Welcome back to the podcast. I want to talk to you today about exercise. You might’ve just rolled your eyes, but come back to me, it’s gonna be OK. I don’t want you to keep viewing exercise as just another thing on your to-do list. OK? We have so many thoughts about exercise. If you are a chronic dieter, or you may have over-exercised in an effort to lose weight, so your brain might rebel a little bit against whatever the idea of exercise that you have is, and so I want to talk about it and see if we can reframe it a little bit. Exercise does not need to be a chore. It does not need to be what we think it does. I want you to take a second, and when I say exercise, I want you to think about what that means for you. I want you to define it. Does it need to be a certain amount of time? Does it need to be at a certain place? Does it require specific equipment? Does your heart rate have to get to a certain threshold? Do you have to be sweaty? What does it have to be? What does it have to be to count as exercise? I can tell you, I go through this with my clients a lot, and we really work on this idea of exercise because what happens is when we make it have to be something—has to be 20 minutes at least, has to be the gym, I have to get my heart rate up, I have to sweat—if I don’t sweat, it doesn’t count—when we have all these things that exercise has to be, then when we don’t have the time or space to meet that specific criteria, we have a tendency to say it doesn’t count, and we have a tendency to say to do nothing. Like, we make it very all or nothing when it has to be a specific way. Sometimes I just call it joyful movement. So, I meet a new client, we talk about where we wanna start. I always like to start with planning. You guys know I’m a huge planner. We plan our meals in advance so we can be smart and we think about our food, and then I like to add joyful movement, some sort of feel-good, move-my-body movement. And I call it that for a reason. Because we have likely been very programmed by a number of sources to think movement does not count as exercise. Even if you were to say, I’m gonna walk 5000 steps, I’m gonna walk 6000 steps, I guarantee a bunch of you were like, oh, doesn’t count unless it’s 10,000 steps, this idea that your body doesn’t count unless it meets some arbitrary threshold criteria is so unhelpful. 'Cause I promise you it’s stopping you from doing these little five minutes that will make a difference, these five minutes of movement that we can have will add up to likely much more than 20 minutes throughout the day, and there’s all the research studies cardiovascularly, like, it is good for your health to move, and it does not need to be continuous. I’m out of time. And there’ll be people that are like, oh, you have to do this specific exercise to lose weight, you have to do a workout, you have to exercise in a fasted state, you have to do heavy lifting. Those are the only ways to lose weight. First of all, anyone tells you there’s only one way to lose weight, stop listening to anything they say. And also, if it sounds too good to be true, also stop listening. But I’m telling you, if you reframe what you have to do for exercise, it can just be very joyful. I read a book, and I’ll make sure I put it in the show notes, and I can’t remember the author's name as I’m sitting here talking, but I promise I’ll put it in there, but she talks about the joy of movement, and she calls these little spurts opportunities to move. ATMs. If we start reframing, I need to exercise for however much time to, I want to try and get as many opportunities to move in my day as possible, things completely flip in your brain, right? Walking down a flight of stairs all of a sudden counts. Before I was like, oh, it only counts if I walk up the stairs. Walking down the stairs, you’re moving instead of like you’re using your legs instead of the elevator. If it’s too hard to walk up, start by walking down. If you’ve got five minutes before your next Zoom meeting, get up and walk around your office. That five minutes, that five-minute, two-minute, one-minute opportunity to move, stand instead of sit, walk instead of stand, these one minutes will add up. And by changing what it means and making it fun and reframing it as just trying to move your body as something nice to do for yourself, can we get much less daunting, right? Especially if you know, if you’ve been overweight and exercise has been hard, and we watch the Biggest Loser and they got in the gym just kicking their asses the whole time, it doesn’t have to be like that. If you wanna get to that, if that makes you happy, by all means, do it, but don’t discount these little 15-minute increments where we can just move our body, that’s just stretching before you go to bed, one minute of stretching, if everyone just stretched for five minutes a day, telling people to feel better. There are studies show, let’s say I need to sit down and be on calls on Zoom for an hour. I turn my camera off and get up and stretch and move my legs for five minutes during that call, I will be more productive for the rest of the day, I will get more done by standing up and moving my body than if I just sat at that computer all day. These minutes, these two minutes, five minutes, count. I’ve had to argue with some clients about this. By the way, I sound a little emphatic in my talking to you. Programmed, that program, it has to be so rigorous, and if we’ve dieted before, and we’ve used exercise and sort of punished our body into exercise, as either like a penalty I ate something now I need to exercise more, right, exercise as a penalty or like a pre-penalty as a way to earn food I can only eat this if I exercise this much, we have to disassociate it from food. The way you move your body, the exercise you do, that should have nothing to do with your food, unless you’re an endurance athlete and then you wanna think about high nutrition, but this I have to earn food through exercise or I can’t eat that cause I didn’t exercise, like we gotta stop that, it doesn’t work that’s the calories in calories out that model has been completely proven 50% of America overweight using that model it’s wrong we know it’s wrong and this exercise having to count or needing a certain amount of calories to be burned so that I can eat or I ate something and now I have to penalize myself by exercising that all feeds into the calories and calories out and it’s garbage so I want you to reframe redefine your idea of exercise and if you need to call movement to help your brain do it it helps my brain not saying that to be coy or whatever or flippant we have a lot of programming around the word, exercise, and what it means so if it’s helpful to just call it movement call it movement I wanna move my body so that I take care of my body and I can still move when I’m 90 right When we start looking for opportunities to move and exercise doesn’t have to fit into very specific criteria we can start finding things that really give us joy. Maybe that means we go to a class maybe that means we go out and garden like all these things find something that sounds fun and go do it a great way to connect with people just go for a walk with your friends instead of going and sitting at a coffee shop get a coffee to go just go for a little walk when you’re taking those kids to the sporting events instead of sitting there, playing on your phone, just walk around a little bit do some chair exercises don’t need to walk around your body take the stairs down walk around your desk stand up and do some calf raises just move your body stretch it out. We are not designed to sit or lay all day long. Our body just not built. That way we built to be up and moving. We need to honor that by finding fun ways to do it, and not worrying about whatever this definition of exercises, when I say it doesn’t count unless it means this criteria what I tell my brain is we only have five minutes don’t bother and then we sit there and play on our phones or zone out or whatever do something totally not unproductive for five minutes because we told her it doesn’t count or like OK cool we’ll just sit rest. Remember our brain wants to eat sleep and not Expend any energy so I’m telling my brain this five minutes isn’t enough to exercise because it won’t count it’s gonna be more than happy to be like. Yeah you’re right it doesn’t count as well. Just hang out. Can we shop online or something? Let’s get Pinterest but if we say oh I’m gonna spend today looking for opportunities to move. I’ve got five minutes what would be fun to do totally different mindset and my brain doesn’t have a lot to argue there like if I ask it what would be fun to do for five minutes that’s what going to think about our brain is gonna kinda do tell it to do if we ask a question it’s going to try and find the answer so we have to ask the right question what would be fun I’ve got five minutes what would be fun right? Do you wanna be super proactive and you know my schedule always has these random five minutes maybe I look up like what’s five minute exercise routine now you can look on Pinterest for that, right Five minutes and five minutes because I didn’t tell my brain it’s not gonna count I’m telling my brain it absolutely counts and movement is good for me and it’ll be fun and I enjoy it and I wanna do it kind of feel like pickle ball revolution. Maybe they didn’t feel like they wanted to play tennis but they wanted to do something like I’ll pickle ball. It’s like way more so I don’t have to run quite as much those very intense. I’m not saying that OK bye maybe pickle ball fun let’s go play pickle ball, go tap dance go swim with our friends go for a walk on the beach take our dog for a walk, hula hoop, trampoline jump on the trampoline with the kids. It all counts when we’re calling it movement anything other than laying down or sitting down counts if we’re calling it movement Our brain does not have a lot of basis to argue when we reframe it as just moving our body so this little tiny switch from exercise to movement can make all the difference if you got an Apple Watch once an hour to stand up, basically the same idea it’s already built-in. You don’t even have to set an alarm but maybe you wanna put some post around or something I don’t know Just small can I find five opportunities to move five OTM tomorrow if you’re listening to me in the morning why don’t we try for today OK can I find opportunities to move today? Is there one thing I can do standing instead of sitting is there one thing I can do move my legs instead of standing Right I’m standing watching the kids at practice. Can I do some calf raises? Can I walk up and down the best type of exercise is the one you enjoy re-framing it to movement will help your brain stuff arguing with you about whether or not accounts, keep track of your opportunities to make it a game and I would love for you to share with me just something that’s different right what a different way to get some movement in that maybe no one thought of could really help somebody out all right that’s it for today I hope you enjoyed it. Please share with a friend, if you learn something new and I will talk to y’all next week bye