05-06-24 Interview - Michelle Zellner is Noting the Connection Between Mind and Body

MICHELLE ZELLNER IS NOTING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MIND AND BODY With her latest blog post on the subject here. May is Mental Health Awareness AND Sports and Physical Activity Month and those things go together in a big way. She joins us at 2:30 to talk about it all.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Michelle Zelner, our health and fitnessguru, is in tummy's in sit up
straight? Just kidding a text ortexted that this morning and I just thought
to share that with you. So, Michelle, what is May? What
do we do in May? Oh? My gosh, Mandy, there's so
much awareness in May. I sayso aware. I am like the most
aware person ever I know, becauseof May. It is mental health awareness

(00:22):
month and it is a physical fitnessand sports month as well. We got
a lot of awareness going on thisone. When are we going to move
beyond like awareness and say, Okay, May is the month when you finally
get some help and you get offyour butt and do some physical exercise.
That's what May should be those well, I mean I kind of spread that

(00:43):
message and maybe a little more subtleway, although not really. You don't
have to like it, you justhave to do it. As one of
my mottos, you know what Iam. Finally, and I've talked about
my journey from person that hated workingout to person that I now think of
it as I don't want to saynecessary evil because it's not. It's not
a necessary evil, but it isa necessary part of my life and It

(01:04):
is one of those things that whenI get up and I go and I
do what I need to do,it's like I mentally go, Okay,
check that's done, but it hasto be done. It's like brush my
teeth. Well, that's the thing. And when I teach classes on this
and you know, how to getpeople motivated or you know what the fitness
options are, it always kind ofmakes me chuckle because back in the day,

(01:26):
this would just called life. Yeah, Like the healthy lifestyle was literally
just life. Like you moved yourbody all day because that's what life required,
and you moved it in a wholebunch of varieties of ways. And
you also weren't doing things that putyour body in a chronically misaligned position for

(01:48):
all day, every day, multipledecades of your life, where now you
have a whole bunch of structural imbalancesthat are causing issues. You know what's
funny about that is, while youwere saying, and I'm thinking to myself,
it was not that long ago thata majority of Americans had what I
would call a physical job, moreblue collar job than white collar. And

(02:10):
even in the white collar sphere,you did not have the same all day
at a computer sedentary lifestyle because youdidn't have the ability to send an email.
A lot of times you were gettingup and walking over to a colleague,
so you had all these little breaks. People didn't work as many hours
in a day. They went towork at nine, they had an hour
of lunch, they got off atfive. They were getting better sleep because

(02:31):
of that schedule. I mean,there's so many differences in the way we
live in society that have had probablya far more dramatic effect on our health
than we even realize. Well,I think so. And then you look
at the generations coming up who haveliterally grown up on technology, sitting inside
playing games in front of a deviceinstead of going outside and playing right,

(02:54):
and then they're going to become adultswho sit in front of a computer,
who sit in a view or onsome kind of vehicle. To get to
their job. It might be aten minute commune, it might be a
ninety minute commute. I have alot of people that I work with that
have an hour commute each week.Oh my god, I would that is.
I get mad when I get caughtin traffic on my way home.
And every time I get mad,I think to myself, Mandy, there

(03:16):
are people who do this every singleday of their lives, every work day.
I could not do it, blessall y'all. But it's frustrating,
it is, and I think youknow that's where now it requires us to
make very dedicated, intentional choices tomove our body. As I always say,
as much as you can, ashard as you can, as often

(03:36):
as you can. And I thinkwhen you really appreciate the mental health benefits
of all of that, we've talkedat length about the physical health benefits of
movement, I think the mental healthbenefits are getting more attention. You had
talked about that study that came outthat Yeah, there was a pretty large
study that said that they basically assignedpeople dealing with mild depression. And I

(04:00):
want to be clear, this ismild depression. This isn't the kind of
crippling, lifelong depression that some peopledeal with, but mild depression. They
assigned some of them a placebo,some of them an antidepressant, and some
of them exercise. And we're nottalking about go lift five hundred pounds.
It was literally like a forty fiveminute walk a day. That was it.
And they found that the group thatdid the walk got the same relief

(04:23):
as the people in the antidepressant group. And boy, the drug companies have
been super mad about this and theyhave done everything they can to discredit that
study well. And I think that'salways something for people to be aware of.
Is you know, there is asI say all the time, there's
a lot of money in sickness.There is no mind in health. And
when you just kind of look atthe big picture, maybe common sense,

(04:46):
it just makes sense that you wouldfeel better when you move your body.
Number one, you usually feel goodabout doing something good for yourself. But
number two, you're increasing blood flowto the brain. That blood is carrying
oxygen and nutrition, which is literallyfeeding your brain so it can grow and
develop and operate properly. You're releasingyour endorphins, which are natural calming chemicals

(05:11):
in our body that gives us thatsense of peace and feeling good. We
also know that exercise, and itdepends on the type and the intensity.
But because it is a stress aroundthe body, you're literally allowing your stress
response mechanisms to practice with each other. And so when you are in a
stressful situation, your body it's likememory recall. Your body knows what to

(05:35):
do chemically, and so you havethese feelings that you have greater control over
difficult things because literally your body systemshave learned how to operate efficiently in a
stressful situation because it's been practicing throughexercise. You know, you and I
have talked so many times about whatit takes to be a happy, healthy

(05:56):
human, right, I mean,you've got to move your body, you've
got to eat real food, you'vegot to commune with other human beings,
you've got to get good sleep.All of these things are part of I
guess May May is the be ahappy healthy human. I mean, shouldn't
we just rename it? I lovethat name. Yeah, yeah, let's
make May be a happy, healthyhuman. It's remarkable to me. And
I'm sure I might have asked youabout this the last time I saw you.

(06:17):
But there's a really funny meme outand it's about a woman going,
God, I just can't I couldn'tsleep last night, and someone says,
well, did you eat right?No? Did you you know? Did
you drink water? No? Didyou exercise no? Did you see anyone
else? Know? And and thenshe goes, did you sleep well?
Oh? Yeah last night? Iwas like, oh that I don't know
what it could be if you're feelingthat we are all so conditioned to look

(06:40):
for the problem of what is wrongthe problem, but we never look at
the big picture of the problem.Well, because that big picture can be
very overwhelming for people, right,and because it probably requires a little bit
of ownership of the choices we haveor had it made. And sometimes I
can be really difficult to face,you know, because I mean, you

(07:02):
know, I've done this for along time. Also my own journey with
all of this. The cumulative effectof all the choices that we make impact
us physically, mentally, and emotionallyevery single time. Yeah, and if
most of those choices we're making arenot ones that support a human being,

(07:24):
then how am I going to behappy, healthy, thriving. There's almost
no way that that can actually happenwithout pharmaceutical intervention, right, And so
that's where we have the magic pill. Oh, the pharmaceutical intervention is the
magic pill. Well, for surefor some situations mental health issues, Yeah,
medicine is necessary. However, it'snot medicine in lieu of doing these

(07:47):
healthy lifestyle behaviors as well, itshould always be in conjunction with I stumbled
upon an article about two weeks agoabout diet and anxiety, and we have
an epidemic of an anxiety with youngpeople and the crux of this particular article,
and I've read like seventeen more sincethen because I didn't even know this

(08:07):
was a field of study. It'sa growing field of study in nutrition to
study the mental health impacts of dieton mental health conditions. And I'm thinking
to myself, like, we haveall these young people that are running around
living on monster energy drinks and fastfood and not eating real food, and
they're all riddled with anxiety. Whenthey can show that a lot of these

(08:31):
people, not just young people,but a lot of people who suffer with
high anxiety when you dramatically change yourdiet after the first week, when you
dramatically change your diet from anything toanything, the first week is horrible.
Okay, it's horrible, But theywere able to alleviate like seventy or eighty
percent of their anxiety just by havingthem eat real food and take all these

(08:52):
processed chemicals out of their diet.Yeah, I mean, I think again,
it kind of goes back to commonsense. When you feed a human
with the raw materials that it wasdesigned to operate with. That's what comes
from real food that human can actuallygrow, develop and operate properly. If
you feed it other things. Notonly are you not giving it the raw

(09:15):
materials it needs, but you're givingit all of this really harmful poison that
it's got to figure out what todo with. And you're never satisfied,
and it becomes very you know,addictive because those are by design intentionally designed
to be addictive by releasing dopamines.I mean, fast food is designed to
release dopamines in your brain. Yep. Yeah, And it becomes a really

(09:37):
difficult cycle to get out of,which is to your point why that first
week is so horrible, because you'reyou're literally detoxing, right and you're going
through withdrawal in some ways. Hey, Rod's got a great commercial for soda
on right now and he says,you know, food can be an addiction.
Well, what's funny is nobody eversays, God, I'm addicted to
vegetables. They never say, man, I'm addicted to fresh fish. I'm

(09:58):
addicted. It's the stuff that iscreated in a lab that makes us addicted.
It's not real food. And youknow, it's just so hard to
think. For a lot of people, where food is our comfort, food
is our celebration, food is whatbrings us joy. To think about parting

(10:20):
with that on top of everything elsethey're feeling that can feel really overwhelming.
And maybe that's where movement comes in, right, instead of eliminating something,
let's add something. And maybe wecan add movement in a variety of ways.
And I think the really beautiful thingabout movement is it doesn't matter what
you do, it will be mentalhealth benefit to it. Any kind of

(10:41):
movement you want to do, you'regonna have a benefit from it. So
if you just want to turn onthe radio and have a dance party in
your house by yourself. There's awoman on Instagram that I followed for a
long time and then she kind ofdisappeared, and I thought maybe she died,
but I don't think she died.Los she lost like eighty pounds just
dancing, and she videoshed herself dancing. And when she started, she was

(11:01):
big, and there was some reallymean comments from people because the Internet is
horrible, but she kept with itand she kept dancing, and she kept
posting videos of herself and the lasttime I saw her. She was down
like eighty pounds just from dancing,and she was very clear. She's like,
I'm not dieting, I'm just dancing. I've decided this is how I'm
gonna tackle my problem well. AndI love that approach because, I mean,

(11:24):
for a lot of people in musicitself brings you joy, right,
and it's hard for us to notmove your body when you hear a song
that you enjoy. I mean,I was in Austin a couple of weekends
ago, and we're listening to livemusic and I'm just watching all these people
the head. The head is bopping, the toes are tapping, the shoulders
are shrugging. Nobody knows this songbecause some obscure you know band that you've

(11:46):
never heard of, that it's oneof their originals. But you can't help
but move your body when you hearsomething like that. And maybe you're doing
that with friends. So now you'realso getting the mental health benefit of social
connect Maybe you want your movement asyour U time so you can disconnect right
right, you can have it byyourself. Maybe you do it out in

(12:07):
nature, so you get the additionalbenefit of being in nature as well as
moving your body. For me,that nature bart is critical. I have
to be outside. I can goon a treadmill, but it's not the
same. Well, and that's thething, right, there's the ideal and
then there's the what am I willingto gotta do it? YEA, still
gotta do it all right, sothis one. Listen to this, Mandy.

(12:30):
I'm a boomer. April nineteen fiftybirthday. I remember in school during
May completing a physical fitness test toearn a Presidential Physical Fitness Patch. I
collected the gold patch every year untilI graduated in nineteen sixty eight. Consequently,
I have kept myself fit working outthrough my life as an adult.
Being an Army Infantry officer helped.Being an Army Infantry officer helped. I

(12:54):
chose not to get out of shapewhat I left active duty. Now at
seventy four, I still work outin a gym five days a week for
two hours, sleep, grate,eat what I want, and enjoy life.
Trail Runner twenty four in Colorado Springs. I love stories like that.
But you know what, it isnever too late to start. And I
am proof of this. Right.I did not exercise consistently. I have

(13:18):
a gentleman who lives in my buildingthat hired me to be his trainer.
He is eighty years old. He'snever exercised a day in his life until
the day he started exercising with me. That is fantastic. It's been about
eight months and I have just watchedhis confidence, his self worth increase,
his you know, I bet hisbalance is everything about his aging body is

(13:39):
better everything. He's strong. Wejoke, I'm like, you better quit
it. You're going to get toostrong. You know what to do here,
but it is never too late tostart, and you will see the
benefit immediately on every level, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I mean,
movement is medicine, There's no doubtabout it. It's like everything else
you have to do it. Iwill say this that working out lifting weights,

(14:01):
especially for me, has really mitigatedme feeling old, because you know,
I'm going to be fifty five thisyear, and when I hit like
fifty three, I was like,huh, kind of starting to feel old
in some ways. But being strongalligates a lot of that. Maintaining skeletal
muscle as you age is one ofthe most critical determining factors of whether you're
going to age independently or not,and how much joy and you're going to

(14:26):
be able to have in your olderyears. And you know, when you
can't continue to do the things thatyou like doing, that is also impacting
your mental health. So we canuse physical activity to prevent the decline that
otherwise is going to happen that eventuallyis going to have a negative outcome for
our mental health as well. Youcan find Michelle at her website Betterbeings dot

(14:46):
net. I put a link onthe blog today for her latest blog post.
She also has a fantastic podcast thatthey talk about all kinds of stuff,
not just working out, but allkinds of different aspects of overall health.
So Michelle a joy to see it. Does reaching for a bag of
potato chips count for movement as thisperson counts as movement but not enough to

(15:07):
mitigate that bag of potato chips?And potato chips are my kryptonite, so
I can't have them in my house. They call to me at the middle
of the night. I can hearthem and Mandy, Mandy, we're so
salty and delicious. Michelle, goodto see I'll see you next month.