Oh hello, welcome to Healthy Ish. You have tuned into our summer series. This, of course is your podcast from Body and Soul. I'm your host of Felicity Harley.
Yes.
To celebrate the hot season, we are dropping our top Healthyish episodes in twenty twenty four. This one was a good eye because I think all of us at some stage feel the three pm slump. Well, a lot of us every day. And I was joined back in February by workplace wellness expert and ted X speaker Lizzie Williamson.
She's a certified PT and she's energized thousands of people along her well career journey, and she joined us to share fun micro moves to boost your work mood and increase productivity, particularly valuable in this time of year, don't you think anyway, make sure you're listening to Extra Healthy Ish as well, where she shares more about the active work day advantages. It's a little philosophy that she lives by. You can search for Extra Healthy Ish wherever you get
your podcasts. Lizzie, Welcome to healthy Ish.
Thank you so much.
I was looking forward to interviewing today because I need a bit of energy in my life and I feel like you are just bursting with it.
I've got some tips and hacks for you.
Okay, good to bring it on, But let's talk about specifically exercised, because I feel like this is this is your sweet spot now. Sometimes, you know, we get to the end of the week, we look back and realize we've done little or no exercise. We're like, what when did I last go to the gym or go for a run, or even go for a walk. And then the next week comes and I mean, now we all know how important exercise is, not just for our physical
and mental health, how do we fit it in? Why do we first thing, why do we find it so hard to fit in?
So many things get in our way. I mean, we have got big lies going on. We have got times where we feel so fatigued and we just can't find that motivation. Sometimes struggling mentally and exercise can be really hard. Then, but here's the thing. We have got so many rules about what exercise has to look like, that it has to be this certain hour or half an hour, it has to be at this certain gym class or yoga class. We have to be wearing our fancy active Where give
us these certain results. And so when exercise doesn't fit into that box, into the rules that we think it has to look like, then what do we do that day? Nothing? And so when we are so stuck in that rules and that mindset of this exercise has to be this separate thing and all of these rules, and if something gets in our way of doing it, whether that's time, energy, motivation, then it just all feels too hard and we think, Okay, well we can't do this exercise thing today.
We'll do it next week and then next Monday, oh no, no, the beginning of next month, oh no, no, next year. Yeah, So we just procrastinate. How specifically can a lack of exercise packed our workday.
Well, we know from research that sitting for long periods of time, this prolonged sitting without breaks, can actually take years off our life potentially, And the World Health Organization has put workplaces at this high priority for breaking up long hours of sitting with movement. It's in all our government guidelines. It's everywhere we need to sit a bit
less and move a little bit more. So the impact isn't just physical on our longevity, but also when you're sitting there at work and your lower backs is really kind of aching because you haven't moved for ages, your shoulders, your neck, you're tight. That's not really very much fun. And then you've also got the mental stuff as well, and the mindset and the soul stuff, because when we're
not physically active, we just don't feel as great. We get more lethargic, our body goes into sleep mode, our brain doesn't operate in the way that it's designed to do. We miss out in a way of all these incredible benefits that physical activity give us in our day.
I love in the beginning that you said it's all in the guidelines. It's in the guidelines people, it's there, But are we actually doing it? No? So how can we? Because often, you know, if you're in an office job specifically, I mean a lot of people do stand all day. Obviously you know, nurses and doctors and whatever. But if you're specifically in an office job and you're sitting all day, or you're sitting at home, you get into the flow of work, or you think I need to bash this
out because a deadline is looming. You stress, you forget that you should be moving, and then all of a sudden, it's three hours and you're still sitting there. How can we get how can we interrupt our workflow, our workloads and get more movement in you know, those three hours that we may be sitting still.
First of all, it's a mindset that we've got to look at how these little things we do, these little micro moves, micro breaks, how they actually are really important and they really do count. There's this show that I can't believe I've gotten into on Netflix called Drive to Survive. It's about Formula ones. Have you seen it?
No?
Okay, I never thought i'd be into Formula one drivers, But when I watch it with my family and I see these drivers on the track and they are racing to that finish line and every millisecond counts for them, high performers, and yet they're called to box. They've got to go and take this pit stop because their tires are running out or something's happened with their engine or their vehicle. And of course I imagine they're on that
track not wanting to get off. They just want to get there, but they know that that is a thing that they need to do to get their vehicle back in this prime way to get them across that finish line. It's the same thing for us. We think that, oh no, we can't stop because we've got to get going. We've got to keep going. We've got to get this dead undone.
So we've got some semblance of work life balance. But if we were to take these little pit stops and take care of our vehicle, which is our bodies and our brain and our mood, then we would get to that finish line in a much better way.
Actually, that's a great analogy. I was just I have actually been in the pits during the Grand Prix down in Melbourne a couple of years ago. I can't even remember the driver at the time, but it was quite phenomenal. How such a short stop and then all of a sudden they're fueled off and I think the I can't even it was Lewis Hamilton anyway, someone like that. It was phenomenal experience. But that's a perfect analogy for just
taking that short break. Now you say there's a two minute trick that we can do in our workday to take that break.
What is it? Before I had postnatal depression fifteen years ago, I always thought that the way that exercise had to be and had to count and to make you feel good was you know, you really have to get out half an hour, an hour whatever. And the problem was, at that time I could not get myself to exercise anymore. And so what I started doing was just saying to myself, just do two minutes. That's all you have to do. Here on your kitchen bench, do a few push ups.
I used to be a dancer, so I do a few PLA's And I tell you that two minutes still felt really hard, but it really then made me feel like I was achieving something. I was doing something for me, And so then this ripple effect happened from that taking this little two minute then meant that I was feeling a bit more late in the day, Okay, maybe I want to move again. Sometimes as the months went past,
that two minutes became more minutes. Just do two minutes or less, because two minutes is so much better than no minutes, because it helps to build that momentum.
There's a great quote that just came to me when you were talking. It's from as I think it's psychotherapist Emma Murray. She has a quote that motion chain into emotion, and your two minute trick is that move it changes how you feel, how you look. So what are some little two minute moves that we can do in our day without feeling ridiculous in front of our workmates.
So so kicked simple. You can keep this really really small, and in fact, you can actually do a lot of this stuff without even anyone knowing that you are exercising or moving at work. So say, for example, you're starting to feel a bit tight in your body. You can feel it in your back. So imagine you've dropped a couple of pens on the ground. Next you just got to pick something up, or you got to plug your
charge in under your desk. You lean over to one side, pick it on up, and lean over the other side, and that just gets your spine out of that same position. You reach up one arm and how great that is. Now, if you're listening, you can just reach up the other arm, and how good that feels to just stretch out your We're reaching, Yes, we start reaching. You can imagine what
is you're reaching for. Imagine if you are about to come on a podcast with the incredible Felicity Hard, you're feeling a little bit nervous, or you about have to go give a presentation, the way we hold our body makes a big difference to the way that we feel. And then of course walking is super powerful. If you're there, think oh, I can't come up with this idea for
this email or this project. There's a study by Stanford University that says that compared to sitting, walking increases creative output by sixty percent, and those creative juices continue to flow after you've sat back down. You don't even have to go outside. It's all those little moments that may not look like exercise as you know it, but they're still getting your body physically active. Yeah.
Amen to the Lizzie, Thank you for coming Unhealthy, Thank you, Thank you for listening to this interview. As part of our twenty twenty four summer series, there are plenty more awesome epps for your ears, both from Healthy Ish and our big sister podcast Extra healthy Ish. If you did like this interview, please take equipment to share it with friend. If you do want any other info, head to bodyansoul
dot com dot you followus on socials. Any feedback please dm me at Felicity Harley and until tomorrow, enjoy the sun and stay healthy.