Click on NOTE CATEGORIES to browse by topic, read through the entire archives, or type a topic in the search box.Biologist Jeannette Loram and Biomechanist Katy Bowman discuss movement “as nutrition”. Using familiar dietary terms, Katy and Jeannette unpack the concept of movement macronutrients, micronutrients and calories. They discuss how simply getting enough physical activity, or ‘movement calories’, does not guarantee you are nourishing your whole body; we also need to consider the general shape you take when moving - the macronutrients- and which parts of you are moving - the micronutrients. They discuss the movement patterns of heart-healthy hunter-gatherer tribes and how Katy has used these to create a ‘movement pyramid’ that can be used, similarly to a food pyramid, to guide a more optimal movement diet.
OVERVIEW
(time codes are approximate)
06:00:00 - Let’s Talk About Movement Nutrition (Jump to section)
00:09:00 - Calories and Movement Nutrition (Jump to section)
00:21:00 - The Movement Pyramid (Jump to section)
00:33:00 - Rest (Jump to section)
00:40:45 - Explaining Micronutrients (Jump to section)
00:47:50 - Changes You Can Make Now (Jump to section)
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Episode #119 with Dr. Jeannette Loram
Episode #156 - Your Perfect Movement Plan
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(Theme Music)
This is the Move Your DNA podcast, where movement science meets your everyday life. I’m Katy Bowman, biomechanist, author, and founder of Nutritious Movement. Every body is welcome here. Let’s get started.
(Music Fade)
Hello everyone. Today I wanted to talk about movement as nutrition. So, I use this analogy often, sometimes on the podcast but probably more often in my books and other written pieces. And if you go back and look through my book, Move Your DNA, from which the podcast is named, you will see that “movement diet” language starts there.
And I really wanted to dedicate an episode to walking through this “movement diet/movement as nutrition” framework. With me today is a friend and colleague, Dr. Jeannette Loram, biologist and a movement teacher who’s familiar with this movement/nutrition model being one of our program graduates. She’s also been on this podcast a couple of times because we both enjoy casual conversations around the more technical topics in movement science. And I thought talking with her would be a fun way to allow all of you listening to go deep with us.
KATY: So, Jeannette, all the way from the UK, welcome to Move Your DNA.
JEANNETTE: Thank you very much, Katy. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm very excited that I get an opportunity to speak with you for 45 minutes on this topic. Fantastic.
KATY: Well I mean people will come to know about us soon. It's not unlike us to just talk for 2 or 3 hours.
JEANNETTE: Good point. We'll try not to do that.
KATY: It's unfortunate because you're so far away. It has to be on Zoom with cups of tea. But we've also taken lots of good walks and talked about lots of detail-y nerdy things.
JEANNETTE: Absolutely.
KATY: All right. Where do you want to start?
JEANNETTE: You just came back from Chicago at the Barefoot Expo.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: Which must have been exciting. I'm pretty jealous because I need some more shoes, desperately.
KATY: It was amazing. There were over 2000 people there. I think for me, who has been around for the barefoot ... it had just come on the scene sort of. And to be so involved in the beginning of the movement and to see where it has grown in eleven or twelve years is amazing. Just the styles and the people coming up with ... the creativity. The entrepreneur spirit. And people feeling whole. I feel like there were holes that were filled in this category. And it was just fun to see everybody.
JEANNETTE: Tell me...have they made a "West Coast-of-Scotland proof" boot?
KATY: Right. It's about weather. I wish there were tall wellies!
JEANNETTE: Yeah! Vivo Barefoot, years ago, did a wellie. But it didn't last and they pulled it.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: So definitely, yeah. We have Freed Footwear here which is pretty good.
KATY: Freed is great.
JEANNETTE: Yeah and they last pretty well. But definitely, there is a gap in the market.
KATY: There is a very good Japanese waterproof pull-on tall rubber boot that is for rice farming work.
JEANNETTE: Yes I've seen them. Are they the ones with two? They've got a big toe and then the rest of the foot is all together?
KATY: No. It's not that style. It's a full pull-on. And all the farmers here where I live are now wearing them.
JEANNETTE: Interesting.
KATY: We borrowed them when we went cranberry bogging. They're listed on the shoe list. You can find them on there. And they're thin. So it allows a lot of sensation in through them. That was something. I think the coolest thing that I saw at the Expo, I mean there's so many things. And really, I barely got to leave my table. It was just - for everyone who came out, it was amazing to meet you. But...
JEANNETTE: So you didn't have a leisurely 5 hours of shopping.
KATY: I bought zero. I bought zero shoes. I didn't get to do ... I did not eat for the entire day. It was unbelievable. And there will be one, I hear, next year as well.
JEANNETTE: Amazing.
KATY: It was remarkable. It's gonna blow up. It's amazing. They have minimal cleats, sporting cleats.
JEANNETTE: Wow! Ok.
KATY: So it's just interesting to see these niches being filled in this particular way.
JEANNETTE: By cleats are you talking about bicycle shoes?
KATY: No I'm talking about football, soccer, cleats. So sporting shoes. I don't know if your kids play soccer. Mine do. My husband plays soccer. And that can have that rear heel lift and they can be quite narrow in the front. And stiff.
JEANNETTE: Both my boys play rugby. And that's very stiff. Very hard, obviously. Yeah, that's interesting.
KATY: They said they're good for rugby too. Any sort of sport like that. I did see also wide toe box clip in cyclist shoes. As we get into summer sport time just going "Oh yeah". Go beyond FiveFinger toe shoes. Where it was primarily when we started.
JEANNETTE: Right. Right. Amazing.
JEANNETTE: So I would love to ask you really the origin of this analogy. And I wondered whether it was really that you realized that people didn't have a language to understand movement and you were trying to find a way to give them a language and a framework to understand it how you understand movement.
KATY: Oh man. When did I first start thinking about it? I think that people are always coming to me with "What's the best exercise?" Questions like that. It's always about the limitation of time. And so it's like, "Tell me the one thing or the three things or the best mode of movement". And then my response to that, because I had good training, I would say, in nutrition, dietary nutrition, was to offer a counter-example to the question. To be like, "Well, that's sort of like asking what's the best single food to eat." It doesn't work that way. Because there's so much that's inside of movement. And then I think from that point I started to think how would someone pick what's the best thing for them to do. Or is this exercise good? Well, what are your goals? What parts of your body need movement? Or, what's the state of your body trying to do this particular exercise? So I think it just came organically where, you know me, I tend to lean heavily on metaphor and analogy when I'm teaching, you know.
JEANNETTE: I think you use beautiful analogies and metaphors. This one, I think, is particularly rich. And certainly my background - my background is molecular biology, but I think we all in our culture, have more of an affinity. We understand chemicals. We understand that we take something into our body and it has an effect. I think we understand that quite well. And I think, certainly from my perspective, I understand food as an input. And I think that's what your work ... I had never thought before I met you about movement as an input. We think - I just don't think we think about it that way. So I think this movement analogy is very rich. But, not to get too complicated right off the bat...
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: So I think there are so many layers to this. I would like to start asking you questions at the broadest level.
JEANNETTE: Because I think that that would help everyone. And then we can kind of get a little more - we can dig in - pun intended. So first of all, you have used the term movement calories and movement nutrients. Both movement macronutrients and micronutrients. Could you define for me what you mean by how you use movement calories?
KATY: Well, the tricky thing with creating a system like this is I had to become more familiar with the dietary language. Because really a calorie is also a nutrient. So right? So that's movement as nutrition and sort of like - it's so hard to have these conversations because the language is inadequate.
JEANNETTE: Mmmm.
KATY: So dietary calories are a nutrient. They're like the most general container for an input. And so movement calories would be the same. It's really a unit of movement. Calories are a unit of energy. But you need it. That's what makes it a nutrient. Movement calories are units of movement but the best way that we would measure them would be in time. So seconds or minutes of movement. This period, this ... I keep trying to use my hands to show. It's a container. It's where the stuff is. It's where the benefits are inside of. And because movement, like you were saying before, it's so much more challenging. And I just want to go back for a second. The reason molecules, chemical molecules, are easier for us to understand is because we can see them. And I do think that as humans as moved towards understanding the body - first is was really what we would call philosophy now was really the beginning of the scientific investigation of "what's inside this body?" And there was a movement when all of the scientists at the time were looking at the way blood pumps through the body, there was a moment when the physicists of the time, like Leonardo di Vinci and Newton, and those folks were also interested in anatomy and were trying to get a sense of all the physical forces. Once the microscope was invented and you could see things, that really hijacked the understanding of the body in terms of these molecules and the way these more invisible physical forces that you cannot see - you can quantify through mathematics but you cannot see - that go by the wayside and we got sort of a molecule centric understanding of the body. And of course that's changed even academics. Now it is very much about mechanical forces coming in and sort of rounding out that science. Which is all to say, a lot of the physical forces, parts I'm talking about, are invisible.
JEANNETTE: I think that's definitely true. Everything you said. It's hard to conceptualize something that you can't see. I do think, like you say, things are changing. Since the 1950s we have been a very molecule-based, cell-based, genetics space in science. And that's now shifting. So maybe with that, I think you're doing your piece, in dragging everyone into this understanding: The cell in a physical way, not just a chemical way. So I'd like to go back to this physical activity. You're saying the unit of measure would be time
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: For the listeners, I think it would be really helpful because I found this helpful, is to relate that to things that are in the ... The health information that we're getting today from government, from medics, etc, is about physical activity.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: And that's measured in minutes. Could you explain a little bit your perspective on the standard physical activity guidelines as a measure versus maybe what a human being actually needs in your framework of movement nutrition?
KATY: Well and that's why I think the movement as nutrition metaphor even developed further. Because I don't think most people would think of calorie totals as a complete guidance for dietary nutrition. Make sure you eat x number of calories a day, full stop. Now you're healthy.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And so with movement, we tend to be more simply in the calorie term. Certainly, I think with people's experience, one of the reasons calories stand out so easily, and I'm gonna think in terms of earlier humans, adequate calories were the first necessary input. But, you know, when you change landscapes and the foods available aren't as nutrient-dense then we've realized there are other things in our food beyond energy that is necessary. And then it's slowly this dietary framework. There are macronutrients in food. There are also micronutrients in food. And so, similarly, where we are with physical activity and movement/exercise guidelines is they're often minutes only. I mean sometimes when you read the details there's actually a little bit more to it, but in general, we have this sort of, "I need to get 60 minutes a day." Or, "I need to get 30 minutes a day." And yes, but ... that's not the only amount that we need and there's these other things. Like you could take 30 minutes of, if you are eating dietary calories, you could eat the proper number of dietary calories and still be malnourished.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: Because you aren't hitting these other categories. And the same goes for movement as well.
JEANNETTE: And you have particular ways of measuring how the macronutrients and the micronutrients ... do you want to go into that just a little bit so we understand right off the bat: What are the other components of movement other than just "are you moving or are you not."?
KATY: Right. So it's like, if it's only time then your time is spent moving or it's not moving. OK, now we're moving. Now that we're moving, what are we doing while we're moving?
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: So the same, now that we're eating, what are the things that we're eating? So when you're eating food, we're tending to go with macros like fats, carbohydrates, protein. With movement, I do think we've had sort of a stab - we've been taking a stab at this idea of macronutrients in our movement. Because there are, for anyone who has spent any time in the exercise science space, there's cardio strength and flexibility. And even a lot of the physical guidelines that do come down from governments or medical institutions, will say, "It's this many minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise", right? Sometimes it'll say "Of those daily 30 minutes that you're doing, two days should be strength training." So there's a stab at sort of saying we understand that just physical activity alone isn't protective against everything. Although it's pretty good against the main things: cardiovascular disease is the number one reason the activity guidelines exist. It doesn't necessarily state that explicitly but it's like just general movement could be better for your heart no matter what it is that you're doing. But of course, people know that things arise for them - issues in their bones, issues in their joints, sometimes mental health, or brain health…
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: …memory or things like that. So that's why there's been a refinement over time. So those categories that exist: cardio, strength training, and flexibility they're really tissue specific. Making sure you get your heart. Making sure you get your muscles. And making sure you take care of your joints. For me, again, I think my biomechanist brain influences the way I think about movement. And because I know how movement gets into the body on that cellular level, I think that shape - the shape your body is making - it's not just shape it's like the efforts in those shapes are a big part of how movement is delivered - how movement is an input. We kind of skipped over movement as an input but, you know what I mean. Movement as input at the cellular level. Go ahead.
JEANNETTE: I was interested, you said one word there, you said "efforts in the shape." Could you clarify because I think that's really interesting? So you were saying about how hard you're working in a shape?
KATY: Yeah, right.
JEANNETTE: So you could be in a shape where your body is arms overhead and you're on the ground. Or you could be arms overhead and climbing. So that's what you're talking about - the effort in those shapes.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: And those are different experiences because of the loads on the cells and the amount the muscles are working. Is that right?
KATY: Yeah. And loads is the thing - what are the loads in the body? That's - it's really hard to create simple categories for loads. So the macronutrients - I kinda created a food pyramid of macronutrients and I used human ... so basically like a hunter/gatherer model. So if you've been following Ancestral Health or Evolutionary Biology it's that premise that what we've been doing with our bodies, the environments our bodies have been in for a very long period of time - that formed our shape are essential to our current body. And the mismatch between the environments we are in right now and what our bodies are used to on the genetic level, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, is that space for things to come up in the body that are simply the needs of the physiology not being met by the environment. And that environment is dietary. It's the air. It's what's in the water. It's the mental or stress load. And it's the movement. Right? It's just sort of the broadest idea of environment that you can come up with.
JEANNETTE: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So I would look to the Hadza which are hunter-gatherer people. And not just the Hadza. There are lots of hunter-gatherer tribes that live on the planet now and I like to say they are not living relics. However, their activities are much closer to these ancestral patterns of behavior than what ours are now.
JEANNETTE: The key with a lot of these, the Hadza and the other hunter-gatherer communities, tribes, is they have no cardiovascular risk factors.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: So that's why ... you know other things are harder to measure in those groups like cancer, etc. But certainly, when it comes to cardiovascular health, they're nailing it.
JEANNETTE: So there's some empirical evidence that they are closer to optimal in terms of their environment, whatever that may be: diet, movement, than we are when we're suffering from all these other things. So to go back to your pyramid because we've all seen the food pyramid. I don't reckon many people have seen a movement pyramid. Could you elaborate for us what the pyramid might look like?
KATY: So we think of calories. The time spent moving - a large portion of those movement calories are going to be while walking. And then the next one up and I had to make it a little bit smaller is carrying. So most walking, when it's done by hunter-gatherers is utility. So it's transporting of something, people. You're carrying water. You're carrying wood. You're carrying children. You're carrying your gear. Your arms are always working. But it's not just your arms. When you carry things in your arms, your core muscles have to balance loads and things like that so there are times that you wouldn't be carrying when you're walking but not much which is why it sits right above. And then there is labor.
JEANNETTE: So can I just clarify it? They're not separate categories, right? The walking and the carrying tend to merge into - they're a group. I find that so interesting that when I look at my life how I've transitioned from having little kids, when I was always walking and carrying, and now that part of my movement has just ... and now I give stuff to my kids to carry because they're big and I'm outsourcing to them. So that was a note to myself that I need to consider that in my movement plan. Oh! And I just have one point on the light activity. Because I found this really interesting. When I had a little look at physical activity guidelines: WHO, the World Health Organization gives the most robust guidelines. But all guidelines do this. You should limit sedentary time. And sedentary time is this independent risk factor. So by independent means, you can still be super active in terms of minutes. You could be moving your moderate to vigorous and doing a bunch of high-intensity movement, but you can still spend a lot of time doing nothing. Like an athlete or a marathon runner. But that sedentary time is independent risk for cardiovascular events, etc. And I wonder sometimes, because I think this hasn't been teased out in the research, and it might be you might know this better than I do, but I'm not sure whether they've related that to the fact that if you're not ... less sedentary time means you're in more light active rest.
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: Does that make sense?
KATY: It totally does. So just to clarify for anyone listening. Yes, if you're not familiar with what an independent risk factor is, this is actually where the sitting is the new smoking came from. That's where people started to recognize that even if you're getting regular exercise, where normally you would think the risk factor was "do you exercise or not".
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: And it's like, "I exercise. Check." Ok well now found that independent of your exercise time is are you sitting all of the other time? Because we thought that if you just exercised that would mean that you are...
JEANNETTE: .. you're ok.
KATY: And you're fine. And you're actually not. And they found people who were very physically fit who exercise regularly but for that, you know, six, or even if you're a marathon runner, let's say you're running for three hours a day, if what you're doing most of the time is sitting, then that itself was a risk factor for usually cardiovascular disease is what they're looking at. And to reduce sedentary time seems so easy but it doesn't say what to do when you're not sedentary. What does that mean? And I do think that that's a lot of the inspiration for me adding active rest and talk about very light activity as a thing that is protective of health. Because when you look at the Hadza - and the reason I think that we use Hadza a lot is that there's the most research on this particular group. And even when people are using the Hadza to say "See, here's their daily vigorous and moderate to vigorous activity" they never really talk about... moderate to vigorous is 18-20 minutes of vigorous activity, 30 or 40 minutes of moderate activity, but the bulk is this very light activity. And I think we show up in neat - this kind of low expenditure of calories throughout the day. Or as I like to think about it as using the different shapes of your body more throughout the day. And I don't think that it's ever been tied together into an understandable package for people.
JEANNETTE: No.
KATY: And that's what I'm trying to do is to say ok here's all the things that everyone is saying but it's not being translated into a useable framework that someone can integrate into a lifestyle.
JEANNETTE: That's right. Because just saying you need to reduce sedentary time when you still got to work and how do you do that and what does it really mean and why? And I think your work gives us the why. Why is it important to reduce sedentary time and then go further - this is how we do it.
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: OK so I interrupted you. I think you got in the pyramid. Everybody's probably forgotten that we're talking about this pyramid. We got to carrying. So what's above carrying?
KATY: Big body work.
JEANNETTE: Ok.
KATY: So I wanted to, I'm thinking of what are Hadza doing and you're looking at the frequency and the shapes that they're making. And I'm trying to create these categories that allow people to swap foods in a category. That's the beauty of a food pyramid - you just need this type. What exactly you eat for grains doesn't matter. What exactly you eat for fruits and vegetables doesn't matter but you know that this category is this size so you can modify it to your preferences. And what works for your lifestyle and your culture.
JEANNETTE: I think it's key. We often don't recognize in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, what our equivalent would be.
KATY: Of course. How could you? Because it's tricky.
JEANNETTE: It's tricky. So tell us, Katy, big body movement. What's that?
KATY: This was the hardest category to create a name for but they are activities (everything I could think of is an activity something that you're doing), so you can't be moving from point A to point B because that's walking for the most part. But big body activity if we go back to not just shape but the intensity of use. Walking intensity is pretty across the board. Sitting is that intensity is fairly across the board. And same with carrying although I guess the heavier the load the more work. But with big body labor, it tends to be fairly rigorous. Like the big bodywork that I was pulling from for Hadza would be like pounding, you know, food, digging tubers. Things that these really small repetitive movements where you're In place but you're doing them against such resistance: whether it's dirt or you're lifting something heavy to pound over and over again. And it usually gets your heart rate up. They can even get into the vigorous. Even though you're not moving or running or anything, you're just sort of in place pounding. So the equivalence would be shoveling snow, stacking wood, gardening, and lifting sacks or moving sacks. It's where you're dealing with a load of something, or not always a load but usually and you're just doing something repetitive in this particular way. Many modern occupations that listened would have, "I have big bodywork of what I do for my work" and it's smaller, and often times our exercise will fit into big bodywork. Lifting weights is gonna be big bodywork.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: Heavier weights would go into big bodywork. And then on top of that is making movements. So making movements are often paired with active sitting positions. But I keep them as separate just for modern context. Because you might want to get your active sitting while you're watching Netflix. And maybe you get your making when you're driving in a car. Like maybe you're knitting (not while you're driving -while you're a passenger!) So it's things like knitting, weaving, cooking, tending a fire, doing woodwork, playing an instrument,
JEANNETTE: Complex hand/shoulder...
KATY: Hand, arm, shoulder, core. There's a little bit of movement. They would also - I know we'll probably get to talk about rest in a little bit but they can also be somewhat restful. They're making in some way. And then for the Hadza, on top of that, and for us too, that would be like, and this is the peak, right? This is the top of the triangle is ... running.
JEANNETTE: Mmm.
KATY: Jumping. So these very vigorous athletic things. It would be archery, in the case of the Hadza. For another tribe, it might be throwing spears. So there's this accuracy. It is highly skillful.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: But in terms of volume of movement, it's very small. And I added that to the pyramid - for most of us thinking "Oh I need to move more - we're often looking at the peak. The peak of the movement pyramid and going "I need to make my whole world - my program - this peak" and we're not really looking at the foundation of movements that sit below it. In Move Your DNA, years ago, that book is over 10 years old now at this point. I had a section called: Everyone Wants To Be A Hunter. You know, hunter/gatherer fitness. You're not really thinking of all of the other pieces. It always goes down to these sprints, these running without looking at the movement diet of the culture.
JEANNETTE: And maybe many people's pyramid actually looks the opposite.
KATY: Right.
JEANNETTE: If they're a fitness, you know, they're all run, sprint, these power moves at the bottom. That's the base and they don't have the other pieces. So it's quite...
KATY: Although really if you were to be accurate and you didn't just put - if you put your all-day movement to your pyramid, what it probably looks like the bottom four or five layers is sitting.
JEANNETTE: Yes.
KATY: The top pyramid might still be those athletic peak endeavors.
JEANNETTE: True
KATY: And it's one of those reasons why it's not as sustainable.
JEANNETTE: Right.
KATY: When you're making your pyramid you have to allot for all of the minutes of your day. That Hadza pyramid accounts for all of their minutes in their day. So your movement also needs to. So it's gonna have "it's mostly sitting". And of course, it's gonna be different if you have a physical occupation. I have farmers and farmers will spend, their whole bottom base, will actually be big bodywork.
KATY: So they might have two or three levels of big bodywork, no walking. They'll have carrying. And then you just start to see... the food pyramid is what we would call weighted. It's weighted in that it shows you what you're doing most often. Or the amounts relative to each other. So as you think about this framework, you're like, "Oh. yeah. What am I doing with my body from most to least?" And sometimes a few levels will need to be taken up by a single activity if you do it, in fact, to that volume that determines what needs to take up that space.
JEANNETTE: So, Katy. I'd like to segue into rest at this point. You mentioned the farmer who might have the bulk of the day doing these big body movements. So they have a slightly skewed pyramid. And they might feel what they need, actually, is more rest. But I also want to tie it into food. Because I think food is interesting. We appreciate, I think now, that our digestive system needs a rest. It needs a rest overnight. And that rest is not only important to give our digestive system a rest but there's also this idea that we are giving our energy systems a chance to switch. Which we don't need to go into now, but it's this idea that if you eat all the time, you're always going to be burning carbohydrate/glucose. If you give your system a rest, then you can switch and start burning fat. So you have this flexibility. And with movement, how can we - we need to get a balance between rest and movement. How do you view that? Because I think you have some really good insights into: a) what part might need a rest. It might not be the part that you think. Could you fill us in a little bit?
KATY: Yeah. I mean so, I realize your question is asking about physical rest. And I do like to - I think that there's a lot of different types of rest. But let's just keep it to a couple of different rests. On one level of rest is the rest of your musculoskeletal system. Like your body is fatigued from whatever energetic pathway you may be in - anaerobic or aerobic type of processes. And just for people listening I mean different types of movement, different intensities of movement use the body to fuel them differently. So that's what I'm talking about there. So there's this idea of physical rest. Maybe you've been on your feet all day. Your leg muscles are tired. You need to get off of them. There's physical rest. And there's mental rest. How much...what's been going into your eyes and ears and your thoughts all day long? You're processing everything. And I don't really separate the mind and the brain from the body. To me, I'm always thinking about this intact thing of your body. And both of those inputs, whether it's physical activity or it's - I just call it intention - they both have physical side effects. Both of those end up making your body not feel very good. So a lot of times the reason I even talk about rest is because one of the reasons many people don't move more is they'll say ...
JEANNETTE: Exhausted.
KATY: Exactly. And it's like, fair enough. And "I have no energy. My body has no energy. I just can't muster. I don't feel like my arms and legs can work. I'm just depleted" And that's right. But at the same time for many people, their state of depletion does not relate at all to being physically active. You can have people who are physically depleted who weren't active at all. So we've got this issue where the body needs a certain amount of movement and that movement needs to be distributed well, but the fatigue is there. So how do we come up with this... how do we introduce this idea that moving your body when you're fatigued, especially when it's not coming from physical fatigue, can actually replenish you? So that's one big piece.
JEANNETTE: Very like we can use food. You're tired. You've been traveling. You've not eaten a great diet. And you need to actually eat something very fresh and nutritious to replenish you. It's the same analogy. We tend to think to replenish ourselves we need to just lie down or watch...
KATY: Sure.
JEANNETTE: But actually movement of certain types can be very VERY renewing, I would say.
KATY: Yeah. And because I think it can give your attention a break. So if you can identify what type of tired you are: am I physically tired or am I intentionally tired? Then that helps you go, "ok then I know this feeling that I'm having..." and our feelings and the signals we get from our body ... I'll set feelings aside. The signals from our body that we're interpreting, to me, are very primitive. They're very simple. They're not specific. I use hunger as an example. You can have a hunger signal. But it doesn't really tell you if what you need is protein, if what you need is fat, if what you need... and it can be shut off, this sort of "nourish me" signal, can be shut off with really any energy unit that you give. And it takes a while to learn how to read your own body for the symptoms that you have. So what I'm saying here is if you can learn to separate the difference between intentional fatigue and physical fatigue and say "ok, I'm exhausted but I know it's because my mind - it's been what's been going on at work - that I'm going to actually go outside and take a walk because I know that that's what I need." So it does take some practice in translating your own physical signals. And then to your other point, sometimes we are physically tired from doing a particular thing. Like let's talk about a farmer, for example, or people who work in agriculture. But their body need, in this case, would be maybe something restorative. Something like they've been using some repetitive movement all day long and any more movement in their mind... "I can't do anymore!" It's like, well, what if I gave you a movement that made this part that is so fatigued more rested, more nourished? What if we allowed another part to do something? So there's just these nuanced ways we can think about resting and it goes back to that movement nutrition issue a little bit where you're going well, you've had certain categories of movement, and we haven't talked about micronutrients yet...
JEANNETTE: We've got to get to that.
KATY: And we can lean into micronutrients in from this way. Micronutrients are "what are the parts that you were using today." Not just the categories. But like, maybe your big bodywork was lower back intensive. And you're like, "I can't hinge my lower back anymore." Great. what I'd like you to do is come in here and here are three movements that sort of relax that area of the body and also here are some movements that would wake up other parts of your legs so that your lower back wouldn't have to be the primary place that you were doing this one particular bit body labor, or big bodywork from. So there's a way of using movement as a tool to actually - it's all about distribution for me. Where's that movement happening?
JEANNETTE: Right. Yeah. You as a farmer have tried this piece. We need to balance things out and bring other things to the party to support this area. Perfect.
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: Now I love the micronutrients bit. I think this shows how many layers this movement/nutrition analogy has. Because to step back a bit, nutrition isn't synonymous with diet or food. It's not, when you look at your plate, and it looks good to whatever metric, it doesn't mean that you're necessarily well nourished. That food, nutrition is you taking that food in, you consuming it, digesting it, absorbing it across your gut, and then the cells being able to use it. And we know with nutrition or with diet that we can't always do those parts really well. Some people can't absorb nutrients very well. Maybe there's a gut issue. And sometimes it's not even a gut issue. The nutrient might get into the bloodstream but maybe certain cells can't use it. So diabetes would be a classic example there. You can eat starch. You can digest it. You can take up the glucose into your bloodstream but the cells in your pancreas can't - they're not producing the thing that you need to be able to take it up into your cells. And you have kind of explained how the same thing can happen with movement and sticky spots in your body. I'd love for you to explain that now in terms of these micronutrients and why we might not be able to get that movement where we need it.
JEANNETTE: It's your gift. It's your gift. You've explained this in lots of different ways but I think this will be really helpful for people to hear you expand on this topic.
KATY: So, I think our bodies have tons of hinges. We have lots of hinges in our body. And when we go to create any movement with our body, that movement is the sum total of the parts that create it. So just like when we talk about calories and macros and micros in food, it's also helpful to remember that the macros and the micros are nestled within the calorie itself. They're not separate. Let's go back to food for a second. If you're like, "I'm going to eat this apple". But these apples, if you had a list of nutrients that were in them, but you couldn't absorb - let's say that you couldn't absorb vitamin C - you wouldn't be getting everything you thought was in that apple. With movement, if you had someone make a list of what parts are used for movement? Well, my legs are swinging back and forth so I have movement at the hips. My arms are moving back and forth, I have movement at my shoulders. My ankle has to flex and extend as I'm walking over it. So you can sort of see every movement is made up of these tinier movements in all the different joints within the body. But it could be that even though you see your legs swinging back and forth when you're walking, the hips are so stiff that the swinging or the movement of the leg behind you is actually being created by a twist to your lower back. Now that's not going to be on the classic list of what's in walking. The fact that you have a hip hinge. You have a leg bone. That leg should move back behind you. That's how that anatomy developed in the first place. And also how you nourish that particular anatomy. But if you sit for 8 hours a day, there are adaptations to that sitting that when you get up and out of it, that hip doesn't want to go behind you anymore. It's adapted to doing something else. And so the leg still gets behind you but now you have to involve your lumbar spine in this particular way. So you might be getting plenty of the macro walking, and still not be getting the micronutrient of hip extension.
JEANNETTE: And you might be getting too much micronutrient
KATY: Yes
JEANNETTE: in the twist of the lumbar spine.
KATY: That's right. And that's the thing with nutrients. It's not just getting them, it's making sure you don't have too much of something. So the more you understand dietary nutritional science, there's a right amount for anything. And if you get not enough it will make you unwell. And if you get too much it will make you unwell. And the same thing goes for movement overall. We're looking to see where are spots in your body that are not moving, they're sticky, and therefore the cells in the area are not experiencing movement like the rest of your body is. So I think of it as you have sedentary cells or sedentary areas in an otherwise active body in that period of time. That's what we want to figure out for ourselves. Because those sort of sedentary areas very much relate to the experience we have of those parts. And some people will say, "Well I move my shoulder all the time. I'm not sure why it's frozen or why I have this rotator cuff injury." It's like, well the angles that you are using, you're getting a lot of this micronutrient and none of these other micronutrients in the shoulder. And where people are probably most familiar with the idea of these micro-movements is when you go to physical therapy. That's what your physical therapist is often doing. "Yes, you're raising your arm over your head but when you're doing so it's actually lifting the whole shoulder and something in this joint isn't happening specifically. So I'm going to have you do these little tiny movements in the same way that a nutritionist would say, "I'm gonna have you take these little tiny supplements and we're gonna try to put just this mineral, just this vitamin into your body." And the physical therapist says, "I want you to move on this angle" or corrective exercise, or restorative exercise like nutritious movement. "I want you to put movement right on these fibers of the shoulder because I can tell by what you're doing, you're not using a large portion of your shoulder and so it's going to start having signs of movement malnutrition." And malnutrition can also be over-nutrition. Over-nutrition we tend to think of meaning too many calories but it can also mean too many of a particular nutrient. And you're neck's gonna be sore...
JEANNETTE: Right.
JEANNETTE: That's wonderful thank you. Ok, so Katy, we've been through the food pyramid. And where does someone go from here? They're looking at the Hadza food pyramid and trying to figure out what to do about either determining what they do and how can they make some changes to their pyramid. Some easy changes if they see it's a bit different from the ideal.
KATY: So the first thing you can do, I'll just restate the categories and you would look at it: "I'm good at that category." or "I'm not getting any of that category." So the bottom is active rest positioning. So that could mean getting out of your chair, using a standing work desk, using a floor work desk, getting on the floor when you're watching Netflix at night, and just sitting, supporting yourself instead of leaning back into chairs. Those are ways that you can get more of that. There was walking. We've got a ton of podcasts on fitting more walking into your life. Maybe go listen to the episode on 11 Minute Walks. Go listen to that if you're wondering how can I get more of this category. Carrying. That is a tricky one. Definitely when you have young children. Oh, how I loved how that used my upper body and core and spine.
JEANNETTE: Mmm.
KATY: So if you're in this stage of life, all of you young parents out there, if you can see - you'll miss it when it's gone. Just like all the things of parenting.
JEANNETTE: I certainly can't, they're bigger than me so...
KATY: Yeah, exactly. Maybe they can carry you now.
JEANNETTE: Yeah well I think they can, yeah.
KATY: That's right. Well, they should. Up the hill! So yes adding some carrying, that could be, you know, walking to the library, throw the bags, take off your backpack, and put it in your arms. If you're gonna go to the grocery store, forego the cart and pick up the basket and just really muscle that basket and pass it back and forth. And even if you're shopping for 15 minutes, that's 15 minutes of carrying that can slot into something that you are already doing. Big body making and then those peak, those intense kind of explosive things, you can make some of that your fitness if you want to. And you can do all the ones - they can all be for your fitness or exercise. But it just - look or listen at the pyramid we've created in your mind and identify one or two categories that might be missing for you. As well as a couple categories where you might be getting too much - where you might be overnourished. And then we would work on maybe swapping out activities - distributing those activities over a week so that you're not always fatiguing. And then with micros, it's a little more complicated. I mean you can go to our virtual studio and take classes by micros. A lot of what I'm writing about in Nutritious Movement is helping people understand the micros. So Rethink Your Position was all about let's think about micros part by part. Here's some things you can do to nourish your feet. Swapping to minimal shoes, right? That's a way of getting more micronutrition into your feet and legs with every step. But I think at this point the idea is to start noticing the shapes of the way you use your body in this maybe new category of movement as a nutrient. And see yourself as oh I'm not getting any vitamins or minerals to what area of your body you, the listener, can fill in the blank? Is it your knees? Is it your hips? Is it your lower back? Is it your shoulders? Is it your spine? Which part of you feels very stiff where even though you're moving your whole body these areas aren't moving at all. It's like a garden. There's no water getting in there. There's no weeding happening. So it's not producing the fruits and flowers for you that maybe other parts of your body is. So just think about that a little bit.
And I want to segue into what's coming up in our next episode. So now that you understand movement nutrition, how can this inform your specific movement plan? We've talked about it in general. Now let's talk about your specific movement plan. With that, I invite you to join us for the next episode of the Move Your DNA podcast which is available now, Your Perfect Movement Plan.
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KATY: So Jeannette thank you for joining me today and I look forward to talking to you about the plan.
JEANNETTE: Thank you very much for having me!
KATY: Yeah.
JEANNETTE: Take care! Bye!
KATY: Bye.
Hi! My name is Alexis from Yucca Valley, California. This has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, a podcast about movement. We hope you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful but it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. Our theme music was performed by Dan MacCormack. This podcast is produced by Brock Armstrong. And is transcribed by Annette Yen. Make sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to audio. And find out more about Katy, her books, and her movement programs at NutritiousMovement.com
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