Speaker 1: Get everyone Sam here. I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: the common themes that keep recurring on The Woodlife, about
Speaker 1: the importance of sleep, importance of exercise, importance of eating
Speaker 1: real food. And I love the fact that these absolute
Speaker 1: keys are continually reinforced in different ways by the experts
Speaker 1: that we speak to. But I also want to dive
Speaker 1: deeper into some of these to really understand them on
Speaker 1: a scientific level. And I think have more practical tips
Speaker 1: of Okay, I kind of get it now, but what
Speaker 1: can I do about it? Today's expert is going to
Speaker 1: blow your mind when it comes to the importance of
Speaker 1: a spending less time on our phones and most importantly,
Speaker 1: how we do that or how we get our kids
Speaker 1: to do that. So, if you're a parent or you
Speaker 1: know that you spend too much time, but the whole
Speaker 1: digital detox thing is this extreme thing that's not really
Speaker 1: going to work for you, you have to stick around.
Speaker 1: I'm going to hand on heart say it's probably the
Speaker 1: best chat that we've had on the wood Life. It's
Speaker 1: with the incredible doctor Christy Goodwin. That's coming up next.
Speaker 1: Then we're going to talk incidental exercise. That's all today
Speaker 1: on the Woodlife. We have had many guests that are
Speaker 1: in the wellness space on the WOODLFE over the last
Speaker 1: year and a half, and it's interesting how often their
Speaker 1: checklist of five or ten things to improve your wellness
Speaker 1: comes up, and one of those things is inevitably to
Speaker 1: reduce screen time. So I've gone and done some research
Speaker 1: and I've discovered an absolute guru in this space and
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to welcome her to the WOODLFE today, doctor
Speaker 1: Christy Goodwin. Welcome to the WOODLFE. How big an issue
Speaker 1: is this? What do you specialize in? And then we'll
Speaker 1: get to it eventually, most importantly, what can we do
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for this opportunity, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: raise my guilty hand and acknowledge. Even though I research this,
Speaker 2: even though I write and speak about this, I find
Speaker 2: it really hard, if not impossible, sometimes to tame my
Speaker 2: tech covers. This is a universal dilemma, whether you're a parent,
Speaker 2: an adult, a kid. I often call our kids screen ages.
Speaker 2: The reality is we all get sucked into the digital vortex.
Speaker 1: And isn't it funny? As a parent? You know, I've
Speaker 1: got three little ones, you know, five, four, nearly two,
Speaker 1: and you just you tell yourself you're not going to
Speaker 1: let that happen, and you feel like you're parenting well,
Speaker 1: and they're still doing heaps of adventures and outdoor activities
Speaker 1: and creative tasks that don't involve screen times. But it does.
Speaker 1: It still infiltrates your life and it sneaks up on you.
Speaker 1: And the term you used vortex, I mean, isn't it true?
Speaker 1: You jump, You go down a social media rabbit hole
Speaker 1: for what feels like two minutes and you've been there
Speaker 1: for forty five. It's scary, and it's not our fault.
Speaker 2: You know the tech that we all use professionally and personally,
Speaker 2: but more so our leisure tech. You know, social media,
Speaker 2: group chats, multiplayer video games. The people creating these technologies
Speaker 2: have intentionally used a whole lot of persuasive design techniques
Speaker 2: to get us hooked on their platforms. You know the
Speaker 2: fact that notifications come to us often say, we have
Speaker 2: ancient palelithic brains. We have brains that are biologically designed
Speaker 2: to go and hunt, forage and get information. But when
Speaker 2: information is constantly being thrust at us, it tricks our
Speaker 2: brain into thinking, well, this is a potential stress or
Speaker 2: coming to me. I must be in a heightened alert state.
Speaker 2: This could be a potential danger. So even though we
Speaker 2: know our phone is vibrating or flashing, our brain can't
Speaker 2: differentiate between a real threat and a perceived threat, and
Speaker 2: so we click on the notification, we pick up the phone.
Speaker 2: The fact that our notification bubble by default is usually red,
Speaker 2: you know, read is a psychological trigger for danger and urgency.
Speaker 2: The fact that there's a metric saying you've got you know,
Speaker 2: fourteen unread WhatsApp messages draws us in. You know, the
Speaker 2: fact in on YouTube and Netflix and stand all the
Speaker 2: streaming services. One clip rolls into the next. The AutoPlay feature,
Speaker 2: you know, we used to have to enable that, but
Speaker 2: it's now a default setting. So there's so many clever
Speaker 2: persuasive ways that draw us in and our kids and
Speaker 2: the average Australian, it is estimated, will spend seventeen years
Speaker 2: of their life on their phones. Who thirty three percent
Speaker 2: of our waking hours are sucked into that digital vortex alone,
Speaker 2: Let alone our laptops, our tablets, our desktop computers. This
Speaker 2: will change with artificial intelligence and wearable technologies. We are
Speaker 2: really spending a huge amount of time and often say
Speaker 2: if we don't take that control, if we're not intentional,
Speaker 2: it's not an anti tech you know, I don't believe
Speaker 2: in digital detoxes. It's not about digital amputation for our kids.
Speaker 2: You know, they're outdated, antiquated approaches. But if we aren't intentional,
Speaker 2: if we do not take back control, technology will and
Speaker 2: does rob us of our two most important human resources,
Speaker 2: our time and our attention. And that's why I'm worried.
Speaker 1: Well, thirty three percent of our awake time, thirty three
Speaker 1: percent of.
Speaker 2: Our aways life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it actually took me a minute to let that
Speaker 1: sink in. I mean, that is so beautifully articulated. I
Speaker 1: guess the first place my head went was I totally
Speaker 1: agree that we have to take back control. But even
Speaker 1: when I try and either do it myself or teach
Speaker 1: discipline to others around switching those notifications off and making
Speaker 1: it a bit more of a you know, or you
Speaker 1: turn your phone off or whatever it is, you then
Speaker 1: just turn it back on to be absolutely bombarded. I'd
Speaker 1: love your advice on how best just focusing on reducing
Speaker 1: I guess that bombardment of stimuli. Where's the first place
Speaker 1: you start with people?
Speaker 2: Yes, and you're exactly right. This is why I don't
Speaker 2: recommend doing a digital detox or anything really restrictive, because
Speaker 2: the research tells us in terms of digital detoxes, they
Speaker 2: create exactly what you just describe a binge and a
Speaker 2: perch cycle. We go offline for three days, but we
Speaker 2: come back Monday morning and we are digitally bombarded by
Speaker 2: the dms, the emails, the WhatsApp messages, and the detox
Speaker 2: doesn't actually create long term sustainable habits. A study was
Speaker 2: done where they compared two groups of people. One group
Speaker 2: who were asked to reduce their social media use by
Speaker 2: an hour a day. The other group went on a
Speaker 2: full digital detox. They fully restricted their use, and what
Speaker 2: the study conclusively found was that those people that went
Speaker 2: on the full digital detox reverted back to their screen
Speaker 2: habits before the digital detox was imposed. But the group
Speaker 2: that just reduced their social media time by an hour
Speaker 2: a day was spending four months after the study thirty
Speaker 2: minutes less on social media. So the research tells us
Speaker 2: that cutting it down or cutting it back is better
Speaker 2: than cutting it out. Because as we know as humans,
Speaker 2: anything that's fully restrictive doesn't often lead to long term change.
Speaker 2: So what I often say to people, is we've got
Speaker 2: to make our tech less sticky, less appealing, because you
Speaker 2: know it is so psychologically appealing. Is it as simple
Speaker 2: as putting your phone somewhere where you cannot see it.
Speaker 2: Research tells us that even if our phone is on
Speaker 2: silent and face down, if it's still in our line
Speaker 2: of sight, it drops out performance our cognitive performance by
Speaker 2: about ten percent. So put bluntly seeing your phone makes
Speaker 2: you about ten percent dumber. I can't be any more
Speaker 2: to recten that. It literally is a brain drain. Some
Speaker 2: of even if we're not picking it up, not opening it,
Speaker 2: some of our attention has gone there. So is it
Speaker 2: putting it in a bag, leaving it in the glove
Speaker 2: box in the car? Is it putting it in another
Speaker 2: room when you want to be fully present in those moments?
Speaker 2: Is it turning it to grayscale? And the first to
Speaker 2: say Instagram is really boring in black and white? It
Speaker 2: really is. Is it logging out of your apps on
Speaker 2: your smartphone. One of the reasons that we go down
Speaker 2: that digital vortex is because there's no friction. Now with
Speaker 2: facial recognition, you don't even have to enter your past code.
Speaker 2: You can simply hold the device up and off you
Speaker 2: go down that rabbit hole. So logging out. You know,
Speaker 2: most of us now have digital dementia. We can't remember
Speaker 2: any information because we're just being constantly peppered. When we
Speaker 2: can't remember the password, it may create a little bit
Speaker 2: more friction, you know, taking your tech temptations off the
Speaker 2: home screen of your phone, controlling your notifications. As you said,
Speaker 2: it's really hard to resist that. So I have three
Speaker 2: golden rules with notifications. One, disable all non essential ones.
Speaker 2: Two we can now bundle or batch when our notifications
Speaker 2: come to us, so rather than dribbling in throughout the
Speaker 2: day and distracting us, we can nominate what time or
Speaker 2: times of the day we want the WhatsApp notifications, we
Speaker 2: want our team's notifications or email notifications. And the third
Speaker 2: one is create VIP lists so that when you put
Speaker 2: your phone on focus or do not Disturb mode, they're
Speaker 2: called different things on different platforms. Everybody else gets blocked
Speaker 2: apart from those people on that list. Everybody else gets blocked,
Speaker 2: but they can get through. So I think there are
Speaker 2: things that we can do, but I am the first
Speaker 2: to say it's hard, Like we are fighting a monumental
Speaker 2: battle in terms of our time and attention.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one of those things I'm sure many
Speaker 1: people are like, absolutely know the what Christie is saying
Speaker 1: is right, But God, that scares me if this is you,
Speaker 1: and my guess is it is most of you. And
Speaker 1: I'm putting my hand right up in the air, and
Speaker 1: I love your honesty two in this, Christie, I'm going
Speaker 1: to find this seriously hard. I have a massive issue here. Massive.
Speaker 1: I mean I've put in probably ten percent of the
Speaker 1: little rules or little protocols that you've spoken about already,
Speaker 1: and I've already found it's helped a little bit. But
Speaker 1: there's so much more that I can do. And I
Speaker 1: love the term we need to take back control.
Speaker 2: Let's face it, we're slaves to our screens, and it's
Speaker 2: no accident. As I said, there's a whole lot of
Speaker 2: persuasive design techniques. The other reason we often and our
Speaker 2: kids in particular our teens. You know why social media
Speaker 2: and multiplayer video games and group chats are so appealing
Speaker 2: is that our more our leisure than our sort of
Speaker 2: work and productivity technologies. But our leisure technologies tap into
Speaker 2: our three most basic psychological drivers most basic human need
Speaker 2: is connection. We are hardwired for relational connection. We want
Speaker 2: to feel like we belong. This is why social media,
Speaker 2: group chats, emails, teams, messages, slack messages, multiplayer video games
Speaker 2: are so popular. Our second need is to feel competent.
Speaker 2: And in the online world, we don't have to often
Speaker 2: exert a lot of hard work and we get to
Speaker 2: feel competent. I can triage my inbox, I can reply
Speaker 2: to the messages. For young people, it's how many Fortnite
Speaker 2: battles they've won, how many social media vanity metrics they
Speaker 2: get on their posts. And the third need that we
Speaker 2: have as humans is control. We want to feel like
Speaker 2: we have some autonomy, and the online world gives us
Speaker 2: a perceived, although i'll say false, sense that we're in control.
Speaker 2: And so a couple of years ago, a mum told
Speaker 2: me this powerful story, and I have never forgotten. She
Speaker 2: told me that she picked her daughter up from school
Speaker 2: one day and her mum turned and said to her mum,
Speaker 2: how much do you earn per our mom? And her
Speaker 2: mom thought, wow, my daughter is finally you know, ambitious.
Speaker 2: She said, look, sweetheart, I own a salary. I'd have
Speaker 2: to do calculations let me get back to you. She
Speaker 2: tucked her daughter into bed that night, and she's tucking
Speaker 2: her in, she said, sweetheart, I've calculated my alli right,
Speaker 2: this is what it is. Why do you ask? And
Speaker 2: her young daughter turned to her mum and said, because
Speaker 2: I'd liked to buy an hour of your time without
Speaker 2: your phone. Yeah out. And even if you don't have kids,
Speaker 2: I think many of us would recognize that our time
Speaker 2: and our attention are being taken away by this. I
Speaker 2: don't want us and I know this sounds melodramatic, but
Speaker 2: the harsh reality is if we are giving up seventeen
Speaker 2: years of our life just to our phones, that's an
Speaker 2: inordinate amount of time. There's certainly some functionality there. I'm
Speaker 2: not denying that, but if we were brutally honest with ourselves,
Speaker 2: for many of us, that's a huge amount of time
Speaker 2: that we will never get back.
Speaker 1: So a couple of things, I mean that story wows
Speaker 1: is that nearly burst into tears. I've had a couple
Speaker 1: of occasions we're probably probably ten where my kids have
Speaker 1: said and I haven't heard them because I've been glued
Speaker 1: to my phone. And then Dad, put down your phone,
Speaker 1: and you know they're very little. So when that happens, well,
Speaker 1: I don't notice that you notice until you say that thing,
Speaker 1: but god, you do notice. And then those three needs
Speaker 1: connected competent control because the connected one is interesting because
Speaker 1: I have a teenage daughter, and it's that desire to
Speaker 1: feel connected through social media. But it's just not a
Speaker 1: real connection, like I just it's not replacing real connections,
Speaker 1: real friendships, real human interaction. And so it's just this
Speaker 1: this fake I mean, yeah, but it's a horrible substitute.
Speaker 2: And we have to be careful. We can't demonize it
Speaker 2: because for our young people, the online world really is
Speaker 2: their primary conduit for connection. But the harsh reality is
Speaker 2: the research tells us that any sort of text based
Speaker 2: communication does not even though we are connecting, does not
Speaker 2: create a hormone called oxytocin. So oxytocin's the social bonding
Speaker 2: sometimes referred to as the love hormone. We get it
Speaker 2: when we're in close physical proximity with others. Their brain
Speaker 2: biologically has to produce this hormone. What we also know
Speaker 2: is that text based communications make the brain produce cortisol,
Speaker 2: the stress hormone, two ways that people totally unaware of
Speaker 2: that our tech habits can make us feel stressed without
Speaker 2: even realizing it is that when we're on any screen,
Speaker 2: we do not sigh as much as what we should
Speaker 2: now as humans, we are biologically designed to sigh while
Speaker 2: we're awaight, roughly every five minutes. It's a natural biological
Speaker 2: mechanism that's built in to our biology that helps us
Speaker 2: regulate our stress response. We do it really subtly. It's
Speaker 2: two inhalations through our nose and an exhalation through our mouth,
Speaker 2: natural way to regulate our oxides in carbon dioxide levels.
Speaker 2: But when we are looking at a small surface area
Speaker 2: our phone, our tablet, our laptop, our computer, we do
Speaker 2: not sigh anywhere near as much. What does this mean
Speaker 2: We are often in a sympathetic nervous system state. We're
Speaker 2: in an elevated stress state just by looking at our screens.
Speaker 2: Another way you will find this one hopefully interesting too,
Speaker 2: is that when we have a very narrow gaze, so
Speaker 2: when our eyes are converging looking at our phones, our tablets,
Speaker 2: our laptops, we again trigger the stress response because biologically,
Speaker 2: as humans, we are designed to dilate our gaze. We
Speaker 2: are designed to look at things in the distance. As humans,
Speaker 2: We're not designed for us to adopt a very narrow gaze.
Speaker 2: So again, when our eyes converge, it triggers that stress response.
Speaker 2: There must be something a potential danger or stress or
Speaker 2: because I've got this very narrow gaze. So think about
Speaker 2: the hours that all of us, kids, teens, and adults
Speaker 2: are spending with that narrow gaze and not sighing. We're
Speaker 2: often really stressed. Those quartersol levels are high, and we
Speaker 2: haven't even started to consider what we're actually doing on
Speaker 2: the screen. Our tech habits are having a profound impact
Speaker 2: on us in ways that I don't think we've even
Speaker 2: started to really digest and consider.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with. The more it is, like, the
Speaker 1: more you know, the more petrifying it is. So I'd
Speaker 1: love some advice selfishly on what you can do with teenagers,
Speaker 1: because not just my daughter Evie, but no of course
Speaker 1: you know parents with teenagers out there who must be going,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm totally at a loss of what
Speaker 1: to do. I'd love some tips, Grissy, if you've got any.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my three tips for parents are the big
Speaker 2: overarching message is that we have to be the co
Speaker 2: pilot of the digital plane, not the passenger, and the
Speaker 2: reason is that the developing brain, the adolescent brain, does
Speaker 2: not have the architecture that is required to regulate what
Speaker 2: they do online. Part of the brain called the prefrontal
Speaker 2: cortex of CAEN say, it's like the CEO or the
Speaker 2: air traffic control system of the brain. It has three
Speaker 2: big jobs. It's impulse control, it's working memory, and its
Speaker 2: mental flexibility, so all sort of the high roll to
Speaker 2: thinking skills. It does not fully develop until somewhere in
Speaker 2: the twenties, late twenties for males, early twenties for females.
Speaker 2: So it is a parenting impossibility to expect your son
Speaker 2: or daughter to spend three hours on TikTok, voluntarily turn
Speaker 2: it off and say I'm going to go on tidy
Speaker 2: my bedroom for you, mum or dad. It's just it's
Speaker 2: never going to happen. They don't have that impulse control,
Speaker 2: they don't have working memory, so even though you've repeatedly
Speaker 2: told them not to look things up, they will still
Speaker 2: keep looking things up. So we have to be that
Speaker 2: co pilot, not the passenger. And to be the copilot,
Speaker 2: I can say we've got to get three bees right.
Speaker 2: The first be is that we have to co establish
Speaker 2: boundaries with them, not on them, you know, come up
Speaker 2: with some agreed boundaries. And again this is not about
Speaker 2: imposing an agreement, It's about co constructing with your team.
Speaker 2: What are some of our parameters, our guardrails, So having
Speaker 2: more broader conversations beyond how much what are they doing?
Speaker 2: When are they using it? You know, is it before
Speaker 2: school or before they go to sleep? Where are they
Speaker 2: using it? You know, establish your no go tech zones.
Speaker 2: Your teenager is much less likely to be sending nudes
Speaker 2: if it's in the lounge room or on the kitchen counter,
Speaker 2: much more likely to be doing it in their bedroom
Speaker 2: or their bathroom with whom you know. Would you invite
Speaker 2: a complete stranger to come in and lay down next
Speaker 2: to your teenager in their bedroom at night. Absolutely not.
Speaker 2: But we're often inevitably doing that when they've got devices
Speaker 2: in their rooms. So the first bees around boundaries, the
Speaker 2: second bee is around their basic needs. I believe the
Speaker 2: reason that we have a serious mental health crisis in
Speaker 2: young people is because of technology, but not the way
Speaker 2: we all think. We're all quick to wag the point
Speaker 2: the finger and say it's smartphones, and it's social media,
Speaker 2: it's what they are displacing. Their most basic physical and
Speaker 2: psychological needs are being displaced and superseded by screens. And
Speaker 2: the three big ones. They're three most basic needs that
Speaker 2: will optimize their mental health, sleep, physical movement, and connection.
Speaker 2: And they are all being significantly shaped and I would
Speaker 2: say sometimes sabotaged by screens. We have to fiercely protect
Speaker 2: those basic needs. And the third b the harsh reality
Speaker 2: is this is one adults really struggle with, boredom, being
Speaker 2: idle with our thoughts knowing you know, years ago we
Speaker 2: used to order a coffee and you talk to the
Speaker 2: barista or the people waiting outside. Today we pull out
Speaker 2: our phones. We pull up at a red traffic light,
Speaker 2: You look around. What are most people often doing pulling
Speaker 2: out those phones? And so the pockets of white space
Speaker 2: that we used to have. I don't know about you, Sam,
Speaker 2: but I've never ever had a great idea in my
Speaker 2: inbox or an inn Excel spreadsheet. My ideas come when
Speaker 2: I'm in the shower, going for a run, going for
Speaker 2: a swim, in an airplane without Wi Fi. We used
Speaker 2: to daydream, but we never have pockets of time to
Speaker 2: be bored anymore, and neither do our kids. So I
Speaker 2: say to parents, they are the three bees boundaries, basic needs,
Speaker 2: and boredom. And if we can nail that, our kids
Speaker 2: can use technology and we won't have to have all
Speaker 2: this moral panic and angst that their tech times are
Speaker 2: eroding their mental health and compromising them. But I think
Speaker 2: we're struggling as adults because we're not being good digital
Speaker 2: role models ourselves. We are tethered to technology, and so
Speaker 2: if we're not being good digital role models, the brain
Speaker 2: has mirror neurons, meaning that we are biologically designed as
Speaker 2: humans to imitate and copy. Like, how can we expect
Speaker 2: our kids to have really good habits if we are
Speaker 2: grappling with this. You know, we've got fully developed brain architecture.
Speaker 2: They don't. So it's again, I don't want to sound
Speaker 2: sad and somber, but this is hard. But we have to.
Speaker 2: I really think we have to put in place some
Speaker 2: strategies to be that co pilot.
Speaker 1: That is that is some of the most brilliant advice
Speaker 1: I've ever had on this show. And I mean that
Speaker 1: so sincerely. Oh thank you, Christy. I could talk to
Speaker 1: you all day because this is something that I'm fascinated by.
Speaker 1: I just want to ask you one more thing. If
Speaker 1: you could give our listeners one digital based challenge to
Speaker 1: focus on over the next week or a month, or
Speaker 1: you can decide the timeline. What would it be.
Speaker 2: So one often talk about microhabits, so not overhauling everything,
Speaker 2: not doing anything radical like a digital detos. What's one
Speaker 2: little lever that you could pull that would yield the
Speaker 2: biggest return for you? And what I find for most
Speaker 2: people is if we can start to avoid bookending our
Speaker 2: days with our devices. Ninety percent of adults. Research tells
Speaker 2: us pick up our phones before we touch our partners
Speaker 2: first thing in the morning. So we're all guilty of
Speaker 2: doing this. If we pick up our phones first thing,
Speaker 2: we trigger the stress response our limbit brain, the Migdaler
Speaker 2: in particular, sort of the emotional hub of our brain
Speaker 2: fires up. You know, we only need to see one
Speaker 2: unkind comment on our social media, an upsetting email, a
Speaker 2: sad news story, and we're already in this elevated stress
Speaker 2: response and our feet haven't even touched the floor. So
Speaker 2: the first fifteen minutes, if we can keep screen free
Speaker 2: now the one at night, ideally we would be having
Speaker 2: a screen free period about sixty minutes before we want
Speaker 2: to go to sleep, even thirty minutes will make a
Speaker 2: huge difference. The blue light not only de lazy onset
Speaker 2: of sleep, but we also now know it disrupts the
Speaker 2: quality of our sleep. If we're on a blue lit
Speaker 2: device in that sixty minutes before we go to sleep,
Speaker 2: it will shorten our deepen rem sleep stages. That's critical
Speaker 2: for memory consolidation, that's critical for us feeling like we've
Speaker 2: woken up and having had a good rest. So trying
Speaker 2: to make first fifteen and if we can the last
Speaker 2: hour even half an hour as screen free as possible
Speaker 2: huge impacts on our wellbeing and our performance.
Speaker 1: I love that, Christy. That's been just such a brilliant chat.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for your wealth of knowledge
Speaker 1: and your time to and I'm sure this wonderful advice
Speaker 1: is going to bring up some wonderful conversations, lots more questions,
Speaker 1: and our Woodlife listeners really are going to be the beneficiary.
Speaker 1: So thank you so so much for your time today.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Wow, Christy was just amazing. I normally write notes when
Speaker 1: I speak to our experts. I've got more notes scribbled
Speaker 1: on my desk than i've ever seen before that we
Speaker 1: must be connected, confident, and have some form of control.
Speaker 1: It's so true, and I think reminding ourselves that that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen in its best form through a screen, although
Speaker 1: it might be its easiest form, is a really important
Speaker 1: reminder for all of us. I hope you enjoyed that
Speaker 1: chat with Christie because that was just wow, brilliant. Next,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about incidental exercise, which I think
Speaker 1: is one of the most unsung heroes in developing good
Speaker 1: habits and taking care of ourselves. I mean, walking is
Speaker 1: the biggest example I use. Just adding in some walking
Speaker 1: to what you're already doing can really move the needle
Speaker 1: significantly when it comes to feeling better and losing weight
Speaker 1: faster and looking better. But we're going to dive into
Speaker 1: some quirky and otherwise incidental exercise tips and challenges that
Speaker 1: I want to throw to. That's coming up next, so
Speaker 1: incidental exercise. The beauty of incidental exercise, by definition is
Speaker 1: that we just don't have to overhaul our whole life
Speaker 1: to make a change. It can just be a small,
Speaker 1: consistent change, and that's often the best thing to do.
Speaker 1: Incidental exercise one of the easiest ways to create these
Speaker 1: small productive habits. So I've put these into two categories,
Speaker 1: the no effort category or next to no effort, and
Speaker 1: the more effort category. I went to a lot of
Speaker 1: trouble with my thinking of the names of these, but
Speaker 1: let's start with no effort getting out of a chair
Speaker 1: without using your hands to push you up. So that
Speaker 1: might be getting off the couch, that might be getting
Speaker 1: out of the armchair, that might be getting out of
Speaker 1: your desk chair at work. It activates your core because
Speaker 1: you've got a balance you've got to stabilize. It activates
Speaker 1: your glutes and leg muscles because instead of just cheating,
Speaker 1: I use the term cheating assisting with your hands. It's
Speaker 1: all legs and core. And if it sounds silly, but
Speaker 1: how many times do we get up and down to
Speaker 1: day twenty thirty fifty, one hundred depends on the individual,
Speaker 1: but it all adds up. Let's say every time there's
Speaker 1: an AD break and your favorite TV show, you walk
Speaker 1: around the house until your TV show comes back on,
Speaker 1: or you stand up and sit down without using your
Speaker 1: hands repeatedly until your TV show comes on, or you
Speaker 1: hop on the ground and you have a stretch or
Speaker 1: do a push up or do some sit ups.
Speaker 3: All of this stuff adds up for little bits of
Speaker 3: effort to make big bits of difference. And that's why
Speaker 3: I love incidental exercise so much.
Speaker 1: So Number one, stop using your hands when you get
Speaker 1: out of your chair. Number two, and this is I
Speaker 1: told you we were going to get weird standing on
Speaker 1: one leg in a flamingo pose while brushing your teeth.
Speaker 1: So this is something that you can do twice a day,
Speaker 1: and you do your flamingo pose to again engage your
Speaker 1: core and train your balance. And what's really interesting, particularly
Speaker 1: as we get older, we don't quite realize how bad
Speaker 1: our stability in one leg is or how bad our
Speaker 1: balance is. And the thing with unilateral exercises, and I
Speaker 1: see this in the gym a lot. We are always
Speaker 1: protecting our weaker side with our stronger side. And simple
Speaker 1: activities like your toothbrush from lingo will identify where you
Speaker 1: perhaps need to strengthen or improve your stability. So these
Speaker 1: are the next to know. If it once now, we're
Speaker 1: going to step it up. Stretching at your desk two
Speaker 1: or three times a day. The ones that I like
Speaker 1: because I think when we sit for long periods of
Speaker 1: time you get very tight through your hips, and you
Speaker 1: get very tight through your upper back. So I love
Speaker 1: to stand and stretch my arm against the wall or
Speaker 1: the doorway to stretch out my pecks or the front
Speaker 1: of my chest. And I love to go into a
Speaker 1: hip flexa stretch, which is where you take a big
Speaker 1: stride forward with one leg and push your hips forward
Speaker 1: and then I stretch my arms right up in the air.
Speaker 1: I'm doing it in the studio while I talk to you,
Speaker 1: looking absolutely ridiculous. But that opens up my hip flexes
Speaker 1: because they're the muscles that have gotten short and tight
Speaker 1: while I've been in my seated position on the keyboard
Speaker 1: or in the car, or even sometimes on the couch.
Speaker 1: So they're my favorite two stretches. If you're only going
Speaker 1: to choose two, to get up two or three times
Speaker 1: a day to do from your desk. And then, as
Speaker 1: I said, bit more effort, incidental exercise, change your commute.
Speaker 1: How do you get to work, get the kids to
Speaker 1: school in the morning. So I have a rule with
Speaker 1: Willa and Charlie. We live about six seven hundred meters
Speaker 1: from their primary school. If it's not raining, we walk.
Speaker 1: I don't care how cold it is. I don't care
Speaker 1: if it's just rained before. I don't care how much
Speaker 1: of a hurry we're in. We walk to school and
Speaker 1: it's one of my greatest pleasures. I love it the
Speaker 1: fact that we connect so beautifully. They're wide awake, they're
Speaker 1: excited about the day. We have the best lit all chats.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and it adds up. I do that four
Speaker 1: or five times a week. There's seven and a half
Speaker 1: kilometers that I walk that otherwise would not walk. But
Speaker 1: those little things, which train station do you get off?
Speaker 1: Do you get off one earlier? Can you walk to work?
Speaker 1: Can you bike ride to work? All of these things
Speaker 1: add up and it can only be a good thing.
Speaker 1: So there you go. Four little incidental exercise challenges that
Speaker 1: I'm throwing to you. Getting up without using your hands,
Speaker 1: out of your chair, continuously standing on one leg in
Speaker 1: a flamingo poster, to brush your teeth, stretching two or
Speaker 1: three times a day, and change up your commute, get
Speaker 1: those steps up. I'd love to hear how you go
Speaker 1: with those as always as a link in the show notes,
Speaker 1: don't be a stranger. Want to hear from you until
Speaker 1: next week. That's all from the Wordlife