Well, Hello, they're Healthy Is listeners. Thanks for tuning into this daily podcast from Body and Soul. I am your host, Felicity Harley. Now, my guest today is simply delightful. I can say that about her because we actually go way back, which means I can also vouch for her wealth of experience. She is an exercise scientist and nutritionist. Her name is Amelia Phillips, and she joins us today to share the
foremost important elements of exercise for longevity. It is in light of her new TV show on Channel nine called do you Want to Live Forever? If you do? What more from Amelia? I know you will make sure you're listening to Extra Healthy Ish, where she talks about how to increase health span. You can grab that episode wherever you get your podcasts. Amelia, welcome back.
How are you so good to be here again?
I know it's too long between chats. We should have got you on sooner. We will get you on sooner next time.
Love that. I would absolutely love that.
So we talk a lot about longevity on this pod. It seems the world is obsessed with this right now, but one thing we haven't really focused on is importance of exercises when it comes to living a longer life, talk to us about this. Remind us, what are the benefits, Why do we need to exercise, et cetera, et cetera.
Honestly, Fliss, if you're wanting to live not only a longer life, but a healthier life, exercise has.
To form a major part of that.
And if you've gotten through this stage of your life, you know, kind of scott free and without too much exercise or good for you. But now and today's episode is definitely.
Your wake up call.
I mean when it comes to exercise, exercise improves all these really fundamental health factors that decline dramatically when we age.
So let me list off a couple of them for you.
So cardiovascular health, so things like our heart function and preventing heart disease. And don't forget that cardiovascular health also directly correlates to our energy levels. And I don't know about youth list but on my podcast, so many of my listeners and my members on my program are lacking in energy. And I'm like, if there's one thing that's going to boost your energy one hundred and ten percent, it's boosting that cardiovascular activity. So that's one of them.
But then there's a couple of other really really crucial ones. So we've got our muscular skeletal health, so that's basically our muscle our bone health. Exercise is crucial for both of those. We've got our metabolic health, which is our ability to manage our weight and control our blood sugar levels. And considering that type two diabetes and these metabolic conditions are the fastest growing diseases in Australia, you really want
to control and manage your metabolic health. Then we've got inflammation that's such a huge one, and immune function which also majorly improved by exercise. And then the final one Fliss is mental health and stress. And there's numerous studies out there that kind of hit SSRI medications against exercise in these studies, and often exercise comes out on top of the medication beating the results.
I mean, when I was listening to you, real off all those benefits and they're probably just some of many. It's almost like the magic pill. Isn't it to better health?
It one hundred percent is, And isn't it frustrating that we kind of know this?
But then why is it.
When the alarm goes off and it's cold outside and it's dark outside. Why is it that we just can't make that happen? And for me, it really is all about habit change. And if you're one of those people that's been lucky enough to be an exerciser.
Throughout your whole life, you don't.
Get those other side of society who haven't.
But they're the people that I work with.
And when I see it go from the effort to exercise to it becoming a habit, it's like a switch gets flicked and then I'm like.
Okay, my job here is done. You're often running now, and that's what I love.
Actually, tell us a bit about that show and the importance of exercise in not that show, your show, and the importance of exercises exercising in the participants who are in the show, because I do think there is two camps. A lot of people who listen to this podcast are exercises, but you also can go with months not exercising and still classify yourself as an exerciser and need that motivation
to get back. So talk to us about the show and what you implemented around this to encourage people to exercise.
Yeah, I was so lucky to have the opportunity to be the programmer on this new Channel nine TV series called Do You Want to Live Forever? And there were eight participants and they all really represent one of us in the I had my complete optimizers, who were already super fit but real wanting to squeeze the juice out of life and try all the different biohacking. So you know, Liberty, for example, was my optimizer.
But then I had everything in between.
I had the ex Olympian Duncan arms Strong, who was an Olympic world record champion, but yet he lets him have it slip. He ended up with a heart attack and a triple bypass, and I'm talking you know, others everywhere in between. And so what I loved about working with these participants is exercise was one of the four pillars that underpinned everything we did. So it was diet, exercise, sleep, and stress. And that's what the protocol that I put
together for them. But they all had a very different program when it came to exercise based on where they were at. But their results were unbelievable. And you know, when you're looking at we kind of we measured their biological age and so seeing ethnics and strength improvements by the end and what that did to reversing the clock as far as their biological age, improving their cellular health was so so inspiring.
Yeah, that's interesting. And so we know there's no one size fits all approach to exercise, but is there kind of something that worked across all of them, Like how should we approach it to increase well our health span which will in turn increase our life span hopefully.
Look, there is there is actually a bit of a blueprint that goes across for everyone that I'd love your listeners to think about.
These four domains.
Of exercise and if we want to leave a long and healthy life list, we want these four domains to feature in our exercise regime. So the first domain is called VO two max okay, and this refers to our cardiovascular function and our fitness level.
So the higher our votwo max.
Which is our fitness score essentially the higher that is the lower and it's associated with lower risks of things like cardiovasculular disease, heart attack, strokes, And it means your whole cardiovascular system, your heart accept is.
Under a lot less strain.
And so in a total workout in a week, about ten percent of your training should be VO two max training and that's the hard stuff. That's the getting completely out of breath. And I've got fantastic programs and little intervals.
If we have time, we can chat through those. So that's the first demate.
The second domain, which I know your listeners are going to love and all my members love, is Zone two.
Okay, this is still cardiovascular, but this is what we call our steady state activity.
So this is where you want to be sitting around sixty to seventy percent of your max heart rate. So you're going for your power walk, or if you're super fit, it might be a steady state jog where your heart rate is sitting between sixty to seventy percent.
So let's say you're a forty year old woman for example.
A quick mathematical way to work this out is two twenty six minus your age. So if you're forty two to twenty six minus forty, max heart rate is one hundred and eighty six feets a minute. So therefore, on your zone twos, you want to be working out somewhere between one ten and one thirty beats per minute a comfortable chat, but you should be having to take a few breaks if you can't talk, it's too far, too intense.
And this is your fat burning zone as well.
This is where lipolysis is at its greatest state.
So that's the second one, okay, zone two.
The third one is strength, and this is where a lot of my women fall down fliss and so this is super important for muscle mass, for our metabolic rate, for bone density, and I cannot tell you how many of my over forty five members end up having a DEXA scan and realizing that they have osteopenia, which is the beginning or bone loss which then leads to osteoporosis. And also that strength is important for joint protection joint stability. And then the fourth one, which a lot of my
women do quite well, is your mobility. So this is things like your yoga, your pilates, This is your range of motion activities that make sure that you stay nice and flexible, not too stiff. But also is really important for balance, and we know into our elderly years, balance becomes.
A huge factor when it comes to our mortality rate.
Amelia, thank you for coming on.
Healthy ish my absolute pleasure.
Well Hopefully that is the inspiration you need today to get out there and go for a walk, a run, jump on your bike, whatever it is. And also we'll leave a link to Amelia show Do You Want to Live Forever in the show notes, as well as her own program Anything Else. Jump online, Body and soul dot com, dou for us on socials, grab our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper. And of course you can rate and review this episode or subscribe to
this podcast. We'll share this EP with a friend And until next time you listen, hopefully tomorrow, Stay healthy ish