episode 165: the top 5 reasons to exercise that have nothing to do with calories, weight loss or food
In today’s episode of The Diet Diaries I’m sharing the top 5 reasons to workout that have nothing to with burning calories, losing weight or earning food.
How does working out impact your body image issues?
Here’s a quick peek into today’s conversation:
Why I swear by strength training, and it’s not just for the physical benefits. There’s a much bigger picture we need to be aware of.
How a tough workout can transform your mindset and carry over to other struggles you are dealing with
How exercise reshapes my relationship with my body, beyond just aesthetics and improves my body confidence and addresses body image issuess
One of the key health/biomarkers to pay attention to as it relates to exercise
The skills you need to make these mindset shifts so you can exercise because you care about your body; not because you hate it
Whether exercise plays a role in losing weight
Take a listen to episodes 151 and 154 for more helpful tips to improve body image issues and body confidence.Quick heads up that the Spring Mini Retreat is coming April 27 at my home in Westfield NJ! Click here to add your name to the interest to get all the details when they're ready.
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[00:00:00] Hello everyone. Welcome back. I'm not sure what episode this is. I forgot to look. It doesn't really matter. Um, but this episode is getting published on Monday, February 12th. You can probably hear my voice sounds a little nasally. I'm getting over a cold as I'm recording this a week before. Um, I kind of knew what I said to myself when I got on the plane to Israel.
[00:00:25] I was like, I'm going to come back sick. And I came back sick. Some of you might say, well, you're manifesting it. But I was also just the reality of being on an international huge flight, jet lag, not sleeping a lot, emotional and physical exhaustion. So it hasn't been too bad, just kind of like a minor cold.
[00:00:43] So Let's just dive in today. There's no big announcements because Eat With Ease is starting today, which is awesome after all this time, like we're off and running, um, and there is going to be, I guess one thing I'll quickly mention for local friends, wow, I sound really nasally, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Um, for local friends, I am doing, um, another retreat at my home in April.
[00:01:08] The date is, wait, let me just double check, Saturday, April 27th. From 10 a. m. to 5 p. m. Um, so if you are interested for that, I'm going to drop A link, I think I have a link for a waitlist on that, because that's capped out at five people, and I know there's a couple of folks who already, um, are committing to coming.
[00:01:29] So, it's just like an in person way, a day to yourself, to prioritize yourself and do some really valuable, impactful work. We're going to focus on behavior change and on nutrition. Though we're going to have two workshops around each of those things, plus yoga, catered lunch, snacks, goody bags, all the stuff.
[00:01:45] So, local friends, basically somewhere in like the tri state area. Um, That's for you. Unless you want to fly in, which you're welcome to do. Um, so, okay, let's dive in. I wanted to, I have like a bunch of podcast topics like sitting in my notes, so I kind of went and picked one for today that I've been wanting to talk about.
[00:02:04] So today is going to be the top three to five reasons to workout that have nothing to do with burning calories, weight loss. Or, um, making up for what you ate, or earning food. So, let's just dive in. Um, because I think so much of us, I was talking to a really good friend of mine about this. So many of us just grew up with the association that exercise is related to weight loss.
[00:02:32] to how many calories you burned, and to either, um, burning off food or preemptively earning food, right? And those are really hard associations to unwire. Um, they are deeply, deeply ingrained in the way that are, the way that we perceive the world, the way that we think of ourselves, um, and that's normal because we've been hearing that from a very young age.
[00:02:57] So as I share these Um, kind of reasons with you. This isn't to say that you're automatically now going to stop thinking that. The thoughts around how many calories did I burn, um, I worked out today so I can have dessert tonight. Those thoughts, your brain is going to continue to pump out those thoughts.
[00:03:14] The work is noticing that that's the thought that's coming up, the immediate reaction. And then choosing how to respond to that thought. Just like you're having a conversation with another person, they say something to you, you get to choose how to respond. It's like you're having a conversation with your own brain.
[00:03:30] Um, it sounds crazy, but this is how you kind of change your thoughts. This is cognitive behavioral coaching. Um, to put kind of a clinical term on it. So anyway, here we go. Number one, mood. Right? Working out drastically improves your mood. There's a ton of research out there that shows the impact of exercise on mental health, even more specifically on people who suffer from depression, that it can play a role in mitigating the severity of depression and different symptoms.
[00:03:58] Um, but even if you are not someone who suffers from depression, right? You're just a person who gets stressed out and gets the blues and all that kind of thing. It really makes a huge difference. Um, and there's lots of biochemical reactions that happen when you work out that play a role in that. We don't even have to get into it.
[00:04:14] I'm certainly not an expert on that. But when you exercise, generally speaking, it can boost your mood. Now, if you are exercising solely with the intent of earning food, burning off calories, that can impact things, right? So you have to be really aware and think about, why am I doing this? And again, not to say that you're totally going to be able to ignore those reasons that your brain is pumping out, but to also remember and think about how you feel after a workout.
[00:04:42] And part of this links in with doing something that you enjoy to a certain extent, right? The myth that you have to love exercise in order to do it is bullshit. I used to say that, like, so I'm the first to kind of take responsibility. It's really not realistic. Um. to love every, like, exercise that you do.
[00:05:04] Like, part of being a human is we have responsibilities to take care of ourselves, and that is going to involve doing things that we don't always want or enjoy doing. Now, does that mean you have to hate it? No. There is definitely a middle ground where you can find something that feels doable and you can make it more doable by listening to a podcast or an audiobook or doing it with a friend or putting it on your favorite playlist or giving yourself some type of a reward or incentivizing yourself afterwards.
[00:05:28] Like, there's a lot of ways to make it enjoyable, but you want to, if you hate what you're doing, it's not really going to help your mood. You also don't need to absolutely love every second of it to get the mood boosting benefit. Okay, so there's one. Number two, um, I'm pretty sure that everyone who listens to this podcast is a woman, and if you're not, that's fine, you're still welcome here.
[00:05:51] But if you are a woman, a woman over the age of 30, you are losing three to eight percent of your muscle mass every decade. I know it doesn't seem like a lot. You're like, oh, 10 years, that's a long time. But that means by the time you're 60, you've lost nine to 24 percent of your muscle mass, which is a lot.
[00:06:08] Even on the low end, it's a lot. By the time you're 60, right? So, Working out, specifically doing load bearing exercises, picking up weights that feel heavy to you, that's subjective, is very important for mitigating that muscle loss, which has a huge impact on osteoporosis and your quality of life, right? If you want to be able to get up and down off a toilet when you are 80 years old, you need to be strength training now.
[00:06:38] And so There's, there's a lot of fear mongering around strength training in our culture. You're gonna hurt yourself. Don't pick that up. It's too heavy. You're gonna hurt your back. Well, guess what? If you don't do that stuff, you're gonna hurt yourself down the road, right? And when it's done with good instruction and proper programming and an understanding of how to slowly progress your effort over time It's very low risk and all around.
[00:07:03] upside. Okay, so I've been seeing more and more about this on social media, which I'm happy to see that people are strength training. Um, again, not as a way to like burn calories, but as a way to think about your future self and set yourself up to improve and maximize. And optimize your quality of life as you age, right?
[00:07:22] There's a lot about aging that is within our control. It is not something we have to just passively sit by and let just kind of like steam roll over us. Um, and yes, there are other benefits to strength training, which I'm not even getting into here because I just kind of wanted to say specific to this one.
[00:07:42] Okay. Number three. Okay. When you work out, you prove to yourself what you are capable of and that you are capable of doing physically challenging things. I'm so nasally. I'm so sorry that you have to listen to my voice like this. It's super annoying. Um, And that has carry over into other skills that might feel challenging and you're like, I can't do this.
[00:08:03] This feels too hard and you can use the evidence that you've done a challenging workout, right? And this builds up over time as proof to yourself of what you are capable of. Doing hard things, right? It's very simple. So I have been doing HIIT workouts, high intensity interval training workouts, once a week for, since like early September.
[00:08:22] So it's been a while at this point. They're, they're really hard, but they're short, somewhere between like 15 and like 25 minutes. Um, and there are so many physiological benefits to this, which I'm not, I'm going to do a separate podcast episode about that, but I'm sharing it today to reference the fact that I do those and they are very hard while I'm doing them and they give me proof of what I am capable of.
[00:08:48] That when I look at this workout planned out on my app before and I'm like, holy shit, how am I going to do this? And then I do it. It's like, wow, I just did that. And then the next time I have something facing me that feels scary or challenging or hard, I recall that. I remember that. That's a skill. Right?
[00:09:03] When I notice the thought spiral, I can't do this. It's too hard. I'm going to mess up. It's too much. I'm like, okay, hold on a second. Again, choosing how to respond to my thoughts and saying, I've done that workout every week pretty much since September. I can do this. So It's really, it's really, really helpful for that.
[00:09:22] Um, so you're taking kind of a physical achievement or accomplishment and experience and then you're using it to apply to other areas of your life that may feel challenging or hard. Number four. I mean, this is kind of a no brainer, but like, The systemic health benefits of exercise, again, like it's just I don't have all the research in front of me I don't think I need to say it.
[00:09:45] It's kind of like very well established how important exercise is for your heart, for your immune system, um, for Um, building strength in terms of muscle, which then loads your skeletal system and prevents osteoporosis, improves bone density, all of this stuff. Um, and you can see this in your biomarkers, right, in your blood work.
[00:10:05] So exercise, cardiovascular and strength exercise is very clearly proven to have a positive impact on insulin sensitivity, right? Insulin resistance is what causes type 2 diabetes. It does play a role in weight gain and where you gain fat. It is very common. Um, and cardiovascular and strength training, cardiovascular exercise and strength training has been proven in the research or demonstrated, I should say, to show that it lowers or increases your insulin sensitivity.
[00:10:37] The flip side of that is lowers your insulin resistance. Um, that's huge, right? So if you want to make a connection between working out and fat loss, that's a really good one, right? By working out, you improve your insulin sensitivity, which makes you less. I don't want to make scientific claims here. It can impact how and where your body stores fat and your body's ability to kind of oxidize and use fat for energy.
[00:11:06] So the link between exercise and health, physiological health and mental health, cannot be overstated. But again, that goes back to why you're doing it, right? There is a class of It's not really considered an eating disorder, but excessive exercise, right, in order to burn off calories, right? If someone who was doing that, right, there are obviously a lot of physiological and mental, um, negative impacts because of that, right?
[00:11:35] So this is, this is all within context, but for most of us who are listening, who are struggling to get in movement, get in exercise, obviously, it's going to improve pretty much every aspect of your health. Can it play a role in fat loss? Yes, it can, right? Definitely food and nutrition is what's really going to pull the levers on that.
[00:11:56] Um, but just improving your health. And when you improve your health, you then kind of improve your baseline and setting yourself up. If you are someone who wants to lose fat, being able to do that more readily. So everything kind of like in over. Uh. interweaves and overlaps. And number five, the last thing I wanted to mention, and these are in not, not priority order, no particular order, because this is just as important as all the other four, is that working out can drastically improve your body image and the way that you see yourself.
[00:12:30] Even if your body, even if kind of the look of your body and the shape of your body and where you carry body fat and whatnot doesn't change, because it helps you reconnect to what your body is physically capable of. It helps remind you that your body is way more than something to be looked at. Um, then your body is more than just about your physical appearance.
[00:12:54] Your body is the, the, the structure, for lack of a better term, that you live your life in. that literally lets you do everything you do to, to, to read, to listen to music, to watch movies, to go on vacations, to eat delicious food, to feel love, to hug, to feel connection and touch things like that. Your body does that for you, right?
[00:13:16] So. So, exercise can be a really good way to start to learn to pay more attention to the physical sensations, to the experience of actually being in your body. Like when you pick up a heavy weight, to me there is nothing that gives me a feeling of vitality more than picking up a heavy weight. It brings me back into myself.
[00:13:36] Whether you're walking or dancing or going for a bike ride, right? And you start to notice the movement and how your foot is hitting the ground or what you're pushing, or you're listening to the beat of the music and you're moving your body to the beat of the music. If you're dancing, it totally pulls you out of what your body looks like and its size and its shape and back into what your body does for you as this miraculous functioning ecosystem that evolved over hundreds and hundreds of thousands and really billions of years.
[00:14:09] So, and just personally, like anecdotally, I have through the exercise program that I've been doing over the last like, what is it, since August, whatever, however many months that is, six, seven months. Um, I've had a little bit, a few small body composition changes, small. Um, my body basically looks the same.
[00:14:32] Like, I still carry fat where I carry fat, I have rolls where I've always had rolls, I have cellulite where I've always had cellulite, because those things don't really change per se. . So my body, the, the safe shape of my body, the size of my body is basically the same as it's been for quite some time, but I feel better in it.
[00:14:50] I feel better about how my body looks. I feel better when I'm getting dressed. And it is not only because of this workout, it. But it's a huge part of it, right? So there's research out there that shows this, but I'm just sharing like my sample size of one and sharing that with you. I mean, I've been talking so much more about getting dressed and enjoying that.
[00:15:11] And these things are, this is not a coincidence, right? It's not a coincidence as to why that is. It is in large part because of the effort and time, energy, and attention I have been putting into working out. Strength training, HIIT workouts, and Zone 2 cardio. And again, maybe, maybe I'll do next week's episode about that.
[00:15:31] So it's like a follow up to this one. So five, five reasons to work out that have nothing to do with burning calories, weight loss, or earning, or preemptively, or burning off food. Mood, improving strength, and lowering your risk of osteoporosis, getting evidence that you can do hard things, the systemic health benefits, and improving your body image.
[00:15:54] So when you notice, when you are feeling the urge, or the guilt, or you feel like you're working out because you ate too much, or you have to earn food, or because you need to burn 300 calories, or whatever it is, Pull one of these things, pick one that resonated with you, and respond to those thoughts with that, right?
[00:16:11] That's how you can take this forward and make it actionable, is you start to respond to those automated thoughts, programmed, deeply wired thoughts around our perceptions or the reasons why we exercise, and respond to them with one of these reasons, and keep doing it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and then do it over again.
[00:16:32] And then that's how you start to rewire. And you start to change your thinking and you start to adjust the volume on the old thoughts goes down and you start to more Rapidly be able to respond to those thoughts without so much work and so much effort like it takes at the beginning so That's what I got for you today Thank you as always for being here for listening for giving me sharing your time energy and attention with me I never ever ever take it for granted.
[00:17:00] I'll be back next week