Reinventing Healthy Living | Melanie Carvell | TEDxUMary

i don't know if you've ever felt like this guy feels he came home from work and he says to his wife i thought we'd just slip into our jogging suits and spend the evening watching tv sounds pretty good actually doesn't it how many of you are tired at the end of your days we all are right how many of you have physically active jobs or lifestyles where you're running around with your head cut off all day anybody a few few lucky souls here unfortunately most of the activities been engineered out of our lifestyles hasn't it due to our labor-saving devices and all our digital distractions we have become very inactive but the good news is we can do something about it and hopefully that will be our goal that we'll accomplish tonight this cartoon always makes me think of my dad i grew up in the small town of mott the spot where the girls are hot you know southwest there was other jingles but we won't go into them but my my dad owned a bar in mott on main street and our family home was about two blocks away from rixon's bar and so he had his routine for 37 years he would head out into whatever big car he was driving at the time drive those two blocks to the bar come home for lunch drive back afterwards come home take a nap come back back and forth probably about six times a day he'd make that trip in his car to work crazy very crazy but you know habits are kind of tricky aren't they they're like that they become kind of automatic and part of who we are and we don't even realize that there's an opportunity maybe to do things a little bit differently try this for me once just cross your arms over your chest and now moving forward from here we're never going to do it that way again from now on we're going to put our opposite arm on top feels kind of wacky sort of uncomfortable habits are a part of us and it is hard to change them but we are faced with big trouble coming our way a virtual tidal wave a tsunami of problems and so it's so important for us to try to develop some healthier habits we know that most of us carry too much weight we've got a big problem with obesity and if you struggle with weight don't feel alone because we're really all in this together how much money do you suppose we spend in the united states a year on weight loss any guesses out there 30 billion dollars so we're all in this together it's a big struggle and the the worrisome thing about obesity is that it's really the canary and the coal mine because where there's obesity several problems follow one of the most concerning ones is that by 2020 public health officials are predicting that one in three of us are going to have a chronic expensive long-term disease diabetes we spend a ton of money every year on health care 2.5 trillion dollars a year on health care more than any other country in the world what does nike tell us to do just do it right like it's that easy it isn't changing behavior is hard it's tricky and um you know it's definitely something that we need to work on and probably the one of the most concerning things is the legacy that we're leaving our children are more sedentary than ever you know our kids don't always listen to us at least mine didn't but they'll never fail to imitate us and so it's so important for us to set a good example if we take care of ourselves then they're going to be so much more likely to do the same if we have a positive relationship with exercise and a healthy relationship with food then they will as well so what gets us into this big heap of trouble really it's just five things the five things that get us into all this trouble are not surprising too much eating too much drinking too much stress too much smoking and not enough exercise and although it's very concerning and kind of depressing there's also great opportunity here 80 of that 2.5 trillion dollars that we spend a year on health care is because of lifestyle factors things that we can control so there's a great opportunity for us if we could get our arms around developing a healthier lifestyle we can prevent 80 percent of disease there's a new criminal in town have you met him it's the time we spend sitting on our rear ends you know in the past couple decades we've been pretty quick to shake a stick out of smoker haven't we and say don't you know those cigarettes are going to kill you but it's very important for us to realize that if we're not shaking a leg ourself we can't really point a crooked finger at a smoker because our relative risk is the same as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day if we're inactive sitting on our rear ends saps our energy and ruins our health and we're doing more and more of it than we've ever done most americans spend about 80 percent of their days sitting and so it's something that we really need to do uh take and take charge of and do something about so please don't take a seat when we have a chair about a hundred things happen and 99 of them aren't good our circulation slows to a crawl and when our circulation slows down it affects our whole body when we sit our fat burning enzymes decrease by 90 our calorie burning comes to a screeching halt when you sit you burn about one calorie a minute when we stand up and move around we burned about seven calories a minute and so you wonder well how much of a difference does that make in an eight-hour day at work a big difference if you're a lawyer or an accountant and you spend most of your day in front of your most of your eight-hour day in front of a computer you'll probably burn about 1500 calories on your work at your work if you're a barista in the coffee shop we're talking more like 3 000 calories so what we do throughout our day how we move throughout our day and if we can interrupt sitting makes a huge difference for us our bones get softer our muscles get weaker and probably one of the most important things is our productivity really starts to flag how many of you have an energy drain in about the middle of the afternoon we're so tired without that blood flow our brains just don't work as well either so we know that being active makes us healthier that is critical but sometimes i don't think we give enough emphasis to some of the other benefits when we take time to take care of ourselves and be physically active it is one of the best antidepressants that we can ever go on it improves our mood it improves our sleep and i don't know about you but when i take time to take care of myself and get some physical activity in i'm a better wife i'm a better mother i'm a better employee and probably most importantly i have the energy then to give to others as well and we all know that serving others is one of the best ways that we can really add meaning to our own life and that's what really makes us happy so so important and then how many of you want to be smarter many times we underestimate the value of how exercise affects our brain affects our cognitive and intellectual skills it is critical when we exercise we stimulate growth factors that actually build brain cells and also have a special effect on a small area of our brain called the hippocampus the hippocampus has a big job it's the area of our brain that controls learning memory programming processing and as we get older the hippocampus starts to shrink but we can keep those losses to a minimum if we stay physically active and exercise is really the only thing that's been shown to decrease our chance of developing alzheimer's by 70 percent remarkable exercise also helps the right and left side of our brains work together let's give it a try i want you all to stand up for me so we're going to start with our right arm and it helps if you count with me here we go pretty simple one count out loud two you've got it three four five six you've got the right arm you got it okay left arm's a little trickier here we go one two right here three four five six right arm one more time simple as pie one two three four five six the tricky side left arm one two three four five six are you ready to put the right and the left side of the brain together bring it on are you ready okay here we go here's one here's two here's three four five six go ahead and have a seat did you have to think a little bit about that i had to practice that a lot before i was willing to get up in front of a group and do it but exercise challenges our brain in many ways and so important for us so if you're a student and you have an exam coming up one of the best things that you could do is take a half hour break and go for a swim or a bike or a walk or a run it will help you to retain everything that you're trying to learn so we know what we need to do we know how powerful a healthy lifestyle is and how it can add years to our life and more importantly life to our years but how do we get ourselves going the best fire is not the one that somebody else lights but the one that we like from within us and when we talk about motivation what it is what it is and how to get it how to keep it oftentimes what i see is that people wait for that magic moment and we think that when we get there and life is easier things settle down a little bit that we're going to start taking care of ourselves we think that when our kids get to school when our kids get out of school we're going to start taking a little bit of care of ourselves when the wind stops blowing we are going to go for a bike ride right when it finally warms up we're going to get out there and go for a walk when it cools down we're going to get moving but we know don't we that there is no there when things are getting easier there's no magic moment we need to do something on a daily basis to take good care of ourselves to invest in ourselves physically spiritually emotionally if we want to lead meaningful lives i think another thing to think about too is that many times people think that first we get motivated and then we start moving but really it's opposite if you want to build your willpower if you want to build your motivation you need to do something positive for yourself and motivation follows every time you make a choice and we are confronted with choices all day long to be more physically active every time you do something positive motivation follows it doesn't come first but it'll follow i like to think of it as motivation 1.0 2.0 on 3.0 where we really want to get to so motivation 1.0 is when we start taking a little bit better care of ourself because somebody tells us that we have to maybe it's an employer maybe it's a death threat we just had a heart attack or we just got a diagnosis of diabetes so 1.0 is something or somebody else knock knock knocking on the door saying hey lady trouble's afoot and we need to make a change motivation 2.0 so we're getting a little bit closer to being more internally motivated that's when we start taking better care of ourself because of the sticks and carrots so a stick might be a little sharp stick poking ya might be your insurance company who says because you smoke you are going to have to cough up another 250 a month on your insurance premium and sometimes getting hit in the wallet is a motivator for us to change or maybe the carrot that gets you going is some type of reward and it might be your employer who says if you do this fitness challenge we're going to give you some extra dollars to spend in your health savings account but at some point no matter how sweet and crunchy the carrots are or how sharp those little sticks are that are poking us that doesn't always lead to long-term behavior change too and some research shows that incentives can actually backfire on us when we incentivize people with money or prizes or whatever it might be we had a fitness challenge at work we all got a little activity tracker which is a wonderful tool to keep us all accountable and then we were rewarded along the way when we reached different milestones for um taking steps but guess what a couple of our employees figured out that if they put their fitbit on top of the dryer when there was a full load of clothes in there and ran at the whole cycle they got 30 000 steps out of the deal even our own ceo clipped his fitbit on his hunting dog of all things so rewards and incentives sometimes can backfire on us but motivation 3.0 is where we all want to get to and that's developing that internal motivation and that's when we can look at something that at first glance seems like a lot of work and maybe a little bit of a negative but we can find the joy in it and we find the value in each day when we take a little bit better care of ourselves that trickle down effect where everything falls into place a little bit better because we are living life fully charged this little hen she has about graduate level motivation i think she says i don't think of it as laying an egg i think of it as lowering my cholesterol so obviously she's finding the positives in the work that she has to do she's a little smug about it but when we're trying to change behavior we know what doesn't work and we know kind of the things that help us out a little bit more i like to think of it like the f's and the r's the f's aren't very helpful somebody's trying to force us to make a change that's not too motivating is it autonomy our autonomy is probably our number one motivator it has to be our idea doesn't it for us to be successful they always say knowledge is power and we can lay all the facts out on the table but having the facts on the table without really doing anything about them and moving to action isn't all that helpful either is that we can scare someone straight and that might keep them going for a while but doesn't lead to much long-term success and then there's always guilt right we can we can do things when we feel guilty about it but that isn't very inspiring either so we know that these things don't help us very much individually or if we're trying to work with others people we manage patients we're working with we know that that that they're not very inspiring so what does help us change behavior what gets us on the right track it has to start with a positive attitude if you want to move forward it's critical that you start from a good place of a solid self-esteem self-love optimism spirituality that spirit of grit bring it on how hard can it be we've got to start there so the r's are so much more helpful than the f's the first one is routine you know our human bodies really crave rhythm and routine when we get into a routine of a healthy habit that becomes automatic and it really serves us well a girlfriend that i run with at 5 30 in the morning sets herself up for success the night before she lays all her clothes out she has the coffee in the coffee maker ready to go all you have to do is push the button the cereal bowl is out with a spoon everything is set to go the alarm goes off and she's up and running she doesn't even think about it she's off the door out the door but if my alarm goes off at five o'clock and i think now where did i put my running shoes did i leave them at work or are they in the car or and isn't that all it takes for us to kind of get in a gumption trap and we're gonna hit the snooze and probably go back to bed getting those healthy routines makes a huge difference for us to be successful who are your reinforcements who's in your cheerleading squad as human beings we're designed to connect with our community we need each other and that's why things like alcoholics anonymous and weight watchers and support groups really help us succeed because we need each other if you want to fail at whatever you're trying to achieve whether it's running 50 marathons before you turn 50 or writing a book or quit smoking if you want to fail keep it a secret you'll be much more likely to fail if you want to succeed talk about it and people will say how's that book coming and then you better get the thing done right it's so important in fact the national weight control registry has studied people who have successfully taken weight off over long term and have found that the most common denominators are peer support and accountability we have to be able to recover don't we many times life throws a wrench into what we're doing and we really need to be able to bounce back it's kind of like that smoker who's quit smoking and they're doing really well and they haven't had a cigarette in six weeks which is a tough thing to accomplish and then they have a terrible day and they have a cigarette and what happens well they think gosh you know i'm a big loser i might as well smoke the pack and go down with the ship was it that one cigarette that hurt them not so much it's how we react to it if you can react to a slip up or a failure and say who cares i'm human peanut buster parfaits went on sale and i had one and i'm not gonna let that be the excuse to let the rest of my uh my diet go to the birds so so important to forgive yourself many times people get frustrated they say you know i took two steps forward and one step back it's so frustrating but what is two steps forward and one step back it is still one step forward right and if you are on the wrong road with your nutrition or your fitness or your stress level or whatever it might be you can turn around right you don't have to take that road all the way to dallas texas you can turn around and rapid city and come on home so forgiving yourself and moving on is probably one of the most important things reframing is taking something that on first glance looks a lot like hard work and turning it around and looking at it with a spirit of gratitude i challenge you to look at your to-do list moving forward from tonight and rather than saying i have to do this and i have to do that change it to get to replace that have to with get to every chance you get we can say i have to stop at the grocery store because i have to go home and make my family supper tonight i get to stop at the grocery store because i get to go home and make my family suffer tonight i have to go to church tomorrow no you don't have to you get to there's so many people that would love to have the chance to practice their religion and they can't i have an exam that i have to study for tomorrow oh i have to study no you don't you get to you get to attend college there's a million people who take your place in a minute i have to go for a run no it's a gift it's a get to and in closing i think one of the experiences that brought gratitude to the front of my life was being able to compete in the national triathlon championships and one of the first years i competed they held them in florida claremont florida and whoever thought that the national triathlon championships in the middle of july was a good idea i don't know it was 100 degrees in the shade 100 humility humility there was a lot of humility in the air too especially with me humidity i meant to say that that's part of the story it was a tough day but there was also a lot on the line on the line was the chance to make the national triathlon team and then be able to go to the world championships but at the same time the weather conditions were such that they were really warning us be careful we've hauled a lot of people off to the hospital with heat stroke and heat exhaustion so the first thing is a mile swim jumped into the lake and even that was in the upper 80s got out of the water not the best swimmer in the world so i was in about 37th place i had some wood to chop to catch up if i was going to make the top 10 but i can ride a bike i got on my bike went to town passed a ton of people really trying to keep my hydration up and and i got off the bike in second place so i was i was thrilled with that but i all it was also cautious i was also very cautious that's where that humility comes in because i'm not as strong of a runner i went from second place to third place to fourth place to fifth place to sixth place to seventh place to eighth place and i had two miles left to go and i had the worst attitude in the world i was sure that my chances of making the national team were gonna go down the drain and then i caught up with a young man that was running on a prosthetic leg and was really struggling we both were really struggling and i remember glancing at my watch and seeing that i had been out there for about two hours 20 minutes two hours and 20 minutes but i knew that the physically challenged division had started about two hours before me so this young man had been out in that heat for over four hours and as i passed him i reached over to him and i touched him on the shoulder and i said you look beautiful and he said you look beautiful too and we both just look like hell but i tell you what i got my rear end in gear and crossed that finish line in eighth place and made the national team and of the eight years that i had the blessing to be able to compete in the world triathlon championships it was that year that i won a bronze medal for team usa and who did i have to thank but someone who showed me how important it is to be grateful for what we have to do when you practice gratitude on a daily basis you are standing on a very firm ground in which you can move forward so can you fit more activity into your everyday it's so important that we do our lives depend on it thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 428,408

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Health, Movement, Nutrition, Self improvement

Id: z7iWZ24NXQQ

Length: 26min 19sec (1579 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2015