Why You Don't Exercise Even Though You Know You Should. And Strategies To Get Over the Hump. | Katy Bowman

28:11That lands for me. coming up katie talks about the role of joy in movement how to find time to move if you feel time starved what movement breaks look like little quick movement breaks and the technique of stacking your life you mentioned looking around at the dance class who's enjoying it But enjoyment seems like a really important thing here. So just to reset, we're mostly at this point in the conversation talking about chapter one of this book you wrote with past guests on the show, Diana Hill called I Know I Should Exercise But. And chapter one is really about like how to manage lack of motivation.

29:00One of the reasons that falls in this bucket is that there are people who just feel like exercise is boring and therefore they're not motivated to do it. I would imagine you would argue you might want to look around to find a kind of movement, whether it's exercise technically or not, that you enjoy. So the exercise is boring excuse gets eviscerated. That's right. I mean, again, that's that really tight box around what counts. Part of the exercise that I have people do, you know, after you've found your values, the next bit is, as you were alluding to, why is movement meaningful to you? So for you, it was about being able to connect with your family, not just now, but in the future as well.

29:43And then I also help people come up with some movement memories of their own, times when they've used their body in a way that brought them joy or pleasure that didn't necessarily fit in an exercise box. Oftentimes people have to go back to childhood to find this period of time in which movement felt quite free. And when people start writing their movement memories, you know, they'll be like, I loved swinging on the rope and dropping into the river. They'll come up with all sorts of things. None of them look like the exercise, the chore that we perceive movement to be now. And so when you recognize that maybe you find gardening meaningful and it's like, well, let's do some vigorous gardening then.

30:30You don't have a space. Let's join the community garden and start getting on your hands and knees and digging and carrying things around. So it is really important to tune in with the ways that you would like to use your body. Some of them could be from memory. Some could be aspirational. Maybe you would like to take a trip with your family members in the future, and it's not necessarily a hiking or biking trip. But, you know, maybe everyone's going to go to Europe, and they're going to be trekking through these museums. Maybe you love arts, but you don't think that you could be on your feet for two or three hours.

31:07It's this idea of going, okay, well, what's meaningful to me is to be able to visit these spaces, do things with these people. And then you start to find what it is about movement that you do enjoy instead of that constant narrative. I don't like any exercise. It's such a blunt tool that we tend to wield against any sort of human movement. And remember that bubble of movement is giant. It doesn't have to be in the gym. It doesn't have to be these small modes that maybe some people really love, but most people don't really find relevant to their lives. My grandfather lived to 90, super healthy, super fit, never exercised ever, but was a really active gardener and not like in a fancy type of thing.

31:52I mean, he ultimately did have a very nice garden that people would come visit, but it was started because he needed to feed his family. So this was not a glamorous thing. This is a father of five, was a middle manager at the Yellow Pages. Remember the Yellow Pages, those huge Bibles of phone numbers that used to show up at your door. So Robert Johnson was not even the boss, was like a kind of middle manager at this institution that put out these thick books that showed up at everybody's doorsteps and became door stops and gardened every day until he died while gardening, I believe. So there are lots of ways to stay fit.

32:29we've spent a lot of time in this first chapter around people who are not motivated to exercise, but I think it's the biggie. Well, actually the first two are really the, I think probably the biggest, but there's one reason for not being motivated that I do want to get you to talk to, which is I'm great at starting exercise programs, but I never stick with them. How do you work with that issue? Right. Well, I mean, that's a tricky thing about, when you have a lot of excitement about starting something new, then it quickly becomes not new anymore. I think the actual asker of that question was really asking about, I'm so good for a 30-day program, but after that 30-day program is done, then I don't really have, ultimately, space in your life cut out beyond that 30-day program.

33:21Because a 30-day program has the end built into it. We don't really acknowledge that the 30-day program is done in 30 days. So when you're signing up for 30 days, you're also maybe effectively signing up for the end of that program. And so when it's not movement that has become distributed throughout your life very well, it's really easy to then stick something else in that particular slot. So I personally am motivated by fresh starts. but I find myself regularly seeking out fresh starts. And so it's not so much that it has an end for me, it's that it's novel. And I have paid enough attention to myself and my reasons for doing things to know that I like a little bit of self-mastery.

34:12And when I've sort of reached the amount of self-mastery that I can get to with something over a few weeks or even a couple of years, that I'll be looking for that next thing. That's just me. Someone else will have their own relationship with maybe why they are, for example, someone who likes starting new things. It's like back to school. It's all hopes and possibilities at that point. And I am attracted to that. But I have found that the movement that I tend to stick to the most often is that which is woven. Again, not in that leisure time for me, but it's in the movement habits that I started with my family, the ways that we have decided to be active, the more permanent modifications I've made to my home, for example.

35:00I've got rings hanging in my living room because I want movement to be more in the fabric of my daily life. It's in the community that I've established for taking walks in the morning or getting together on the weekends. And those larger structures, what they do is they make you less susceptible to the absolute possibility that something's going to come up and thwart your exercise program. So I think what I hear you say there, I think you said a bunch of things. I want to get back to the rings in your living room, but we'll set that aside. But I think the thrust of your argument there was if you're part of a group, if your movement is deeply entwined with your social life, that really makes it much stickier.

35:57Am I right about that? Yeah, I would say if it's woven through your environment and others, community is a big part of that environment. It's really challenging to get regular movement if you can't meet any other needs during that period of time. But again, if you can layer in time with other people and your movement at the same time, it moves it out of that leisure time category in many cases. And then there's a lot more time in which you can be taking care of household tasks. Like I choose to not outsource a lot of movement as far as chores go so that it's woven through the day for me. So it's about modifying your environment in some ways.

36:38And then again, yes, that's community and spend a little time to take movement a little deeper. So it's not always on the, I just started this. It's more superficial. It's not even woven through my calendar, really. It's almost too discreet. The volume is low and the distribution is not at all. So this kind of brings us to chapter two, which I think is one of the other huge, quite legitimate issues that people have with exercise, which is I don't have enough time. And so I imagine what we've just been talking about, which is thinking deeply about your environment, both your physical environment and your social environment, and actually even your calendar environment as modalities and mechanisms for boosting your movement quotient, even if you feel time starved.

37:35Right. So there's the very practical, try to figure out ways to move while you're getting other things done. And thus, it's going to be more concrete in your lives. But what I learned from Diana writing this book was this concept of time affluence. And that time affluence is even really a perception that we perceive that we don't have enough time. But one thing that increases your sense of time is movement. If you exercise regularly, you're able to, we'll say, get more done, but it just feels like you've got more space in your schedule. And then another thing, too, is recognizing this goes down to those thoughts that we have.

38:22It's an unhelpful thought to think I don't have enough time. Now, there is also the reality, the concrete reality of just literally not having enough space in your life to do all the things. That's real. But also, I would say that you have to tune in and become aware of, I would say, pseudo-busyness. And I'll just use myself as an example. Like I have regularly caught myself feeling overwhelmed. I don't have enough time to do all these things. And the sense of overwhelm that I have, it starts out as a thought. And then I sort of race around, I would say, not really being all that functional. That the primary thing I'm doing is sort of lamenting that I don't have enough time.

39:06Even if I have a big deadline and I'm doing quite a bit of concrete work, I'll catch myself being pseudo-busy, creating almost non-urgent tasks. And when I can tune into that, I can use that as a cue to be like, oh, I'm not actually getting any work done right now. This is actually a good time for me to take a movement break. Because I can sense that the overwhelm that I'm having in my mind about not having enough time to do anything, exercise aside, just even the non-exercise things, is actually a good communication for my body that I need to move. And then that's a pause for me. And I'll take five minutes to move around.

39:46And again, it's not a workout. It's not going to be sweaty. For many people right now, when you have that really tight box, it's not going to count towards the exercise that you need to do for whatever reason you're doing it. But it instantly connects me to my body. Those steps, those minutes of movement absolutely count, just like the 60-minute block does. and I have been able to, this helps with distribution, pepper my day with more movement when I don't believe everything that I think, including I don't have enough time. What do those movement breaks look like if they don't look like what one traditionally might define as exercise?

40:26Well, I mean, I think everyone would define them as about a physical activity. You know, I might bend over and touch my toes. I might do a calisthenic stretch. I might put myself into a yoga lunge position and go back and forth from one leg to the other. I might step outside and do a brisk walk around the block. Earlier today, before this interview, I just took 10 minutes to jump in place and touch my toes and stretch my spine and go look at something far away to relax my eyes and then close my eyes for a minute and just stood. How balanced do I feel? Just to check in with myself physically. So I think that all of those pieces by themselves, doing a couple pull-ups on a hanging bar next to my desk, would count as what people think exercise looks like.

41:14But exercise for many people is about it being compressed. It's about it being long enough in duration to count. And so people regularly don't think of themselves as exercising because they didn't make it to the place. They didn't get into the outfit. They didn't monitor their heart rate while they were doing it. They didn't lift heavy enough. Those are then those very tight movement rules. So I've given myself a lot of compassion and freedom about not all my movement has to look like that. And in doing so, my volume can come up quite a bit. So let's just be super concrete. Somebody's listening to this.

41:51They're in their car on their way to work. They've got two or three jobs. They got a bunch of kids. They just really feel, and I sympathize with this person. that they just don't have time to quote unquote, get to the gym. Based on everything you just said, how could we devise and design a exercise or movement diet for this person? Well, if you can't, let's just say going to the gym is not going to happen today. So all movement is not off the table for you. And again, the situation will vary depending on what your exact scenario is, but can you, you know, maybe you had a kid stay home and now it's affecting the course of your day.

42:38It's like, well, can you roll out a mat and do something for 15 minutes right there in your living room? And you don't have to change clothes. You don't have to have a shower when you're done. What's the part of your movement diet? You know, when I talked about movement diet that really leapt out at you, it's like, oh yeah, I need to get more walking. if you're sitting in your car, you know, waiting for a doctor's appointment or you're waiting to pick your kids up, could you get out of the car? You know, instead of just sitting and scrolling, you can use scrolling as a cue to be like, I could change the shape of my body in some way right now.

43:12I've got seven minutes. I'm going to get out of my car. I'm going to go walk over for three minutes to this far thing that I see, and I'm going to walk back. Or I'm going to just get out of my car I'm going to touch my toes and stretch my shoulders because this is a category of movement that we need just as much as other categories. Or maybe you have to do a last-minute work project, so you're going to take your laptop to something low, and you're going to stretch your legs out and open up your hips and do something that feels good to your body while you're also meeting this other task that needs to be done.

43:49It doesn't have to be done in the same rigid container that you're used to doing things in. You know, picking up your kids, if it's like all you can think of is it's just a chair shape, and you're not paying attention to the 17 minutes here and there that you had complete freedom to get out and move around and do something else, then that's where you put that flashlight and that awareness. You start catching yourself where you're whittling minutes through scrolling or other things that you don't necessarily value and choose something that you do value instead. Speaking of values, what if somebody has the story that exercising or even taking a walk is contrary to their values because it takes them away from their family?

44:36I mean, that's a big one. People feel selfish. That's a whole bucket. it. I feel selfish when I take care of myself. I think we see that come up again and again. And I think exercise can be selfish sometimes, right? If you're regularly ditching out your friends and family to get your workout in, you know, when you've made plans and you're regularly canceling on them. But once you know what selfish exercise looks like, then you can recognize that there could be something else where this is an act of self-compassion. So you can be compassionate to yourself without actually doing harm to others. And this goes back to the values again.

45:16Do you show up as a better parent or a better partner or a better employee when you're taking care of your body? Then that's not selfish at all. It's the opposite. It's you not only taking care of your needs, it's you showing up to do these other things that you care about even better because you moved. You've mentioned self-compassion a couple times in the last couple of minutes. As I understand it, it's a big theme in the book. Can you say a little bit more about why it's so important as it pertains to getting ourselves to move? Well, I don't think we tend to have really great relationships with ourselves.

45:56You know, I once heard a psychiatrist say, like, you're in a relationship with the outside world, you're in a relationship with your physical body, and then you're in a relationship with the parts of you that are not your physical body. And I don't think that our relationship with our physical body is, I'll just use the word very good. And what I mean by that is like, I don't think we understand the signals that our body is giving. It'd be like being in a relationship with someone, but you couldn't communicate very well. You rarely checked in to communicate at all. And when you did, there was a lot of mixed signals, cross signals.

46:31And I think that that's a relationship with our body quite often. And a lot of our physical experience has to do with how that relationship is going. And certainly I think our relationship with our physical self is affected by our relationship with our non-body parts of ourselves and our relationship with others. I think all of the three are affecting each other all of the time. but in I would say more behavioral psychology the idea of having compassionate thoughts to yourself and to recognize when you talk to your mind like you would talk to a good friend or a small child that that is a helpful thing to do I think of that same way of behaving and extended out to taking care of yourself.

47:24You know, if you were a puppy, if you were a garden, if you were your own child, what would you want to physically do? You would want to water, you would want to weed, you would want to make sure that the dog got some exercise, that the dog got some petting, you know, like that the child wasn't cooped up inside a chair all day long and that there was someone who brought in this element of play. When you look at your physical body in that way, I think a lot of the communications coming from our physical body is, I have not been well cared for physically. And not that there's not necessarily a reason for it.

48:00You know, you've got this schedule. We're living in an arcade, essentially. It's quite stressful on ourselves. So the idea of prioritizing self-care physically to make sure that you're meeting these biological needs to bring down the noise and all the other relationships, I think is really important to recognize this is care. This is basic care for your body. It's not selfish. It's not excessive. It's the bar. You know, we're just trying to get us like just feeding ourselves, get ourselves out of this drought a bit. Yes. If you, as most of us do care about being a positive player in the world, you do need to take care of yourself.

48:42Let me just ask us some more questions about chapter two, which is around feeling like you don't have enough time to exercise. One of the things you recommend is stacking your life. What does that mean? Well, I've mentioned stacking a couple times. Stacking is a term that comes from permaculture and approach to agricultural growing, which is, if you look at your schedule, our to-do list is a list of discrete things. You know, it's sort of back to these domains. You know, I have to do work right now, and then I have to make dinner. You know, I've got to get my kid from here to there. I've got to make sure my kid is being stimulated, so I've got to get him to this class.

49:19It's all very discrete and done in series. So we have so many needs. I mean, we're not even to wants yet. We're just to needs that when you are only fulfilling one need at a time, it fills a lot more time. But when you are able to accomplish multiple needs in the same unit of time, I used this term before, you're increasing the nutrient density of a period of time. So it would be the idea of an example that I'll use quite often is you have to grocery shop. You got your kids in the car. You have to make this meal. You know you need to move your body. You know they need to move their body. But what do you do?

50:04You pull into the first parking lot at the grocery store and you give your kid the iPad and they sit down and they can be quiet while you do your grocery shopping. They get back in your car and do it again. and that all took a certain period of time. Or you could park a couple blocks away, walk hand in hand, not as quickly as you would have gotten there driving, walk hand in hand to the grocery store, pick up a bag of things. Now you're carrying it. You're having conversation with your kid. As you're doing that, you're still accomplishing the task of getting what you need for dinner, but you're also having this bit of communication.

50:40Both of you are outside. You know, you're looking at the birds. You're talking about the day, debriefing from the day, and you walk back. And maybe if you compared that to rushing into the grocery store to get the thing, you might have doubled or tripled the time from 15 minutes to 45 minutes. But the nourishment that you get from that 45 minutes is much deeper for everyone involved. And you got other things done besides just going to the grocery store. It's different than multitasking. Multitasking is trying to do many things at the same time. This is about swapping a task to find a task that meets more of the needs in a unit of time.

51:27And so I'm always looking to figure out what's the more dynamic option here, not only just for my own body. I'm usually, like I said, involving other aspects of community, figuring out if I could be of service. whatever these domains you have in your life are. And when you look at it as a much broader picture, you end up with, I wouldn't say, time is fixed. You don't get more time, but you get more, not even more things done, you get more needs met because we're getting a lot done. But a lot of the things that we're doing aren't necessarily meeting needs. They're not meeting those deeper needs that we all have in common.

52:07So I'm regularly looking for ways to, I call it stack your life, of layering in, and we'll do it on the backbone of movement in this particular case. Coming up, Katie talks about how to overcome embarrassment and shame related to movement, getting comfortable with discomfort, what to do when you're addicted to your screen, and the role of ancestral movements.

52:36Let's keep going through some of the categories of resistance to exercise. Chapter three is called I'm Too Embarrassed. And some of the entries in this bucket are, you know, I'm ashamed of my jiggly body. People might judge me if I stretch in public spaces. I used to be an athlete. Now I feel like a loser. I'm in a larger size body and I'd be judged by others at yoga. I keep comparing myself to people in my exercise class. What are some of the ways to work with this bucket of resistance? In this bucket, attention was a big one. And then also looking at, I'm just trying to think of some discrepancy.

53:14Like for the embarrassed of my body, we talked about broadening your perspective, you know, not just hyper-focusing on yourself, but looking around and looking around at all the other things that were happening to see aspects. What are some aspects that I do like? while I'm here. Also in that section was strengthening your so what muscle. This was about like a, you know, you get embarrassed about being the least coordinated person in the room. You know, you are, you've got the worst clothes or whatever your story is about why you shouldn't be there. In addition to broadening your perspective, it's also like, so what?

53:54What's the big harm here about being the person who's least coordinated? So no one has ever, Diana always says this, no one has ever actually died of embarrassment, but many people will have negative impacts from the things that they're keeping themselves from doing because they're embarrassed. So there is benefit to overcoming, you know, the feelings that make you burn up with shame. And then also there's some, you know, back to the jiggly body is like just start jiggling your body You know, just desensitize yourself a little bit to that, you know, get on a trampoline Just let it bounce around and and by exposing yourself to that a little bit You realize you're still here.

54:36You didn't die And then eventually you can get some of the payoff from these other movement things that you would like to do With the athlete That's another one that I hear quite often and just my own work where you know, we tend to be really at our peak physicality, I would say in our teens and 20s, where we don't have that much responsibility and you can really pursue, you know, just hanging out physically with your friends or athletics. And because that is such an identity for you, that when jobs come up and other relationships that keep you away from the level of training that you used to do, for example.

55:16Nothing else cuts it. Everything else pales in comparison. So for that example specifically is going back to the values a little bit, is the thing that you're struggling with here about you not being at 49 in the same physical shape you were at 24? Like, is that a realistic expectation here? Is it about that? or is it about the fact that you are not even maximizing what you could be at 49? Because sometimes we focus on the thing that you have absolutely no control over. It's my age, I can't do anything about it so I will therefore continue to do nothing. But if it's a reframe a little bit where it's like, you could actually be doing quite a bit right now and maybe fitness for someone who's always participated in sports is not the right avenue of pursuing movement.

56:09So instead of getting yourself to a gym just to try to be generally fit, recognizing in yourself, I actually value competitiveness. I value camaraderie. I value collaboration. And so then you would want to make your movement practice look more like the things that you value if just being generally fit wasn't actually what it was all about for you anyway. And then also there's this also checking in to make sure that you're not just sad about being 25 years older and then working through that realization of like, yeah, you might have to grieve. You might have to recognize that you are not the same as you were and then sort of move through that discomfort and then get back to taking care of this vessel.

56:55I like the so what muscle. I joined an exercise group 18 months ago where I'm almost always the smallest, oldest, and weakest person in the room. And just like I just got used to it. I put out lower weights than the other guys and women. Nobody gives a shit. I mean, I keep thinking about we haven't used this term, but it's come up obliquely like the spotlight effect. This is a fallacy that we many of us live with that we're in the spotlight somehow, but everybody else is in their own movie. They don't give a shit about you. And so that's been really helpful for me. Okay, chapter four is about another very common beef that people have with, I was going to say meditation, but it's actually exercise, although I guess it would apply to both, which is that it's uncomfortable.

57:43I've got chronic pain. I've got menopause blues. I'd like to walk outside, but it's too cold. I'm in grief right now. I feel like I'm carrying around a load of bricks. I'm on my feet all day for work, and afterwards, I just want to watch a TV show. So what's your advice for this category of non-exerciser? Oh, so many different tools in this particular chapter for the menopause. And this could go for any sort of like, I'm just, I physically, I'm not feeling exercise right now. Again, we got this narrow definition of what it is. And I think this would work for grief as well. Not trying to move away from those feelings.

58:27Instead, try to lean into those feelings with movement. So some of the advice in the, you know, when you're going through menopause, for example, or I would say any, I mean, just the changes of getting older in general, it can have a grief that's associated with that as well. That's not that different than the transition from adolescence through puberty. So it's like, what were you doing during puberty? How did you deal with all of this physical discomfort when you were 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 and 16 and 17? Because I don't think you can tell a menopausal person any more than you can tell a teenager what would be really good for them right now and just have them do it.

59:16Like, oh, you'd feel so much better if you would just go outside and take a run. But during that period of time in my adolescence, like I recognized when looking back, like I really leaned into listening to the moodiest music, the more melancholy, give me some moody blues and I'm going to go walk on the beach for hours, you know, just feeling sorry for myself. but I would walk for three hours a day, you know, and then, or maybe you wanted to put on, like maybe you were just all about the rage metal and just, you know, wanted to punch things and you had your boxing gear out and that's what you were doing.

59:52So the idea is to consider what, I've been in this space before. I've moved, I've transitioned from one stage to another. How did I deal with it physically? What were some of these pieces? Bring them up and then give them life again. So instead of going, you know, maybe going to the gym and trying to be cheerful in a class isn't what you need. Maybe you need to get on a surfboard and actually not talk to anyone for a full Saturday and to spend all day floating around in the water, being active in that particular way. So it's just not trying to avoid those feelings, but instead leaning into them a little bit for the grief person who just lost their father.

1:00:32I had dealt with losing my father too. And it was a really hard year for me, but my father was an avid walker. And so I kind of created grief rituals that were based on walking. And I felt like I could really connect to him in those periods of time. We even had a walking cemetery visit with all my siblings. And And so it's this idea of honoring either where you were, if we're talking about life changes, or if you're doing it for grief's sake, honoring this other person through something physical. Pointing people to the fact that dynamic grief is absolutely a thing. The fact that we are grieving in such a quiet, still way, that's sort of a counter to many cultures, historically, how they deal with grief.

1:01:23Here where I live in Washington State, there's an organization, Wild Grief, where they take children who've lost siblings or parents on these nature excursions to really, I would say it's another way of shining the spotlight on something bigger than just only feeling isolated or whatever they might be feeling inside, but recognizing the world is out here and it's going on around me and being with other people who have been in a similar space. So these are tools against somewhat similar. And then a lot of it is also for physical discomfort, making sure you're scaffolding for action with small changes, making sure that you're not trying to make giant changes for the people listening who are like, I'm in chronic pain right now and I can't imagine becoming an all-day mover, Pepper throughout the day.

1:02:12It's like, well, we're going to find something small, doable, appropriate for your ability or your context. And then that social support is really important when it's uncomfortable. You know, friends and others can get you over the hump, if only for redirecting your attention while you're with them. A walk that might seem terrible alone, when you pair it with someone else, now you're chatting and you're working on these other aspects. You've stacked it with other interpersonal connection time, being outside. Maybe you're walking to get something done or to go somewhere, a lot's happening in that period of time and it becomes more doable for you.

1:02:51Another thing you talk about in this chapter is getting comfortable with discomfort. I mean, that is talking about earlier, you go into a space and you're, you know, you're the only fill in the blank. And there is that emotional discomfort. That's the so what muscle is tempering it yourself. And then there is the reality of physical discomfort. I mean, exercise, The reason it works is because it is micro damage to your body. But sometimes people don't recognize that this is the natural outcome of movement, is that it's going to have some amount of physical discomfort. And some of it is just poor training, poor choices.

1:03:32You are not adding movement in small enough steps. There's an anecdote in the book about the first exercise class I ever went to had a very motivating teacher. and this was it back in my I love new things phase and I went to this class on a 6 a.m morning and she did like a thousand lunges and and I just picked up the same weight she did and I couldn't walk for five days after that particular class if that had been my only exposure to movement you know I could have been like I really hurt myself here it's just to recognize like sometimes you can overdo it in movement and it's temporary and it passes and you use that information to make a different choice about the movement that you're going to do next time.

1:04:20So it's just learning how to consider broader pieces of data and just not doing the same thing over and over again, seeing that the buffet for movement's massive. Chapter five is called I'm stuck to my screen. So for people who feel like they're addicted to their phone, and I think that's probably most, if not all of us, what's the workaround there? Some of it's quite practical. Reducing the friction in the questions in there were really around the idea of, I reached for my phone to turn the alarm off in the morning, and then 70 minutes later, I'm still on it. And that wasn't the intention there.

1:05:00So the very practical is get an alarm clock. Don't use your phone as the first thing you put in your hand. And then there's all the, you know, the very practical advice of take your apps off your phone, noticing those types of things. And then also dopamine is a real, it's a real thing. And, you know, when you're comparing the mundane activity of going to do an exercise session over the unlimited stimulation that your body can get from scrolling, you're going to have to have a plan before the morning comes. For me, having people that I meet is really helpful in that regard. This is again, that weaving through of community.

1:05:42Like if you've got an obligation to somebody, if you're motivated more by serving others or doing things in a group, then that's a good way to set yourself up is have someone meet you. Another thing is, again, with the friction, you need some reminder from yourself in the past that the future you wants to do these things. So, you know, if your alarm goes off at 6 a.m. and you're still scrolling 15 minutes later, then you need a second alarm that goes off every single day that goes on at 6.10 to say, it's time to turn your phone off. You know, it's just a note from yourself. And you're doing that type of thing.

1:06:19You can also look, it's not only in the morning, it would be the way of, you know, like gyms have had televisions above their equipment for decades. Like we know that if you can sort of entertain someone, then they're much more likely to engage in moving their body if they can sort of zone out a little bit. So if there's a way to put your phone to good use, part of living in an arcade is your phone can also find any movement game that's available. You can put that into your hands. You can put on a five-minute, a 10-minute, and a 15-minute exercise routine, preload that onto your phone. So if you know you get off work and you're just like, I'm so exhausted, I'm just going to look at my phone for a few minutes, that you have a cue.

1:07:10You develop this. The psychological tool here is a cue to recognize that scrolling for relaxation, there's going to be a point of diminished return. There's going to be a point at which scrolling or still being on your phone, and you're going to be like, ah, I can't believe I'm still here. I feel terrible. You know, I don't feel good emotionally. I don't feel good physically. You're going to let that be a cue maybe to put down your phone. Maybe that's too big of a step. Maybe it's to click over to that five-minute stretching routine that you preloaded. And catching yourself in doom-scrolling mode is going to be the cue to do that five-minute routine.

1:07:47And then you're just drafting off of that little bit of momentum of that inertia. you've changed your behavior a little bit and you're going to keep going with that. We don't have time to get to the last two chapters. People should buy the book. This is me being selfish as the interviewer here. There was something you wrote in another book, which is called Move Your DNA, that just caught my attention. And I'd be curious to hear you say more about it. You point out that the human body evolved to perform specific movements like walking and squatting and hanging and carrying. And yet in our convenience-centric culture, we don't do a lot of these movements.

1:08:28So why are these movements important? And how do we do them more frequently? And what would the benefits be from doing them? If I were to draw a food pyramid, you know, if people can think of their government's food pyramid that has at the bottom of the pyramid, the thing that you need a lot of, And then all the different food groups go up to the top, to the pyramid, which you need just a little bit of. The way I think about a movement diet is making sure we hit these macronutrient categories. And they are varied. I won't go into what all of them are. You name some of them. Walking and squatting and being able to use your arms somewhat like legs.

1:09:07You know, the idea that you can hang from them or crawl around on your hands and knees to get under your house with relative ease. These are movements taken from human populations that live now that don't really have the conveniences that we are sort of used to as a culture. They have to subsist. Their days are full of physical activity and most of it's labor. So you have to, one, modify your environment a little bit, you know, and then the other part is making choices. So using your car less, choosing to walk any place that's within a half a mile of my house, then I try to make myself walk those places outside of circumstances where there absolutely isn't enough time.

1:09:52We talked about the rings that I have in my house. That's to create a little bit of a hanging space because hanging, using your arms well, you know, you think of in a sedentary culture, we don't walk very much, but if you are going to get from point A to point B, you're going to use your legs. Well, in a culture that has very little making left. You know, you think of like, what have human arms done for eons? On that movement pyramid, making movements is one of them. You know, the idea of processing, processing plants and animals into food is actually quite labor-intensive with the arms. Cooking can get us a little bit there.

1:10:33If you play a musical instrument, you might be using your arms more. So it's choosing the more dynamic versions of a lot of things. Like I will choose ingredients or food that requires a lot more chopping, for example, a lot more handwork. I won't buy pre-graded things because those things, they're whole foods in terms of the dietary nutrients, but they're not mechanically whole any longer. I mean, now we just have DoorDash. Like now it just shows up ready to eat. Not only did you not have to hunt and gather it. You didn't even have to go to the grocery store to get it. You know, you didn't have to grade it or prepare it.

1:11:12Now it can be blunt. You don't have to chew it. So there's been a slow reduction of movement in just our everyday life. So I just choose more of the labor-rich versions of things. I talked about setting up a, you know, a computer to work low on the table to stretch your hips a little bit. I might work on getting some of my squatting in. We have some lower tables in our house. I've gotten rid of a lot of the high seats in the house in favor for low, more meditation cushion looking things to not just meditate on, but to play games in the evening with my family. Or if I'm going to watch a movie, like we'll be on something that's lower.

1:11:56And that way I'm getting a lot of the exercises that I might go to a specialized class for, like how to stretch my hips, how to make my legs not so tight and my back not so tight. Instead of carving out time additionally to go get that in an exercise, leisure time domain, I will fit it into the flow of my day when I'm doing things with other people, getting other things done. And it's not to diminish. You don't even have to reduce the exercise time that you have, but it allows you to expand and use your body more diversely. And you asked why it's important. Your body's like a garden. It's watered and weeded through movement.

1:12:42And a lot of what we do for these exercise modalities is actually quite similar. Even though the modalities will differ, you know, there's not that much difference between running and cycling as far as the hip joint is concerned. It's kind of going through the same range of motion. And both of those range of motions are similar to how you sit in a chair. So I'm trying to distribute the movement throughout my body, distribute the types of movement throughout my body, including the heart and lungs, and fitting in movement throughout the day, choosing movements that don't necessarily look like our, I guess, commonly agreed on modalities of exercise is a big way to make sure I am taking care of what I call the body politic.

1:13:30Your body is a collection of tissues, just like any government. And some exercises work some areas and some, like you might love swimming. It's really good for your heart and lungs and your arms and legs, but your bones, they're not nourished by that activity. So then your bones would not vote for swimming. So then you have to do something for your bones, but maybe your knees don't like it. So you're always navigating the body politic when it comes to movement. And when I talk about these ancestral movements, that's the situation that sort of created the body government. And so the way that I have figured out to keep nourishing all these different parts is to make sure a lot of these ancestral movement patterns and macronutrients are being met in some way.

1:14:15some exercise and some just through the activities of daily living. Final two questions I ask habitually. The first is, is there anything you were hoping we would cover that we haven't yet? We covered a lot. The one thing I would want to add is calling back to earlier on is this idea of, we want to have much time to talk about it, but I'll put it out there. In the same way, we have learned how our body communicates with us about hunger, dietary hunger, the feeling of just having a stomach that's growling for food. And then we've also maybe diversified or gone beyond that a little bit where you can maybe recognize that being snappy with people that you love could also be a sign of hunger.

1:15:06This emotion that comes up can relate to you not being well-fed. Feeling tired and blue might relate to what you ate, what you chose to eat. So we're understanding that there's these signals that come from our body that are fairly complex that relate to nothing more than your nutritional diet, that the same goes for movement. We are just not as fluent in these signals yet. We don't know how our very primitive software communicates to you. You should go take a walk. And that there's a whole relationship here that you can develop through time when you don't always assume that how you're feeling is about something more than just your relationship with your physical body.

1:15:59You know, like I'll just use crankiness again. And it took me a long time to realize that when everyone around me was very annoying and I had no patience for anyone, that that was actually my body's way of letting me know that I was under moved. Because when I go take a walk, then everyone agrees not to annoy me. And then I come back and everyone's better. No, just kidding. So our signals are going to be different, but that is a form of communication that I don't think as a culture we've really explored at all. Totally agree. Last question. Can you just remind everybody of the names of your books and anything else you want us to know about?

1:16:39The book that we discussed mostly today was I Know I Should Exercise, But...44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them. And we talked a little bit about Move Your DNA. I'm at Nutritious Movement. Nutritious movement is where you can dig a little bit deeper into this analogy and also reality of movement as nutrition. Such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for your time. Appreciate you. Thanks so much for the conversation.

1:17:10Thanks again to Katie Bowman. Really great to talk to her. Don't forget to check out what we're doing over on our new app, 10 % with Dan Harris. You can sign up at danharris.com. We've got a 14-day free trial. If you sign up for the app, you'll find a guided meditation that comes with today's episode. It's called Rewire Your Relationship with Your Body, something many of us need to do. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer.

1:17:45Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.