Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Rediscovering Fitness: Shame, Grief & Learning to Love Your Body with Dr. Diana Hill

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Exercise isn't just another thing on your to-do list – it's a chance to enjoy moving and connect with your amazing body. Join Dr. Diana Hill for a warm and insightful conversation about self-compassion, breaking free from strict workout plans, and rediscovering the joy of movement. She'll explore how our thoughts about exercise can clash with what our bodies are telling us, especially during big life changes like perimenopause. We'll also touch on the real-life and emotional hurdles we face and how motivation, shame, our sense of self, and even grief can play a role. This episode is for anyone who longs for a kinder, more personalized approach to movement, that focuses on finding activities you love and weaving them into your day-to-day, rather than forcing yourself into rigid routines. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep291 Diana Hill, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, international trainer, and a leading expert on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and compassion. She is the host of the Wise Effort podcast and author of four books including The Self-Compassion Daily Journal, ACT Daily Journal, her latest I Know I Should Exercise, But..., and Wise Effort (forthcoming Fall 2025). Integrating over 20 years of meditation and yoga experience with psychological research, Dr. Hill leads retreats, therapist trainings, and workshops to help organizations and individuals develop psychological flexibility so that they can grow fulfilling and impactful lives. She is on the Institute for Better Health board and writes for Psychology Today and Mindful.  Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of The Resetter Podcast, I am bringing you Dr. Diana Hill. So Dr. Diana is the author of a new book called I Know I Should Exercise, But. And then there's like dot, dot, dot, 44 reasons we don't move and how to get over them. Phenomenal title, right? And why I wanted to bring her to you all is A, she has co-authored this book with Katie Bowman. and so many of you loved the interview I did with Katie. We'll leave a link here to that. But what these two women are out to do, which is really beautiful,

is help us go get back into a positive relationship with movement. And what's so beautiful is that Katie is a movement expert, and Diana is a clinical psychologist. So a little bit of a background on Diana, and then I want to tell you what you're about to hear. She is an international trainer and a leading expert on acceptance and commitment therapy and compassion. She hosts a podcast called The Wise Effort Podcast, and she's authored four books, including the self-compassion Daily Journal. So that gives you a little bit of an idea of the lens in which you're going to hear this conversation.

And really what we go through is how do you love exercising and what does that look like? like, then we dive into what do you do when you're out moving your body and you're like, I hate this, I hate this. And every cell inside of you wants to stop. We had talked about that. We then go into the psychological hurdles. And of course, they have 44 hurdles in their book. But we went through some really important ones like what happens when we're grieving our younger bodies?

And what happens if we have a lot of shame about our body? And how about our identity? A lot of us were athletes when we were younger and we're no longer athletes or a lot of us were identified as somebody who is thin and now we have extra weight and how do we handle those changes in identity? So I love this conversation because it's looking at exercise and movement from a completely different lens. So if you are really struggling to find your rhythm with exercise and movement. I hope you find peace here. I hope you find some insight. But most of all, I never ever want you to give up on yourself. I believe we all have a unique way in which we want to move our body. And I'm hoping that this conversation will

hit you in a place that helps you understand your perfect path towards movement. Dr. Diana Hill, I know I should exercise, but is the name of her book, and enjoy. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. So let me just start off by welcoming you to my Resetter podcast. Exercise is a topic I cannot talk about enough. I absolutely love this topic.

And you bring such a really cool new part of this conversation. So let me just start off by saying welcome. Well, thank you. And I think some people love the topic, but they hate the topic. It's like exercise is the topic. I don't want you to bring up with me. So maybe we have people that are on both sides of the fence here. Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny you say that. because, you know, I as a young, the younger version of me, like, needed to move my body all the time. And then when I went through perimenopause, it was the first time my brain was like, you need to go move your body. And then my body was like, no, there's nothing in here right now that wants to exercise. And so somewhere in my mid-40s was the first time I really had a realization that it's, It's hard when your brain says no and you know you're supposed to exercise, but nothing in you wants to. So can we start with what do you think the biggest hurdle is to people's mindset when it

comes to exercise? Oh, it's hard to land on one. I mean, I think there's hurdles around exactly what you're talking about in terms of the physiology of it, right? we're getting over the hurdle of inertia. And it's kind of nuanced. Sometimes we do need to listen to our body and pull back and rest and do. Maybe it's not exercise that your body is craving, but it's movement.

And those are two different things, right? Or exercise is one component of a moving body. Maybe you need a slow walk outside that's not exercise, but is getting your body connected to nature, connected back to yourself, getting a little mental break. So one barrier can be just our belief systems about what constitutes exercise, how our head gets in the way of what is actually effective in our lives and what our body needs. But gosh, there's so many environmental barriers that are there as well, just our lifestyle that are blocking us. And then there is our emotional barriers, which I'm also really interested in because when you talk about me as a kid versus me as a 20 year old versus me as a 40, 50, 60, 70, and beyond. There's different emotional and sort of affective processes that are going on during those time periods that influence our movement.

So it's interesting you bring that up because one of the things I always taught people when I was coaching them one-on-one, and I've been recently diving into this with my membership group, is that there's this interesting journey we go on with health where we hit a moment in our life where we're like, I don't really love living in my body. I need to make some changes. And then we have a really clear idea of where we're going, what we're doing. But the gap in between there is where we get lost. The gap between I know I need to change and I want a new result. That is what I see is like a sand trap for a lot of people. And what I'm hearing you say is that that's emotional. That's like that's an emotional gap.

I think there's six things in that gap. And we often think it's just motivation. We just think I'm not motivated enough. And if I get more motivated, then I'll be able to cross over this hurdle. But when we look at the science of psychology, the sort of the modern psychological science, there's six processes or six things that are going on inside our psychology. One is motivation for sure. But there's also feelings.

You know, so maybe for some people, that gap is shame. they can't bridge the gap because they have shame around where their body is. They don't want to go out in public. They don't want to go to an exercise class. They don't want to go for a walk with their friends because they don't want to show up and have that sense of comparison or competition. So emotions, yes, are a big part of it. Maybe you're going through grief.

Grief is like carrying around lead bricks. And certainly the older we get, the more grief we have, right? It's just the nature of growing older. So emotions are part of it. then there's our thoughts, which can be a big thing that can be a gap. And our thoughts include mental rules. Our thoughts include, I just don't want to. Our thoughts include this forecasting of how hard it's going to be. We kind of put that out there, like it's going to be painful. With feelings, we have thoughts. We also have our sense of self. Folks won't exercise or won't bridge that gap

because they say things like, I'm not, I'm not a runner, or I'm not the type of person who, or I've never been an athlete. or I'm a grinder at work and I need to get my work done. So that's a big barriers. Who you think you are and who you think you aren't. Your sense of self is a factor. And then we also have our attention, our inability to be in the present moment and our attention being scattered all over the place.

And that can be, you know, you may have the best intentions, but really poor attention. So you can't get from where you are to where you want to go. Yep. And then the last one has to do really with our ability to kind of like take perspective on ourselves and our life in the long run, you know, to be able to think down the road when I'm at the end of the day or the end of the week, will, will I feel like I'm more who I want to be showing up my life that I want to, in a way that I've shown up if I have moved

my body today? Your future self. Your future self. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's a big one. My future self gets me through those tough days a lot, where I'm like, well, the today's self doesn't really feel like doing this, but the future self would really appreciate if I get up and move my body. And that has been a little trick that has worked for me is to remind

myself that it's not just today version of me, but tomorrow is also a great way to get me going. Yeah. So then you add to that trick by saying, oh, thank you, past self. Yeah. Not only do you think about our future self, but we acknowledge and say thank you to our past self for setting us up for today. Yeah. You know, like my past self that put all my little supplements in the little container and, you know, like thank you past self. You made it so easy for me to just to take my supplements at lunch. I really appreciate her. Oh my God. I love that. I've never thought to go back and like thank my past self. It's a that's a really good one. Yeah, I got to like work with her. I love. Oh my God. I love that. Let's start with this question. And to give you a little bit of an idea, and my audience might not even know this, that my undergraduate degree was in exercise, physiology, and nutrition.

And I was a competitive tennis player at the University of Kansas. And so I, like, I've been studying exercise. I've been enjoying exercise for a long time. And somewhere in my perimenopausal journey, I really had to start reevaluating the way my relationship to exercise was because the athlete in me was push on through. And yet the perimenopausal journey was not a push on through a journey when it comes to exercise. So before we get into like the tricks to get yourself over that, do we do we know what a 40 plus year old woman should be doing on a weekly basis when it comes to exercise? Like do we have any kind of formula?

for that? So it depends on that 40 plus year old, five plus year old woman because is that 45 plus year old woman have three kids and working in the home and on the floor picking up stuff and lugging sports equipment and walking their dog, maybe they don't need, quote, to go to the gym an hour a day. Right. Yes. Is that 45 year old woman working as a hairstylist on her feet all day, you know, her arms are up in the air. She's doing repetitive motion. Asking her to go walk on a treadmill for an hour may not be the best idea either. So I really believe in individualized approaches to movement and exercise. We need a variety of movements. Katie Bowman is my co-author on this book and she is the queen of nutritious movement. So she talks about movement in terms of nutrition. Are you getting the variety of

nutrients that your body needs? And that includes rest. And that includes twisting to the right and arms over your head and fast movement and jumping movement and on the floor crawling movement and hanging movement. All of these, she has her beautiful pyramid. I love her pyramid of movement. And I'd love the conversation I had with her about like getting out of that idea that you got to join a gym or hire a trainer, like that it's really about movement of the body. So thank you for putting that out again. Yeah. So I'm sitting on the floor. I'm a therapist. I sit for a lot of hours a day. The way that I work with that is I have. walk, whenever I can, I have a walking meeting with a session, a walking session with a client

or a walking meeting to prep for this podcast. I went for a walk and I listened to you talk, right? These are, that's me prepping as I'm moving. And now I'm sitting on the floor, which actually uses a lot more of my body than if I were sitting in a chair because I have my legs crossed. I'm using my core to hold my spine up. I'm not leaning back into something that's outsourcing my movement. And that's all designed. It's like built into the environmental design of how I live, right? To build a more movement-rich lifestyle. That's unique to me. For somebody else that is on their feet all day, you know, they may do something different than the way that I'm doing it. So it really has to be individualized, but certainly are the requirements that are out there are, you know, 30 minutes,

five days a week of cardiovascular exercise and then the twice a week of strength training. Look, if you're doing 30 minutes on an elliptical and then you're sitting the rest of the day, your body is not getting the nutrients that it needs. Just like if you were to, you know, eat a little pile of, you know, something that wasn't super nutrient dense and not having nutrition in the other areas. So it really has to be individualized. Is it fair to say we've overcomplicated exercise? Like we've made it way more sophisticated than it needs to be? I think we've over dissected it.

Maybe not overcomplicated it. Great. Because it can be such a rich, dynamic part of our life, naturally incorporated into our lifestyle. Yeah. I was just, we were just working in the garden this weekend, and we picked a ton of fava beans.

And then my son is like, we're watching basketball playoffs, and my son is shelling fava beans while we're watching the basketball. That's a fine motor skill. Right. Right. Actually, really good for our hands. Our hands are, we have these opposable thumbs, but we've lost the rest of our hands, right? So he's doing nutritious movement while watching the basketball game and we're sitting on the floor. And my other son is like, you know,

gesturing and jumping up and down and cheering. That's movement that's part of our life. It's part of our family time. It's part of our cooking time. And you can go and buy the little machine where you do the scruncher of the fingers to strengthen your grip where you can shell some fava beans. Yeah. And so I think the dissecting of movement into trying to, like, some of it has to do with capitalism and selling stuff, right? Well, it's all of health is like that. Yeah. All of health is like that.

I have become completely addicted to understanding our primal design. And when I go back and I look at how we were designed back and how the hunter and gatherers moved or, how the hunter and gatherers aid or they fasted. It's just effortless because they were working with their design. And then I fast forward to nowadays we have this really big statement that's coming out for menopausal women that you need to lift heavy stuff. And now you've got all these women that are like, oh my God, one more have to. I have to go to the gym and I've got to lift all this heavy stuff.

And we've lost sight of how do you do this effortlessly all day long, which to me seems like, If you could make it flow with your daily rhythm, then the mind will be looking at it with more joy and not looking at it with dread. So it's effortless but also effortful at times. You know, when I'm lugging groceries from the car to my, all like pack them in, you know, I'll pack three in one side, one or the other. I'm like, this is hard. But the way my mental processing of that, my mindset around it is,

this is me lifting heavy things, which is what my body is meant to do. And it's, it's, it's uncomfortable. But we can be with the discomfort when we connect it to something that either is meaningful to us in some way or that has some kind of purpose to it. Like I'm feeding my family. I'm like, this is, this feels good to me or I'm taking care of my body by, I mean, you know, it's actually good for us to lift uneven things. Like not everything has to be so, you know, you know, even on both sides all the time, that our bodies were meant to be dynamic like that. It may actually help us not fall as much, right, in the future if we have that kind of imbalance type of movement. So some of it is also just getting more cognitively flexible around how we're moving our bodies,

why we're moving our bodies, and kind of breaking out of those confines of what exercise is supposed to be. Because as soon as it becomes a supposed to and a should, then it becomes a rule and then it becomes a box. And then actually we get demotivated. We don't want to do it because we want to, especially when we become a little bit rebellious in our menopausal years, we're like, F that. I'm not telling any of those rules. So it's good for us, rebellious folks, to break out of those rules and redefine it for ourselves, but connect it to something meaningful. Connect it to what's important to you. And then you have intrinsic motivation. You have a motivation and a fire that comes from within as opposed to the extrinsic external things that are pushing. you. And when you feel pushed, we become like mules. We just dig our, you know, feet into the ground. It's so true. And that was what I learned from my last conversation with Katie is I really started to see how many different movements I was doing during the day. Like, was I gripping? Was I chopping? Was I bending? Like, it really opened my mind to see that I could be actually working out and exercising

all day long, just in very different variations. And it was, it was freedom that conversation I had with her because I thought, this is a totally aligned way to look at why we need to exercise in the first place. You know, we're not gaining weight. We're not getting poor health because we didn't join the right gym. We're getting it because we didn't create the little tiny habits every single day. We're not looking at those little moments where exercise is possible, like you said, with the fava beans. So there's the cognitive flexibility around it and there's also the emotional flexibility around it where we've gotten weaker over time in our ability to be with discomfort and our ability to be with uncomfortable feelings because we're also sold

this message that we're always supposed to feel good. We're always supposed to be happy. We're happy, take this medication, and we can get rid of that feeling for you pretty quick, right? And we've lost our capacity to be with the discomfort, but also see the value of discomfort. There's competency and mastery that you build by tolerating discomfort. I have two kids that are both mountain bikers, and one's a, he does enduro racing, right? And so, indoor racing is you, you ride a bike up a very, very steep hill, and then you go down. the hill very fast. And the uphill is the endurance part. It's the, this is uncomfortable for the reward of the down. And we need to as sort of as a species, because so much of our environment is

built around making us more comfortable. And this is what you do with fasting is you, you are developing not only the health benefits of fasting, but there's mental benefits, there's psychological benefits to riding that edge of discomfort and seeing that it doesn't kill you. Right. You know, like we say things like, oh my gosh, it's so uncomfortable, I'm going to die. No one's, no one's ever died of the discomfort of embarrassment or the discomfort of anxiety. But a lot of people have become very unhealthy because they're unwilling to be embarrassed. They're unwilling to be the person at the airport like me that's like doing the yoga stretches while everyone's sitting down in their seats, right? So there's that as well is is part of the breaking out of this. these confines of what exercise should look like, that it should be contained to some location in a certain outfit with a certain body shape and size and a certain age. And if you don't fit that mold, then you're going to be embarrassed in some way or uncomfortable in some way.

Okay. So what do you say? This is something I've heard over the years by patients so much that they roll their eyes at me and be like, I know I'm supposed to work out. I just hate it. And what I equated that to is it's painful, it's uncomfortable going back to what you just said. So what do you say, what do you do if you literally physically hate working out? I would want to look at a few things, right? So one is the hating of working out related to a history. So I'm a psychologist. I can't not go there. So is there a history there? Like a

history of being forced to work out, a shame history, only exposed to one form of movement. Some people, maybe they associate it with like gym class or in school when everyone had to run the mile and they were the last one or they felt shame around that, right? So it may be a mismatch of what you were exposed to as a kid in terms of joy of movement, right? Working out is different than movement. So have you ever had a time when you've experienced joy? And you have a history that contributes to that hating of it. So that's one part. I want to, I don't want to lose this thought. So are we, are we designed to enjoy movement? Yes and no. So we have two systems going on evolutionarily. We have evolutionarily a system that is there to preserve resources, right? So the

sedentary don't, don't expend energy unless you need to. Right. And when we're in a a state of safety or a state, and that is a very good time evolutionarily to be inactive. Now we're using that inactivity time of like scrolling on the couch time, right, when actually we should be active. So we actually need to override that system to some degree. And that requires some degree of discomfort in overcoming of that inertia. There's another part of movement that actually is quite reinforcing. Like, why is it that when I start running 10 minutes in or when I start playing pickleball or

when I start kicking the ball around with my kid, I start to feel good. And that part comes from the evolutionary benefits of if you were moving in the wild, say you needed to go get food, say you needed to run away from a predator, say you needed to run to get somewhere before nightfall. Your body needs to tell you, keep going. Good job. And so you get flooded with a number of different types of neurohormones, including dopamine, which includes us, makes us want to keep going, right? So that's sort of craving neurohormone. But other things like serotonin that gives you that sort of satisfaction, right, that endocabinoids, which make you feel good as well. And that's why when we start moving, we get that reinforcement to continue. So both are going on, right? We were designed to

move and we were designed to not move. Right. And probably our day should look like that. We should have some active rest times where we're shelling Fava beans. That's not like a big output, right? But you got to feel pretty safe to shell a Fava bean. Yeah. Right? Nothing's got to be coming after you. And then we do need a little bit of sprinting or a little bit of going up a, you know, steep hill every once in a while because we also, our body needs that as well, or lifting heavy things. Is there anything we can say to ourselves when we're sprinting uphill? And, you know, I don't know about you, I'm sure people listening have this happen, but my brain sometimes literally is like a petulant child that is like, I hate this, I hate this, I'm uncomfortable, do I really need to be

doing this like I start negotiating with myself? Are there tricks in those moments that you can use to get you to that place where the endorphins kick in? Yeah. So one of the really interesting pieces of research that's come out more recently is around the power of self-compassion. and physical activity. There was a study done with over 500 participants in the UK where they looked at people's ability and self-efficacy around movement. So they asked them questions like, on a skill from zero to a hundred, how likely are you to move your body and go exercise even if it's raining outside, even if you are really tired,

even if you really don't want to, right? And folks that scored higher on this measure of self-compassion, which I'll describe what it is, we're more likely to overcome that barrier, right? So if you have a petulant child, well, we've all had some form of pet. Excellent. Thank you for making me feel normal. Maybe you have a petulant pet, which I actually have more of right now. My children are less petulant. It kind of comes and goes. My dog is more petulant. If you've had a petulant child or a petulant pet or a petulant friend, maybe you've had neither of those or a petulant partner. Okay, one of those. You've had one of those, hopefully. What do we know about it?

about what's not helpful. You know, like we kind of have some common sense around this, berating them, blaming them, criticizing them, kicking them, telling them what a loser they are. Like, is that going to increase or decrease their ability to get up that hill? I mean, if you just had that inner voice going in the same way that you would be like the worst parent ever, right? And what self-compassion is, is not, it's not self-esteem. They've done tons of studies on the differences between self-esteem and self-compassion. So self-esteem is just like pumping yourself up. You've got this. You're the best. You're the strongest. You're the greatest, right? The cheerleader of the 1980s. Self-compassion is different. Self-compassion is, this is hard.

Yeah. I hear you. It's hard. What you're doing right now is hard. And I believe in you. And you've done hard things before. And I'm here for you. And I'm listening to you. And sometimes that voice is not the most helpful voice to listen to. You need to get into your heart. You need to dig deeper. There's a bigger reason why you wanted to go up this hill. What is that reason? And remember that right now, especially when you're at the steepest part. And be kind to yourself. Fierce self-compassion. Be kind to yourself with a fierceness to it, with a like encouragement, the way that a really good parent would encourage their kid to go to school, even if they really don't want to go to school when they know that today's a day when it actually it'll probably get better for you.

Like, I know you, you know, you're scared, but things will turn around at 10 o'clock, you know, by recess. So one of the things that we can start to do is start to use a different way of relating to ourselves, which is not either, you know, pounding down the petulant child, but not listening to the petulant child either. Like you don't just say, okay, you're right. This is too hard. I'm going to stop here. So you're like pep talk. But a third way is self-compassion.

Yeah. talk, but it's, compassion's different than puppy. I mean, we can smell puppy. Like, pep talk has a falseness to it. Compassion has a, I understand and I get that this is hard for you. And I'm with you in it. I'm not abandoning you in this. It's a little different than the, you know, the coach that's the saying the good jobs and the good girls. It's like, it's like somebody working out with you, cheering you on. You're, you being your own training. You being your own training. your own person that's believing in you and supporting the negative thinking is what I hear. Yeah, and validating you.

Yeah, and validating you. You know, like validation has a quality of, I mean, this is a lot of what I, if you do as a therapist, is I almost always start with some degree of validation of understanding. Yeah. And then through that understanding and that validation, through that acceptance, we can produce change. Yeah. But if you start with change and pushing, the other person will push back. And this is the foundation of a lot of what's called motivational interviewing, which is the science of motivation change.

What would you say? I want to go back to this shame piece because this is something that I'm seeing and more and more in women is that a lot of us have shame around some aspect of our body. A lot of us have decided we want to guilt ourselves all the time and we're not even aware of it. And my experience with fasting is that one of the biggest hurdles I had with women is that it was really reconnecting them to their body. and they were going to have to now have a relationship with their body and a relationship they've never had before. And there's shame, there's fear, there's guilt, there's trauma in their bodies. And now they have to face that as they go into this fasted state. I think it's the same thing as when we go into exercise. It's like the body keeps the score. It is a house of memories that sometimes we don't want to connect with.

How do we help women who feel disconnected from their bodies and movement is not, doesn't feel safe. It actually feels more traumatizing. Well, okay, there's many layers to my answer because I want to start with the emotion of shame itself and the science of shame and the evolution of shame. So humans evolved many different emotions, shame being one of them for a reason. We evolved shame because it's actually a social emotion. It's one of the emotions that is deeply connected to our desire to belong.

And if we didn't belong in some way, right, it's very dangerous for us as humans not to be part of the group. So we evolve this emotion of shame, which actually has this sort of closing up quality to it, shutting down, make yourself smaller, hide this part of yourself, don't ever let anyone see that part because they would never love you if they saw that part. And for some of us, that's actually our physical body selves. You know, a lot of women will talk about like covering parts of their body when they are intimate with their partners. They won't let their partners, oh, don't touch that part. Because that part doesn't deserve love. So true. These people, partners you've been with for 10 years, There's 20 years. You still feel it. You know, or, you know, when you're getting naked,

you're kind of like hide in this angle, right? Yeah. So there's this shame. It's like this part of me is bad. And the difference between shame and guilt is important as well because guilt is I did something bad and it motivates repair. Guilt actually makes us go like apologize. But shame is I am bad and therefore I need to hide this part of me. And then it festers. And what happens is it's a lot like black mold in like the bottom of your, you know, kitchen cabinet that as long as it doesn't get any air and nobody sees it, including you because you hide it from your very self, then it gets bigger and stronger and grosser. It becomes this like black mold of me, right? So that's shame. And if you're experiencing shame, I want to say that's human. It makes you human human. And if you

connect to that shame in a way that's like, oh, that's the part of me that wants to be loved, that wants to belong, then now we have the answer to shame, which is it needs love. It needs air. It needs to, you know, kind of, and you can just like crack the door open a tiny bit. Maybe you look at that body part in your mirror, in the mirror, and you put your hand on it and you breathe with it. And you say, hello, shame. Hi, old friend. I haven't really ever looked at you. I haven't really looked at you through eyes of love before. And what would that be like? What would it be like to just, you know, do a little bit of opposite to shame action? Like, you know, you got shame around the cellulite light on your thighs. What if you were to like wear something that shows that? But, you know,

you do it as an act of love and you do it as an active, almost like an act of activism, really, of like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to hide you anymore. Right. So that's one part of it. But the other thing that you were asking about is how do we make contact with our, with our bodies, a different way. And this is what my whole, my dissertation and masters was all on interceptive awareness and as well as like how to help retrain our awareness of our bodies, our physical selves. Interceptive awareness is like awareness of your heartbeat and your breath and your hunger and your fullness and your emotions and everything that's going on in the wilderness inside of our body. And what has happened over time is we've become so disembodied.

We don't know that language. It's just, it's like so foreign. We're so numb to it. And so it does require some listening in. And one of the things that happens with fasting, which is so interesting, is that I think sometimes our head, like, kind of quiets down a little bit. Totally does. And we can start to listen. Same thing with movement and exercise. Our head can quiet down a little bit.

And we can start to listen to this body that has so much to tell us. Yeah. And we haven't been listening enough. Yeah. And, you know, that's the one surprise I have. with Fast like a Girl going out into the world is how many women discovered new parts themselves from fasting because it is the total reconnection to your body and then your body starts telling you things without food like I'm angry and then like, oh wait, I'm depressed but I don't have my

go-to tool where I would go eat and all of a sudden I used to say that fasting was like a mirror. It could show you what parts you could nourish and you can work on, and you wouldn't be able to see those if you hadn't taken food out of the equation. And I'm wondering if exercise, I'm looking at that now and thinking, maybe that's very similar. Maybe it's when we look at why we don't want to exercise, when we look at the discomfort when we exercise, there's a story there that we can honor and can put us back. into relationship with our bodies. Is that a bit of how you're seeing this?

Yeah. I mean, I think exercise helps us with embodiment. You know, a lot of people, I'm a longtime practitioner of yoga. And how many times at the end of the yoga class tears come, right? And I don't even know why they're coming. It's just something has moved through me, you know, and it needed to move through my body. And maybe when we go for a walk and people talk about the clarity that comes, or they connect with people that have passed through their movement, right?

Through going through a walk on the beach or a walk of a mountain or connecting to something much bigger than them, you know, connecting to a tree or a mountain or the sky. You start to see things, you hear things. And it is a similar state of that expansive awareness that can happen, I think, with fasting. Fasting, I think, helps with that sort of interconnected space that we can get into as humans, in part because we're pulling away all of the distractors that are just usually in our way, you know, that are usually filtering our world. It's just you and you.

It's helpful for that. Yeah, you sort of left with you and you, which is what I love about it and you're left to nourish yourself, guide yourself, which I think with exercise is the same way. What about grief? I think grief is really interesting because I think a lot of menopausal women are grieving, their younger selves. And when it comes to exercise, I know I grieve my, you know, 20-year-old athletic self who craved, craved exercise and could build muscle like nobody's business and, you know, all the things that made exercise effortless. She's not around anymore. I don't know. She left the building,

and it becomes a different version of me that has to get me moving. And I, and I grieve the younger self. But that's part of aging. What do we do with grief? Oh, gosh. Well, my favorite, what do we do with grief? Francis Weller, who wrote the book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow. And he talks about the five gates of grief of becoming an apprentice to grief, for one. Like, we, the grief is not something that we actually do anything with or are going to get rid of. We're going to get better at. And we better get better at it because there's big waves coming. And the first gate that he talks about is everything we love, we will lose. Yeah.

Yeah. We will lose our eyesight. We will lose, you know, this form of movement at some point, right? It's not going to be there for everything. Everything is impermanent, right? And then he also talks about the grief around the parts of ourselves that haven't known love. I think there's a waking up to that in menopause. We were like, oh my gosh.

Yeah. If I could go back and talk to my 20-year-old self about that part of herself, I love her. Like, like, how, you know, how dare that be taken from her that she couldn't get up and be bold or have, you know, these experiences that I wish that she had because she didn't love that part of her. So the parts of ourselves that haven't known love. And then he also talks about that what we wished for but didn't receive. Hmm. Ooh, that's got to be a big one. Yeah, with our, like, our expectations of our life.

Like, I kind of wished for some women. It's like, I wish for a marriage that would go on forever, but I got a divorce. I wished for a child and I couldn't have one. I wished for X, Y, and Z, right? There's grief around that and grief around our bodies. That which we wished for, we didn't receive around our bodies, right? And then the sorrows of the world is another one. We all got to get better at that.

Yeah, we do. Having compassion for the sorrows of the world. And then we have our ancestral grief, which is a whole other big one. We can think about our mothers and our mother's mothers and their relationships with food and their bodies. And, and I mean, I don't know. I remember so distinctly watching my mom in the mirror being like eight and watching her button her pants in the morning and the way that she looked at herself with disgust. Yeah.

You know? And then, and me taking that on, like there's something wrong with her body. So therefore there's something wrong with my body. Right. And like adopting that for myself. And I have grief around that for her and for me because. I love her body birthed me. Yeah. I mean, like, I love her body. Thank you. Thank you to that belly. Yeah. That's beautiful way to look at it. So I do think, you know, I lead these retreats and I lead one in Costa Rica every year. And we do grief rituals.

Mm-hmm. We go around the gates and we honor each one of these. And we can honor grief in lots of ways. Grief does have a heaviness to it, a slowness to it. And there's ways we can move with the heaviness and slowness. movement processes our emotions. We know that when we move our bodies, the stress neurohormones kind of move through us too. They don't get as stuck. So I really recommend when people are grieving any one of those. Maybe you're grieving the loss of a pet or a loved one or one of those other gates. You're grieving the sorrows of the world. A really wonderful thing is to go for a walk. It's a really beautiful expression of grief. And if you can make it a meaningful walk where maybe you're placing a rock somewhere to honor somebody or you're connecting and doing some kind of

prayer or kind of mantra or something that breathing exercise that connects you to whatever it is your grieving, that can be really helpful as well. One of the ways I like to think about grief is that it is really an expression of love. And you said that as somebody who's been grieving this year, I was lost a very dear friend in October. He was 54. And then I had a home in the palisades that, you know, no longer is accessible to us. But what I learned is that in honoring grief, I really, really understood love. It was like love. I could understand love at a bigger level because I lost two things I loved dearly in a matter of a short period of time. And I'm wondering in menopause if there is a bit, I know Francis Weller's work, and I think there is something that could be

really profound about us honoring that at 55, which is what I am right now, I'm not going to have the body that I had at 35. And I may never have that body back again. And I loved that part of me. And I'm wondering if there are ways we can sit and honor and grieve what will no longer be because I'll never have that 35 year old again. Right. Right. Right. There's a ways to honor that and there's ways also to connect with what is it that I loved about that? Like what are the values underneath that? You know, like for you, what did you love about that body? Like what was it?

What did that body? Well, I loved how strong she was. Like, I loved how strong she was and I loved how effortless it felt to move her body. Like I would go for a run and it was like the best drug on the planet for me. And now if I run too much, my joints hurt, so I go for a walk. So it has to be a little bit different. So I loved her exuberance and how powerful she felt in her body. 20 years later, I don't feel as powerful in my body.

And so when I work out, it has a very different experience for me. I do a lot of walking. I do a lot of yoga. And most of that is for my mental health. And the body is just along for the ride. I think a lot of women probably hit our age and it's like, I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm not trying to like, and especially like those of us that are out on socials, I always tell my following, like, I don't really care if you think my arms are like amazing or like I'm the fittest 55 year old that you ever saw. I actually care more about working out for my own self, not for what other people think, which I think that is a real switch.

all of a sudden you have to motivate yourself differently because I'm not motivated to impress anybody else. I'm more motivated to just feel good in my body and my brain. So the motivation lens changed too. Yeah. So one practice with grief, grief is closely related to love. Yes, the other side of grief is love. The size of your grief is the size of your love. But grief and gratitude our sisters as well. And so we can say thank you. Thank you. You know, and any time that memory of that powerful, exuberant self shows up, like, thank you.

Oh, yeah, when you get a glimmer of her. Yeah. I'm like so appreciative as opposed to like, oh, no, I can't have you, which is attachment, clinginess, non-acceptance, right? So we want in one hand gratitude and the other hand acceptance. And acceptance is not necessarily having to like something. But the actual, the word acceptance, the root of the word acceptance is to receive. I don't have to like it, but I can receive it.

And when I open both of my hands, when I open one hand to gratitude, thank you, and the other hand to acceptance, I receive this. I receive where I am right now in my life. Then you also are opening up to a you that 20 years down the line, you will look back at you and be like, oh, I remember, gosh, when I was, you know, I used to have, I was like so free and who I was. I was and I didn't care what I did one thing. And that was such like a beautiful thing of my, you know, like early menopausal years were just so rad. And I would, I would love to have that again. You'll have something else. You'll have wisdom. And so what we know about wisdom is that it doesn't necessarily grow with age, but it does, it does grow with openness to experience. So it's associated with the psychological construct of openness. And that wisdom is this

combination of knowledge, cleverness, life experience, like problem solving skills with heart, with heart and compassion and values. And when you combine that, you know, you have something that can handle the grief and the loss, but and honor it with wisdom and also honor where you're at right now. In the here and now, there's really fabulous things that you wouldn't trade for when you were 20 or 30. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn't give them up. Yep. And I loved when I was 20 and 30 as well, what I had them. What I just heard is really cool. I hadn't really thought about it.

Like, you may be losing one thing, but as you get older, you're getting wiser. And so it's actually, you're losing one thing but gaining something else. And like what I would say when it comes to working out, for me, what I lost was the desire to look a certain way so that I could be worthy to the people around me. I could feel like enough to the people around me. And I'm happy to have lost that in exchange for I'm actually now working out for me and the state I want to be in, not necessarily a byproduct of an external appearance. And I think a lot of women going through menopause, this is what we go through,

is we go into this coming, I call it returning home back to ourselves, where we're like, wait a second, all of my lifestyle tools now are for me. They're not for the other people around me. And I loved how you said that. It's like you gave up one thing, but you got something else. And when I put it through my own lens, that was beautiful. I'm like, yeah. Well, and here's, yeah, and here's the twist. When you start making it that way, it does become for other people too. Because you show up differently for other people. Right. When your lifestyle tools are about helping you be more bad. And balanced about helping you feel more like you're growing, you're wiser, you're stronger, you know, all the things that healthy or whatever definition of your lifestyle tools benefiting

you are. Right. Then you show up for your family members better. You're less irritable. You're more compassionate. You're more present. You're showing up at work with more creativity, more openness, more, you know, thinking outside of the box, all the things that benefit our world.

And I really see it as a flow. It's not either or. We don't have to choose. But when we start to engage in that flow of well-being or flow of compassion or flow of a different type of lifestyle, you see that your fasting doesn't just benefit you. Yep. I know that like when you're done with your fast, you are so clear. Your work is so creative.

Your team is like you've got energy for your team. You got energy for your whatever, your plant. Whatever it is that you want to express yourself in, you're going to express yourself more fully. and you show up more as the genius that you are. And so that's the sort of regenerative nature of things that we can engage in regenerative lifestyles. That it's not just about me and it's not just about you anymore. It's about we.

But it does start with your relationship with yourself because that's usually the one that needs to get unlocked, especially for women because we're so used to having a bee for everybody else. Right. So we have to sort of target that first. And talk a little bit about, you mentioned earlier about our identity, get stuck in the way. Explain that a little more because I can tell you that my identity when it came to working out was I'm an athlete. I don't really have that identity. I don't identify as an athlete anymore.

And it's been the example that I've used a lot is I used to love to run and then I started injuring myself all the time and I started walking and I felt really lazy. I was like, oh my God, like, I can't believe that I'm not pushing myself to the same level that I used to push myself. And then I had to redefine walking as forward movement. I'm like, Mindy, you're just moving forward, just moving forward at a different pace. What I want to point out is that that was the identity shift of, I'm not an athlete anymore. So now how am I going to work out? And it almost freed me in some level, but I'm,

curious when we have people that are like, well, I don't do yoga or I don't dance or I don't, it's like this identity piece has to come into play for people. Yeah, it's a major barrier for people. And, you know, our identity, our mind wants to categorize things because it's metabolically expensive to have more than one category overlap. Like, it takes too much mental energy. So I just need to categorize when we do this with other people. I'm going to categorize you as this, not that, based on what I see about you, what clothes you're wearing, how your hair is, and what house you live in, right? I'm just going to put you in that category. It's easier. And then we put ourselves in our own categories because it's easier. But what happens is those

categories create boxes in which confine us. And what if one of those categories falls apart, right? Then we don't know who we are anymore. Or we never leave that box to expand our identity to multitudes, right? One of the exercises that I'll often do with clients and session as I'll just ask them repeatedly over and over again, who are you? And they'll say like, I'm a mom. Who are you? I'm a therapist. Who are you? I'm a, and I just keep on going at who are you, who are you, who are you, who are you? Until you get to the point where you're like, oh, I'm everything. I'm you. I'm love. I'm like, I'm not one thing because sometimes you're not a mom. Sometimes you're not a therapist. All of these are sometimes. And we have to get more flexible with our

with our categorization of things because otherwise you won't go to, I just recently, a year or so ago started doing African dance with one of my good friends. And I'm like, I'm not a dancer. There's no way. Right. There you go. I can't do that. Right. I'm not a dancer. Well, guess what? If I said no to that, I'm not a dancer, then I would have missed out on this incredible experience with a friend at the beach, learning a new skill, discovering parts of my body that I never knew could move. Like, you know, my hips could. move separately from my other parts of my body. I had no idea. So our identities keep us stuck. And this is where we also, in these years, it's really fun and exciting to start to push those

limits, you know, and our kids can be great teachers of that, our friends, we can push each other as friends to start getting outside of our identities of who we are and who we aren't and dropping some of them because going back to Francis Weller, you're going to lose those identities too. Everything you love, you're going to lose. So might as well get. more flexible with them. And that's what will allow us, you know, sort of longevity-wise, to be more adaptable as we age because so much is changing and will change. That's the one guarantee. Yeah. You know, I really like that thought because I feel like menopause is a redefining of identity in general. And I think, you know, a lot of us go from, I was a mom, well, I'm still a mom,

but my adult children, mommy and adult children looks a lot different than like, you know, teenagers. Or like me, I was in clinical practice. Well, I'm still helping people. I'm just not in clinical practice anymore. So what I'm hearing is if you have an identity that you should move your body in a certain way and that you don't move it in another way, it's time to reevaluate that and potentially take on a new identity. Is that what I gleaned from what you just said? Yeah, or just be flexible with identities altogether. Yeah. Just put a sometimes, comma, sometimes next to all of them.

Yeah. And then a question mark too, because there's some that you don't even know yet, but you haven't even explored, you know, and that's where a movement can be really fun as well. Because, you know, everything from like, I'm not a soccer player, and then you have a kid that loves soccer and all of a sudden you're kicking the ball around in the backyard and you're like, whoa, I had no idea. Yeah. Like, this is a new identity, you know? So it's more about being flexible and being adaptable. And in the service of what? Like in the service of fun or in the service of joy or in the service of connection or in the service of service of, you know, giving your using your physical body to for transportation or for helping a friend move. You know, all of the physical bodies. We talk about the palisades. I'm close to you and I've also been impacted by fire multiple, multiple times here in Santa Barbara mud flow.

our physical bodies can be powerful resources to help each other, you know, to move, to dig out of mud, to, you know, get animals out of places where they're, you know, in danger. And then all of a sudden, we can drop our identity, right? It doesn't really matter who you are in that moment. Yeah. So you can try it on and then you can let go of it and try another one on. I like that idea. I like that idea. Play with it. Yeah. So your book that you and Katie put out, I'd love that. the title. I know I should exercise, but very, very creative. What can people expect in this? And for those especially, those women that are really struggling, trying to find their way with exercise, what can they find in your book? Well, it's 44 reasons why we don't move and how to get over them.

And we sourced our audiences. Like, what are the reasons why you don't move? And they're very nuanced. They're very specific. Like, I can't, you know, I have five kids and I can't. I, you know, I have five kids and can't get them out the door. We have stuff on menopause. We have stuff on not enough time. And we approach it from these two angles. Katie's a biomechanist. She's got creative ways to move that are not on a stairmaster for 45 minutes, right? She's got creative ways to stack your life, build movement into your life. I'm a psychologist and I look at it through a psychological lens and through the processes that are inflexible that are preventing you from moving your body. And so we tackle it from these two. It's really unique and then we tackle it from these two angles. And we teach these skills that although these examples are very nuanced, could be applied anywhere and everywhere so that hopefully by the end of reading this book, and you can kind of flip through it. It's one of these like open to a page and read that page and get inspired. You'd have to read it from beginning to end. But hopefully as you move your way through it, you will be able to apply this to your unique reason why you are struggling either moving your body differently or moving your body more.

or maybe take an arrest because maybe that's what you also need. So true, so true. Well, Diana, how do people find you? And the book is out now? It's been out for a while? Yeah, the book is out. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Yeah, it's definitely out. You can get it anywhere. And I'm on socials at Dr. Diana Hill, mostly Instagram. And then I have a newsletter at Dr. Diana Hill.com. And I have a meditation there, which is like my new go-to, which is how to sit with an uncomfortable feeling because people often tell you you should just sit with discomfort, but people don't know what that means. Like what are you actually doing there when you're sitting with an uncomfortable feeling?

Are you with an uncomfortable feeling? So I have a meditation on my website at Dr. Diane Hill.com that walks you through that and a lot of other resources there. Amazing. Well, I love what you gals are up to. I really think a better conversation, a deeper conversation. I shouldn't say better. Deeper conversation around exercise needs to be had.

and it feels like you two are having it. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.