SHAWN STEVENSON: You're about to hear from multiple experts on how this one form of exercise can help you to burn more fat, improve your hormone function, and help you to live longer. And I'm going to kick things off for you by sharing the remarkable impact that this form of exercise can have on fat loss. A recent study conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan uncovered some profound results. The study titled Effects of Walking Speed on Total and Regional Body Fat in Healthy Postmenopausal Women placed women into different walking speed groups to see how it affected fat loss. Essentially, they either placed them into a slow to moderate paced walking group or a fast paced walking group.

After compiling the data from this 30 week study, here's what they found. The researcher stated, " Total body fat is lost through walking at all speeds. But the change is a more rapid, clear, and essentially greater with the slow walking and overweight subjects." We're not talking about mere calorie expenditure. We're talking about where your body is choosing to pull that energy from. And a greater percentage of actual body fat is used for fuel when you're walking at casual to moderate speeds. Now, the crazy thing is that this has been known for decades. As a matter of fact, a study published in 2001 titled The Effects of Increasing Exercise Intensity on Muscle Fuel Utilization in Humans was cited in the Journal of Physiology.

The study found that whole body fat oxidation increases with progressive low intensity exercise, but diminishes as the intensity reaches a threshold where the body uses more stored fuel from the muscles. So again, as exercise gets more and more intense, our bodies shift gears. It shifts its fuel source from fat oxidation, from using stored body fat to using stored glycogen from the muscles and also the liver. Our body is a hybrid. It's got all these incredible channels to utilize energy from to fuel certain processes. Now, this does not mean that you burn more calories just by walking, nor does it mean that you don't burn any body fat as a result of doing intense exercise.

This just means that low intensity exercise, specifically walking, uses more body fat right there on the spot. Our body chooses to use stored body fat for fuel. When we're walking at slow to moderate intensity. It's during low intensity exercise like walking that our bodies primarily utilize aerobic metabolism. All right. Now this means that our body's able to use oxygen to convert fat into energy. However, as the intensity of exercise rises, the environment to utilize oxygen becomes more and more suppressed. And so we shift over to anaerobic metabolism. And so as there are higher amounts of stress, other energy sources are forced to be utilized.

And again, anaerobic metabolism doesn't require oxygen in order to fuel these processes. And so our bodies can start grabbing stored glycogen from our muscles and liver to fuel the exercise that we're doing. Now, this is not about good, bad, better, best, whatever the case might be. All forms of exercise have some value, but if we're talking about expressly on the spot, starting the process of our bodies using fat for fuel, there is nothing better than going for a nice walk.

Now we're about to dive deeper into this super human form of exercise, and I'm saying that intentionally it is super human. This is the form of exercise that is expressly uniquely for us as human beings. It is our superpower. We're pretty much the only creatures, especially in the mammal kingdom that are out here walking around on two legs. Now, of course, bipedal, some bears can get up on there. You know, some orangutans can hop onto two feet from time to time, but we live like this. All right. Of course, you might be like, what other, we have birds. We got birds out here hopping and skipping around on the two feet, but they got wings.

All right. We got some marsupials out here. We got, we got the kangaroos, okay. They're hopping around different. All right. Humans are unique in how we walk around. We're bipedal. So this exercise is a super human form of exercise, and that's why we're going to dive deeper into this powerful form of exercise to understand why it's so effective for human health, ranging from fat loss, efficiency to longevity and you're also going to learn the best practices to employ. And first up, you're going to hear from New York Times bestselling authors, Dr. Kelly Starrett, who's a doctor of physical therapy and one of the greatest teachers in the world in physical therapy, and his incredible partner and wife and co-author in multiple New York Times bestselling books, Juliet Starret, who's a superstar, former professional athlete and coach.

So prepare to have your mind blown and to have more powerful and empowering reasons to make sure that you're getting your walk on each and every day. In this segment with Juliette and Kelly Starrett, you're gonna discover where the concept of walking 10,000 steps a day actually comes from and this was not based on science at first. You're also gonna learn why these two experts in physical therapy prescribe walking to accelerate recovery from pain and injuries. You'll learn how walking actually helps us to build up something called sleep pressure to help you to sleep better at night. You'll learn how walking a specific way can quickly create. Positive neuroplastic changes in the brain and more. Enjoy this first segment from the Amazing Juliet and Dr. Kelly Starret. 

JULIET STARRETT: We've now become obsessed with walking for a variety of reasons. I mean you hit on it a little bit. There are a, you know, I will go back and say that the 10,000 steps concept was invented by a Japanese pedometer company in the sixties. 

DR. KELLY STARRETT: And 10 to sell is not auspicious number in Japan maybe last 10,000 years. When you shout Bonsai, that's 10,000 years when you last. So you can see why that marketing worked really well, because we were capturing this magical number. 

JULIET STARRETT: But what's happened since then though, is there has been a ton of research that has filled that in and shown that basically the more steps you take a day, the longer you will live, and the fewer chronic illnesses you will suffer. 

DR. KELLY STARRETT: That means I just always need to max up my steps. Or is there a minimum? 

JULIET STARRETT: No, you know, the minimum we say is 8,000. The reason we say that is that the average American gets about 3000 steps. And we've also read that it's actually possible for people to get up to 8,000 steps. Anything above 8,000 is like gold. That's great. Like if you, if you have a life that allows you to be able to walk 16,000 steps a day, like more power to you, that's definitely gonna help your longevity. But you know, there's so many other things about walking that are so awesome.

You know, we talked a little bit about the lymphatic system and about how walking is the perfect way to recover from workouts and, you know, it's the first thing that we suggest people do who come to us with low back pain or post-surgical because, you know, the best thing you can do post surgery is just to walk and just keep everything you know. Get the garbage outta your body. But there's all these other sort of like fluffier things about walking that we like so much. I mean, we talked about this earlier, everybody's talking about it online, but you need to get a little bit of sunlight on your body. Sometimes you need to get a little direct sun. One of the best ways to do that is to.. 

DR. KELLY STARRETT: Model health show says. 

JULIET STARRETT: The model health show says you need to get some sun on your body so you, you know, it has a side benefit of you get some sun on your body. It can also be really social because what we learned in the pandemic is how lonely people are and how, how depressed and kids aren't doing well from a mental health standpoint. People are feeling, even though we're more and more connected online, people are feeling more and more disconnected. And so walking is the perfect way to just have simple connection with people. And so it's just this like moment. 

DR. KELLY STARRETT: You can be like this. What's up? I hate that guy. But he's my neighbor. What's up? I now live in a community.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That guy. 

JULIET STARRETT: And we're fine. You know, we're fine. If you treadmill walk, like if it's, you know, if you live in Buffalo, New York and you need to walk on a treadmill in the winter, that's totally fine. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Or walk in the mall. 

JULIET STARRETT: Walk in the mall. Exactly. I mean, you know, there's a lot of empty malls out there you can walk in. It doesn't matter, even if it's just walking around the block. 

I mean, one of the things I've done. I've figured out like five places in my neighborhood that are little routes that are just leaving from my front door, walking around the neighborhood and it's like, I know from my house to the end of the block, it's 1,750 steps.

If I go from my house down this little mini loop, it's 3000 steps. And so, you know, if, if I just need to fit in some walking, I've sort of set it up for myself and you know, you get your hip into extension. Speaking of Kelly's obsession with hip, hip extension, it's good for the sole, it's good for the community.

DR. KELLY STARRETT: Check this out. We were working with an elite military force in the Army called Delta, and when they have a lot of disordered sleep, and they do. One of the things that they started prescribing for all of their soldiers and war fighters was walking. So you have all the technology in the world available to you, and the thing that's handed out is walking 12 to 15,000 steps a day.

So if you're listening to this, hear this, if you have a hard time falling asleep, or sleeping. One of the ways that we would help you with that is say, Hey, let's see if we get you to move more in the day to accumulate enough non-exercise activity that you actually have sleep stress so that, or it's actually called sleep pressure so that you actually want to go to sleep.

You actually have to move more in order to be fatigued enough. And if you're been on deadlines and you're sitting and you're in board meetings, you can't move and you're on Zoom and you have a hard time falling asleep. One of the reasons is you didn't move. So as Juliet says, it's one of these things that makes a huge, huge difference on so many levels. And for us, again, we're like sort of obsessed with performance and one of the things we notice when we give this book to our athlete friends, like world champion friends are like, wow, I don't walk enough. And when I started walking, my knees felt better. I recovered from my workouts more effectively. Zone two. We also found that the walking is a perfect time to do all these crazy breath drills.

You can do all the eye movement tracking stuff. You want call, you can just call checking out your neighbors. Right where you just, your eyes track. You can look far. You can look close. Yep. You can start doing breath holds. There's so many ways where you can turn that thing up and make it interesting. Plus, we have so many friends who are like, I'm not running over my dead body. I'm never running. We're like, great. Have you met the backpack that weighs 10 pounds? And suddenly you have a really and meaningful way to load your spine and load your tissues. It's called rucking. Welcome to walking. It is the future.

JULIET STARRETT: Well, and I think one of the things we have done a good job of in the health and fitness business is tell people they should exercise.

DR. KELLY STARRETT: Nailed it.

JULIET STARRETT: And they are, they're spending trillions of dollars on gym memberships and apps and, you know, you name it. And, but that's not working, like the data has out. Like we, we, you know, people really didn't go to the gym that much until starting in the early nineties. Like it just gym culture wasn't a thing. And we've all been now going to the gym and following the rule that we should exercise for X amount of time a day and X amount of time per week. And what we see is that obesity rates are rising and diabetes rates are rising.

And you know, it's not that alone isn't working. So we of course, are gigantic fans of exercise. Like we're exercisers, we love exercise, but what we see is that people aren't getting enough total movement in their day and it has all these unintended downstream consequences. Your body doesn't feel as good, you can't move as freely, you potentially don't sleep as well. And, you know, there are lots of other ways to get non-exercise activity like that could be gardening. There's lots of ways to keep moving more besides just walking, but what we've found is that's the simple and most accessible way for people to just add in more movement in their day.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. One of the things I say is that, you know, can we squat with 500 pounds on our back? Yeah. It's, it's a thing we can do. Are we designed to do it per se? And you know, to do it in this kind of re repetitive fashion. There are so many cool things that we can do and we can get great benefit from them. The thing that we're designed to do, our genes expect us to walk like it's a, it's an essential movement input that I believe, and you guys know this, it activates so many beneficial things in our bodies. And I wanna share a direct quote from the book, which I love this book by the way.

The quote is, "walking puts your hips into extension, lengthens the tissues that are shortened by sitting by the way, and puts the body back into biomechanical balance." It's it's medicine, walking is medicine, and you're just really like bringing it right in our faces like if you want to feel good, if you want to get your body in sync, get these steps and walk. It's something so nourishing about it. 

DR. KELLY STARRETT: We're hearing a lot these days about this phenomenon called neuroplasticity. People are starting to get into the neurobiology. We, we used to think that the brain couldn't rewire itself. And now we're like, oh my gosh, the brain rewires itself and continues to grow and learn and rewire itself through your whole lifespan. That's pretty amazing. That's, that's changed the last 20 years. One of the easiest ways to rewire your brain. And to create the opportunities to rewire your brain is through walking fast. So as soon as you just walk a little bit faster than a normal kind of gate, your brain starts to be like, why is this person walking fast?

I should pay attention, what's going on here? So if you are trying to change some aspect, it creates this window of opportunity where you might be able to rewire pain pathways, or you might be able to remember, neurons that fire together, wire together, or neurons that fire apart, wire apart. So if I'm trying to change a behavior, if I create an opportunity where my brain is more likely to do that, I'm down with that. What does that look like? Walking fast. That's pretty radical. That's a radical idea. 

JULIET STARRETT: I love this book called Spark by a guy named John Rady and he says, exercise and walking is like miracle grow for the brain. And you know, if we all look forward into sort of how we want our old age to be, we want two things. We wanna be able to move our body and we wanna be able to use our minds. We wanna stay mentally acute, you know, and so walking and exercise is just, you know, insurance, it's just an insurance policy for being able to, you know, hopefully be able to move our bodies and use our minds. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Alright, I hope that you enjoyed that first segment. Next up is somebody who's had a profound impact on my life and on my thinking. He is ranked number one in the world, master's 400 meter sprinter. He's ranked number two in master's level high jump. All right, so we're talking 60 and above. He's really in a league of his own, and this is coming from somebody who is a former world class top ranked triathlete.

And he had this incredible evolution in his thinking and his performance and in his body by changing the way that he was training. And now he is so full on, focused on the power of walking, the power of occasional explosive movements, sprinting, and of course utilizing some heavy weights as well. But in this segment specifically, he's gonna be sharing why walking literally creates the foundation for aerobic fitness and performance. You're gonna learn how walking builds the resilience to do complex, high effort exercise and activities, and reduces the risk of injuries. You're going to discover why we need to put some respect on walk-ins name today. I'm talking about the one and only, new York Times bestselling author, Brad Kerns. Enjoy this next segment. 

BRAD KEARNS: It's the baseline aerobic conditioning for life and for all athletic and fitness and active lifestyle pursuits. We need to have that foundation and the aerobic foundation is built at low heart rates, period. Ain't none of you can argue that. I don't care if you like to go faster and like to get a better workout and get more endorphin rush.

The aerobic system is built at the fat burning heart rates where you have enough oxygen to stimulate mitochondrial production and improve your fat burning capabilities. So without that foundation, you really can't do anything. Note without getting winded and exhausted. So that's the weekend warrior going and playing on the basketball team, and they're good for like two minutes and 12 seconds, and then they raise their hand to get subbed out.

Good for them, they're trying. But if they walked more and built up that just easy foundation where the effort feels easy, not strenuous. That's when you kind of elevate the platform from which you launch all other fitness endeavors, including my sprinting and jumping and things that would be very difficult to just come out of the office at five o'clock and head over and start slamming it.

It doesn't work unless you have that foundation of active lifestyle. That's why people are getting injured so frequently when they're playing pickleball, which is not terribly strenuous, but it's the hot sport of the age right now. But they're walking right out of the office onto the court taking one false step and there goes the meniscus or what have you.

So I think that's the first fitness objective for everybody, is to raise that platform of general daily activity. And by the way, when you do that, you negate all the health consequences that are related to sitting, sitting as the new smoking. That whole body of research. And it doesn't take this huge commitment or this huge lifestyle change because a two minute walk, if we want to take a break now with our crew too, we could take a two minute walk, come back, everyone would be fine.

Hey, we're back at the Model Health Show. We just walked up a few fights of stairs. In fact, I sprinted from 4 7 2 11. It was pretty fun. You know that stuff is with reach of everyone, but we for some reason don't do it 'cause we're too slammed. We're too busy, we can't get away from our screen. We have brain research from Stanford University showing that after 20 minutes, we can't maintain peak cognitive focus anyway, so our brains will take a break for us unless we take one. And a physical break would be the best, right? If I don't take my physical breaks, I tend over to YouTube watching high jump videos. Instead of working on my important presentation, so there's no excuse not to get up and walk for a minute or two here, two to five minutes here.

Maybe a nice centerpiece like you get home from work and you walk for 20, 30 minutes with the dog around the block. And these things have a major contribution to fitness. It's just we're not respecting it or appreciated enough. And then as you talked about in the middle ground, that running down the street, man, where you're huffing and puffing, has a lot of adverse consequences, including the metabolic and the appetite hormones and things like that. So just moving more without the strain and then putting in the icing on the cake is that high intensity stuff. And even that is not going to exhaust and deplete you and wear you out because I only want you going for brief bursts.

That's when you really are powerful and explosive. It's not about going, you know, some of the spinning classes are organized in a manner that's a little disturbing for me because it's like, alright class, we're gonna pretend we're in the tour to France and we're gonna sprint for a minute, 10 times and a minute break. And that's an interval session. It has wonderful fitness stimulation benefits, but not if you're not super fit to begin with and you're just getting on that bike after eight hours of sitting on your butt in another chair, now you're on the bike seat and you're asked to slam it really hard. That can easily lead to overdoing it. So we want to have this notion of moving more in a comfortable pace and then hitting it hard once in a while. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Alright, I hope that you enjoyed that segment with the incredible New York Times bestselling author, Brad Kerns. Now Brad truly is an icon in health and fitness and he's got decades of experience, and he's one of those people that truly provides a model for what's possible. And so I love learning from individuals like him and also spending time. Brad is from the Valley here where I moved to a few years ago, and so he's been able to put me on game in the area and direct me to some different places related to health and fitness. And so I've been able to hang out with Brad and he's really about that life.

He's showing up in his track suit. We're just walking down the street and he's doing high knees and whatnot, just out the blue, and he's, this man's over 60 and his level of fitness and his energy is just unbelievable. It is so remarkable, and it's a testament to his practices and to what he's implementing. And again, one of those primary things is the power of walking and walking. He's the one who put me on to Peluvas, like in a major way. Of course, it was introduced initially by Mark Sisson, who is the creator of this incredible brand. But Brad is the one who really got me with the science and got me to really consider putting on these strange.

Looking shoes with the five digits, right? And there were some iterations that were earlier on prior to Peluva coming online. But Peluva really has dominated in the space of athletics because it has that cushioning for really doing a lot of different stuff, whereas a lot of people kind of gotta spend time and get acclimated to utilizing more minimal issues, zero, drop the five digits, all that kind of stuff.

And so it gives us a faster on ramp to rehabilitating our feet. Our feet have 26 bones, 33 joints, 19 muscles 107 ligaments per foot, and each foot has over 200,000 nerve endings. And all of that is there for collecting data to determine our movement and our modern shoes essentially mute or disrupt thousands of data signals that would normally be transmitted from our feet. And feed it throughout the rest of our body to modulate appropriate movement. And the results of this, well, we have epidemics of foot dysfunction, foot and ankle injuries, knee injuries, hip injuries, and more that can be rooted back to modern footwear. Now let me be clear, this does not mean that we don't utilize and enjoy putting on our various foot fashion that we enjoy.

But today, more than ever, we need to have that prehab and rehab for our feet because it is literally the foundation of our movement. And this is why I love my Peluvas. And right now you can get 15% off of your Peluvas when you go to Peluva.com/model. Alright, that's P-E-L-U-V-A. Dot com slash model, but make sure to use the code model at checkout for 15% off.

I'm happy to say that we are a Peluva family. My wife loves her Peluvas. I'm rocking the Peluvas all the time. It's probably what you're gonna see me. If you catch me out walking, I'm gonna have my peluvas on. And it is definitely translated to more efficient and effective movement, just feeling better overall. It really is remarkable how nourishing, and again, rehab and prehab that we do with our feet can translate to so much better health and functionality. Again, go to peluva.com/model. Use the code model at checkout for 15% off, and next up in this very powerful compilation on the power of walking and overall human health.

In this segment, you're going to discover how a tiny bit of walking each day can add years to your life. You're gonna be shocked at how small that amount is. You're also gonna discover how walking can dramatically improve your insulin sensitivity. And of course that helps with fat loss. You're gonna learn the shocking impact that walking has on protecting your brain and dementia prevention and more. Enjoy this next segment from the author of multiple USA today, national Bestsellers and the International bestselling book, sleep Smarter. He's the host of the Model Health Show. You know him. You love them. The next segment is from me to you. Enjoy.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Longevity daily walking substantially, decreases all cause mortality. It reduces the risk of death from everything. All right. According to a study published in the Journal Plus Medicine as public Liberia of science medicine, walking for just 11 minutes a day is enough to extend your lifespan. By two years, you get two more years of life. If you proactively walk for 11 minutes a day, that's a pretty sweet deal. Meanwhile, research from scientists at Salin University determined that just 25 minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to seven years, seven more years of life. The researchers found that by measuring the increases of telomeres activity, so telomeres is an enzyme that the discovery of this enzyme was awarded the Nobel Prize by Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn and her co-author in the Telomere Effect, the bestselling book on the subject, Dr. Alyssa Apple's, good friend and friend of the show who's been on several times.

And this enzyme has been found to essentially add length back onto our telomeres. And our telomeres are one of the best biological markers that we have. Distinguishing or determining how long we're going to live and, or live healthfully. So this enzyme, again, has been found to essentially add length back onto our telomeres, dramatically slowing down the aging process, and dare I say, reversing it. All right, so in this study, the research has found that by measuring the increases of telomeres activity and the decrease in senes marker P 16, both of these are markers for cellular aging in the blood.

Over a six month period, doctors were able to show that regular walking triggers the anti-aging process. Now we've got this on the surface, cool. We're increasing our longevity triggering this anti-aging process. But what are some of the mechanisms behind this increase in longevity from walking while a meta-analysis of two studies conducted by Harvard School of Public Health that included over 73,000 people found that briskly walking for half an hour a day reduces the risk of developing type two diabetes by 30%. Alright, so we are seeing this shift over in our metabolic health, improving insulin sensitivity and again, reducing the risk for type two diabetes, which is one of the fastest growing epidemics in our society today.

Over 130 million Americans are now type two diabetic or pre-diabetic, and this is known as an accelerated aging disease. That's one of the hallmarks of diabetes that isn't talked about. It's accelerating the aging process in a myriad of ways. From the breakdown of our blood vessels, our cardiovascular system, the breakdown of our skin, the breakdown of blood flow to our limbs, our vision, the list goes on and on, on the ramifications, the breakdown of our other organs, liver failure, kidney failure, and so to put an overarching kind of umbrella over what is diabetes, at its core, it's an accelerated aging condition.

Now, numerous studies have also found that walking is remarkably effective at burning away visceral fat, AKA belly fat, while also helping to retain our valuable muscle tissue. That's the killer combo, right? That's the combination that we want. Now, this sounds a lot like something that testosterone would do, so the question is, does walking notably increase our testosterone?

Well, first and foremost, we have to finally drop this dichotomous belief that testosterone is a male hormone. This is part of the problem because testosterone is actually, and this is a scientifically validated fact, testosterone is the most abundant hormone in both sexes. Testosterone is actually the most abundant, biologically active female hormone as well. And this information is detailed in a 2013 study titled Testosterone Therapy in Women, Myths and Misconceptions. Yes, men have higher ratios of testosterone, but testosterone is critically important to women's health as well. So this dichotomous thinking about test testosterone diminishes our value and appreciation of this hormone for all of us.

So I wanna share just a few of the important things that testosterone is responsible for. It's responsible for production of our blood cells. All right. The river of life, it's kind of important. Testosterone is critical in that for everybody. It, it's also critical for body fat. Distribution and utilization is critical for bone density.

Muscle growth and strength. We know that one. That's the kind of captain obvious one. But what about bone density? Again, we don't really think about that. It's critical for sex drive for both sexes. It's critical for human fertility, for breast health in women, for sperm production in men, for mental health is generally protective against depression, anxiety, and lack of motivation in both sexes.

So now that we've gotten the dichotomous view of testosterone either the way, please address that in your own psychology to stop putting this kind of black or white view of testosterone is important for everyone. Now let's look at where does walking tie in with this and this longevity benefit and why it needs to be part of our daily habits. A recent study published in the journal Endocrinology analyzed the connection between testosterone levels and the amount of steps people were taking each day. Now this study was looking at middle aged male test subjects. The researchers stated, "percentage changes in serum testosterone levels were significantly correlated with the total number of steps taken per day. There was the most notable increase in testosterone at 8,000 or more steps per day."

Again, there was a direct connection between the number of steps taken per day and an increase in testosterone. As you're taking steps just producing more and more testosterone, you're literally stepping your way into more testosterone production, but even over 4,000 steps per day, the researcher stated," total testosterone increased seven nanograms per deciliter for each additional 1000 steps taken daily." That's pretty remarkable. Again, it's kind of like filling up your testosterone gas tank by taking those steps. Additionally, walking significantly improves insulin sensitivity as noted, increases lipolysis the release of stored fat to be used for energy and improves overall metabolic health. There are lots of modalities out there right now for people trying to hack the system to get more testosterone.

People taking some of everything. They're doing all these different, they're dipping their teabag in cold water, whatever it takes. They're doing all this stuff. All right. Not to displace any of that stuff, but simply walking. Are we getting our steps in? We could be dipping our sack in the cold water. We could be getting, we could be sunning the balls. We could be taking all these different supplements. We could be taking things that are illicit as well. There's a lot of illicit stuff on the streets right now for people trying to boost their testosterone. But are you walking? Are you window dressing?

Are you doing the stuff on the periphery and missing out on the main course, which is your jeans expect you to walk and is directly increasing your production mobilization, utilization of testosterone by simply walking. So if you want to boost that test, you wanna boost that test. Are you walking? And specifically, again, 30 minutes a day. Making this a daily habit. And by the way, we can split this up. We could do two 15 minute walks, or three 10 minute walks, or a 20 minute walk in the morning, 10 minute walk in the evening, you know, or afternoon, whatever it looks like for you. But right now we're about stacking conditions psychologically for you to take this on as a daily habit to make it a mandate, right?

And also to find some joy in this as well. How can you leverage this opportunity for more connection? For more growth, and let's talk about the mind connection here, right? Body, mind, and spirit. The mind/brain connection. All right, so we're looking at both now. Walking has been found to be protective of the brain itself. A study including nearly 80,000 adults publishing jama Neurology revealed that there is a dose dependent effect of steps taken per day and lowering the risk of dementia. As we're taking those steps, our dementia risk is just dropping precipitously right along with it. Participants who walked briskly for an average of 30 minutes per day had their risk of developing dementia slashed by 62%.

Come on. There's not a treatment in the world in all of medicine that compares to that 62% reduction in the risk of dementia. Dementia, one of its forms is Alzheimer's. It's number six is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States right now. It's gonna hit the top five soon, right? This is just one form of dementia. What are we doing to circumvent this issue? We're doing all of these treatments that are largely ineffective because the issues just, just keeps getting worse and worse. Our genes expect us. This is for healthy expression of our genes, including genes related to our cognitive health.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back.

There's one beverage that rules them all when it comes to longevity. In fact, a study published just last year in the Lancet found that people who regularly drink tea, age slower than people who do not. Now, there are so many varieties of tea that come teaming with health benefits and flavor profiles from green tea to ginger tea and more. And speaking of anti-aging and anti-obesity effects, a study published in the journal Clinical Interventions in Aging took 59 overweight or mildly obese subjects to see if the renowned tea called Pu'erh. Makes a notable difference in weight loss. The randomized double-blind placebo controlled trial gave participants either a placebo, or pu'erh, for a 20 week study period.

There were no other interventions noted. Here's what happened. The researcher stated, " consumption of PIR was associated with statistically significant weight loss when compared to the placebo. Fat loss was seen for the arms, legs, and the hip and belly region." The participants who received, who wear lost more overall body fat, and what was especially remarkable was that they maintained more of their muscle mass, and that is the equation for healthy aging.

The tea that I personally drink most often is pu'erh, but the only pu'erh that I drink is from Pique life. It's triple toxin screen for purity and made through a patented cold extraction technology that makes it as effective as what was seen in this study. It's wild harvested in truly the best pu'erh on earth. Head over to piquelife.com/model. Right now when you'll receive up to 20% off, plus some limited time free bonuses, like an electric frother to mix your favorite beverages, and you get to try peak tea's risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee. You'll either love it or you'll receive a full free refund. Go to piquelife.com/model right now. That's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F e.com/model and get hooked up with all of this good stuff. That's piquelife.com/model. And now back to the show.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I hope that you enjoyed that segment and I couldn't think of a better way to close out this powerful compilation on the benefits of walking than sharing one of my greatest mentors in the space of health and wellness. At over 70 years old, he's one of the most physically active and energetic people that I've ever met, and I'm talking about the one and only Dr. Johnny Bowden. In this segment, he's gonna be sharing one of the best times. If we're looking at what's an optimal time for us to get that walk-in, if we can only get in a certain time of day, this would be the best time to do it. He's gonna be sharing the best times to walk each day to improve metabolic health. He's gonna share how to use psychological and environmental triggers to ensure you walk regularly and much more. Enjoy this segment from the amazing Dr. Johnny Bowden. 

JB: Exercise and movement are not the same thing. Exercise is what you do when you go to the gym and you work out for half an hour, and that's great and everybody should do that, but metabolically that doesn't change very much. What changes metabolism overall is when you're constantly in motion. I don't sit down much. I mean, I walk everywhere and I take phone messages walking up and down in my garden, and I have a standing desk and probably sit down less than two hours a day. So those, that's movement. Walking to the mailbox, walking to, you know, up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, the daily movement stuff that you do, fidgeting.

So all of that kind of movement stuff really, really does count. And you don't undo eight hours of sitting and eating junk food by going to the gym and working out 45 minutes. You just don't, you know, and so I think both exercise and movement are really important. And now we get to a what kind of exercise. And I'm gonna give you the same basic, kind of pair it down to its essential. Just move as much as possible. Every chance you get. And of course, exercise. I do that, you know, I play tennis every day and that's my, but if we were to try to pick one habit that would equal the kind of eat real food habit. And I believe that if they taught this in every elementary school and every kid learned this and did it, it would change the budget for healthcare by double digit percentage.

And it would, it would put us up a number of notches. And that is take a 20 minute walk after dinner. End of story. Anybody can do that. It doesn't cost anything. It doesn't require a 20 minute walk, preferably after dinner every day. You're gonna see a major return on investment, and that's from somebody who has studied every exercise modality that ever came down the pike. And if you, you are looking at, you know, you're advising people on their investments and saying, this stock is gonna return the walk after dinner. That's your best return on investment.

SHAWN STEVENSON: What are some things that can be triggers for us to move? Do you have a pet, Johnny?

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: Do I have a pet?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: I've had, I have a dog. I don't consider him a pet, but he's my, yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You're companion. Do you have a furry companion? No disrespect.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: I have a furry companion. I do indeed. And I've always, I've had them for 30 years.

SHAWN STEVENSON: What?

DR. JONNY BOWDEN:  I've had. Oh, not the same ones, I mean.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: All, no, we, no, we live with dogs. We..

SHAWN STEVENSON: I was about to say, what, what do you know that we don't know about?

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: No, no, no. We have two. We have two dogs. She had one.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So having a pet that's going to be an automatic movement prompt.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: It's one of the big advantages. It's not the only one there many, many more to having an animal in your life or more, but that's definitely one of them.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. Are there any other things, like, I'm wondering what gets Johnny up and moving. Like what, what is the catalyst? Not just the mindset piece, but just practical things.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: I have to force myself sometimes to do it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mm. Come on.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: But, you know, I, I, I believe that we treat our own word, the way we treat the word of our friends. So if we had a friend who constantly said, I'll meet at 1:30. And they constantly come late. It's either the dog ate my homework or there was traffic, or I got a flat tire something. After a while, you stop believing them. You just don't put the gun? Oh yeah. I'm definitely be there on time. I'm definitely gonna be there. And you know, they're not right. I mean, 'cause you basically make predictions based on the past.

Well, we do the same thing with ourselves. If you hear yourself saying, today's the day I'm gonna stop smoking enough times and it doesn't happen, you stop believing your own word. So in my coaching when I work with clients, one of the first things I work on is rehabilitating their word. So that they get to believe that if I say it, it is going to happen. If I say it, it's law in the universe. And I used to start very, very simply with that. I'd have clients who were terrified of the gym. I'm thinking of one celebrity client whose name you would know in a minute, and whose songs we all sing. And this person really was his early nineties. You go into Equinox, everybody's in spandex, everybody's working on, it's a meat market and of course it's intimidating as shit.

So what I used to do with her, I pick her up at her house, we walk into the gym, we have a smoothie and we walk out. We come back the next day. We'd walk around for a minute. And we'd walk out and I literally did behavioral modification, systematic desensitization. She'd stand on the treadmill, we'd walk, talk for a couple minutes out, and she would get used to doing this. Right? We have to do that with our own words. So you start with things you can't fuck up. I will have a glass of water when I wake up. You put the damn water on the bedpost and you drink it there. There's no if, ands or buts, right? What happens is your mind. Very digital. It's not analog. It's not well.

And under these it only knows success. Failure. Yes. No. So if you set the goal, I'm gonna drink that glass of water, that gets coated as a win. And what I was doing with the client that I was bringing is I'm coding wins. Success win. So when people came into the gym and they had this Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, the, the Encyclopedia bodybuilding, they were gonna do this two hour workout and they would get to 20 minutes and they'd leave. That's always as coded as a failure. And they, people don't do what they fail at. They don't like doing what they fail at. They don't like failing. But if instead of setting that goal, you set a two minute on the treadmill goal. You may think, your conscious mind may think, well, that doesn't count. Yeah, it does count.

Because what you're doing is you're tricking your mind into saying he does what he says he's gonna do. I do what I say I'm gonna do. And you take a stand that is independent of how you feel in the moment. It's not about your feelings.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: It's about do you take a stand? I've dated single women with kids. And I notice how they get up at ridiculous hours, get the kids ready, drive them to school. And you know what? They do it whether they feel like it or not. They do it because they said they were gonna do it and because that's their agreement that they made with themselves and the universe and the kid. That's how we have to treat ourselves. You do it not 'cause you feel like it. You're not gonna feel like, I don't feel like going for walks every day with the dog. But come walk time, I do it 'cause I took, I'm taking a stand for myself. That's how you deal with the convenience thing that's always pulling at you.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. Amazing. You're getting to the heart of this matter. And by the way, you already mentioned a couple of prompts too, which is.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: Tell me.

SHAWN STEVENSON: After dinner, that's the prompt.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: Oh yeah.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Taking Your Animal Companion, your furry companion for their walks. Phone rings, get on the phone, start moving around while you're taking your calls.

DR. JONNY BOWDEN: Oh yeah. I don't know why anybody sits and has phone conversations, walk around your kitchen and mine is smaller than your room right here, and you can walk in circles. I do it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this and enjoyed this. If you did, please share it out with the people that you care about. Sharing is caring. Share that empowering health information. It really does mean a lot. We've got some incredible master classes and world leading guests coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to the model health show.com.

That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions videos for each episode, and if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome and I appreciate that so much and take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful and powering great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.