Hard things in health
“But I’d like to remind us all that we evolved by doing hard things and doing hard things makes everything else easier.”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Episode 186
Hard things in health
They say yoga poses don’t begin until you want to quit. That is true for everything in health and wellness. If we want to be strong, healthy and well beyond the false sense of security that comes with mainstream medical health markers we need to do hard things. We need to ask our body for more and stop quitting on ourselves before we get there. Today on the Work IN we’re looking at how to leverage the body’s adaptation pathways through exercise and nutrition for lasting physical mental and emotional health that don’t come in a bottle.
Staying healthy is easier than getting healthy. Becoming a participant in your health is cheaper than staying a patient in the medical system. Getting comfortable with discomfort will make you more comfortable in the long term than literally anything on the market today.
I was at a meeting the other night for a non-profit that I volunteer with and one of my fellow board members came in (I’ll call her Mary). Mary is morbidly obese and walks with a cane. I don’t know her personally very well but she has been a long time volunteer and has done amazing things for this organization. I couldn’t help but notice as she sat down at the table how hard she was breathing from walking probably 50 feet from her car and across the room. It took her a good 15 minutes for her breathing to calm. I know because she was sitting next to me.
Before I continue this story I just want to say that not many of these people know or understand what I do. I don’t offer advice or observations on other people’s health unless I’m asked. This story isn’t about body weight and I am not fat shaming so you can all unclutch your pearls.
Mary looked across the table to another friend and said her doctor had given her a clean bill of health. That all the tests came back clean. Now she didn’t elaborate. She wasn’t even talking to me, but I literally heard the record scratch in my head.
It reminded me of another story I heard on my friend Nate Slegers podcast (The Begin Within Health Show Ep 214) His guest Belldone Colme told his story of how he got a clean bill of health and two weeks later had his first heart attack. Turns out artificially keeping your numbers in a (healthy) range blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar doesn’t actually make you healthy. Who knew?
So hearing that statement from Mary as she was gasping for breath was alarming to me. And it occurred to me that maybe none of us ask enough questions about what our mainstream medical professionals tell us about what is healthy.
Questions like “Is that true?” followed by “Are you sure?” And “How do you know?” And the big one, “Why?” But that’s just me.
The fact is it is hard to get and stay healthy in our society today. It’s hard to wade through all the general mediocre health recommendations that come from mediocre government health “experts” with hidden conflicts of interest. It is hard to push yourself beyond what you already know you can do when you are soaking in societal messages that promote comfort, convenience and pleasure in all things from symptom chasing prescriptions to ultra processed fast food to safe spaces for our mental and emotional health. It’s hard to push back on that.
But I’d like to remind us all that we evolved by doing hard things and doing hard things makes everything else easier.
So let's look at some of those hard things, why we should do them and how do we know whats hard enough to make a difference.
Exercise
This seems like a no brainer. Exercise can and should be hard. The only way that muscles change and adapt is if you do more than they can already do. And I would argue that the older we get the harder we should be exercising.
Because as we age it gets harder for every body but especially female bodies to maintain and build both muscle and bone. All the same principles apply as when we’re younger but the systeme we’re working with has changed. Muscle synthesis tends to slow down, we get metabolic changes with our hormone shifts through perimenopause and menopause. Those hormone changes affect how and where we store fat in the body and how we maintain bone health. So in order to counteract all of those things we need to stress the bones and muscles almost to failure. Pushing the edge of what we think we can do.
And I say it like that because the mind will tell you to quit way ahead of when the body actually has to quit.
One of the hard things is knowing where that edge is because if we’re training on a consistent basis the edge will move. You will be able to do more today than you could do yesterday.
The Hard things: the bare minimum.
Consistent body weight training and movement
Pushing to the edge every time
Adequate rest for recovery
Nutrition (nourishment)
Diet is dogma. It is more like religion than almost religion itself. People get super confused about it. I don’t want to get into specific diets and plans here because there are many that work. I do want to say that changing your diet is hard. It is a hard thing. Food, especially the ultra processed convenient food is addictive. I would never expect a drug addict to go cold turkey. But that’s what we do with food addiction. The hard thing with food is we can’t simply stop eating. We need nourishment. The problem is most of us don’t eat for nourishment. We eat for comfort, convenience and pleasure. And nobody likes feeling deprived.
If we feed our body the nutrients it needs from protein, fiber and healthy fat it will make the correction you’re looking for.
The Hard things: one bite at a time
Add nourishing whole foods: clean protein, greens and veggies, fruit
Eliminate the ultra processed foods (anything in a box or a bag that has an ingredient label)
Replace all processed beverages with water (stay hydrated), tea or black coffee
Sleep
Sleep should be easy. Right? Sadly it’s often not easy at all and so much of the advice for better sleep comes across as trite. Get more sunlight in the morning, don’t eat too close to bedtime, get to bed early, etc. all things we have discussed on this podcast in the past. The thing is when you start doing the hard things in exercise and nutrition, your sleep will improve. Insomnia is a side effect of many other deeper issues in metabolism, nourishment and the nervous system.
The other thing to remember about sleep is that we have unrealistic expectations about what good sleep is. Meaning that we think that a good night's sleep is one where you never wake up to go to the bathroom, or are never disturbed by anything. But that’s just not true. Because we cycle through several stages of sleep including very light sleep several times during the night it is normal to wake occasionally. The hard thing is to not let that completely wake you up. All you need for that is knowledge that it's ok if you wake up here and there. Lower the stress about it and it will be easier to return to your slumber.
The Hard things: breaking habits
Make good sleep habits a higher priority
Let go of unrealistic sleep expectations
Permission to nap
Connection
When we talk about connection on this podcast we’re talking about 2 different types of connection. Interpersonal connections with others and intrapersonal connections within yourself. The hard things in this category tend to overlap both.
Recently I’ve been reading Byron Katy’s book called Loving what is It’s a manual for The Work that she outlines to help people accept reality and become more at peace within themselves no matter what else is going on around them. The Work is a simple process applied to a painful thought or belief about someone or something in your life that is causing you pain. It's 4 questions and a turn around. Which sounds ridiculously easy but in reality isn’t all that easy. It can be a very hard thing. But again it’s the kind of hard thing that makes the rest of your life feel easier.
Things like The Work ask you to take a hard look at yourself and who you want to be. So many people float alone in this world feeling like we’re at the mercy of our history, our emotions, the actions of other people. But none of that is true. We can be the master and commander of our own life. We just might have to step up and do some hard things to get there.
Hard Things: Growing a backbone
Boundary setting for yourself and others
Challenge your self awareness
Adopt a growth mindset
So all of this encouragement to do hard things is great but when is it TOO much. What if you’re one of those people who only does hard things? What about burnout? Look if that’s you then this episode wasn’t for you. This episode is for people who know they have some work to do but don’t know how or where to start.
Well we are going to look at that in an upcoming episode. For now just think about these 4 things: Exercise, nutrition, sleep and connection. Are there any places where you can see room to challenge yourself? If so, stay tuned because we are going to go deeper into each one of these in the coming weeks to give you more ideas about how you can get the best health results the kind that go beyond what the eyes can see.
Thanks for listening today!
If you're looking for ways to handle the effects of stress, physically, mentally and emotionally through the body head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin you’ll find all the show notes for this and other episodes plus lots of free resources. And if you’re in a place where you are ready for more and you live in the Dayton Ohio area I’m taking private clients for trauma informed yoga and trauma release exercise in person and online. So you can book a discovery call and we can have a real life conversation. And of course I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a moment to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening.
Thanks again everyone and as always stop working out and start working IN.
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Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a health coach and trauma informed yoga professional bringing real world resilience and healing to main street USA.
I offer trauma release + yoga + wellness education for groups and individuals…regular people like you.
Book a call to learn how I can help.