Holy Quads, Batman! Finding Your Heart Zen

This episode explores movement as medicine, and what soul-led activity looks like. Dr. Louder discusses the internal struggle many people face with exercise, advocating for less one-size fits all exercise fads and more heart-centered activities designed to align with your body and spirit's needs rather than external goals. Listen in to learn how to build a ritual around your workouts and find joy in moving your one, precious body.

Transcript

Mary Louder: 0:55

Hi, welcome to the Dr. Mary Louder podcast. Today's

episode: 0:58

Holy Quads, Batman. I'm trying to find my heart Zen. And also we'll have our repeating section on gadgets, gimmicks and gotchas. So welcome back. Today, we're going to dive into movement as medicine, exercise as medicine. Tell me if this sounds like you when you think about movement or activity or exercise. You get your workout gear all set out, your playlist, your shoes, your, you know, you schedule your gym time, you schedule your class. And yet there's this little voice inside of your head that's whispering, oh, I don't know, not today, friend, I don't think this is going to happen. I get it, or sometimes it might be, yeah, you better get going. Otherwise what? Right? So movement can feel like that tug of war, that battleground, sometimes between what we think we should do, what we ought to do, and maybe really what our body needs. So we're going to explore looking at that from a different path. Sometimes we need movement and sometimes we need rest. Sometimes we need to push it, sometimes we need to slow it way down. So it's not about punishment or perfection, but we're going to talk more about finding both your heart zone, which is the science and the heart rate training, and your heart Zen. That's the inner peace. Maybe it's the endorphins, but that comes when you move with alignment, with your body's wisdom. And along the way, we're going to peek by pulling back the curtain of a buzzy fitness trend, the treadmill 12-3-30 workout. And we're going to understand and look at why a one-size-fits-all plan can't really replace your heart and soul centered movement, so grab your coffee or your green smoothie, lace up your shoes, get your podcast headphones on, and here we go. We're starting right in today on exercise as medicine, finding your heart Zen. And when I think about my own relationship with movement, it's had its mixed moments, that's for sure, but I think can connect with when I was a kiddo, and we had a tire swing in our backyard, this big oak tree with two tire swings, and we used to put kids on there, and we'd run under there and push, and we'd jump from one to the other, and you'd pump really hard and see how high you could go in that swing. And sometimes we even jumped off the tire swing into the sand. It was a lot of fun. And I wasn't thinking about heart rates then. I was thinking about making big circles and connecting, you know, trying to grab the other tire swing, and there wasn't anything other than just the joy of moving and being in my body and feeling really, really, really alive, and that, my friend, is the energy that I want us to talk about and even consider reclaiming today, movement as an act of communion, not necessarily the control, not being perfect, but being able to go through and really find with reverence and curiosity, maybe a little bit of cheekiness of what we want to really do and participate in. So in order to go forward, again, we get to go inward. We slow down to go faster. So before we dive into the zones and the training plans, here's a secret. The best workouts begin on the inside. When you ask yourself, what is that felt sense about my body today? Am I tired? Do I feel restless, joyful, anxious? Am I raring to go, or maybe a little trepidatious? This isn't self indulgent, but it's really data by connecting with your soul. And when we use that data from a soul sense, not a disconnect, but a connection. That's one of the best ways we can avoid injury. And we can build trust with our bodies, and we can create consistency. So you're not starting from scratch, but you're starting from that connection with your soul. And then it's setting heart-led goals. So let's bust a myth here. What we know for sure is that most fitness goals are extrinsic. They're outside of you. Lose 10 pounds, burn X amount of calories, three weeks to fit into your jeans. But what keeps us from moving long term, what keeps us from activity long term? What keeps us from reaching our goals? It's having those on the outside, rather than having the intrinsic goals of, I want to feel more clear headed today. I want to honor my strength. I want to reconnect with joy. I want to overcome this illness. I want to strengthen my bones, right? So these goals invite us back into relationship with the body, rather than putting us at odds with the body. So we're not battling, but we're cooperating. And so maybe before your next workout, you might write down a couple heart led intentions swimming for me, you know, it's a very resistant activity, resistance into the water. With good technique, you can let that resistance keep you buoyant. You can let that resistance train your muscles, and you can let that resistance allow you to get a bit of a workout. So not all resistance is bad. And different types of motion And another way to do and be led by the type of exercise that's and movement are better than others, and some you're attracted to more than others. Some people have the explosive bursts, and some people's more the endurance. But guess what? It's okay to love yoga and hate the spin class or vice versa. It's okay to walk instead of running, or run instead of walking. It's okay to dance instead of being, go, going and doing a deadlift, right? So there's lots of forms of movement, and there's lots of forms of exercise that you can explore. Walking could be a moving meditation, strength training about resiliency-building, dance as an emotional release, yoga about breath and body wisdom, rebounding or the vibrational plate could be a playful way for lymphatic stimulation. So play with the different types of forms of activity till you find really what makes your body home. good for you is to go deeper and follow your genome. And if you haven't done your genome yet, your genome, rather, your genome, look at our website, drmarylouder.com. Check out our membership program, because the genomic test is included in that that's a beautiful way to connect with your genes on the inside, with the data that's there supporting lifestyle medicine, which is really a soulful way of doing and leading your health journey all the way along, and it's your blueprint for better living. So you can learn more by just simply going to my website, drmarylouder.com, but let's get back to this movement and the magic that comes with doing exercise, huh? One of the things I want to talk about is how we make peace with the least favorite parts. And we all have a movement nemesis. For me, it's walking. It's not my favorite thing, or even lunges or running stairs, ugh. But what I've learned is that the resistance to that isn't failure. It's an invitation where I can ask myself, What is this movement teaching me? Well, it might teach me I just don't want to do that one so much, and I can find something else to do. How can I meet that with compassion in myself, versus saying, Boy, you're such a failure if you don't like to do this. Everybody likes to do this. Everybody likes to walk. But instead, find what I like to do. When I do walking, I turn it into a meditation, turn it into an amble, connect with nature, and then I find the parts that feel hard, then become more nourishing. So rather than fighting it, I just learn more about and get curious why I feel that way. And again, no judgments. All right, into the science. Heart rate zones. A quick breakdown. Zone One: very light recovery. This is where heart Zen might often begin. It's calming and restoring, a gentle walk, gentle stretching, your heart rate is in a certain level. Zone Two, that's going to be endurance, which is a sweet spot for metabolism, and think steady walks or hikes. Zone Three, that's going to be moderate aerobic challenge, building your endurance. You can talk and carry conversation, but with effort. Zone Four, that's that hard threshold right up against the aerobic anaerobic capacity, useful in high intensity interval training. Zone Five is that sprint, dead out, giving everything you got, you can't talk, you can't even hardly do anything other than that activity. And you don't need to live in zone four or five to be fit. Most of us spend time and need more time and activity at zone one or two, a conversation that you can have while you're walking, a conversation with yourself while you're walking, while you're biking, while you're stretching, while you're marching. All those things can be heart rate zone one or two, which is a great place to hang out. So instead of chasing the high zones daily, dance across the zones, get a little bit of each in there. 20

minutes: 11:43

five minute warm up, 10 Minute zone two, maybe bump into zone three for a little bit, and that's 15 minutes, and then five minutes back down in heart rate zone one and two. And here's another way to think about this too, to support your recovery and endurance. One of the things I created for this is my mycoVIM functional mushroom line, and you can find that at my website, drmarylouder.com, but I want to insert this here because functional mushrooms are pretty amazing. We've got Lion's Mane, Chaga, Turkey Tail, Reishi and Cordyceps. I've put them together in a blend that help with recovery, help with endurance, help with antioxidizing. So you can explore the line at mycoVIM.com or drmarylouder.com, mycoVIM, you can get the blend that have all the five mushrooms, or you can get them individually for the targeted performance that the mushrooms provide. And those help with recovery. I use them all the time with my exercise and my swimming, and I notice much better muscle resilience. And if you're enjoying this podcast too, I want to take a minute to ask you to rate and review wherever you listen. And get your podcasts at share it with a friend. Send us a note too. If there's some topics that you might want to hear about, the more the merrier when we get together on these podcasts. And so thank you for listening and and I appreciate the fact that you're here with us today. All right, so let's get back to the business. We've done, the heart zones. We've talked a bit about the heart Zens. Let's get into the gadgets, the gimmicks and the gotcha, this reoccurring segment. We're going to pull back the curtain on the wellness trends. We'll help you move smarter, not harder. We'll teach you what to stay away from as well. So today we're going to talk about the 12-3-30 treadmill protocol. That's 12% incline, three miles an hour, for 30 minutes. And that burst onto the scene in the late 2019, 2020 era, which also the other thing that burst onto the scene there was COVID, right? So it dominated our fitness feeds for a few years, all throughout the pandemic, and it was sold as a silver bullet for weight loss and fitness. And I remember patients asking me about I'm like, I had no clue what it was. I had to go figure it out, right? And it was all the rage. You get a treadmill, you get a treadmill, you get a treadmill, right? Everybody was exercising at home, and it was that type of thing. But here's the thing about silver bullets. Especially if something's sold as a silver bullet, they promise an easy way out. They promise an easy and perfect plan, but our life, our bodies, are rarely that simple, and when it comes to fitness, chasing the silver bullets often distracts us from listening to our own deep wisdom and honoring the beautiful complexity of who we are. And so I would say I would put them in the category of the gimmick to the gotcha. Now, if you bought a treadmill, don't take that back. We just find the heart rate zones, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and work through those. And we found that even with that treadmill trend, it dropped off by 55% because it wasn't sustainable. It wasn't personalized, and your body is not a formula. following your genome, following the heart zones, finding the Zen. Some folks could thrive on that steady incline. Others needed interval or mobility, and they didn't have mobility for that incline. And also, folks who are triggered by activity go into more inflammation, which I'm one of those. If I did that treadmill trend, I would find myself triggered into inflammation. My muscles wouldn't recover, my joints wouldn't recover. And actually the adipose tissue that you have gets inflamed that prevents you from losing weight. So for me, the 12-3-20, for my body, was a gotcha. So the most important thing is find out your genomic approach, your season of life, your energy needs, your heart rate zone needs, and your joy movement can be a medicine. So it's not really a copy and paste from someone's influencer feed. So next time you see a shiny trend, pause, here's the questions to ask yourself, is that aligned with my genome? Is it aligned with my body's needs? Is this an activity that's adaptable? Can I personalize this? Are there parts of this that might fit? And that helps you avoid the gotchas and the gimmicks and really helps you find the gadgets that will help you go forward and work on that. So what's your secret sauce? How do we do it? Five things here. You build a ritual. It's not just a routine. You begin each workout with a sacred start asking yourself one or two questions, heart-focused, soul-centered. What do you want to do? Breath work. Begin with an intention, maybe music that stirs you and gets you going. And you close your activity after you've done your activity, with gratitude, thanking your body, cheering yourself on, letting yourself know you did a great job. That's not a participation thing, you really did it. And number five, finding your zen. So remember this, you're not broken, no fixing required. You're wise to seek to move in a more loving way, in a way that's connected to your heart, to your soul and to your needs and to your enjoyment. It's not about achieving the perfect body. The perfect body is the one you have, because that is the one you have. But it's out about being thankful for your body to be--being able to move and finding that heart Zen, finding that next walk, that dance, that workout, that lifting, that spinning, that yoga, any of the above that makes you feel the grace, the grit and the joy, because you got this. You can do this. Go get 'em, right? And so that's why we say Holy Quads Batman, you found your heart zen, and this is exactly what you're meant to be doing at this time. So thanks for listening, see you next time. We've got in the show notes, some--a handout on the heart zones and what the pulses look like for, if you were to check your heart rates as well. So how to measure that. And that's a one page handout that you'll be able to take with you as you plan your daily workouts. So until next time, thanks for being here, and we'll see you and the Dr. Mary Louder podcast show. Be well.