They were like, “Yeah, but you’re not doing NAB if you’re not, you know, going out and partying every night. And the challenge was to be able to still maintain that and to still get the full experience of NAB while trying to maintain some of a healthy lifestyle rituals, you know, so really the challenge started with going well. How do we stick to our current, you know, our at-home stuff as much of it as possible while still doing NAB to the fullest? And yeah, food was food was the place where we started with that because you know, food is always a concern for us. It’s always a big priority because you know it does restrict us in a lot of ways, especially for me. So yeah, we looked to see what we could get in Vegas. It was it was looking a little bit dismal. So that’s when we started trying to find you know alternative like meal replacement bars and stuff. I always carry a few of those around because I often have to miss meals, whether I’m going out after work or or I’m at staying late at work. You know, I can’t eat a lot of the takeout stuff, and sometimes I just don’t have time. And I knew that at NAB things were going to be tough. I was going to need to eat in a hurry and on the go, and that that. The the pizza cart wasn’t going to be and it wasn’t going to be you know an option for me, so we started looking at more well you know I always have like one kind of you know meal replacement bar but I figured I didn’t want to spend a week eating that potentially three times a day so we started sampling every single one that we could get our hands on, which was kind of crazy. We asked we asked everybody. We went on the Fitness and Post Facebook wall for recommendations, and we looked on the internet and we went. I I went down to Whole Foods at three different times and bought one of every single thing that I could eat, and then you know we went online and bought one of every single thing I could eat. We ended up eating 30-seven different, trying 30-seven different bars.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, when you when you sent me your document, like when you had initially told me about this, you said, “Yeah, we want to go ahead and try different meal replacement bars. I’m like, “Oh, awesome! Maybe they’ll try you know five and give me a report. And you sent me the document, and it’s 15 pages and 37 bars, and my jaw was open. I’m like, oh my god, not even I would go to this level. So this, it’s an amazing, amazing resource, and everybody listening can download it for free. So it is awesome.

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, we don’t do things by halves, and we’re also both real tech nerds. So we we are all about workflow and logging and all this sort of thing. So you know, we we do that all the time. Yeah, and

Zack Arnold: I pretty much guarantee the consumerreports.com doesn’t have a report on meal replacement bars as intricate as yours. So it is an amazing resource.

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, it was actually kind of fun. You know, we you know because and also from two different perspectives. You know, Bonchon and I are pretty different in what we like and and how things and what our concerns are with things. So we we also you know we we looked at what tasted good, how long it lasted us. We actually learn a lot from doing that. You know, I think the biggest thing that I actually learned was I could never figure out why one meal replacement would sustain me really well, and another wouldn’t. And I thought it had to do with sugars and protein, and it actually is simpler than that. It turned out that you know, in trying all these things, it was as simple as because we log everything that we eat. I do it especially with my fitness pal because I need to make sure I’m getting all my nutrients and that I’m eating enough to, you know, actually sustain me because I’m not absorbing most of what I eat. And what I realized was that, you know, is is it’s actually a lot of it’s to do with the actual calorie punch that it packs. You know, now I know that there are different kinds of calories, and definitely there was a huge difference between stuff that was high protein and low sugar, and stuff that was high sugar and low protein. That was just if it was high GI, there was no point in even trying it, really. But what we found was that you know, if it didn’t have enough calories, it wasn’t going to sustain us, which is obvious. It seems really obvious, but it’s like a normal meal for us is about like a light meal. You know, we’re kind of people eat six times a day, so a meal is going to be like 300 calories. Well, if you have a bar that is not 300 calories, it’s only going to last you. It’s not going to last you between meals, and it’s really hard to find something that’s 300 calories. But you know, actually, I realized that well, you know, there’s like 100 calories in a banana. So if I can find a 200 calorie meal replacement bar and a banana, it’s amazing. It’s going to totally tide me over, and it’s going to be exactly what I need. So that was, you know, that was really, really a big learning curve. You know, like because you can eat a massive giant brick of a thing, and then be like, man, why am I so hungry right after? If I’m hungry right after, it’s because it has too much sugar in it, and if I’m hungry a couple of hours later, it’s probably you know it might have had low sugar and high protein, but it’s probably just not enough calories. So you know that was that was a big thing. That in terms of actually finding a decent meal replacement that you can throw into your purse or your pocket, that was actually a big thing. It’s like find something that’s actually really high calories, and it might freak you out when you look at the label, but it will actually sustain you. And then so we yeah we did that. We ended up picking seven different bars that we took with us, so that we weren’t always eating the same thing, and so that if we were, you know, supplementing with some actual real food, or, you know, we just wanted something to tide us over or whatever, you know, we we did that, and we also took along for breakfast. We had Viga One packets, and we took some blender bottles. I actually got in on Sunday afternoon, and I walked to the nearest supermarket, which was an hour away. But I got my steps in, so that I could buy some bananas and almond milk. Paul Bernstein didn’t get to do. That she flew in at midnight the night before NAB opened, so she was having to have her shake with water.

Katie Hinsen: But you know, we you know mean we had a really good breakfast, and then we you know had had our bars during the day when we needed to, and we try and get some real food in the evening if where we could, and if we could only if it was some sort of buffet and there was only like one tiny thing of a few leaves of lettuce that I could eat, then at least I had my bars.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that when it comes to meal replacement, I’m glad that you brought up the whole idea of the macronutrients-the fat, protein, and sugar. Because yeah, you can have a 300 calorie bar, but if it’s all just sugar, it’s really not going to do anything, and you’re gonna just feel hungry right after you eat it because you’re gonna start craving sugar and your blood sugar is gonna crash. So if if somebody’s listening saying, “Oh, I want to check out meal replacements, but what should I be looking for? First of all, what you need to do is download this this document that you guys created because it’s amazing. But if you want to break it down to the macros, if you really want something that’s gonna fill you up. The two things you need to look at more than anything are going to be the fat content and the fiber content. If you can get something that’s high in healthy fats and you can get something high in fiber, it may be 200 calories and it’s going to fill you up way more than something that’s high in sugar that’s 400 calories. So that’s really the place to start. When I go to events or when I travel, my staple is Shakeology, and I also love the the Vega one as well. Like you said, the Vega one packets. So I’ll just travel with Shakeology packets, and I’ll travel with some coconut oil. I actually use Brain Octane oil when I use it in my smoothies. But if I start the day with a packet of Shakeology and a little bit of brain octane oil, which is just a purified form of coconut oil, that will last me for hours. And what it does is it doesn’t allow my blood sugar to spike and then crash, which will actually regulate my appetite for most of the day. And then in my backpack, I will have a couple of bananas. I’ll have a bag of cashews or a bag of almonds, so that way I can still snack if I’m getting hungry, but I’m never tempted or feeling like, oh my God, there’s pizza, I must have it because I’m starving. It’s more well, do I feel like having pizza and enjoying myself, or do I want to have a healthy lunch, but I don’t feel compelled to grab something just because I’m so starving and I haven’t prepared. So that’s the way that I will handle conferences and events where I don’t have access to healthy food, which is similar to the way that you did it. Yeah,

Katie Hinsen: I mean that was that was pretty much how Bernshin handled it. Like she wanted to make sure she wasn’t starving, so she wasn’t tempted to just go to the fast food joints, you know. And for me, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to starve to death, so because I couldn’t have any other options. You know, the other thing that I actually discovered while I was there, and I’ve never actually done this before, and now I’m totally in love with it, was getting at Starbucks. They have they’ll do a flat white with coconut milk. Actually, if I needed a proper pick me up, but I didn’t want to like have a shot of coffee because that’s just going to spike me and crash me. The coconut milk has so much fat in it that it actually it’s almost like having it’s almost like having a bulletproof. You know, it’s not obviously good quality coffee, but I I just fell in love with that that whole thing because a flat white it doesn’t have very much milk in it, but it has. But if you but doing it with coconut milk means that it’s like high carb, high fat, and it’s just going to make that that coffee buzz kind of you know like last you a little bit longer, which was something that I actually discovered while I was there. They have Starbucks at the convention center. It has a longer line than line for the bathroom, but yeah, I’m

Zack Arnold: Sure. And on a side note, I don’t remember if it was you or somebody else that posted that I must be in an alternate universe because the line for the men’s room is way longer than the line for the women’s room.

Katie Hinsen: That was my yeah. That was you. Okay. Yeah, I tweeted that. I always think that’s really fun about NAB. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: All right. So now that we’ve kind of hit diet a little bit and we’ve talked about food, unless there’s something else that you want to bring up as far as food, I figured we could move on to activity next. Yeah, because a lot of people will say, “Well, I don’t need to worry about doing any type of activity because at NAB I walk around all day, so I can eat whatever I want. Like I’ve I burned off my calories, so I’ve earned my four drinks and my half a pizza, and I mean, my it just kind of makes my brain want to explode when people say, “Well, I got 20,000 steps, so I can eat whatever I want. It’s like if even if I did believe in calorie counting and calorie math, the amounts do not even remotely add up. But but activity is still an important part of it, even if you’re just walking around all day, so let’s talk a little bit about how you approached activity.

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, I mean, so a big part of it again was the challenge was to see how many of our actual daily rituals we could stick to while we’re at NAB, and those daily rituals do it. They include food, they include activity, and so we we both. Have like this whole morning ritual thing that each of us do, and they’re different for for each of us. For me, like right now, I’m actually I have a goal the end of the year to do a half marathon. So I’m actually I’m running. We both work out in the mornings and we do yoga morning and night. And Bonchun likes to meditate. I actually did meditate for a while and loved it, but because I am ridiculously busy with you know three full time jobs and everything else, I had to take one thing off my list that wasn’t a 10. So I actually had to strike off meditation for a little while. So I’m not doing that right now. But we had to. So we we had to try and figure out how we were going to try and you know do as many of those things as we could while we were away, and whether it was possible. So yeah, we were definitely going to get our 20,000 steps, no problem at all. I mean that’s easy. Everyone always like you know as much as in the industry normally people always try and have this whole like how many hours did you work? What was your longest shift? At NAB, everyone’s like how many steps did you do today? Everyone’s got their step counters on and boasting about I got 25,000 steps and all this sort of thing. So that was never going to be such an issue. But the issue was, you know, how many of our actual rituals, in terms of more than just walking, but actual like exercise, full body, mind and body type stuff. Could we do now? For me, a really important thing is is my yoga. I love to do my yoga, and sometimes I’ll just do 15 minutes. But that’s almost for me like a meditation ritual. It’s my time riders wake up my whole body, relax everything. I zone out, and I tell you what, I had no idea just how amazing doing yoga while I’m at NAB was because everybody knows how much it aches to walk around that convention center all day, usually with a backpack, and you’ve got your laptop, and you’ve got your swag, and then you’re going to be at a party all night, all that sort of thing, and the all you want to do is just get a big full body massage. Well, you know what? Like I actually found that doing fifth, even a minimum of 15 minutes of yoga, but when I get up in the morning was like I was groaning, like oh, you know, it was like getting a massage. It was so good. So we picked up some travel yoga mats, which were actually really awesome. I wouldn’t recommend using a travel yoga mat for my daily, like my at-home yoga. But these things just fold down, pack into your suitcase, and it’s totally fine. You got carpet at your hotel, so it’s not going to be too, you know, hard on your knees and stuff. But you’ve got a nice sticky surface. These are lightweight things, and so I was rolling that out morning and night, and and doing my yoga, and it was really great. So if I didn’t have a lot of time, which some of the mornings I didn’t have a lot of time because I had really early early morning meetings and stuff, you know, I just do 20 minutes on the yoga mat, and it was really, really beneficial. And if I had more time, I would get up early and I’d go to the hotel gym just for a little run for a little while, and and then do a bit of yoga, a bit of stretching, and and that was really, really beneficial. That was really great.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I can’t emphasize enough what a difference it can make just to do these small amounts of stretching or yoga or foam rolling or trigger point therapy with a lacrosse ball or something. I mean, it is just night and day. Like for example, with me, and this has nothing to do with NAB. It just has to do with the wear and tear of working in front of computers all day long. I will just have chronic lower back stiffness, have you know sharp pain in one side of the lower back, depending on the kind of day I have. But if you know how to do the right stretches, or you’re doing something like yoga every morning, it is like getting a massage every single day. And it’s not just about eliminating that tiny chronic pain. It’s like whoa, well now my lower back isn’t stiff, and now I have more energy, and that means that I’m more awake and more creative. Like they’re all interconnected. It’s just not this isolated incident, and that’s why I built the whole video library that I did for the Optimize Yourself program. It has like over 70 videos where you say, “All right, well, I’m in front of the computer and my lower back hurts. Now what do I do? And NAB is just an exacerbation of that same concept where you’re walking 20,000 steps a day when maybe you usually get 7000 steps a day on a good day and your body’s saying no sorry this is not what I do on a regular basis and that’s why the third day you’re like basically crawling and waddling to your your seat at your your tutorial lesson for the day saying oh my god why do I feel this way? It’s because your body’s not used to it, and you have to open up all those muscles and those joints that aren’t being used, and that just chronically happens to all of us every day in front of in front of our computer. So yes, I’m a huge advocate of stretching and yoga, and I think that it, as I’m sure you can tell, it’s not just about oh. Now my legs feel better. It actually changes your mindset and your level of stress or anxiety over the course of a long day at an event like NAB.

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, I really found that getting up, you know, just like you know, making that commitment the night before to knowing that I’m going to get up at 6o’clock tomorrow morning, and my priority is that. That was my priority. So when I was out the night before, whatever it was that I was doing, all the decisions that I was making were how am I going to feel getting up at 6o’clock in the morning? But what I really and yes, admittedly it was a little easier because I’m you know I’m from New York and you know the time zone made it you know kind of awesome, but you know I do that normally, and that’s part of my habits. And it was like you know that was one of the part of the challenge going to get up at 6o’clock in the morning. But the benefit of doing that of actually dragging myself out of bed at 6o’clock in the morning to stretch out, to go for a run to do whatever it was that I was doing that day, because my program changes daily, so that I don’t, you know, tire myself out. Really meant that by the time I rocked up to the convention center at nine, I was so awake, I was feeling so good, all the endorphins were going, and I was like everyone else is kind of crawling and hung over, and I’m like, “Hey guys, what’s up? Let’s do another day of NAB. And

Zack Arnold: Everybody’s saying, “Oh my God, Katie, would you shut up? Oh my God, shut up! I just got up 30 minutes ago, and I slept for three hours. Shut up! So yeah,

Katie Hinsen: I was definitely sleep deprived. That was, you know, that is something that I knew was going to be the biggest challenge, and that I had to be okay with potentially not succeeding at getting my eight hours. You know, when I’m at home, that is a big priority in my life. I knew that that was just not going to happen, but I did want to prioritize. You know, being able to get as much as I could so that I could still get up early in the morning and feel great. So you know, I was, I was not, I was probably not as peppy as I normally am. But nobody is when they’re there.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. And a couple of, I’ll I’ll throw out a couple of like quick, quick tactical things for people if they’re listening. Number one, if you’re saying, well, I don’t want to travel with a yoga mat, what you can do is you can actually buy yoga gloves and yoga socks that have the little sticky pads on them. So all you have to do is pack them in your backpack or anywhere. I mean, it literally looks like a pair of socks, and you put them on your hands and your feet, and your hands and your feet stick exactly like you’re on a yoga mat. So that’s one. Yeah, that’s one way that you can travel and you know, in a sense, have a yoga mat with you without having to pack it, so that that’s one one tool that I would recommend. Another thing I would recommend, because yes, sleep deprivation just comes with the territory. Even if I went to an event like this, I would not be getting my seven or my eight hours. And when I go to these events, the same thing happens to me. But there are three quick things that I’ll throw out that are immensely helpful. The first of which is melatonin patches. When I travel, if I change time zones or if I do events where I know I’m going to be sleep deprived, I will use a melatonin patch before I go to sleep. And the reason that I use a patch instead of a melatonin pill is because it will be absorbed into your body more slowly over a longer period of time. So you’re going to get deeper, higher quality sleep, even if it’s for lesser time, you should not be doing this on a regular basis because if you use a melatonin patch or melatonin pills every night, your body will start to downregulate its own creation of melatonin, which is the sleep hormone. So don’t say, “Oh, I don’t sleep well, so I’m just going to start using the patch. But if you’re changing time zones or you’re going to be at an event like this short term. That’s my first hack. The second one is one of the best ways to fight the sleep deprivation and fight the alcohol consumption, which we’re going to go into next. Is drinking a ton of water when you wake up. So usually, if I’m at home, I’ll drink 12 to 16 ounces in the morning. If I’m traveling or at an event, I will double that, and I will just just totally drench myself with water. Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. That’ll help wake me up. And then the third is just doing some type of morning exercise or stretching, because like you said, it might be those 15 minutes, and people are thinking, “Oh, I don’t. I just want to sleep as long as I can, and I don’t have those 15 minutes. But it’s going to drastically improve the quality of the whole rest of your day and become a force multiplier. So those are kind of my three absolute must-haves if I’m going to go to an event like this. Are the melatonin patch, drinking tons of water in the morning, and just taking 15 minutes to do stretching, yoga, or meditation, and it changes the way I experience the whole event. Well, that having been said about all of those different techniques to try and help with sleep deprivation and help make sure that you’re active and focused throughout the day, now we’re going to come to the 800-pound gorilla, which is alcohol, and you had some great recommendations in the blog post. So, talk a little bit about how you manage. Alcohol. So, like you said, you can do NAB in quotes. You want to do NAB the right way, but do it responsibly. And you had some great ideas in the post about how you deal with alcohol.

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, it’s it. That’s been a challenge for me. That’s actually been a you know, it’s kind of been a bigger challenge for me than than the food thing because, like I said, you know, the eating gluten free has always been, you know, part of my life in some way. But you know, I’m I’m from New Zealand. You know, we love to crack a few beers and open a good whiskey or a good wine or whatever. You know, so you know that that that’s always been actually an issue for me. I you know how do I how do I have a social occasion where where the drinks are flowing and everybody’s giving me free cocktails and all that sort of thing, and where I’m where I’m not going to be that person in the corner of the room going, no, I I would just like a club soda, thank you, you know. So you know that was that was something that I had to try and do, and it is something that I’ve been working on for the last couple of years, and the more you know, been doing a lot more social events, you know, through the Blue Collar Post Collective, which I run with with my co-president Janice Vogel. You know, we just had to, you know, I’ve had to really work on that. So we Bernstein and I, you know, support each other a lot. I mean, obviously, she’s not a big drinker, but I, I have been. But a lot of it is, you know, certainly accountability and having somebody helping me out is is is really great. Just, you know, and people around me just knowing that, you know, I’m I’m not gonna be, you know, killing it tonight. You know, that was always a good thing, but not, you know. I don’t want to be that person saying no, thank you, I’m not drinking. But you know, just at least having a few people around me that know that I’m going to be drinking, but I’m not going to be, you know, please don’t pull me shots. You know, is is always really useful. I never ever ever take a sip of alcohol without food in my stomach, that is an absolute rule, and it doesn’t matter what the situation is. If there is not food in my stomach, I will not take that first sip of alcohol until I can get even a bag of chips. Anything, just put something in my stomach, and it just has become a habit. And then with every drink that I have, it’s become habit to put some food in my mouth, and every second drink that I have is non-alcoholic. So you know, I mean, it’s it’s not that hard. You can actually do some pretty nice things. I try. I don’t really drink soda. I never really have. I used to like a bit of ginger beer, but that you can’t get good ginger beer here in the states, you know. Actually, club soda with a twist of lime is is a pretty good one. And people don’t give you a very hard time because they think that you’re probably just having vodka. And yeah, mostly I just I really pace myself, so I know that one of the great things about growing up in New Zealand is actually that we have very strict drink driving laws, and not just the laws, but it’s actually a real taboo. It’s a real social taboo. You don’t have a single drink and drive. It’s just one of those things. So we, I kind of grew up knowing exactly how much you can drink and how to drink, you know, so that you stay not over the limit, or at least not even registering. So pretty much for a woman in particular, it’s one drink per hour, but one drink is one standard drink, and one standard drink is actually a lot less than you think. So one standard drink is, for example, 100 mils of of wine, which is about two ounces. So basically, a one standard drink per hour is my limit if I don’t want to be drunk. And then definitely going every second drink. So usually, you know, in these kind of social situations, you’re pretty much having more than one drink per hour in your hand.

Katie Hinsen: So I make sure that I have one alcoholic standard drink per hour, and no more than that. I also try and really occupy myself, and that’s actually become a lot easier and a lot easier as I’m, you know, being the hostess with the mostess at these some of these events. You know, I’m actually keeping myself really occupied at a lot of things, so I’m engaging in conversation, which is also a lot easier if you’re sober to do, but really, you know, having great conversations with people. I love introducing people to each other. I love saying, “Hey, Zack, you you should totally meet this person, and making those introductions, and just doing all the things that you know, even going to the bar and getting people drinks and doing all kinds of things that keep me busy, so that I’m not, you know, kind of got nothing really to do. So I’m sipping at my drink half the time. I’m finding now that I’m getting so good at keeping myself busy that I’ll put a drink down and and just not even know, forget about it. And two hours later, be like, didn’t I have. Drink somewhere. So those those are those are some of the things that I did while I was at NAB as well, and and those have become habits for me, and and really made a huge difference. So it meant that absolutely you can buy me a whiskey, absolutely you can get me a cider or a wine or whatever, and I’m going to drink it with you, and it’s all going to be fun. But I’m going to go go back to my hotel room at the end of the night, feeling feeling just fine, being able to do my stretching out and get up at six in the morning. And that was really a big priority for me.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think one of the the really key takeaways here is that it for you wasn’t just about the tactics, and you had some really good tactics, which were about making sure you have food in your stomach, having a drink once an hour. Those are great, but the reason that I believe you were successful goes much deeper than that. And you were very intentional, like you said. I make it very clear this is how I’m going to behave this evening. I let people know. Listen, you want to give me a drink? That’s great. Don’t even bother asking me to have a shot with you. Once you put it out there, people respect it and they understand it. And you said my purpose is I’m going to wake up in the morning and I’m going to do my yoga. Having all of that clearly defined in your mind is the reason that you are successful much more than the little tactics here and there.

Katie Hinsen: Oh, absolutely. It was you know, and and for me, again, making it a challenge was a huge thing because I wanted to win, I wanted to do this, I wanted to see if it could be done, and I wanted to beat this challenge. And so, for me, that was actually a huge motivating factor. And obviously, in my day-to-day life, I have my other my own motivations. But of course, when you’re in Vegas, you’re on. You’re basically on vacation in a way, anyway. So my motivations had to be different. I knew that going into it. I knew that it would be too easy to say, “Well, I’m not in New York right now. Actually, you know, Janice is back. You know, taking care of the BCPC for me. I’ve got my assistants at Light Iron and my colleagues at Light Iron taking care of everything else. So you know what? It’s totally fine. I don’t need to worry about work. You know. So I needed to have a focus and a purpose while I was there, and something that would actually work for me personally. And so I found that having a challenge that I wanted to really nail and really win at was a huge motivating factor, and it really helped.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it’s it’s really night and day, and that that’s really the the key to everything, the foundation to whatever the goal might be. And anybody that’s listened to this show for a while knows that I’m very big on the big picture and setting goals and defining why’s, and it’s it’s much bigger than just little tactics here and there. And that that’s very very important. Even if you just decide you’re going to go to NEB, and you want to be healthier. I want to be respectful of your time because we’re starting to get to that point. But before we go, my last question is: Did you have any failures that you want to talk about that you learned from?

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, I did actually. My biggest failure was actually that I I lost my motivation a little bit. It was mental. It was a it was a mental block. So one of the things was I wanted to keep up with all my rituals, and one of my rituals is logging all my food and all my exercise and everything like that. And I was all ready to rock, you know. And I was also ready to kill it on the steps challenges and all that sort of thing, and I got there on Sunday afternoon after a six-hour flight. I was already hitting 15,000 steps because I’d taken an hour-long walk to an hour-long walk back from the supermarket, and I’d gone for a swim, and my watch and phone stopped syncing with each other. I mean, my apps all just broke down, and it stopped logging all my steps. And I don’t like to do things if I’m not winning. So it just-I’m the kind of person that if I’m not-I’m not really killing it at something. I often just give up. So it was a real mental thing, and luckily, you know, I had this accountability that I’d set for myself by putting it out there that I was doing this challenge, which really helped because I think it would have been really easy for me at that point to just say, you know what, what’s what’s the point, you know, is it’s not working, and just flipping out on it, and it sounds like a really small thing, and when I say it out loud, it sounds really ridiculous, but it was just one of those mental things for me that my my brain just went, nope. I guess I’m just going to give up because everything’s not going perfectly.

Zack Arnold: I understand this perfectly, by the way, because if if my Fitbit breaks or you know is out of batteries or isn’t sinking, I’ll just stand in one place, like well, if it doesn’t count, should I walk? Should I move? Like it’s it’s. I totally get. I mean, it’s not that extreme, but I get it. It’s like I you lose that motivation because if you’re not measuring it, there’s nothing to improve on. You’re like, okay, well now my steps don’t really count anymore. So what should I do?

Katie Hinsen: So I had to actually really race it myself a little. And the first thing I had to do was just let it go, and the second thing I had to do was revisit why was I doing this. I wasn’t doing it to get numbers, and I had to really remind myself of that and be like, I’m not doing this to get numbers. I’m not doing this to get data and to to win at how many steps I get, and and how many you know, how many workout minutes and all that sort of you know calories burned or whatever else. That’s never been why I do it, and so I just had to really reset myself there. But that was actually a bit of a challenge, and I felt like it was it was a little bit almost like I think I failed at logging everything as best as well as I should have, but at the same time, it was also a really great learning experience for me because it made me really realize that it’s easy to to forget the real why I’m doing this, and it’s not about getting on my app and saying, “Oh yeah, I’ve really beat my yesterday. I beat yesterday’s record or anything like that. It’s not that’s not why I’m doing it, and I think that that was you know something that I had to learn from. I can also tell you that I think I actually succeeded better than I expected to. I know that Bernshin struggled more than I did. We weren’t staying together because we both had work commitments and we were staying with our teams that we were with. And I think that was a little bit tough for her because she didn’t have me to push her out of bed in the morning, but she also had a little bit of an issue because she didn’t. She wasn’t able to go to the supermarket and pick up her bananas and get everything prepared before she started, and she kind of started on a back foot. And I think so. She definitely found it difficult to maintain as all the exercise that she was trying to do, so she still managed to do her yoga in the morning and her meditation, but definitely wasn’t really killing it on the on the working out as much as she wanted to. But I think that we, you know, had to. We both really. It wasn’t about winning at everything, and the challenge wasn’t about succeeding at every single aspect of it. This challenge was to see whether it could be done and how much of it could be done. And it was more of an experiment in a lot of ways, just to see, you know, how how it would go, what what would happen if we tried this, you know. So it was easier for me to get up in the morning and and go exercise because my hotel was right next to the convention center and hers was a lot further out. So I think that she struggled a little bit more with that. But yeah, it was definitely one of those things that we had to really consider that it was more of an experiment. It wasn’t about succeeding or failing. It was about trying, and we both felt really good about it at the end. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: And I think that at the end, if you make it about 100% success or total failure, you’re going to fail every single time. But if you make it about improvement, and you say, “Well, we failed at a few things, but there are a lot of things we were successful at, that’s already a huge step forward. Is from just saying, well, you know, I can either log on my food and get 20,000 steps, not eat anything bad, and not drink. But if I do have one thing, well, I’ve just failed, and I’m going to give up. That doesn’t get you anywhere. That’s the all-or-nothing approach, which I don’t believe in. But if you just say, you know what, I’m going to do all the same things that I usually do at these events, but I’m just going to try and replace one crappy meal with a healthy meal, that’s a start. It’s better to get started than to think about all the things that you should be doing that you’re not. Just start by doing one thing. That’s it. That’s what builds the momentum.

Katie Hinsen: Yeah, people ask me how I how I you know people look at me and they say, “Man, you really fit. How did you how did you how do you do it? You know, how did you start? And the truth is, it was baby steps. I started really small. I started by by getting a Fitbit, saying, “Oh my goodness, I’m doing 2000 steps a day. Let’s see if I can do 5000 steps a day. It started really small and making small improvements. And with the healthy eating, it was literally going. You know what? I’m going to replace one thing. I’m going to change one, make one different decision in this dish. So maybe instead of fries, I’ll get a salad. I’m still going to get the burger with extra bacon and cheese, but instead of fries, maybe I’ll just get a salad. And it was small steps that were just incremental, force multiplying, and you know now people look at me and they go, “Oh my God, how did you know? I could never be like you. But it just it’s it’s small things, and it’s really important even now for me to keep reminding myself of that. That just try and make one decision, one healthy decision, and it’s going to make a difference. Because if I don’t do it, then you know none of it’s healthy.

Zack Arnold: Absolutely, and that as a complete, total shameless plug, this is what the Optimize Yourself program is all about: is teaching people how to take that first step, how to build on it, how to build habit stacks, and go from one tiny thing and just create this giant snowball rolling down the mountain. But a lot. Times people just say, “I don’t know where to start. What is the first step? Like, I don’t even know where to begin. That’s what Optimize Yourself is all about. So I’ve I understand the struggle. I’ve been through the struggle for years, and that’s why I developed this entire learning program as well as the whole video library to help people get through that first step. And what I see time and time again is people saying, “Oh man, I just tried these one or two things, and now everything is just getting easier, and I want to do more and more and more because they get these easy wins and they don’t fail right out of the gate, and that’s a hugely, hugely important part of all of it. So, and as soon as

Katie Hinsen: Snowball starts rolling, it feels really good,

Zack Arnold: And it’s fun too. And you’re like, “Oh man, this is actually really fun. I don’t feel like I’m trying to be a health nut of depriving myself of things. I actually enjoy my life more. I’m more creative, and I’m getting more done. So it’s it’s like this drug where you just you feel it all building upon itself, and you just want to keep trying more. So it’s it’s it’s an exciting process. But so I want to thank you again for taking on this challenge, for sharing the challenge with our audience, and helping people in our industry find ways to enjoy an event like NAB, but enjoy it responsibly. So that having been said, if people want to learn more about you, they want to learn more about Blue Collar Post. Where can I send my audience? Oh

Katie Hinsen: Well, I’m on Twitter at Katie Hinsen. It’s pretty easy to find me, and yeah, you can also you know definitely find me through the Blue Collar Post Collective, bluecollarpostcollective.com will take you to all the social media stuff, and you know I’m I’m definitely around. I’m pretty easy to find. So yeah, you’re welcome to hit me up, and it’s I love to talk about these things and and you know help help people with these things, and because you know a lot of people have supported me, both professionally and personally. You know, even in this challenge, I had all these people coming up to me and being like, “Man, how’s it going? You know, I hear you doing this healthy this healthy NAB thing. How’s it going? Good for you. And so, yeah, definitely, if you want to try and do something like that? I’m happy to. I’m happy to be there and tell you good for you as well.

Zack Arnold: Fantastic! I love hearing all of that. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, and I look forward to to talking to you again in the future about all this.

Katie Hinsen: Sounds great.

Zack Arnold

Learn

Connect

How to Stay Healthy at Conventions & Events

About Episode

Episode Highlights

Useful Links

About Guest

Transcript

Episode Credits