Moving through Midlife | Helping Midlife Women Move Better and Feel Better

154 | Don't Overcomplicate Weight Loss: Three Things to Focus on Right Now to See Results

• Courtney McManus

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What if the key to better health in midlife is simply slowing down? Join me, Courtney, on this episode of Moving Through Midlife, where we unlock the transformative power of simplifying your wellness strategies. We'll explore how being intentional in three areas—slowing down, moving more, and being present—can transition you from a state of stress to a state of relaxation. This shift not only enhances nutrient absorption and muscle activation but also allows you to fully enjoy your meals, workouts, and everyday interactions. I'll share practical tips for incorporating more movement into your daily routine, even if you have a sedentary job, so you can make significant strides in your overall health.

Discover the profound impact of mindset on physical activity, with insights from a fascinating study involving hotel maids who burned more calories by merely perceiving their tasks as exercise. We'll also dive into the importance of variety, whether in your diet or exercise routine, to keep your body responsive and healthy. To cap off the episode, I'll guide you on how to create a personalized wellness plan tailored to your needs, especially as you navigate midlife. Don't forget to book a one-on-one consultation for customized advice, and become part of our supportive community at movingthroughmidlife.com. Let’s journey together towards better health and wellness with grace and intention!

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Courtney:

We have overcomplicated so much and it is creating mass confusion, and I think it is important to really get back to some basic things if you are struggling with weight loss or even, honestly, just living a healthier life. So today I'm going to share with you three things I think you can begin to focus on today to help you on your weight loss journey or on your health and wellness journey to feeling better. So let's get started. Welcome to Moving Through Midlife. I am your host, courtney, a personal trainer and movement specialist who wants to help you move through midlife with more grace. Each week we will discuss ways we can show up better for ourselves and our children without the burnout. We will focus on overall health through habit stacking to help increase energy, provide movement snacks to help you move more throughout the day, while also moving your body more, and learn from professionals on moving through midlife with ease so that you can feel confident with aging. Gracefully, grab your earbuds and join me on a leisurely walk while we discuss moving through midlife. The first thing I recommend you do is slow down. I want you to slow down while you eat, so when you are eating breakfast, lunch or dinner, first find a place that you can sit down, relax, take a few deep breaths before you begin eating. If you listen to one of my most recent episodes, I spoke about this in the way of your body is in that fight or flight phase and a lot of times we're rushing through life and we are remaining in that state rather than allowing our body to go into the rest and digest state. So that is a portion of slowing down Slow down your eating so that you can get into that rest and digest phase, so that you can get more nutrients out of the food that you are eating. But also slow down your exercises. If you are working out, instead of rushing through the movements, slow down, get that intention behind the movement so that you really feel those muscles working. That's even in like a yoga class. If you're doing a sun salutation and then you move into, say, a down dog position, you can sit there in that position. You can be in that position and not really be thinking about the position you're in or you can be active in that position. So really thinking about slowing down the movement in okay. So if you're in yoga, slowing down that sun salutation so that you are feeling how your body is moving through each position and with each position and that slowing movement, it will increase the intensity with which you are working. If you are lifting weights, if you are quickly lifting weights, and of course there is something to changing up the speed, but if overall, you're thinking about slowing down that movement of lifting the weights, you're less likely to use momentum behind that movement and use the muscle behind that movement. So you're going to get more activation of the muscles you're using.

Courtney:

Slowing down when talking to someone you know, really focusing in on what it is you are doing, right then and there, so that you are present with the person that you're speaking with and not kind of stressing yourself out with your what's next, just really taking time to appreciate each moment in your day, to help you deal with stress a little bit better and, um, keep that nervous system a little bit more regulated. I happened to be reading something the other day and it was talking about how quickly we move and when we are rushing, when we're walking quickly, it tends to create this fight or flight response in our body as well response in our body as well, rather than slowly walking, relaxed and enjoying things. And I notice, you know, I think we've, like I mentioned at the beginning, we have overcomplicated all of this wellness, this wellness movement that we live in. And if you look out in society that we live in and if you look out in society, we are not getting healthier. We are not a healthier society today than we were, say, 30 years ago. And some of this, I think, are some of these little things that I'm talking about, this slowing down, really being present, not having 10 tabs open at a time on your computer. You know, really being focused in on one thing at a time, so that we're not getting that cortisol response in our body, so that we're not getting that dopamine hit if we're scrolling through numerous different videos and things, getting information from different people constantly. You know that kind of thing. Really just focusing in and slowing down with our movement, with our food, with our workouts, with our attention, with our workouts, with our attention, all of that.

Courtney:

The second thing that I would recommend for just a simple thing, is movement, move more of you, more often, right, and you've I know I'm a broken record, I apologize, but this here again is something that I don't think we appreciate enough, and that is if you are at a desk all day and you're working at your desk and you know that you don't have a lot of opportunities to work out the rest of the day, how can you and I'm not meaning, I don't want you to look at like, okay, now I'm going to have to do 15 squats at my desk and 10 pushups at my desk, and how can I find ways to get a workout in at my desk? That's not what I'm recommending. I'm recommending how can you move a little bit differently while you are working, to kind of create a different movement in your body, a different position in your body. I talk about this a lot with your posture and with your hip health and how can we create different movements to occur? Just by tapping our feet on the floor, we are creating movement with our calf muscle, which is going to help pump that blood back up to our heart a little bit quicker. So that is going to create a certain movement in our body that is different than just relaxing into that movement. Bringing one leg kind of out and behind us in the chair will be stretching out our psoas or hip flexor. So if you're dealing with tension in your hip flexor, you can bring that leg a little bit further behind and get a little stretch in that area, which may help you to feel better, you might be able to bring that leg out to the side a little bit. So if you're sitting in a chair that doesn't have arms, even just bringing that leg out to the side, flexing it, kind of reaching to the side while you're working, creates a little stretch within that movement. And then just looking at how can we vary while we are moving throughout the day, you will hear me talk about getting on the floor more throughout the day. So if you are at home at night with you know, watching TV or something, maybe get down on the floor and just kind of move through different positions. Maybe that doesn't feel comfortable and you don't want to go to the floor. What about trying different positions on the couch? You know sitting cross-legged on the couch, sitting with one leg down and one leg up on the couch. What about straightening one leg, putting it maybe on the coffee table? You know these are varying your positions, moving in different positions that are going to create a different way for your body to move. And the other thing that this can do for you is when you are thinking of the fact that you are moving throughout the day in different ways and not looking at it so much like exercise. It changes your perception of everything. Your perception of everything.

Courtney:

So they did this study with and I don't have the study, it's a I heard it from someone that I trust and believe in, and they were talking about this study that they read where there were people, maids in a hotel service, and they did this thing where they assessed both like. So they took two, two different groups, and one group. They said that they, you know they weren't getting enough exercise in a day and that they needed to exercise outside of cleaning the hotel. The other group they spoke about how this was kind of like exercise because they were active. They were actively vacuuming and sweeping and dusting and mopping. You know they were moving through these different movement patterns and that they could count this as kind of their exercise. And then at the end of it, when they looked at their calories, like how many calories they burned, the group that they had said was exercising during this time they burned more calories than the people who thought that they were. You know that this wasn't any kind of exercise and that they would have to go outside of this to get exercise.

Courtney:

So you know, you could look at it one of two ways. One is maybe the people that were thought that it already counted as exercise, maybe they were a little bit more excited about it, so then they were maybe dusting with a little bit more enthusiasm, which maybe allowed them to burn calories more. Or you can look at it is it more of a mind thing where, depending on what you believe, that mindset shift will depend on how your body works through and maybe you can burn more calories just by changing the mindset of what you're doing. So that would be my recommendation is just look at how can you move yourself a little bit differently. Another thing you know like maybe if you carry in a lot of items, maybe you go to work and you've got a lot of items to carry, that can be kind of like weighted work and you can work on like I'm going to hold everything in my right hand and then I'm going to switch and hold everything in my left hand. So just changing how we perceive what we're doing. Just like if you have children you know, carrying your child on your hip all day, if you take it from the hip and then think about using your arms more for the workload rather than leaning it into the body. That's going to change how your body is holding and moving through that, holding the child up. So just thinking about all of that can affect how we are moving, what we consider to be our movement each day. And I always say you want a movement-rich life, so make sure you're finding ways to move more in your every day.

Courtney:

And then the third thing is variety, very variety. And so when I think of variety again, I'm thinking of your food, your movement, your nutrition, all of that, and even, like your rest, changing things up so we can get very stagnant in the foods that we eat and when we do that we tend to lack nutrients because we're always eating the same things every day or the same things every week, so you're not changing the nutritional value that's coming in, value that's coming in, and then you tend to get more. You might get more of an immune response from certain things if you're constantly eating them. So changing things up a little bit and it doesn't mean you have to change everything up. I've spoken about this in one of my other episodes about eating vegetables. I don't remember what it was specifically, but maybe it was called Eat your Greens, but it's about how we can vary.

Courtney:

Say, we eat a salad every day. Maybe that's just like that's what I do every day for lunch I have a salad. So this week buy, I have a salad. Okay. So this week, buy field greens for your salad. Next week, buy spinach for your salad. The week after, buy romaine. The week after that, buy butter leaf. You're changing. You're not changing what you're eating. You're still eating a salad every day, but you're changing the greens so that you will be changing some of the nutritional value within those greens each week. Same thing with, like oatmeal or yogurt. Maybe this week we throw bananas on top, next week we throw blueberries on top. Those little, those little changes can have a big effect on your nutritional value.

Courtney:

So varying foods and varying the ingredients within foods. Same thing with spices. We've learned about how different spices are good for us, how they are healthy for us. So how can we change some of the spices that we're eating in a week to provide us some different nutrients, some different antioxidants all of that as well and phytonutrients? So that would be one thing you could work on. Varying is the foods that you're eating.

Courtney:

The other thing that I would recommend is varying your exercise. So, in addition to movement and not saying every day, but in addition to movement you should be trying to find some way to exercise. It doesn't need to be for very long, it doesn't need to be five days a week, it's whatever you feel you can fit in in your day, but trying to vary that up as well. So maybe you do a week of strength, or maybe you do a month of strength. Maybe you want to decide to change it up a little bit and instead of strength you want to do some yoga, or you want to go do some spin classes or you want to do whatever it is swimming. Vary that up as well. Don't get stuck in one thing all the time. Try something different and that can change your body's response. How your body responds to your exercise, how your body responds to what you are eating. All of these things are going to have an effect on your overall health and weight loss, because as you change things, you will start to see a change within your body as well. So those are the three things that I would recommend you do to not overcomplicate things and see work on it, see if that makes any difference.

Courtney:

Slow down, move more and add variety into your life. So if you have any questions, if you want to join us, you can head over to Moving Through Midlife Community over on Facebook. I have started adding some workouts in there. Instead of doing a workout every few days, what I'm doing is I'm posting four to five exercises for you to do for the week and you can do them when you can, when you want to, and I'm there to help hold you accountable for that. If you would like to work with me one-on-one, you can go to movingthroughmidlifecom, scroll all the way down to the bottom, click on that link. That is where you can schedule a 45-minute one-on-one coaching session with me.

Courtney:

I can help you with movement, I can help you with that low belly pooch, if you're struggling with that, and I can help you with creating a nutrition plan. What I will do? We'll meet for 45 minutes, we'll discuss what your problem is, what your concern is, and then I will create a one-month plan for you, a four-week plan for you to work through to help you reach whatever the goal it is that you're interested in. So I am opening spots up for that. If you're interested for a one-on-one session, you are welcome to do that as well. I hope you all have a wonderful day and make sure to keep moving. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found something to take away to help you practice healthier habits, move more or handle the midlife and aging with grace. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave us a review to help us reach more moms just like you. Head to movingthroughmidlifecom to join the free community or learn how you can move more and feel better in your daily life.