[00:00:00] Cynthia Garcia: A sedentary lifestyle is the number one cause of lower back pain, which as much as 80% of adults in the U S experience at some point in their lives, in fact, lower back pain represents a leading cause of disability among us workers. 

Welcome back to the Transformational Nutrition Podcast, the podcast that is redefining nutrition as anything that eats you physically, mentally and spiritually.

I’m your host, Cynthia Garcia, the founder and CEO of ITN. And for today’s episode, you might want to move around while you’re listening, because we are talking about the negative health effects of being sedentary. So let’s get into this show. So a few years ago, maybe you remember seeing this article, there was kind of a big fuss over this article that came out that then kind of morphed into more articles.

And essentially the idea was that there were studies that have shown that sitting too much was as dangerous to your health as smoking. Right. Do you remember this? Did you, do you remember seeing this? It happened a few years. Now what you need to know, because that’s a pretty big shock value right off the bat.

What you need to know is that was a myth and it’s been debunked several times since then, you know, it bleeds, it leads. And so it was in the headlines, but we know that that is simply. True that sitting too much is not as dangerous to your health as smoking. I mean, sensational. Yes, but true. No. However, it is still very concerning for many reasons.

I’m going to share those in this episode. So I want you to seriously think about how much time you spend sitting or lying down. Do you commute to work? Do you drive yourself? Do you use public transportation? Once you’re at work? Do you sit at a desk? Do you have a standing desk when you take a lunch break, do you eat while you sit?

Maybe you chat with some coworkers. Maybe you take your lunch to your desk and you watch a quick episode of a TV show. When you get home, what do you do? Do you have a Netflix series that you enjoy watching with your spouse or your partner or your roommates? You play video games. Do you enter night taking a hot bath, you just crash on the couch and call it a day.

I’m tired. I don’t know. What do you do? Most of us do do these exact things. And this has become so normalized that now technology is so advanced that it meets us where we’re at and it’s like, oh, you don’t want to get up. You don’t have to, I can bring her groceries to you on Instagram. You can get anything delivered with an app.

These days we have access to so much, right. At the tips of our fingers, right? In our past.

We love spotlighting the unique stories and transformations of our students and graduates here at ITN. This week, I’m excited to introduce Jessica Davis and give her a chance to talk about her own journey of becoming a certified transformational nutrition coach. Let’s start by learning about Jessica’s background.

[00:03:14] Jessica Davis: I was a performing arts student. So I was a dance major in high school. And then I was also a dance major in college. And really, I do have to say that that probably started my health journey. So being in front of mirrors, in a leotard and tights for multiple hours in a day with other girls my age and everything like that really reinforced.

Comparison idea for me, I was always comparing myself to others and then dance can be very competitive. So I feel like my whole life, everything kind of revolved around looks and appearance. And then, you know, you start to tie your worth to that. So I noticed that. I found my identity and my self worth in the way that I looked.

And that really did a number on my mental health at the same time. Going through some health issues related to chronic stress. They were, you know, my hormones were all over the place. My weight was sort of fluctuating and people were really noticing, I don’t even think it was fluctuating that badly, but you know, a few pounds here or there and people because I was in the dance world, people were commenting on it and it really bothered me.

I was not taking care of my body. ’cause, I didn’t know how at the time. And that made me really want to move away from dance because dance was too physically demanding for me time. And I was at the same time realizing that maybe it wasn’t even who I was. I had always put my identity there because I started when I was eight years old and it was my life.

[00:05:04] Cynthia Garcia: Now, according to the world health organization, 60 to 85% of people in the world from both developed and developing countries, lead sedentary life. Making it one of the most serious yet insufficiently addressed public health problems of our time. Check it out. This will get your attention. Life expectancy decreases by 22 minutes for every one hour spent watching television, according to Dr.

James Levine, who is the author of the get up? Why your chair is killing you and what you can do about it. I mean, did you hear me? Like every 22 year life is short term? It’s shortened by 22 minutes. For every hour you spend watching television. It’s estimated that nearly two thirds of our children are insufficiently active.

According to the American heart association, sedentary jobs have increased 83% since 1950 and physically active jobs. Now make up less than 20% of the us workforce down from roughly half of our jobs in 19 six. Listen. I mean, when we socialize with other people, we sit down, we stopped by your friend’s house and they say, come on and take a seat, make yourself comfortable.

This is all normal. This is just how we live. I mean, most people are sitting for seven, eight hours a day at their jobs. And then another two hours, once they get home from work, it’s about nine to 10 hours or more of just being sedentary. And that doesn’t even include the time that we’re laying down to sleep.

And look, I know maybe you’ve heard this before I get it, but I don’t think any of us has truly understand the severity of our world’s condition when it comes to being sedentary. The world health organization estimates that 95% of the world’s adult population is inactive. And you might be thinking well, yeah, that makes sense.

You know, most people have jobs where they’re at a desk, they don’t get up and move around every single day, but that percentage does not include. Who just don’t get very active during the day because of their job, right? That statistic is naming people who are failing to meet minimum health recommendations of activity and listen to, you know, what the minimum recommendation for activity is.

Do you know? Cause you know, when I first read this, I was like, I mean, what are we talking here an hour or two? Well, what are we, what are we. No, the minimum recommendation for activity that the majority of those are failing to meet is 30 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity. Five times a week, 30 minutes, 95% of the world’s adult population is not even getting 30 minutes of moderate to intense physical activity, five times a week.

I mean, Wow. That was surprising and less than, you know this already, but that is not good for our physical, mental, and spiritual health. And here’s the deal. It’s not like, it’s just like, oh man, I should be more active. And then we push it aside. Here’s the truth about living a sedentary lifestyle. Like I really, man, I really want you to get this because it’s so simple to fix.

It is such low hanging fruit. It can radically transform your life. And I have to tell you, it even had a huge impact on me now I’d make my health a priority. And when I read this, I was like, okay, I’m going to move even more. What else can I do? How can I regularly integrate? Movement into my life. So if you’re not quite there yet, let me give you some more information that might just push you to that tipping point.

Okay. Let’s tune in again to discover what Jessica did after leaving her career in dance and how this allowed her to find her passion in nutrition, coaching.

[00:09:07] Jessica Davis: When I was leaving the dance world, I was kind of focused on two things. And one of those things was being a fitness instructor because dancers are naturally very good at being fitness instructors, because we can really talk about the body. So I was focusing on fitness and I was really starting to get passionate about.

And then at the same time, I was noticing that all of my clients who were in my classes really needed help with nutrition because they would be coming and they would not be seeing the results. And I knew from having to learn to take care of myself after having the hormonal issues and the chronic stress and just my body being completely rundown from dance.

I started learning how to take care of myself. And I started learning that no matter what you’re doing movement wise, you need to still be supporting yourself nutritionally. At that time, I was actually struggling with whether or not, so I wanted to potentially go into counseling or I wanted to be a nutrition.

And I didn’t know which one I want me to do. And anytime I would go to look into like counseling programs and really make the decision, I would kind of have this like empty feeling, like there’s something missing. And that was really for me, the nutrition aspect, like I needed to incorporate nutrition into the mental health.

And then, so when I found ITN and how they incorporate the three pillars, Mental health, the science pillar, and then the spiritual health that really spoke to me because I knew that in my own experience, if I only focused on nutrition, it still did not necessarily make a difference. If I wasn’t doing well spiritually and emotionally.

[00:11:05] Cynthia Garcia: Let’s look at each pillar of health that we focus on in the model of transformation, nutrition, which is physical, mental, and then spiritual. So let’s start with physical. After 30 minutes of sitting your metabolism slows down by 90%, the enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, it slows down the muscles and your lower body.

Or turned off and after two hours, your good cholesterol drops 20%. A sedentary lifestyle is the number one cause of lower back pain, which as much as 80% of adults in the U S experience at some point in their lives, in fact, lower back pain represents a leading cause of disability among us. Those who sit for prolonged periods of time, have a sustainably higher risk of contracting type two diabetes.

And let’s be clear. It’s not sitting that’s bad for you. I know. I keep talking about sitting. It’s not just sitting. It’s never moving. That’s bad for you. Okay. Or not moving enough. Now, these statistics are. And they’re kind of real scary and that’s just the physical effects of living this sort of lifestyle.

So let’s talk about the mental effects. People who live a sedentary lifestyle may suffer from higher rates of anxiety and depression. And then this increase in anxiety and depression. It can quickly create a negative cycle. So anxiety and depression cause increased Isilon. And then you may struggle to work up the energy, to engage in exercise, despite the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

And despite knowing that exercise and movement helps with those symptoms. And so we don’t want to move. And then that lack of movement causes further depression and anxiety. Not only that, but people who live sedentary lifestyles may also feel poorly about themselves. I have low self esteem, not a lot of.

Right. And that’s a problem because this then leads to an even more enhanced lack of motivation, a lack of movement, an increased weight gain due to that lifestyle. I know it’s crazy, but wait, there’s more because those things cause issues with our spiritual health, you see sitting for prolonged periods of time.

And overall just living an inactive lifestyle can lead you to missing your sense of purpose. I mean, think about it. Have you ever had that thought, like, gosh, what do I even do today? Like, what is the point of this? I’m like a hamster on a wheel. I’m just going through the motions or maybe you’ve neglected your connection to other people.

So many of us sit and type away at our laptops or computers every day and we barely speak to those around us. We drive home alone. We get home. We’re so exhausted. We don’t want to do anything. We just want to eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed. And then we repeat the process. No wonder. So many of us feel tired and burnt out.

The lifestyle that we’re living is causing us to drain ourselves physically, mentally, and spiritually. It is a problem. Our entire world has become more prone to sitting our jobs have us sitting down and typing all day. Most of us traveled by cars, trains, and planes, rather than walking or biking to our destinations are leisurely activities are often done sitting or laying down.

One of our favorite things is finding out what our graduates enjoyed the most about the transformational nutrition coach program. When we asked Jessica this question, she explained, uh,

[00:15:01] Jessica Davis: for me it was the coaching community that I gained. And I think the coaching aspect of ITN and having the coaching lab. That was just so powerful because we’re not just on our own, going through the materials and trying to piece it all together. We have people that we can actually interact with and I’ve become very good friends with several of the people that I met through ITN.

I think being a part of the community of people who want the same things as you is so incredible.

[00:15:40] Cynthia Garcia: So it’s clear, at least to me that we need to fix how we approach movement in our society, because it should not be this hard to move throughout the day. It really shouldn’t. So let’s talk about some easy ways that we can shift our lifestyles and start integrating movement. And again, I looked at this in my own life.

I am standing up and moving as I record this podcast, I’m telling you I’m all over it. These statistics, I was like, wow, this is amazing. I got to do something. So what do we do? Well, first we can get more active during work. Now I know some companies offer standing guests for their employees, some don’t and that’s what.

Stay with me on this while a standing desk might help reduce the amount of time that you sit standing eight hours a day that has its own set of problems, including links to cardiovascular issues, bear coats, veins, and lower back pain. It’s also more tired. Right. So that’s an issue for people with certain kinds of heart disease, men specifically, it increases the progression of those issues because of the additional load on the circulatory side.

Now also, as I shared prolonged, standing at work increases the risk of air coast, veins and accounts for more than one fifth of all cases of working age. So standing all day is not better than sitting all day, right. It doesn’t, it doesn’t really work like that. The performance of many of your fine motor skills.

Also less good when people stand rather than sip our economists to have long recognized that standing to work is a way more tiring than sitting to work. Do you know that it requires 20% more energy to stand and work than it does to sit and work? Standing puts greater strain on the circulatory system and on the legs and the feet.

Consequently. We provide employees with ergonomically anti-fatigue mats to stand on with anti-fatigue, but where, and which hairs to allow them to sit down during rest breaks. Right. And a lot of different industries. We do that and that’s important, right? That’s a good thing to have that flex, that flux back and forth.

So, if you stand at work, please don’t overdo it and don’t stand all day long. One way to kind of find that balance is to determine which tasks require sitting and then which don’t. So check it out. You can brainstorm. While you walk or clean your desk, right? If you need to write a report, you can sit and do that.

If you’re doing something with graphics or designed, probably better that you sit and focus to do that. But when it comes time for phone calls or meetings, perhaps you stay. Right. Listen, I will do calf raises brushing my teeth. I’ll do squats when I’m in meetings, but I’m a little weird. You do, you, you do what works for you since completing her certification.

Jessica has been working hard to build her dream career as a nutrition coach. Let’s hear what she’s been up to lately.

[00:18:58] Jessica Davis: I work remotely for a tech company and I do their operations for them, but I also, I’m doing one-on-one coaching on the side and I’m thinking that my one-on-one coaching will take over very quickly and I’ll be able to leave my full time job faster than I originally thought I was thinking it was going to take a little bit long.

But people are actually really in need of help. And so when, you know, I’m able to connect with people and they find out that I do nutrition coaching and they actually really do seem interested. And I think people are so. Like, what should I do? Should I do this diet? Should I, do you know what this other person is doing?

And they don’t know how to find for themselves what they need. So I’m close to being able to do one-on-one coaching. Full-time.

[00:19:53] Cynthia Garcia: Here’s a really easy tip for you. It’s called the three S’s and this is a great way to make sure that you’re moving and you’re getting in some balances. You’re like, well, Cynthia, do I sit, do a St like what’s going on here? Do I stand up? I don’t. You said standing wasn’t good. All right. So the three yeses, here’s what we’re going to do.

We’re going to sit through. First S which stands for CIT. The second S stands for stand. So we’re going to sit to work then every 20 minutes, we’re going to stand for eight minutes and move or third one stretch for two minutes. So sit, stand, and stretch. Sit to work every 20 minutes, stand up for eight minutes and move or stretch for two.

Now the absolute time isn’t critical, but about every 20 to 30 minutes, take a posture break and stand and move and stretch for a couple of minutes right now that will get you going. But listen, this is not all you need to do. This is just getting us out of our chairs and moving and stretching and standing throughout the day.

Standing. Isn’t quite enough. So let’s talk about what we need to do, because what we really need to do here is get blood circulation through the muscles and you got to move in order to do that. So here’s some ideas take the stairs instead of the elevator. Anytime you can park far away as far away as you can, and then walk to wherever it is that you’re going.

I like those close parking spots too. I do, but they’re not serving me or my health. So park far away, instead of emailing a coworker about something, when you’re both in the office, walk to their desk and chat with them in person. And I already gave you some of my other ideas, right? Standing during meetings, I moving, just brushing my teeth.

I’m doing squats when I’m brushing my teeth. I have a really small treadmill that fits under my couch in our family room. So I can hop on that and walk and still be present with my family while we’re watching something on TV. I keep little weights around so that I can just do random workouts as I’m sitting here having a conversation.

And of course I do all of this all the time. I built in relaxation as well, but think about how you can start to bring in some of these basic lists. Changes so that you can start moving more in your life. Now, the other thing that you want to think about is what you do for fun. Now I know after a long day at work, all you probably want to do is sit on the couch and have a good snack and mentally zone out.

But you have to think about how that’s affecting your health longterm. If you want to get, you know, continue watching your TV shows or your movies, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Maybe bring in some activity. As I said, I put a treadmill in my family and red sides, right under the couch. It’s just a little tiny one, so I can pull it out when we are watching something or I want to be with my family.

You don’t have to do sprints or anything like that. You can walk slowly and enjoy the show. Sometimes I’ll lift some arm weights with it, some little dumbbells, but again, you do you, or you could do housework while you’re hanging out. You can fold your laundry while you watch TV. Right. You can put your dishes away like these simple activities, get your body moving without any physical strength or think about new hobbies that you could develop that would help you get more.

Can you join a sports league in your town and play basketball once a week with some brands? What about starting a garden so that you tend to it a few days a week, maybe painting a room in your house, making an effort to play a game that gets you up and moving with your kids. Now every night. One of the other things that I do is my family and I’d enjoy a fun conversation while we are on a nightly walk after dinner.

So every night we finish our dinner, we put everything away, get our shoes on and we head out for a stroll around the neighborhood. It allows us just to get moving, get our food, start to digesting and connect and a deeper level. That’s not just sitting on the couch. All right. Let’s hear from Jessica one last time, as she shares a couple of things that she wishes she would have known when she was starting her coaching career.

Hopefully this can inspire other people looking to become a coach as well.

[00:24:14] Jessica Davis: I wish I would have known that this process can be. Because our have always just wanted to be there already and never really enjoyed the process of not being quote unquote there yet, wherever there is being here where I am right now, 10 be enjoyable. And people feel that when you’re having fun, you know, people feel that when you’re enjoying life and you’re doing what you love, then.

You know, they will be attracted to you and they won’t feel like you’re trying to target them in any way. Like I’m trying to help lose weight because I think you need to lose weight. No, I’m honestly trying to help people. And that’s what I love doing is really helping people restore their relationship to themselves and their bodies and their minds.

I think having fun in the process, I definitely was not doing that. At first. I was in a scarcity mindset at first and I was thinking that I was not deserving of it. And I was just having no fun because I was working my full-time job during the day. And then I was on the computer again, trying to work on my business during the night.

And there was no time for fun in there. If you’re not having fun, your energy is definitely not fun for other people. I think the only other thing that I’ve really been focused on is coming into things as you are now, because I think we learn that at the very beginning of it. Show up, you know, you know, enough just show up how you are.

And we teach people that too, we teach our clients to show up at the gym, how you are now. You don’t have to be there already. So really I’m focusing on instead of have, do be I’m focusing on the do have, so being before I have the thing and really just showing up as my authentic self.

[00:26:18] Cynthia Garcia: All right now, at this point, you’re probably thinking of a lot of different ideas, right? Thinking about how you could get out and about in your community, make a day of it. Walk around the local shops, support, small businesses, so on and so forth. And you might also be thinking, yeah, I don’t know, Cynthia.

I’m good. I exercise every day before I go to work, I get my blood pumping, but here’s the thing. 30 minutes, even one hour. Isn’t quite enough and it’s definitely better than nothing, but you can’t possibly rule out that 30 minutes or can’t possibly think that 30 minutes is going to rule out 12 hours.

Right? I mean, come on 30 minutes is great. And yes, it is that minimum that the majority of people in the world are not meeting, but I would strongly encourage you to do that. You don’t have to change overnight just over time and slowly start working your way up and tracking your progress. Some small studies have found that it’s not just your health that improves, but your productivity improves by 15%.

Whenever you’re more active during the day, that’s a lot, like 15% is a good amount. So I’ve given you lots of things that you can do to start to take action so that you are more active. You’re happier. You’re healthier. You’re more productive and you feel better over all. Plus you ward off any health issues that might come sailing your way.

Now, take some time, take this information in being more active as not impossible, but it is something that you need to work on every day until it becomes part of your normal routine. But I mean, look, you’ve got this, you’ve done way harder thing. Just make an effort, show up, start with the small, simple ways, or create other ones that work for you, your family, your loved ones, your lifestyle, and then go from there.

And if you’re looking for more information or more tips on how you can get started doing this, then head over to our private Facebook community, just go to Facebook and search for transformation generation. And that is our group. You’ll connect there with lots of like-minded people just. You and lots of great tips that we share on a regular basis.

All right. If you liked this episode, if it brought value into your life, if you learn something, please rate and review. And if you know someone who could benefit from this, please share it with them. Please help us get the word out. Thank you so much for joining me today. I so appreciate your time and your attention.

You can see all the show notes and other resources for this episode over at transformationalnutrition.com/episode015. And I’ll be back here next week with another new episode.