Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #150 BITESIZE | How Movement Can Transform Your Life | Dr Kelly McGonigal

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of optimism and positivity to get you ready for the weekend. If we can incorporate regular movement into our daily lives, we'll feel benefits for our physical and our mental health, yet so many of us view exercise as a punishment or an obligation. Today's clip is from episode 109 of the podcast with Kelly McGonigal. Kelly is a US research psychologist. She's a lecturer at Stanford University, and she's an author. And in this

Starting point is 00:01:43 clip, Kelly reveals how it's possible to change our mindset to view physical activity as a way to engage with life so that we can all find pleasure in the simple joy of movement. The way we talk about movement in society has conventionally been around burning off energy, burning off calories. It's good for your physical health. I mean, it's a very one-dimensional narrative. Yeah, it's punishment for enjoying life. That's how a lot of people think about it. And mindset influences so much of how we experience something. So I describe movement as using your body to engage with life. And I think of whether you call it movement or you call it exercise, it's really about finding

Starting point is 00:02:31 an activity that allows you to engage with life the way that you want to. So maybe you love how it feels when you go for a walk in nature, or you love how it feels when you run and you feel fast and free and you can sense your own persistence. Or you love how it feels to move and flow and Tai Chi or yoga or have dance parties in your living room with your kid. And that you use your body to engage with life, to express different aspects of your human nature, to connect with other people. And if you're experiencing movement instead as a punishment for something you ate or an investment in your future wellbeing that is not connected to something you actually enjoy, it just sets people up to, first of all, find an activity that they hate. I mean, if people

Starting point is 00:03:14 are obsessed with looking at their watch and seeing like these calorie counters or, you know, counting how many steps they've taken, it's very easy to miss how powerful you feel when you lift something heavy or how much fun it is to high-five someone after you do an exercise or you know go for a run so i think we need a total mindset reset about what movement is and why we do it so that people first of all are more likely to choose something that actually connects them to joy and meaning and also so that we we can sort of escape the voices in the head that often come up when you come to exercise from a place of shame or fear that's so common. It is something I can't shake off at the moment.

Starting point is 00:03:51 It's this thought that we've got movement all wrong. We talk about it all wrong. We put people off. We make them think they have to go to a gym at a particular time with a particular outfit on. When basically what you're saying is it's a fundamental part to be a human is to move. I think about it. I mean, even if you're thinking of movement as medicine, so your quadriceps don't really care if you are squatting and lifting things because you're gardening or you're squatting and lifting things in a gym because a coach is telling you do this now. Your quadriceps just know I need

Starting point is 00:04:23 to exert strength. I need to use energy. And any good that comes from that squat, whether it's changing your mood or releasing these myokines that protect your health, it's going to happen because you're moving your body. And your quadriceps aren't tracking, did you do it exactly 20 times for exactly this many repetitions? Your body and your brain just know, I'm engaging with life. And all the benefits that come from movement, it's about using energy, using your muscles, using as much of your body as you can. And that's when your brain and body reward you. We don't need some of this other stuff unless it lights you up. It's very hard not to shake off this idea that ultimately movement

Starting point is 00:05:00 is very personal. And it's not ideal to be prescribing the same form of movement to everyone that ultimately we've all got to figure out that yes yes it is what it means to be human is to move right and therefore if we haven't found that type of movement yet that we love maybe we need to go on that search for that type of movement that we love think about something that you already love and then think of an activity that allows you to do that. So if you love animals and maybe you don't have a pet, do you know how many animal shelters will let you volunteer to take a dog for a walk or a run? Maybe there's a person you want to spend time with. Maybe they love an activity and you could choose to do it with them. Do you know how much that

Starting point is 00:05:43 strengthens a relationship when you endorse an activity that someone else loves and they feel like it's their best self and you're like, okay, I'll go to that yoga class with you? There's a lot of ways to think about who and what you already enjoy. And I think that rather than thinking of durations and intensities, 30 minutes must be moderate. People don't even know what that means. 30 minutes must be moderate. People don't even know what that means. I think that we should view movement as being as essential to human survival as eating and sleeping. You don't say, I'll do it like once on the weekend. It's part of how you live your life. If you can find ways to make it

Starting point is 00:06:20 part of your life so that it's not a chore. It's an activity you love, so maybe it's part of your recreation. Or it's part of how you get about your life. You run errands by cycling or walking. Or it's how you connect with people in your life. If you're going to spend 20 minutes with your partner or with your kid, why not make that a movement since we know that the neurochemistry of movement helps us bond and connect with others. And I really think this idea that it's something that you're shoving into your life that's divorced from your life is one of the reasons people don't actually do it. We know very well that exercise helps make us more resilient to stress.

Starting point is 00:06:56 Yeah. So, okay. So how exercise helps us with stress, it is both on that short term. So if you're feeling stressed out, you're feeling anxious or angry, it's going to change your brain chemistry in a way that gives you more hope and more energy. That's the common denominator. That's the feel better effect. But also we know that people who are regularly active, it actually changes the structure and the function of their brains in ways that basically teaches the brain how to be resilient to stress and also more sensitive to joy. So you're going to have an increased availability of dopamine and endocannabinoid and endorphin receptors. Your brain is basically going to say, oh, I guess we can experience joy

Starting point is 00:07:37 and meaning in life and hope and optimism. So let's just be ready for it in a way that increases people's mood and joy in a much more generalized way. I'm a scientist. And one of the things that I want to communicate is that for me, science and spirituality are not in opposition. So if you were to look at my early work, I did a lot of work looking at yoga and my research on meditation and sort of what's happening in your body and brain and what the benefits of that are. And I feel like it's not that we need science to prove things that we can directly experience, but sometimes the science can also help us feel that sense of awe

Starting point is 00:08:15 and wonder. Like when I understand that my muscles are sending proteins into my bloodstream that act to give my brain hope when they cross the blood-brain barrier, I experience a sense of awe and wonder that actually feels almost spiritual. So one of the things that you will hear when people are being encouraged to exercise initially is you only have to do a minute. And it's true. There's no dose that's too small to get physical mental health benefits. You could do as close to nothing. And as soon as you take a breath, as soon as you take a single squat, everything is good for you. But there does seem to be like a dose response. And for people who are dealing with mental health challenges,

Starting point is 00:08:55 people who are dealing with a sense of isolation, sometimes doing things that are really hard seems to kick into gear what's happening in your brain and what happens in your sense of self and your ability to experience transcendence that you can experience while doing a marathon or an ultra marathon that maybe you're not going to experience when you first take that walk around the block. Don't be afraid of going beyond what you think you're capable of. Three minutes of exercise can boost your mood. Yes, that is definitely true. And also you might want to run a marathon. You might even want to run an ultra marathon to have these transcendent experiences. And that's also an option. There are a lot of different kinds of people listening to this

Starting point is 00:09:40 podcast, but I wonder, have you got some pearls of wisdom to finish off this conversation? to this podcast, but I wonder, have you got some pearls of wisdom to finish off this conversation? Yeah. So, so many people get an immediate benefit from moving outdoors. If you are somebody who thinks you don't like to exercise, if there's any natural environment where you feel safe in, and it doesn't have to be the wilderness, it could be any green space, to spend time outdoors will often be the most powerful way for people to immediately connect to the psychological benefits of movement. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest. And if you enjoyed

Starting point is 00:10:26 this episode, I think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversational Wednesday

Starting point is 00:11:11 and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #150 BITESIZE | How Movement Can Transform Your Life | Dr Kelly McGonigal

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.