Jonathan: Hey, what’s up everybody! Jonathan Bailor and April Perry back with another SANE show! Today are going to talk about the M-word— Movement! April, we’re going to talk about movement today. Are you excited?

April: I am so excited to be able to dive deep into this specific topic because I have questions from everybody. It’s actually been really fun. I actually like to filter through these questions and figure out what are the most common problems that people are having. One problem is that people don’t know how much they need to move their body.
The front of your book, “The Calorie Myth,” says that you can exercise less. People are thinking, first of all, Jonathan doesn’t want me to exercise, you think that exercise is bad. Of course, we all know that we need to be exercising. All about that.
Then what we start seeing are a whole lot of different things of advice on how movement should be done or rules we should set up for our movement and there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I feel like I have a few things I’m confused about. Are you okay if I go through the list of these misconceptions and you can help us?

Jonathan: Absolutely. Before I have to give you one quick shout out before we get into the list of specifics. The common clarifying question in case this is the first podcast or video vodcast or however Google blast magic episode you’re watching here is, when we say exercise less, what are we saying? What we’re saying is conventional exercise, like jogging and stair steppers and stuff like that which you hate doing, do less of that and instead do more intelligent exercise and more just general activity, like walking and standing and moving. So, nonsense exercise, do less of that. Smarter, intelligent stuff like weight training and walking and playing with your children, do more of that instead.

April: Okay. Love that. So glad you clarified. My daughter, Alia, who has completely transformed her life going SANE has a yoga class at her high school so she does yoga two or three days a week and just loves it and I’m amazed at how strong and healthy she is. That’s kind of fun too. A little shout out for yoga.

Jonathan: I love yoga as well.

April: Okay. I’m going to go ahead and read off these different pieces of advice I received. I actually found in these in one article and I was so glad to have them all in one place because these are the things I’ve been hearing my whole life. When you look at all of these rules and you try to figure out how to apply all of them to your life you feel totally exhausted and confused. Not that all of these are wrong. They don’t they’re really explained clearly.
Here’s one. You’ll lose weight and fat if you walk 45 minutes a day, but not 30. You also need to walk five minutes for at least every two hours. [Inaudible 00:02:56] sitting. Walk before dinner and you’ll cut calories and your appetitive. So if you think, good I won’t overeat at dinner if I walk first.
Spend ten minutes a day walking up and down stairs. Make one social outing this week an active one. Buy a pedometer, and everybody is trying to get to a certain numbers of steps. Try to get an extra 1,000 steps a day. Watch one less hour of TV. Wash something thoroughly once a week, be moving.
This is something I find all the time in magazines where they say, hey if every time when you go to the store you park at the farthest parking spot from the store entrance, over your lifetime you’re going to burn an extra 5,000 calories. They’ll give you all these little themes if you reach farther for your alarm clock, you’re burning more calories every morning when you sit up. It starts almost becoming almost ridiculous like you’re trying to just randomly move your body to lose weight. Can you just walk us through this and give us the principles so we can help understand how to interpret all of this?

Jonathan: Like you said April, a lot of these things they might be partially true or half true or they might be true, but for the wrong reasons. I think that’s really important. For example, be more active, that in and of itself is, if those are the only words uttered, I agree with that 100 percent. If it’s be more active so that you burn more calories and weigh less, then I would say that new statement, I’ve got some problems with that and that’s true why we do things matters a lot.
If the reason that you hug your child in public is so that other people will think that you’re a good parent. If an article said, make sure you show your children affection, so that other people will think highly of you. Yes, I should just show my children affection, but not so that other people would think more highly of me. I should just show my children affection because that’s what people should do.
Move your body, absolutely. Not so that you can conform to some misogynistic societal thing that says that women should be smaller, but rather because your body was meant to move. We’re supposed to stand up. That’s why we have legs. Sitting in chairs for 12 hours a day is not the natural state for humans. So it’s not about working at a standing desk so that you can fit into a size 2 when you’re 45, which is ridiculous. It’s about working at a standing desk because it will radically reduce back pain, it will radically reduce wrist pain. Humans are designed and intended to stand for longer periods that they’re sitting.

April: That’s great.

Jonathan: So that’s great. Yes. So the first thing is it says, you’ll lose weight and fat if you walk 45 minutes per day, not 30. If that was phrased, as walking for 45 minutes is better for you than walking for 30 minutes. I love walking. If you could walk for 45 minutes per day instead of 30 minutes per day, I would absolutely say do that. That will improve your health, but if you’re doing that because you believe that 15 additional minutes will burn 17 additional calories and if you do that every day that means using calorie math that you’ll lose 14 lbs. until you eventually weigh nothing, that’s where it sort of falls down. Is that why you’re doing it? Does that make sense?

April: It’s really helpful because I knew that we were going to be recording this podcast and a few days ago my son, Ethan, and I went on a walk. It had been one of those days where I had been sitting way too much. I had just been inside too much. I needed a break. It was late at night and it was dark. I said, Ethan, do you want to walk with me? He’s 12. So he comes with me and we’re out together, but we had to get back because I only had 30 minutes. So, in my mind, I’m thinking, it says I’m supposed to walk 45 minutes and not 30 minutes, so am I doing something wrong by coming home after 30 minutes. It was totally crazy, but that’s really helpful, because yes, movement and walking is good, but that difference in the 15 minutes, that’s not going to radically change the way your body burns fat or how your metabolism works.

Jonathan: Not only is that true, April, but we can extrapolate the truth you just said into this giant macro principle which makes nutrition and exercise so ridiculously more simple and that’s these 45 minutes versus 30, nobody, nobody is struggling with their weight because they’re only walking for 30 minutes a day, instead of 45 minutes per day.
The reason we have an obesity epidemic is not because people aren’t measuring their servings of vegetables accurately enough or they’re missing the seven minutes of additional walking, where if they would have done it, that one thing, no, no, no. Like if you eat vegetables, proteins and fats, if you move your body, if you sleep, if you minimize stress, if you have loving relationships in your life, you’re going to be healthy. Because we’re told to focus on all of this other nonsense, we get distracted from those basics.

April: So, I’m finding a theme in a lot of these things are just giving you more excuses and more reasons to be active. I’ll tell you this quickly. This one about watching TV for an hour less a day. When I was in high school I did this TV fast for 30 days and I was a senior in high school, I said for 30 days, no TV, no videos, nothing. I lost 6 lbs. that month. Not trying because I wasn’t sitting in front of the TV and I wasn’t eating while I was sitting in front of the TV, so my body just lost 6 lbs. I think what we can see is that when you are standing active, moving, you’re allowing the natural metabolism of your body and functions of your body as human to work and to help you to be healthier. Is that right?

Jonathan: Yeah, that’s exactly right April. I think a lot of these things, just building off what you said for example, park further away from the grocery store. We live in an unnatural world and that’s pretty fair to say. What we’re doing right now is incredibly unnatural. You’re in California, I’m in Seattle and we’re not only speaking, but we are seeing each other while we speak. That’s unnatural. That’s totally unnatural. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s good. There’s a lot of wonderful things about living in an unnatural world. Sometimes when you’re in an unnatural world, you then do additional unnatural things to try to restore some level of naturalness.
If you need to go to the grocery store, in a car, which is unnatural, the grocery store is unnatural, the car is unnatural, and you then do another unnatural thing, which is artificially park far away so you can do a natural thing, which is walk more. This is where, especially for calorie counting gets so convoluted and complex because we sort of resign ourselves to saying things need to be complicated and things need to be unnatural so I’m going to eat 1,300 calories of whatever I want, wherever it’s from, as long as I count them in this very precise way, which is the most—I’m going to eat unnatural food, and then I’m going to track it in an unnatural way, using this blah-blah-blah.
Eat foods that are directly found in nature, as much as you can and move your body as much as you can. Period. That should be the goal and the more you can do that, the healthier you will be, then once you establish that baseline, you can totally refine it. If you’re 100 lbs. overweight and diabetic, and you get to i.e., natural foods that I move my body, you might not be at your goal weight, but let’s get there first. Focus on getting there first and then we can take it to the next level.

April: Okay. I like that. Let’s say somebody struggles with movement. For example, my two daughters, one daughter, Alia, is the one who went SANE, lost 25 lbs., totally changed her body. One daughter has a super high metabolism. We are feeding her all day to keep her full because she is just very slender, very active. The difference is, Grace has always been active. There was a year of her life we only saw her feet because she was cartwheeling around the house all of the time. So we would just see her feet flying in the air, and that’s what she did. She cartwheeled everywhere she went. She was moving.
Our daughter, Alia, likes to read, she likes to talk. She is very conversational. She doesn’t love cartwheeling. She can’t do a cartwheel. She doesn’t love that type of activity. It’s interesting to see how their bodies are just totally different shapes. Alia was thicker and getting heavier and Grace was just super thin.
Let’s say is somebody is naturally just doesn’t like to move a lot. They don’t love sports. They don’t love going outside. They like to read. They like to sit. It’s an effort for them to move. Would you recommend they get fit? Would you recommend they start putting some of these new habits into place? I think I’ll start walking before dinner. That would be a good habit. These are really good habits. I feel like everything that I read here, isn’t something I would say, oh, no you should walk before dinner, or you shouldn’t climb stairs. Those things are fine. I’m just wondering for somebody who doesn’t naturally move, what would you recommend to help them just to move more, as much as their body would need?

Jonathan: My microphone was muted there. So I love that. It’s all good. You’re exactly right in saying bottom line movement is good. If my natural state is that I don’t really want to move, that could actually be going on for a couple of different reasons. In fact, some of the underlying metabolic things, which cause us to gain weight also cause us to want to move less. Like movement becomes painful if you’re 100 lbs. overweight, movement doesn’t feel good. You don’t really want to do it. Yes, movement, universally is good. You should move more. So if you don’t naturally feel inclined to move, if the pedometer helps you move, then buy a pedometer, but if you makes you neurotic, then don’t buy it.
This is what I personally did, I don’t really like exercising, however, I do like to read, and especially when I was doing a lot of the reading for the Calorie Myth and for what is sanesolution.com, I did that on a treadmill at two miles an hour. So just super slow or stand.
These techniques, watch one less hour of TV, wash something thoroughly once a week, by a pedometer, and clip it to your belt. These are all going back to the kind of silly showing your child affection. Like hug your child, yes, pat your child on the back, yes. They’re all good things to do, but if the reason you’re doing it is wrong, then the “what you’re doing” also becomes compromised. These are great things to do, but the reason you’re doing them is because of health, it’s because the body is meant to move. It’s not so that you can adhere to mythical calorie math that doesn’t apply in the real world.

April: I feel really happy right now. Thank you. It just makes it so easy. You’re able to put things into great, principle based solutions that I feel like I can do that. I want to be outside moving more. I want my old standing desk and standing again. I want to be standing more. I want to be continually becoming more and healthier.
I think what’s happened is as you help and show me all of the things out there that are not true, or that they’re a lot of different people out there who are trying to teach things that really won’t help us be healthier, I just feel like I question things a lot more now. I think it’s good. I think it’s good for us to always question the advice we’re receiving. Just like that example, why you would treat your children a certain way. What is it that you’re trying to achieve by doing that? I think it’s really important for all of us to think, why am I going out walking right now? Why am I at a standing desk? Why am I going to the gym or why am I doing lunges? Why am I doing yoga? I’m asking these questions why?
I think so many times the reason why I exercised was because I felt like if I didn’t, people would disapprove of me, either because I would be overweight and I wouldn’t look a certain way, or I felt like I need exercise to prove I’m at least doing something to be able to move myself forward even if I’m not seeing results. I just felt like you have to show up at the gym because your friends are at the gym, who want to see you there to prove you’ve done it or you just feel like I’ve got to exercise and check it off my box to show that I did exercise today so that my mind can rest and I won’t feel bad about these extra pounds I’m carrying around.
I feel like there’s these random reasons I was doing things, when really, all we want is to be healthy. Every single person I speak with and every single person who emails me and asks me questions about SANE, their real goal is to be able to have nutritional serenity, to have strong healthy bodies, to be able to focus on their real purpose in life. So many people feel like they never get a chance to get there because they are so consumed by all of these expectations that they have of themselves.

Jonathan: I think you hit the nail on the head there, April, in terms of living that happy life and tying that into our personal goal of always providing you with a goal and a next action for each of these episodes. I would recommend that they be for a next-action, something as simple as, so what is something that you do that you enjoy? Maybe it’s talking with your friends or talking with your partner or your spouse or speaking with your children. Do you do that sitting down? Do you have to do it sitting down? Could you go for a walk?
I think women actually do a great job of this. You see a group of women get together and they go walking together. I don’t really see guys doing it as much, but women do a great job of it. I think just walking and talking, when people talk about eating dinner together is a great thing for a family. I agree. I also think that going for a walk as a family, talking, talk with your friends, you’re talking on the phone, throw on a headset, walk around your house, while you talk on the phone. The next action is, what do you seated that you don’t have to be seated for? And if not, maybe stand up, maybe walk while you do it? How does that sound for next action?

April: I love that. I’ve actually started doing that. I have a weekly meeting with Saren,, who runs [Inaudible 17:51] with me and we’d always be sitting there looking at her computer, having this conversations and last time, I put on my headset. I actually went rollerblading while I had my meeting and it was awesome.
Two nights ago, our family sometimes would sit down and play a board game together or do something fun together sitting around the table, or sit and watch a TV show together.
We had our very first six person basketball game in the backyard and it was so fun. All my kids are old enough now, where it was kids against parents and we were out there all moving, playing basketball together, having a great time. I wasn’t doing it so I could fit in a size 2, I was doing it because I wanted to be with my kids and I wanted to have a good time with them.
I love that goal and I think there are so many things. I can think of ten more things in my week that I could change so that I could do it standing up or moving and that’s actually really exciting. So thank you.

Jonathan: My pleasure. So that next action is take something you already do. Do it standing or walking and the stretch goal for me, is just like mind and body simultaneously. The stretch goal is, whether it’s something that’s inspirational, whether it’s something that’s educational. It’s got to be inspirational or educational, either read it or listen to it while you walk. It’s almost like a meditation. So for a half hour, try to find a half hour per week and if you can do more it’s great. I’ve got to tell you. For the bang for the buck, you can put a half hour or hour reading or listening to something inspirational while moving your body, that is a half hour to an hour that’s really well spent. That’s added to the schedule and that’s the stretch goal. Is that okay?

April: Yay! I’m all for it.

Jonathan: Awesome. Well, hopefully folks, this was a helpful clarification on some of the M-word issues that you have to deal with the movement issues of course, move the body, live a happy, healthy life, and of course, as always, stay SANE.