SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to the Model Health Show.  This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. We are now existing in the most sedentary time in human history. We are moving less as a species than we ever have before. But is this about willpower? Do we just need to get up and get moving? Is it solely on us as a people not being willing enough or motivated enough to move or is there something deeper at play? Well, just to give you a little bit of an insight we're gonna talk about today. We have systemic culture wide changes that have taken place that have literally created the conditions to make a sedentary. So don't beat yourself up too much. Now, does this mean that we don't have a responsibility to make change?

Absolutely not. This does not mean that we can just outsource our movement and exercise responsibility to someone else. We cannot hire AI to do push ups for us yet. But in all seriousness, so many of us have struggled at some point, or consistently, to get in the movement that we truly desire to have to get in the exercise and have the exercise habits to have the health and the body that we truly desire to have. But I'm here today to say that you are far from being alone and we can change this starting now. Today we're going to be talking to the world's foremost biomechanist expert on human movement and also one of the premier psychologist with a specialty in fitness, psychology, exercise psychology, so that we can peel back the layers of what's happening culturally, but also individually, and what is preventing us from doing the things we want to do when it comes to having the health that we want to have, the practices, the exercise that we desire to do. 

What is stopping us? What gets in our way so we can finally, definitively take control of our lives and our practices and feel empowered to get into the best shape of our lives. Now, one of our special guests, the biomechanist, is actually one of the most frequent guests on the Model Health Show. And for good reason. I love her. She's so smart and so insightful. And every time that I've talked with her, I've taken something away that I've applied to my life and changed my habits, the way that I'm living, and it's brought more fruitful results for me personally. She's someone who helped to recontextualize the concept of walking for me and spending time getting more movement into my parts, right? Just being able to put my body into different shapes and to get these different movement nutrients in. It's a great analogy that she uses because we can look at movement in terms of calories.

We can make that parallel. We can make that comparison. And not all calories are created equal, right? Movement inputs, there are certain things that we do. Even if you're sitting or laying down, there's still movement happening. There's still pressure on parts. There's certain parts of your body that are doing things they wouldn't be doing had you not been laying down or sitting down. And so there's still activity happening. But just like those high quality calories that provide far more than the caloric energy, that very vanilla way of looking at food, it can provide a wealth of life giving nutrients along with it. We can look at that in the same vein as the activity of walking, which the human body of all movements, of all forms of cold exercise that we can do. Walking is the fundamental thing that our genes expect from us.

We are literally built and born to walk. And my two guests are so about that life. They walked in the light California rain to get here, all right, they decided rather than jumping in a car service, they took a walk. Now they're not that far, okay, just to be clear. But, again, one of my special guests, Katy Bowman, is one of my greatest mentors, and she's about that life when it comes to walking. And also, ensuring that we're getting the right inputs to our respective parts. If you think about the activity of walking, it is literally from the ground up. It is the interaction of our feet with the ground that sets off this powerful information superhighway, this kinetic chain and all this activity and data exchange that starts with our feet.

Your foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, 19 muscles, and 107 ligaments. And each foot has over 200, 000 nerve endings, all there for collecting data to inform everything upstream. What's happening with your ankles, your knees, your back, all how to distribute forces to turn certain things on and to turn certain things off instantaneously. It's this powerful, synchronistic dance that's happening in our bodies when the intelligence of our feet interacting with the ground when it's actually there. But today, more than ever, we have so much physical dysfunction, dysfunctional movement. Often springing from dysfunctional feet. And so I am on a mission now to help us all to re habilitate our feet to get that information superhighway back online. 

And a big part of that is allowing our feet to be feet, spending more time with our feet, being able to interact with the ground directly. And also when we are out walking, it's a great opportunity for us to rehabilitate our feet by having shoes that are not throwing off our balance and our proprioception, by not having abnormal elevations and having individual toe boxes to really get that proprioception back line. In particular, being able to free the great toe. Yes, the great toe is AKA the big toe. A 2009 study titled the role of the great toe in balance performance put test subjects through various balance tests, including single leg balance tests, which is correlated.

This is one of the most remarkable tests for determining lifespan as far as a fitness functionality test is a single leg balance test. And I actually just had the author of the study reach out to me, an incredible physician and researcher in Brazil. This test is so powerful because it gives us a lot of data about what's happening, not just with our muscles and our bones, but also with our nervous system. But having test subjects do the single leg balance test with their toes constrained, like what would happen in a typical narrow shoe, versus when their toes were unconstrained, like when we're barefoot, with good toe splay, or in shoes that have individual toe boxes that also look good, and feel good. The researcher stated quote, our results indicate that constraining the great toe deteriorated the subject's single leg stance, performance, and worsened the directional control ability during forward and backward weight shifting unquote.

The translation is that we get physically dumber when our toes are constrained. I am not saying that you can't wear your favorite shoes, your favorite Jordans. Your favorite hocus, your favorite heels, whatever the case might be. Give your feet some rehab and prehab and spend some time walking in shoes that have a wide supple toe box so that your feet can actually splay naturally in individual toe boxes to help to get all of your digits back online and active again. There's 200, 000 nerve endings in your foot to get that data. And this is something that I've been doing for over a year before I decided to share and to talk about it because I wanted to really make sure that this is something that is viable for all of us that translates to better movement, better health, better functionality, and it truly, truly does. And I'm talking about the incredible shoes from Peluva. Go to peluva.com/model. That's P E L U V A. com/model and use the code model at checkout for 15 percent off.

They've got a wide variety of styles for everyone. And so these are the shoes that you'll regularly see me at. If you see me out walking. You see, my wife and I out walking, you're going to see that we have Peluvas on our feet most of the time. And also, these are great to train in, just to spend time, even if you're just hanging out around the house and you want to have some shoes on, just to get this rehabilitation and this data back online with the health of our foot. Which again, it is the starting point for this kinetic chain, this connection between the ground and our body, our brain and the world around us. It starts with the interaction with our feet. So I'm a huge, huge fan of the Peluva's. Head over to peluva.com/model and use the code model. This is very important. Use the code model at checkout for 15 percent off. And now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week. 

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled "the best health podcast. Full stop." By thisgameissocoolmyfeet. I adore Shawn and this podcast have been listening for years. It just doesn't get any better than this.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's what I'm talking about. Thank you so much for leaving that review over on Apple Podcasts. And I love the handle. You got feet in the handle. That was very appropriate and timely for our conversation today. And today's episode is with the incredible Katy Bowman and Dr. Diana Hill. 

Katy Bowman is a biomechanist, best selling author, and founder of Nutritious Movement. She's a world leading expert in the importance of a diverse movement diet. And she's been featured everywhere in major media, including the New York Times, NPR, The Today Show, and many other media outlets. Dr. Diana Hill is a clinical psychologist. She's a world renowned international trainer and world renowned expert in psychological flexibility, helping people to create fulfilling and impactful lives. She's a bestselling author with over 20 years of experience and co author of the new book, I Know I Should Exercise. But 44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them. Welcome. So good to see you both. Thank you for coming to hang out with us. 

KATY BOWMAN: Thanks for having us. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Traveling through the rain, literally walking through the rain, just to get here, right. 

KATY BOWMAN: It's on brand.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Walking your talk, literally. So one of the things I want to ask you about is. You're pointing to we're, we're, we're existing in a perfect storm of sedentary behavior, you know, the way that we really evolved as a species movement was required to survive, and we've automated so many things. But also we're kind of hardwired to not expend a lot of energy and so like these two things are meeting together and We don't know why we struggle to move. But you're kind of taking some of the pressure off and the guilt by pointing to like, this is a systemic culture wide issue that we're struggling with. Can you talk a little bit more about that? 

KATY BOWMAN: Well, I think it's really helpful for people to know that there's like a capacity to your willpower muscle, so to speak, and we're really trying to lean on this idea of willpower when maybe there's some changes that you can make to your environment a little bit that won't make you have to muster action all of the time. It can kind of make it where action is happening without you having to muscle through it as much. And then you want to talk to the psychology part of it? 

DR. DIANA HILL: Yeah. So it's both, right? So our environments are increasingly encouraging us to move less. I mean, five years ago I was reaching up and pulling the back of my car down and now I'm reaching up and using my big finger, you know, to push the thing and we don't, we don't notice it. It's just easier. And the psychology behind that is that, yes, it is, we always want to do what's easier, right? We want to preserve our energy, but there's more to it than that because there's also cultural influences in terms of messaging that we've been fed around movement and especially messaging around what constitutes exercise.

So I'm a, I'm from the Jane Fonda little body suit with the stripes generation where we did our 30 minutes of exercise and then we checked the box. And many of us have those outdated rules in our own head about what constitutes is exercise and we keep on believing them. We're inflexible with those rules and that's the human mind too. It tends to be quite inflexible. And then there's a lot of emotional stuff that's going on around our movement, right? So we don't want to be embarrassed. We don't want to stand out. Maybe we've had bad experiences as kids around movement. I mean a lot of us have shame experiences so these kind of like it's like a polypharmacy of things that contribute to us getting really stuck and not moving and what Katy and I tried to do is unpack that and look at it from both environmental but also a psychological perspective.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's what I love about it, you know, because you're looking at so much about what we do, especially when it comes to exercise and movement, it's driven by our thoughts, it's driven by our beliefs, you know, our psychology behind it. And so you're actually addressing the root cause or the root struggle versus like, you know, the, like, park further away, you know, just walk, right? And you're talking about why it works and how it works. Can you talk a little bit more about how movement has been pulled out of our daily lives. Like, what are some of the things that we used to do to move and get these movement inputs that we're not doing now? 

KATY BOWMAN: Well, I mean, we walked, you know, we walked here and it wasn't even a long walk. But I think that a lot of people won't take that half mile or mile walk. It's so easy to jump into a car to be able to go everywhere, and then it's also really easy to stay in your car now, like you have drive throughs, you know, first it used to be coffee, now it's banking. There's a lot of schools that don't allow you to get out of your car when you're picking up your kids. You have to stay in the car, in the line, you know, so the kid can get into the car, so like things like walking to and from school, just walking for transportation. I'm kind of, you know, dwindled and as Diana was saying, so many things are like rolling a window up and down, lowering a, closing a van door.

Oh, you know, I always talk about the key fob. I mean, even just the simple rotation of your wrist to get rid of sort of these mechanical ways of operating for a more digital version. And then of course, like the phone, I think the phone can be a movement disruptor in a couple of ways. One, it's so enticing that you will just sit and not move while you're on it. So, you know, instead of going to the movies, you know, which I think we all learned during COVID time, like just leaving your house is a certain amount of movement, even if you're going to go someplace else to sit at work. Getting up and getting dressed was, you know, a thousand steps by the time you were all done.

And so the more you, the more you get from something so small in a single place, you know, the less you're gonna move. And then also, you know, you can bring things now to you. That same technology that can entertain you in place can also have things delivered to you. I mean, you can even shop for a house. You can, you can shop for a mate. You know, really kind of by just swiping. It's that same, it's the same van closing finger press, is also bring your food right to you, bring a date right to you, and it's just a finger jab. It's a poke, you know, and that's, everything can be reduced to a digit motion. That's kind of a pretty big reduction.

SHAWN STEVENSON: My jaw was just hanging open because I didn't think about the, even finding a mate, like you don't have to necessarily go somewhere and like be involved and be in an environment. And the same thing with finding a home and you know, a big part of human movement was for the procurement of food. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? And now like literally you can get just about anything you can imagine delivered right to your door. And we're again hardwired to conserve energy because we needed to do that as a species to survive. And so you match those things together and we run into this situation we're in where exercise is now kind of relegated to we have to do this as a supplement. Right? And so with this being said we pretty much everybody knows that you know I need to exercise, you know, but it's a superficial thing. But there's a lot of reasons why we find ourselves struggling to do it in our modern environment and you guys are addressing 44 of these reasons in the book looking at the psychology behind it, but also solutions. And so we're gonna get into some of these specific reasons and I think they're gonna resonate with a lot of people but I would love to talk a little bit about fitness psychology and concepts like being psychologically flexible. Why are these important going into this. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Well psychological flexibility I think is probably the most important skill that we can have beyond fitness psychology, just in general. And then you can slap it onto pretty much anything. Psychological flexibility in your marriage, psychological flexibility in parenting, psychological flexibility in our careers. And what it is, is it's your capacity to stay open, engaged, and present and flexible as you pursue things that matter to you. So if It matters to me talking about the car drop off. A while back, I just decided I'm going to be the one parent that parks the car and looks like a moron and walks in to go get my kid.

And why would I want to do that? Sure, I'm getting more steps in but it has more to it than that. It has greeting my kid face to face instead of my kid getting in the back seat and we just continue on the way. It has seeing the other families that are coming to pick up. It's just a little bit of waiting time. I'd rather wait standing outside on the grass, right? So it connected to some of my values. And when you identify what your values are, and you start wanting to pursue them, which is central to psychological flexibility, what you will find is there's all sorts of obstacles in the way. There's your thoughts, there's your feelings, there's uncomfortable physical sensations, there's your identities, like, I'm this, I'm not that, I'm a runner, I'm not a runner, all the things.

And with fitness psychology, we have to look at how to overcome those obstacles. So that we can be the type of mover, lifelong mover we want to be. There's a lot of research. I mean this psychological flexibility has it's part of a act, acceptance of commitment, training or therapy. And there's over a thousand randomized controlled trials on it. There's, it's used with Olympic athletes. It's used in a lot of different settings. But that term itself is probably one of the most helpful things that we can develop. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Just being introduced to the, most of our lives we're not aware of the things that we're doing, the decisions that we're making. I resonate so much with that, getting out of the car, like, and I never thought about it before, but my wife would kind of talk shit about it, you know, because whenever I would pick up my son versus when she, she's gets into the car line, but I would always get out and walk in, but I, in my mind, it was being more efficient rather than sitting in the car line. I'm just going to get out and go get him. But there's all these other inputs that I'm attracted to that I value, right? Being able to be seen on campus, right? Like this parent is around, right? Also being able to see what he's doing, you know what I mean, just get a little quick peek, you know, what's going on, who is he hanging out with, what's he doing.

And being able to speak to people and, you know, of course, like, just getting out of the car and stretching my bones and that kind of stuff, but it was like such a loaded thing. And it's such a simple act for me, you know, from my perspective, and this involves, and to say that psychological flexibility is the most important, the most important. And it makes more sense to me now because that translates into so many areas of our lives because life is absolutely going to come at you in all kinds of different ways. And the ability to be flexible, I think, is going to be an ability for us to have more resilience, to sustain a certain temperament and positive disposition to keep going forward. I think a lot is going to come along. 

DR. DIANA HILL: So there was a meta analysis that was done with over 55, 000 studies looking at, this was Steve Hayes, he looked at pretty much all the research that he could possibly find on why people change. So therapy interventions. Every type of intervention you can think about. CBT and interpersonal therapy and DBT. So these different types of interventions. What is it that causes them to change when they, when they actually are successful at change? What are the mechanisms of action? And he found that psychological flexibility accounted for over and above. Social support, all sorts of things, about 50 percent of people's change. 

It's because when we can be more cognitively flexible, when we can be with difficult feelings, and we can keep our eye on the prize of the why, behind why we want to change, then we'll be more successful at it. And there's lots of different ways to do it. So in the book, Katy and I are tackling psychological flexibility in all sorts of ways. Katy does it with her nutritious movement. I mean, she was already doing it before we had a name for it, but it's probably the most, it's the best predictor of change in psychology research.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Powerful, powerful. Well, this leads into getting into some of these reasons. And I did a mini poll to kind of get a beat on in this community who, you know, a lot of people listening are already interested at least or dedicated in some capacity to movement and to exercise and to be just being better. And yet even the best of us struggle at different times. And I found that a lot of these different reasons we tend to have a lot of them together, sometimes all at once, and then sometimes at different times. And so I'd love to go through some of these reasons, again, there's 44. And so I think I know every person is gonna be able to identify themselves in this book and like that thing that holds them back, you know. 

And so I want to start we're gonna jump around a little bit. We're going to be psychologically flexible and I want to ask you guys about reason number eight. And again, we're talking about the reasons the title of the book is I know I should exercise but and there's 44 reasons why we don't move and how to get over them. And reason number eight is, in this category, you have certain broad categories and you dig in, but the broad category is I don't have enough time. And I know a lot of people can identify with that one right now, but specifically, I have too much work and too many family responsibilities. So how do we address this, this very common feeling that I don't have enough time? Work, family, it's just taking up my time, I just don't have the time to exercise.

KATY BOWMAN: I think we should start by talking about time affluence. Because I think that that's, blows people's minds. You wanna? 

DR. DIANA HILL: Well, time affluence is your perception of how much time you have. So there's the reality of the 24 hours we have in a day, but then there's our perception of time. And we've all had an experience of time going really quickly, right? Or time slowing way down, like when you're waiting for your prescription at CVS, right? It's like, this is taking forever, right? Or the DMV, right? And what, what the research on time affluence shows is that when we do meaningful activities, We feel like we have more time when we're more generous. There's actually research on that when we give more We feel like we have more time and when we are moving our bodies. So Cassie Holmes. Who's at UCLA, she prescribes it to her students to exercise 30 minutes a day if you feel like you don't have enough time. And people will it depend you need to do it meaningfully, right if you are engaging in a walk, as we were walking over here, we were late, we were actually five minutes late to this interview. And we chose to walk, and I will probably remember that walk more than I will remember the two hour drive I took to get here.

And it was probably a 10 minute walk, right? It was a more meaningful experience, actually kind of extended my time, whereas the two hour driving just kind of, I'll probably never, I won't remember that 20 years from now. I'll remember walking with Katy. That has a big impact on our perception of time. So given that, if you feel like you don't have enough time, then it's best to slow down and use your time in a meaningful way. And you may actually end up feeling you have more time, especially if you're moving and moving in ways that are values aligned.

KATY BOWMAN: So then let's talk about is our family keeping us from moving or is our occupation keeping us from moving? So my, the way that I like to work on psychological flexibility is what are some ways you can move within that domain of your occupation and within that domain of parenting time. So we'll just keep going with the picking up your kids example. Like what if you parked a little bit farther away and actually walked your kid back to your car. So now you're accomplishing that task of picking up your kid. You know you're going to have to debrief with the kid at some point in the day. Talk about like, is there homework that needs to be done?

You've got practice that we've got to go, you know, you kind of do these discussions and a lot of times you're trying to do it when they're doing something else. You're both doing something else and it's more hurried and maybe everyone's not paying attention. But if you can pair it with that pickup, then you're accomplishing multiple things at the same time. It's a, it's a, something that I call stacking, stacking your life where you're adding a layer of movement in, you're moving your bodies because you're getting back to your car, but you're also accomplishing other more or less enjoyable parenting tasks that still need to be done. And in that way you are adding movement into your, into your day.

So that requires flexibility in a couple ways. One, that maybe you have to shift around your schedule a little bit, where I only have 20 minutes to pick you up, because then we got to get home, and then we got to do this, and then we'll discuss later on. Maybe you figure out how to adjust that time that you are going to spend after you are done picking up and extend the period of time in which you have to do pick up, giving yourself an extra 20 minutes for that period of time, knowing that you won't need time later on. You also have to be flexible where maybe you were thinking you needed your exercise to look a certain way that day. I have to do this type of exercise and you weren't going to count. 40 minute walk or a 20 minute walk with your kid towards the kind of exercise. So that's the way I like to apply this idea of flexibility is you're going to have to, you're going to have to shift some mindset a little bit and you can do that same thing for work as well.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Does this tie in with the either or mentality when it comes to, you know, I don't have enough time. 

DR. DIANA HILL: We have either or both and so what was what Katy and I came to at the end of this. That we have these, these thoughts. that are quite rigid, right? So either I go to the gym or I'm not going to exercise today, right? And there's a, there's a way in which our mind just wants to make things dichotomous. It doesn't like the ambiguity of holding a paradox. And most things are paradoxical. They're not dichotomous. Most things are a both and. situation, right? So even just, you know, for example, walking over here with Katy, we got, we were a little bit late.

My mind could say either I'm either we should drive or and be on time or we should walk, right? We can both walk and be a little bit late and do Shawn's podcast. And then we add on the, and so what if we're late, what's going to happen? What's more important to us that's where the "so what" comes in because we get tripped up in our mind by believing the rule the either or rule and if we add the so what and you actually just land on and that was Katy's edition. That's so what if we land on the so what with so many things we realize that wow I'm keeping myself in a box and I didn't even know that box was there until I added a so what right?

I'm late for my exercise class. So what? What happens if you walk in a little bit late if you know, or if I have to leave a little early, or so what if I haven't done this before? And I'm new to it, and I look a little bit like I'm new to it. What I find that a lot of folks, when they're trying new things, they feel so embarrassed about trying new things. But most people experience them not as embarrassing. They're like, wow, you're trying a new thing. It's actually quite, motivating for those of us that are, that are watching you as a beginner, you know, trying something new. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And I also just want to circle back. I love the awareness of time affluence because all of us can identify with time moving faster, moving slower, and I've been thinking about, funny enough, I've been thinking about this a lot lately because it seems like my days have been zipping past recently. And I literally just stopped the other day, and I was, I actually went and took a break and went for a walk, and I'm just like, I literally wrote books, multiple books in the same amount of time that I have right now, and I felt like I had so much time, so much time writing these books. 

And it's just the structure of my life is different right now, and I'm doing a lot of different items, and so it has me feeling like time is moving faster, but in actuality it's just my, my experience of time right now, and I can change that just with my awareness. And so a lot of us, we use time as our excuse. It's our reason to not move because we don't have it. And it's just shifting around, not literally per se, like physically shifting around things, but like, making a shift mentally, you know, having more psychological flexibility with our perspective about time is what I'm hearing is going to help us to reveal that time that already exists.

DR. DIANA HILL: Yeah, you could try out the both and with that. I don't have enough time and? What are you going to do even if you don't have enough time? Because none of us feel like we have enough time. The thing about time, what's interesting about time is that things are being added to our task list as we're checking them off. So if you're trying to get through your task list, it's going to be a never ending carousel of things coming on. And the faster you go, the less time you will feel. I don't think you're alone in that, Shawn. I think a lot of us are experiencing that because there is a speed up of everything. Because we're getting used to things being faster.

Right? So there's a little bit of, you need to be a little counterculture to go slow when everything is going so fast. But you may experience life differently that way. You may see more things. You see more things when you're walking somewhere than when you're driving somewhere. Right? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Got a little Neo in you. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm hmm. There is no spoon.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mmm. Oh, I say that all the time! I say it all the time. 

KATY BOWMAN: It's because, you know, we're connected. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: We're connect. Alright. In the same vein of I don't have enough time, another one, another reason we get is that I'm burned out. 

KATY BOWMAN: I feel that. Yeah. It's really, I mean, I, I'm, want to talk about movement so much all the time, not just the psychology, but I think attentionally we're burnt out. You know, we can, we can look at all this. I mean, certainly there's people who are physically burnt out. They, they've been physical all day long. So setting that aside, many of us who too, feel too physically tired to do exercise are attentionally fatigued. Or, you know, you've focused so intently on what you're doing, and also, because we're doing so many things, you're switching between what you're doing all the time, and so I think there's literal time being lost. Every time you switch tasks, and that's kind of Cal Newport's work. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Switching costs. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah, that, that cost of switching tasks, so multitasking. There's a liability to it in terms of one, how fast it feels that it goes by, but also there's kind of wasted time if you're not maybe organizing what you're going to do in a way that allows you to stay kind of in a more of a flow state. So, when we're burnt out, I'll just talk to the movement motivation, it's really hard to be motivated to move because you feel so physically spent, but you can, you know, logically see that you haven't, spent yourself physically, but the way you feel is markedly the same as being physically exhausted. So in that case, when people are burnt out, I like to suggest things like, what's, what's a way of moving that feels low energy to you, that you could start with?

You know, maybe it's not, it's also a either or. If you're like, I have to go to the gym for exercise, that feels so high energy when you feel so low energy, maybe picking something that's more of a low energy version. Like I'm just going to get on the floor and do some stretches here for a second. Or I'm just going to go for a walk. I'm not going to get myself to the gym or whatever else you imagine doing, but I'm just going to go take an easy going walk. And what happens is you can do sort of light, very light to light activity and it gives you energy, and it's one of those paradoxes where it feels like it can only take more, but it's opposite.

It's pretty revitalizing, and then once you're on that trajectory of having more energy from doing lower, maybe intensities of movement. I don't mean physical activity, but picking something that would feel enjoyable to you to do. You might find that you have more energy to eventually do that bigger thing or maybe you're just going to get a lot of lighter activity and you're not going to just sit still and do nothing because those aren't your only two options.

SHAWN STEVENSON: This reminds me of the concept of, you know, flossing one tooth, you know what I mean? Like it just like you start the process, you're like, I might as well, but this one I can really identify with from, you know, having a rough year as we talked about. And you know, I've gone to the gym less this past year than I have in two years. You know, 25 years or, you know, something like that. And I love it. I love the gym. The gym loves me. But just all that I was going through and carrying, I just found myself. But what I did was I gave myself permission to just do what feels good. And so I spent a lot of time just going outside and walking. Or, I love my rope flow, which I don't know, do you know about the rope flow? 

KATY BOWMAN: I love rope flow. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I brought it, you know, just in case, you know, if you were, I knew you'd be into it. But just going out in my backyard and just doing some rope flow or, you know, sometimes I felt like, okay, I'm not going to go to the gym, but I'm just going to go out and do as many pull ups as I can. I feel like that. Let me go grab this pull up bar, you know, so I gave myself permission and am I the fittest I've ever been? No, but I'm still a problem. 

All right, I'm still a presence, you know, but I just. I gave myself permission. It was tough because I was being a little hard on myself. I gave myself permission to just do something and I wanted to be outside And I want more people to give themselves permission to you know, especially again if you're feeling burnt out. So do you have any other input?

DR. DIANA HILL: Well, I think you're alluding to the psychological skill of self compassion which is for most of us when we're struggling we aren't the best inspirational coach to ourselves. If you were to climb inside someone's head and listen, like kind of listen with a voice recorder of what people say to themselves when they're struggling, especially when they're burned out. They blame themselves and what we know about burnout is that it's actually more a systemic issue than an individual issue. There's plenty of research on that. People are burned out in part because there's too much workload and not enough resources to the workload. Or they're in environments that are toxic or they're going through a life transition that it's just too much to carry for them as an individual to carry, right? 

And we blame ourselves for it. And then we compare ourselves to when we went to the gym for an hour and a half and how many pull ups I used to do. And if you were to, if you were to think about somebody that's struggling and going through all that and tell them, well, you used to do, you know, 15 pull ups and now you're not doing any pull ups. All you're doing is walking outside. Do you think it's going to increase or decrease their motivation to get to do, you know, to get out and walk? So the practice of self compassion is woven through all of our work. It's an additional practice to psychological flexibility and it has just as much research as psychological flexibility and that what's interesting about self compassion is that it's different than pity.

It's not pitying yourself. You're encouraging yourself, but you're using a kind tone. You're using a like a like the best parent that you could imagine or your favorite coach that was like so helpful to you as a kid using that tone you're using those words. And you are actually encouraging yourself to work hard because you know that it's good for you, but you're adjusting. You're asking what you need, what you enjoy, like Katy was saying, and it sounds like you're already doing that, Shawn. So you naturally, probably a lot of work, have gotten to that, and that's why you're still moving even though you've had a hard year. Yeah. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now, you know, since, you know, again, I've been sharing some stuff on social media, I was kind of hiding out. But since then, the last month, I've been at the gym like all the time, you know, like I feel like myself. You know, and as far as that's concerned, but I didn't want to get back to, and I think that that's another thing I hear a lot is I want to get back to, I want to get back to, and I had this revelation. I don't want to go back. I want to be better. I want to be better, you know, than I've ever been before.

And it might be different, right? It might not be again, like I'm carrying, you know, 30 extra pounds of muscle, it might be, you know, I'm faster or have, you know, better agility than I've ever had, you know, whatever the case might be. And just trying to find, um, the opportunity. And, another one of these, by the way, and I know so many people can agree with this or resonate with this one, is, this was reason five in the book, I'm great at starting exercise programs, but I can't seem to stick to them. And I know there's some people that have their antennas going up right now, like that's me. Like I'm great at starting stuff, but you know, I "fall off". Can you talk a little bit about that one? 

KATY BOWMAN: Well, I think a lot of times we will embrace something like we'll even reach out for like a 30 day challenge, you know, I'll do something for this fit time, but like it already has an end date on it. You know, and like, so spoiler alert, like you're not, you're, you're connecting maybe more to almost the shortness of it. You're motivated by the shortness of it, the ending of it without necessarily recognizing that before, like, that as you were even getting started, you're already, you already see the end in sight. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Yeah. One of the places that I, we start with folks around is around values. And there's a difference between, I think 30 day plans are fun. I can, I can get on that motivation train of all sorts of things and there's a little dopamine boost. You feel energized by it. When that goes away. There's some other things that are still there about the reasons why you wanted to do the 30 day plan in the first place. So when you were talking about agility and being a little faster, if you were my client, I wouldn't let you end at that. I'd want to know why do you want to be a little faster. What is it about that for you? Because your reason for being a little faster at the gym may be different than mine. And there may be, so why do you want to be a little faster? 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh, I'm getting interviewed. I like that. Yeah. A couple of reasons. Just a part of it is I love to compete, you know, and like competing, playing basketball with my son, for example. And now he's really good. And so just being able to. And he's very fast, you know, just being able to compete and not, for me, it's not about the competition. It's about giving him a challenge and helping him with things so that he can be better against other people. So it's like part of it is for my own confidence, but a big part of it is service, you know, and love for my son.

DR. DIANA HILL: Okay. So if you, you put those two in front of you. You put, I want to be a little faster, like on a, on a piece of paper in front of you. And I'm going to give you a 30 day plan to be a little faster. Or if you put in front of you, I care about service and being there for my son, which is a bigger motivator for you? I mean, that, the, the service and being there for your son is like, that's going to be there forever, you know? And, and, and, and it could show up in lots of different ways. It could show up by being a little faster so that you can play with him. But when you're 90, he's still, he's going to be faster than you. You know, at some point he's going to. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You say?

DR. DIANA HILL: I don't know, maybe not, maybe not, maybe you'll still, you know, you're taking a lot of precautions, but it, If you dig into the deeper reason why, like the heart one, that like, ooh, that one feels a little bit meatier for you, then it lasts longer than the 30 day plan for you. And if you can bring it up close, you can remind yourself of that, it also can help you overcome the, all the things that are getting away, in the way mentally to do that bit of getting a little faster. There's lots of physical discomfort. There's probably thoughts that you have when you're on whatever sprinting that could get in the way. And the values are more sustainable long term. So we do a lot of work around values in the book because it's such a important foundation of psychological flexibility. 

KATY BOWMAN: And motivation. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Motivation. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's like, what are you motivated by? And, and I think also we don't recognize that our motivations change over time. What motivated you when you were 30 is going to be different than what motivates you when you're 40. Or what motivates you when you're dealing with grief, or when you're dealing with injury. So, I, we have to stay flexible around our movement wise. I think that's really helpful for people who have a hard time sticking with it, is maybe you didn't, you didn't have a north before you started.

So definitely, I have found personally from just working with Diana, knowing my movement wise are really helpful because I just, what do we say recently, like you're drafting behind them a little bit and without them you're sort of swimming around in all these different directions, not necessarily in the direction you wanted. 

DR. DIANA HILL: And it's different than, I mean, we, we see values all over the place. Like every mission statement has values on them. And it's different than like what you would write down and hang up on the break room wall we're talking about. I once did a workshop with a group of CEOs and I was going in to do this values workshop and they had their journals with their values printed on them. And they're like, we already have our values. I'm not as much interested in that, like the word that you associate with the value. I'm interested in the way it's reflected in your day to day life. 

And do you feel moment to moment clarity around what's most important to you, what your values are, how you want to show up, the verbs and adverbs of how you are being and where are you in relationship to that? Because every moment's a choice point to either move towards or away. And what's great about that is that there'll be another choice point. So if we had decided to drive here, we would have another choice point to move our bodies and it It's forever. So that's what's nice about values is they're they're dynamic. They're changing. They're active. 

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

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SHAWN STEVENSON: This ties in really well to, and you kick off the book with this, as far as the specific reasons. I don't care that exercise is good for me. I just don't want to do it. You know, and that is again, some people are going to resonate with that. I just don't care. I don't want to. And part of this was you got me and I, and I kind of quiz myself on this, but you mapped out some of the things that as far as like my disposition and my values. Right? And values, this proposition about understanding our values is embedded here throughout the book. Because that is that underlying thing.

When you mentioned even about my son, if the conditions change, my value is going to help me to be flexible and to change my approach with something to keep on finding a way to be there for him. And so, there are a bunch of different things that you guys listed out. One of them was as far as volumes, like what values, what do I resonate with? There's like adventure, right? So like embracing opportunities for new experiences, there's collaboration, there's compassion, there's body awareness, nature connection, equity, playfulness, many other options. But I identified my three that jumped out. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yay!. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: And the first one was compassion, demonstrating empathy and actively working to alleviate suffering in oneself and others. So that value really does, if I'm being honest, because I try to switch it, I try to consciously switch to like, I'm going to love me. Like this is my era, not my soft era, but like my, my era, right? But it doesn't motivate me as much as being my best so that I can be there to support and uplift and provide a model for others. And so that compassion is a big driver. Playfulness was another big driver for me. Engaging in activities that bring joy, fun, and rejuvenation. I love to play. If I'm just being honest, I like it. And then the last one was integrity. Living with honesty and staying true to your principles. That one, yeah.

This is like, I have to be this. I have to be this. And so, taking my values and consciously putting them into my movement practices and what I'm choosing to do is just like it unlocks. And it's not an accident I read this book and then like the last month I've been at the gym more, you know And I feel like quote more like myself. And it's like this stuff really does work but it's like being able to have that self assessment to go within and to think about these things. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah, we just taught a workshop to help people find their values, because for me, maybe not for you, because you live in that psychological space, but I'm just a regular person, like I'm not a psychological expert. It was hard. I understood the concept of values, but I didn't know what my words were. I needed actually to take the time to identify them, and I think once you do that, it's really helpful to then align them to movement, whether you bring movement to the values or the values to movement, which is an interesting distinction.

But yeah, going through that process and it was interesting to hear everyone bring up there and people were bringing up values like organization. I've, they would say like, I really value organization, but I can't see how to influence my, how this influences my movement or how my movement influences this. So to bring up examples like well, then is movement on your calendar somewhere? You know, you organize your time, or what about space in your home? Can you organize your home in some way where it's supportive of movement? So once you have those words for yourself, it becomes, I think, much easier. 

DR. DIANA HILL: It's a fuel that can, that drives your behavior. So if you, if you really value compassion, you could think about, okay, When I, when I go to the gym, do I come home and I'm, am I more compassionate? Does my movement help me be more compassionate? I, for me, for sure. If I go for a run, I'm a much more compassionate mom than before my run, right? But then the next part of it is, okay, then how could I bring compassion to the gym?

Am I lifting in a way that's compassionate? And maybe things like, am I wiping down my sweaty spot for the next person that's coming? Or am I making this place an inclusive place where all bodies are welcome at my gym? And that would be a way to bring compassion to the gym. So that's the beautiful thing about movement and values is that you can, when you were talking about bringing your values to movement or your movement to your values, is that when you start to frame it that way, it's much richer. I mean, that's a richer experience than just going in the gym, clocking in, clocking out. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You've mentioned this a couple of times about the environment and being more supportive. And just to circle back, like put a little, you know, period on the sentence of what I went through this past year and something that really helped me was I had these tools in my environment that were attractive for me at that time. So. I had gotten, and this is, again, this is just an example. This could be as simple as a rope, right? But I had gotten a sled. And so, again, I just felt like, let me just go outside and push this sled a little bit. And just, it's kind of like that first domino, right? And the first, you know, floss in the one tooth.

I do, do that. Very challenging, you know, but I just, it like turns stuff on. It's like, I'll go ahead and do some lunges. I'll go ahead and do some Bulgarian split squats. The next thing you know, like I've had an incredible workout and so what can we do to create an environment where things are attractive? It does not mean that everybody needs to get a sled. But having that rope for the rope flow, the flow, flow rope and just literally leaving it sitting out though. 

KATY BOWMAN: Absolutely. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: All right. Because. I've, I've got a chair and that my wife doesn't necessarily like, right in the living room and I just, I'll leave it right there versus if it's in the drawer tucked away, I don't, I literally don't touch it as much. If I see it and I walk by it, I tend to pick it up like five, ten times, you know, more likelihood of, of using it. 

KATY BOWMAN: Absolutely. Well, you mentioned playfulness. I have teenagers now and a value that I have is connect, connecting with them, not in, and in a, in a fun way, not in the way that sometimes I have to connect with them. I put a mini rebounder, a little mini trampoline in our living room. Right out in the middle of the living room. Your wife would probably also not like our living room. But, but everyone's just on it, and jumping all the time. We have difficult conversations, going through to do lists, and everyone's just bouncing away.

So, that's just a very simple addition. So for if play or fun or just physical activity for your family is something that you're trying to do, that's like a simple modification. But absolutely out where you don't have to have that willpower muscle that we talked about earlier to go find it because you want to do some exercise. You know, it's just a casual interaction that launches you. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Which requires psychological flexibility. So, sports equipment on my lawn. I've got like a big, you know, net and then there's like baseballs and there's basketballs and there's shoes everywhere and it's a mess. And I, as a mom, want it cleaned up. But if I clean it up, then I'm missing out on that opportunity for my kids to, like, just in the morning, they'll walk by, they'll pick up and they'll do a few hits and then they'll go get in the car. Right? So it's out there and it's ugly and I'm willing to have it be ugly because I know it's my kids moving and my kids moving.

It gets priority over the ugliness of my lawn and you know, and then everyone people come over I tell them to clean it up or once in a while. But it's actually people come over and they want to play with it, too. So, you know as a psychologist I'm, my office space a podcast office space. I sit on the floor from my podcast, I'm on a little cushion. So now I'm using my body instead of right, you know, leaning back I have a ball that I sit on. I do the first I always offer my clients to go walking. We open the beginning of a session as therapy. You're just kind of chatting a little bit. We walk down my little lane. We walk back and then we sit down or sometimes I do the whole session walking and it requires us to get out of these confines, I mean Katy's so good about talking about everything from our shoes to our physical spaces that keep us stuck, but our mental spaces keep us stuck too.

So we have to break those rules and be the one. Be the one that's doing it, and other people will join in and then it'll feel better. That, that activation energy, yes, a lot of people talk about evolution and the brain and how it's more sedentary, but the brain is also designed to move. And there's also some evolutionarily. If you were moving in the wild, you were moving for a reason. And so your brain gives you feedback, keep moving. If you were running in the wild, you were running for a reason. So your brain fills you up with all sorts of neurohormones that tell you, keep moving, this feels good, this is important, keep doing it. So if you can get over that activation energy with psychological flexibility, then your body will take over and it will reinforce you. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love this. Now, you didn't know what I was going to go to next, but it involves, it's a good transition. I love segways, which is being concerned about what other people think, right? So having your yard look a little different or your living room, right? And in all fairness to my wife, by the way, she's letting me do some pretty crazy stuff. Like looking back, like I can't believe she let me do that. But we used to have a yoga swing in our living room in a smaller house when we first got married. And I found out about this, you know, this thing, and I literally, we didn't have anywhere to put it. And so it's in our, when people walk in the house, and they're just like, People that, you know, they come over, they're like, what are you guys into? Like, this looks crazy, right? But then, all these grown ass people want to play on it.

KATY BOWMAN: That's right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know? But, you know, that, that piece. But also, it's just like, we need to keep things out of the way. We don't want, you know, to, to have any kind of intrusive things. Your house is supposed to look a certain way. Your yard is supposed to look a certain way. You know, we've got all these manicured lawns, you know, in, in our neighborhood, we could be using that space to grow food, you know, like, it's just like it's, but we're doing what is socially acceptable. 

KATY BOWMAN: Sure. Or, or not even like what you have, like what you're doing. I, I go to a lot of sports, a lot of soccer games, and I'm standing around, you know, watching all the soccer. I'm like, this would be a really great 90 minute movement session. If I can feel comfortable being the only person doing some lunges here right now, or walking around the field and, and watching from that position as opposed to sitting in a chair or standing. 

And so I've tried to give myself permission to do that. I'll bring my, my flow rope and watch. And then I noticed that other people start to come over and do it with me, or I'll invite people to do it. And then if you can, you know, be the change, so to speak, it gives permission to a lot of other people to do it as well. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, it's something as simple as that, which is like at those soccer games, which I've been to a lot or baseball, you know, some of the, they got the most immaculate chairs with the cupholders freaking, you know, umbrella. 

KATY BOWMAN: Tents, now for rain. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, remote control, whatever. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Got the snacks.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You know, all the snacks are crazy, you know what I mean? And I'm just, you know, standing there and also, you know, you're dealing with different climates and things like that is just for me mentally, it's an opportunity, but in to lean more into this is one of these reasons. I'm too embarrassed. I'm too embarrassed. And this is something that many people are experiencing right now of, you know, reasons why they're not exercising or going, "going to the gym". And specifically, I want to ask you guys about this. I'm too embarrassed. I'm ashamed of my body. Let's talk about this one.

KATY BOWMAN: Well, this is where the so, so what comes from down the road, but I think that you should probably address some of the psychology first. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Yeah, I almost went to so what first. But that's a dangerous move to go to quickly. You don't want to say so what, you know. But if you can, if you can get there, that's great. Certainly body image is a huge reason why we don't move. And it's this vicious cycle, right? Because what we know about movement is that whatever size you are at, moving your body improves your body image. Without having to change anything about your body. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Right, that is a fact. 

DR. DIANA HILL: So just a bout of movement will make you feel more embodied. Maybe you relate to your body in a different way. The nature of movement, especially if you have a focus on the function, not just the form, and you start to appreciate, wow, my body, the things it can do, that's another way of relating to our body differently. This is one of those ones that's a lot of contextual factors that are contributing to this, and so blaming the individual for their negative body images.

It's ridiculous. So there's just. I have a history of anorexia and bulimia and a long, and I used to run a treatment center for eating disorders and, um, you know, initially what the treatment approach for some of these eating disorders was, was to restrict movement. Have people not move and then people that were in larger bodies force them to move. So it's the same like model of movement as punishment. But if we could start to switch it to movement as the kindest thing that you could do for yourself, and then how could you both find inclusive places where. And there's messaging out there, like things like yoga is, is very much a, people don't want to go do it because it's all thin people with lots of mirrors, right?

Can you find, can you like do a little search? And look, use words like inclusive in your, your search on Google for gyms or yoga, but we could start online. We can start with friends and then we slowly expand our zone of flexibility into places where practice a little bit with being embarrassed. I love to tell clients what happens when you're embarrassed? You start to feel embarrassed and then your cheeks kind of get a little pink and your heart races and then it gets really, really, really, really embarrassing. And then you have a moment of like, Oh my gosh, you want to die of embarrassment. And no one's ever died of embarrassment, but a lot of people have died of the things that maybe they didn't do. 

Or they die with a lot of regrets about the things that they didn't do. So we, we all could do, we could be more embarrassing. I mean parents of teenagers. This is just my, I'm just embarrassing human being to be around. 

KATY BOWMAN: Just existing. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Just existing, breathing. So I'm kind of more comfortable with embarrassment as I age and it's a good thing to get you know comfortable with and be part of challenging, you know, that it's really a systemic issue. I mean body image is a systemic thing. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So are there any practical things? So again, like if someone is they, they want to exercise but they're too embarrassed because they don't feel comfortable in their own skin to go to the gym that's, you know, by their house that they've been wanting to go to. Is there anything practical they can do?

KATY BOWMAN: Well, I think you would have to identify what it is, you know, are you embarrassed because you won't know what's going on? Are you embarrassed because we added like jiggle, my body's gonna jiggle. So we made a whole list of things to do to start jiggling your body like get used to that feeling. Do it in front of a mirror, maybe you need to normalize some of those feelings and those movements to yourself. It's not even about necessarily other people. It's that you don't feel comfortable first. So getting more comfortable in your own skin, you know, inside your own home. If it's, if you're embarrassed, cause you will be the worst person there.

I think that's a big one. I'm going to be the least coordinated person there. Everyone else's big stories, right? About what it's going to be like. How do you step into the gym just a little bit? Go, go for one class, stay for just a little bit, take a tour, bring someone with you. You know, these are practical ways, hi, ask, ask, I mean, I, I'm a big person. I'm, I'm really big on communicating what the problem is, going, I would love to come to this school. space, but I'm so nervous because I, everyone else is going to. I worked in gyms for years and people would say, everyone else is going to know, I don't know what I'm doing here. 

And I'll be like, Oh, I'll, I'll show you, like, I'll take you around for the first time, you know, and there's compassionate people who work in health and wellness. I think sometimes when you are not in that. space often, the feeling is, is everyone else has already got it together and are extremely judgmental. But it's just people, people who love fitness and love the gym. And of course they want you to come and have a good time here. So you just need to find those people and maybe be a little vulnerable, say what you're afraid of and see what comes back and what, how that can be accommodated.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, I love that practical solution of peopling, you know, using people. You know, taking advantage of your relationships. You know, because it's pretty automatic that you have more comfort when you're with somebody that you're comfortable with, you know. 

DR. DIANA HILL: And there's a, there's a practice, there's a Buddhist practice called just like me. And in the practice, what you do is you, you kind of just go down the street and you look at people and you say, just like me, just like me, this person's embarrassed about something. Just like me, this person's suffering around something. Just like me, this person's afraid of something. Just like me, this person has something they worry about at night.

Everybody is embarrassed of something. And when we see that, this is sort of the common, this is a practice of self compassion, the common humanity around embarrassment. It's a, it's also a built in evolutionary very social emotion. We are embarrassed to keep us in line and part of the group. But if we remember, just like me, They're embarrassed too, then all of a sudden we're part of the group. There's things that they are embarrassed of. that are so easy for you. And there's things that you're embarrassed of that are so easy for them. And that's okay, you know, just like me. It's, I see self compassion is probably the, the, the key intervention for embarrassment in con, combination with what, Katy's like a armchair psychologist.

She should get like the honorary degree in psychology because she already does all of it. What she was talking about with jiggling is a psychological principle called exposure, which is where you expose yourself to the feared thing. And you start small, and then you do gradual exposure, and you get better and better and better at being with that feared thing. So, start small with your embarrassment, do embarrassing things on purpose, and embarrassment will be part of your repertoire. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Mmm, wow. Like a muscle. I want to ask you a little bit more about this particular one. I'm Too Embarrassed. Again, this is one of the subsections. And another one of them really stuck out is I want to go walking with friends, but I'm too out of shape, right? And so there's this idea that we can have that I want to do the thing, but I need to get good enough first, right? I want to, I want to, you know, play basketball with my, you know, with my friends. They get together and play basketball. But I'm not good enough yet.

So let me practice, which usually doesn't happen, right? We delay the thing, and same thing, you know, going for a hike. Like, I'm not in shape enough to go for this hike with my friends, even though it's just a very casual thing that they do every Sunday they invite me to, but I want to get good enough first. Let's talk about that one. 

KATY BOWMAN: I love this question. These are all real submissions from people and I have a lot of friends of a wide variety of fitness levels, we'll say, just like everyone else, right? Doesn't everyone have a wide range of friends? And so the idea that friend time is always exactly the same as far as, you know, how fast everyone is going. It's like, well, maybe there are friends who go your speed right now, or maybe your friends will go your speed if you just ask them, you know. That's another one of those reaching out to say, and I actually had a friend who sent me this text. He's like, I would love to get together and move and she sends a group text to all of all of her friends.

But I have been recovering from this whatever, illness, life situation. So I can't go really fast, but I feel like I could go a few miles or whatever it was, put some parameters around it and like, boop, boop, boop. Messages coming in. I'd love to do that with you. Let me know, let me know when. And so I think it's again about not keeping everything inside of ourselves and making a lot of assumptions about how everyone else is going to behave or what they're thinking.

And just sort of communicating a little bit. You can start with, you know, your close friends or you could do something a little bit more, more broad where you're putting up a message on a, you know, a Facebook page or in another community, your school community or your church community, and say, I would love to get better at hiking, but my capacity is this right now. Does anyone have a similar capacity who would like to get together? And, and leaning on that, a community also so important, I would say, for movement habits is like others. 

DR. DIANA HILL: I love how all of it translates to life, right? Because the, I want to go walking with my friend, but I'm out of shape could translate to, I want to go to my, you know, out to dinner with my friend, but, you know, I lost my job. I'm embarrassed of that. I don't want, you know, I'm the only one that's not working right now. Or I'm the only one that is, you know, not in school or with all the things that we feel like we're different or separate. And what Katy's talking about there is when you acknowledge that and you say it out loud. You, you get people actually wanting to come towards you. 

People, we have lots of drives, human drives. We have the drive, sure, to run away from scary things. And we have the drive to seek out resources. Those are the two prominent ones that are emotion systems that are actually hyper stimulated in our current environment, the threat system and the drive system. But we have a third system, which is our drive to bond, to tend and befriend. So when you go on that walk and you say to your friend, I'm kind of, you know, I haven't walked in a long time, I'm kind of out of shape. You're just, you're just going to push on their compassion button and they're naturally going to want to be helpful to you.

And then they may share something with you. And then all of a sudden we're going on a walk, but it's about more than the walk. We're actually connecting around some more vulnerable stuff. And then it becomes that meaningful walk and it's good use of your time. You have time affluence because you're having meaningful connection.

KATY BOWMAN: And I think also sometimes you are actually more capable of taking this walk that you perceived as extra hard. But when you get with friends, it's a little easier, right? You're enjoying yourself a little bit more. And one other practical thing is, you can also just go a little bit. You know, that's the, that's the flight, again, that psychological approach is, maybe you don't do the whole hike. Maybe you don't do the whole walk. I'd love to come and join you for the first 20 minutes and then I'm going to turn back around. That's what I can do right now. Instead of thinking either or. I can either do it with my friends in exactly this way or I can't do it at all. Find a portion of it you can do. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's great advice. I want to go one more in this category of I'm too embarrassed. 

KATY BOWMAN: I love this category. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Because again, it really, a lot of, a lot of us feel this a lot. And this one is. I keep comparing myself to people in my exercise class and that comparison it is, I, I, I believe it is a natural human tendency.. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Sure. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: to compare ourselves. And I also know that we can absolutely jump in and take the steering wheel on it. And today more than ever, it is like hammered into our, our brains that matter of fact, and this is going to be a good segue to the next thing too. But we're exposed to so many things to compare ourselves to, so many people. We used to have like a tribe, you know, maybe according to the data, you know, 100, 150 people we might compare ourselves to in some aspect. 

Now it's thousands, thousands and thousands of people. It's just very abnormal. It's so much pressure for the human brain to handle. I love the, the sentiment that comparison is a thief of joy, of course, but how do we handle this? You know, I'm too, too embarrassed. I'm in that yoga class and I'm comparing myself to other people and I know I should exercise. But I, I don't want to because I compare myself. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Well I wouldn't say comparison's all bad. So there's a, there's a swing towards we shouldn't compare ourselves, stop comparing yourself. Sometimes comparison can be a really useful tool to get yourself moving forward in something. 

You know, because it could be motivating, but it would, it has that quality of judgment associated with it that is problematic. So comparison again is another one of those evolutionary psychologically beneficial things, for the most part, until we add negative judgment. 

And one of the things that I do when I, so I've been taking yoga for 20 years, I would, I actually dropped out of graduate school and went to a yoga ashram thinking I was going to be a yoga teacher and then went back to graduate school. And, with my own history, reclaiming my relationship with movement was, it was a rough one. Like it was, you know, going back into it and how do I do it in a way that isn't about. Being on the Stairmaster looking at the 470 calories burned or the person next to me that's thinner than me or whatever, whatever than me. So I started practicing and learning about attentional flexibility and the power of attentional flexibility.

So you could pay attention to the other person and their form and how they're looking and compare it with negative judgment to how you're, how you're moving. You could also, we just had a podcast with Kelly McGonigal, who's an incredible psychologist and she wrote The Joy of Movement. And we talked about what about, what if you were to. Move your attention, zoom it way out and look at the whole room moving as sort of like little cells of a body and see, you know, if you're in a yoga class, you could see the whole synchronized movement of all the arms coming up and all the arms coming down and then there's a few that aren't going quite at the same speed, right? Just like the body, like not everything does everything at the same time. You could zoom out. What if you zoom way in and you pay attention to the sensation in your hip as you are in pigeon pose? 

And where is the sensation the tightest and where it is the more diffuse. And you could play with that type of attentional flexibility so that you can choose where you place your attention. When I, I practiced, I started committing to doing all the arm balances that I can't do. in yoga. Like, I, I can't do very many of them. I'm, so I'm like, I'm like the only one that's, there's all the arm balancers and then there's me that's like, I can't do the arm balance but I'm kind of sort of in the position of as if. And I practice lifting my foot up and I kind of fall and I, and I've been doing this and it's quite liberating. Like, I, I'm just practicing falling and also paying attention to, like, this is kind of playful. So there's lots of ways you can get more attentionally flexible. 

KATY BOWMAN: And then this is also, I do think, a good flex of the "so what" muscle is kind of helpful. Because after you've played around with your attention and all the different things that you're seeing, you know, if you're coming back to like, I'm the slowest one here. So what? Like, what's the consequence of it? Like, no one died of being the slowest one there. You're not getting, you're not, not getting the benefits of the activity because you're the least coordinated one there.

Someone has to be. Someone has to be, you know, the worst dressed person there. Someone has to be the person who lifts the lightest weights. Like, that has to be somebody and it's going to be you sometimes. So what? It doesn't, it doesn't say anything about the quality of that movement session for you. So you can let it go.

SHAWN STEVENSON: What I heard is if you're going to be the slowest, be the best dressed. 

KATY BOWMAN: There you go. See that's, that's right. Exactly. Right. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Leverage. It's 2025 as of this recording. Some people listening to this in the future, which is super cool. All right, shout out to all the Michael J. Fox's, who are listening to this in the future. And right now, we are absolutely immersed or even inundated with technology. It's everywhere, you know, and we've got this. Our phone is really, you know, I remember one of my favorite movies as a kid was Cyborg. It was like Jean Claude Van Damme. Shout out to all those type of movies. But we merged with technology and we really have. Most people keep this on them at all times. And we have access to basically anything we can imagine as you mentioned, you know, whether it's like finding a home a mate food whatever the case might be. 

But it also has become an outlet for entertainment or just pure mind numbing brain candy and these designers these incredible scientists have created these apps to keep us hooked psychologically. Like we open that app many of us know when you mention Cal Newport. 

He talks about this phenomenon of the just checks, like we just want to pick up our phone and just check you open that app up next thing, you know, you're doom scrolling for the next 30 minutes. And so one of the reasons that people give today is that I'm stuck on my screen, right?

They can tell themselves, like, I got time to exercise, but if they're being honest, like, I spend a lot of time scrolling, and on social media, or just, you know, using my technology, and with Netflix, binge watching. So, I'm stuck on my screen, I struggle with tech addiction. Let's talk about this one. What can people do to address this?

DR. DIANA HILL: Well, we went old school with this answer because, yes, it's all new, but it's also not new. We've known addiction for a long time. And there's this classic intervention with smoking, Alan Marlott. I'm a smoking researcher that's used a lot now with addictions, which is urge surfing and developing our capacity to be with the urge without acting on it. Simple as that. Like watching the urge like it's a wave. You notice it rising, rising, rising, rising. It gets to that peak and it will eventually come down whether you act on it or not. 

So one thing to start paying attention to is the automaticity with which sometimes people will just start talking about the phone and you want to go pick up your phone, right? And could you just notice that? Could you just notice the urge to pick it up without picking it up? I'll have clients in session open up their phone. And because we have like a, I think it was Katy. 

KATY BOWMAN: I call it LAPS. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Yeah, the LAPS, right? 

KATY BOWMAN: There's a LAPS, you know, when you open one app, close it. The next one, it's very rhythmic. It's, I call it LAPS because I was at a zoo and saw that an animal in the zoo walked the same pattern. It was just making this mindless loop. It wasn't going anywhere. And it had worn an etch into the ground and it was the only place in its, in its whole entire habitat that it really moved with regularity. I'm like, that feels like a phone, you know, where you're just bumping into the same. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Right. So could you pay attention to that? What do you, what do you press first? Where does your finger go next? And could you slow it down? So that you actually are maybe doing a different lab, right? So, so, sorry, I mean, we can do all sorts of things. We do need to engineer our phones. Like, if you open up my phone, my main screen, all it has on it is settings. Because settings is the one thing I need to be able to turn off this or turn on that, like, in a kind of emergency kind of situation, right? Keep the bright on, whatever. And I have to work. I've got to do a little work to get to the other ones, right?

So you can engineer your phone but we bring awareness to that. But another thing that I would love people to bring more awareness to is the differentiation between wanting and liking. So there's a, when they're looking at sort of the neuroscience of addiction, it's not just a wanting, it's also a liking. And a lot of the things that we want, we actually don't end up liking. And these are two systems in the brain. Dopamine is more the wanting system, whereas like serotonin, things that exercise gives us, is more of the liking system. What they find with phone use is that we want to get on there, but when we're on there, there's a point of diminishing returns where we no longer like it, and it feels dissatisfying.

And if you can develop your awareness of that point of diminishing returns, just like you do with a piece of cake. The first three bites are good, and then maybe the next, like, too much frosting makes you sick. Train yourself. Because I'm not about, I don't think we need to like, we, there's no, there's no fighting this thing at this point. It's, it's in everything that we do. But we can be a bit more mindful, be a bit more aware, know our own system, and then choose to step out, and oftentimes, the thing that we would both want to do and like to do, is something like being connected, aligned with our values, moving our bodies. All those things. And pay attention to that. Does the point of diminishing returns, actually maybe there's not a point of diminishing returns. There's a point of increased returns as you do those things. It's a little different. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is awesome. You know, this has got me thinking of a specific example, which is, you know, someone's telling themselves they don't have time to exercise, but yet they have time to watch Real Housewives. All right. And you guys talk about this concept of temptation bundling. Talk about that. 

KATY BOWMAN: I love temptation bundling. I've been doing it for years, for cleaning. It's when you take something that you do like to do and you pair it with this other thing that you want to get done but maybe is a little bit more tricky for you to access. So, if you love Housewives, then can you pair it with movement in some way? You know, instead of sitting in your chair while watching it, can you get down on the floor and do some exercises while you watch it? Or, I feel like gyms have been temptation, Tentation bundling the entire time by putting the TV screen, you know, right there on the treadmill. It's this idea of fitting. It's it's it's the zucchini in the brownies. You're right You know You're trying to you're doing a serving of vegetables in there. Something that you like. 

DR. DIANA HILL: And the key is you're only allowed to do that thing that you like while you're moving. 

KATY BOWMAN: Mm hmm. 

DR. DIANA HILL: So I only listen to certain podcasts on my runs, you know. And then it's like I all of a sudden I'm looking forward to I call certain friends Right. I'm looking forward to it now because you're overriding some of that. I mean, it's just a mixed bag Like there's things are always uncomfortable, but if you can add in a little bit of joy, it makes it you know, it's like the spoonful of sugar approach, you know to medicine over a long time ago. I'm told there's a lot of research on temptation by the bundling and that comes from Katy Milkman who sort of designed this intervention to increase exercise. And they found I think it increases your exercise by like 23 percent. And so there's good research behind it. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: I remember hearing my wife say she couldn't wait to get to the Stairmaster so she could watch her show. 

KATY BOWMAN: Yeah, right. 

DR. DIANA HILL: Yeah, exactly. 

KATY BOWMAN: And for me, it's music. I don't have control over the music anymore in my house, so the fact that I can load up just whatever I want to listen to, and I'll go take a walk really just to go listen to music, but I'll, you know, be out there for 90 minutes walking fast and hard just because I like the music. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: This is so good. I want to keep talking to you both. And again, the book is so valuable. It's one of these things that, you know, that sentiment, there's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. This is one of those things right now, to have access to this book, addressing so many of our psychological barriers to movement. And today, again, we have a society, a culture that's set up in a way that you should not feel guilty about not moving.

The culture is designed in a way that has removed it from the equation. And so, we have to engage something that humans have never had to do. The concept of exercising, you know, expending energy, was something that, this again, this is a new revelation, new invention. And, there are so many different fruitful solutions available for us to be able to access, because the thing is, if you're listening to this right now. Especially to this point, you want to move, you want to find that joint movement, you want to find that connection and consistency and all these things.

And so the solution is going within and being able to self assess and find out what are the things that are holding you back and having science backed ways to address them. Is there anything else about the book that you want people to know? And also, where can people pick up a copy? 

DR. DIANA HILL: Well, I think I want to add that, I think a big mission for this book is also for the people that are physicians and coaches and therapists that are regularly prescribing movement and are just giving people all the reasons why they should move. I mean, there's a little spin on that, I know I should exercise, but because someone told you that, your doctor told you that, your personal trainer told you that, your physical therapist told you that, and we want to arm those folks. with some ammunition of what happens when they get a reason back. Here are some things you could do to coach your clients differently if you, you know, if you're a movement coach, whatever it is, yoga instructor.

For me as a therapist, I'm prescribing movement as a mental health intervention. It's probably the most important mental health intervention that I prescribe. And I need to know all of the defenses that come at me and how to work with those in a psychologically sophisticated way, while not shaming someone.

KATY BOWMAN: And for me, I think the biggest takeaway I have for the book is maybe the first part of you that has to move is your mind. You know, like maybe that's the muscle that needs on muscle, but that's the first bit of flexibility and strength and that's the first body part that you might want to play with and if you've never approached it that way, it might be the easiest way for you to get moving.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Katy, I wouldn't even say maybe, you know it is. 

KATY BOWMAN: I just like to leave, you know, a little wiggle room. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: So where can people pick up a copy? 

KATY BOWMAN:  Their local bookstore, Amazon, online, yeah, anywhere, anywhere fine books are sold. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome, and where can people follow you both? 

KATY BOWMAN: You can find me at NutritiousMovement. com and, and all of that too on socials. 

DR. DIANA HILL: And you can find me at Dr. Diana Hill on socials, and I have a Just Like Me meditation. If you're interested in that part of it, like how to build a little more compassion, that's a bit of my interest as well. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. Well, thank you both so much for coming and sharing your wisdom. It's been amazing. I appreciate you. 

KATY BOWMAN: Thank you for having us. 

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. Thank you so much for tuning into the episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. This is one of those huge potential transformative life lessons and resources to be able to address what's really holding us back or seemingly stopping us from creating the life that we want to create from creating the health and the fitness and the practices that we want to create. There cannot be a problem without a solution. The solutions exist and more than ever It's doing our inner homework and that's what this incredible project from Dr. Diana Hill and Katy Bowman is all about so definitely check out the new book. I know I should exercise, but there are 44 reasons why we don't move and how to get over them. 

We've got some amazing masterclasses and world class 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 themodelhealthshow.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, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.