KATY: It’s the KatySays podcast, where movement geek, Dani Hemmat, joins biomechanist, Katy Bowman, (that’s me!) author of Move Your DNA, for discussions on body mechanics, movement nutrition, natural movement, and how natural movement can be the solution to modern ailments we all experience.
DANI: And today’s show is all about Ben. Ben is this guy, who tagged Katy – you – on Twitter – and the tweet was, “@JoeRogan’s convo with @AlignedandWell – legitimately changed my life” and then he included a link to his Facebook post that was this story -
KATY: Oh my gosh, an amazing story.
Dani: His story is amazing; we need to talk about it
KATY: We do. So that’s what we’re going to do today – we’re doing this show today on Ben, but I would say even more so - this show’s not about Ben; it’s about how his story made us all feel.
DANI: mm-hmm
KATY: That story – I shared – I retweeted it, and then I shared his Facebook post – it’s long – and I’m going to read the bulk of it here shortly. But it got 30,000 views.
DANI: Wow!
KATY: I mean, that’s – and just the comments of people being super inspired – and I want to read it and I want to talk about it because 1) his story, of course, is super inspiring. He is super inspiring. But also because his story changed the way I feel about podcasts and podcasting.
DANI: which is cool – you already listen to podcasts and you are a podcaster but to have this new outlook is – I want to hear about it.
KATY: Yeah, okay, well, let me read his story first, okay? Ben’s Canadian, so I guess I will use a Canadian accent. “Going into 2015, I decided to get healthier so I turned my New Year’s Resolution into a challenge – what would happen if I tried to walk 2,015km in 2015?” And, um, we should have converted that into miles.
DANI: hmmm, that would take me a while. Let’s keep going.
KATY: Whatever. Yeah, you guys can do that at home.
DANI: Yeah, there’s an app for that.
KATY: 5km is 3.1 miles, in case anyone is wondering. “Previously, for about a decade, I couldn’t crack ‘getting fit’ because I had a crappy diet based on convenience over nutrition, the exercises I chose were too hard to integrate into my work-heavy schedule, or too stressful on my out-of-shape body, leading to derailing injuries like shin splints - or -they were kind of expensive and made me feel like a piece of sh!t when I abandoned gym memberships or exercise equipment. So this time around, I knew I had to change my approach in order to set myself up for success. This meant finding something I could easily slot into my schedule at different every day, and is doable every day in any weather and any season, was low impact on my body and basically free. So I decided to take up walking.” I already like his guy.
DANI: Mm-hmm
KATY: Anyway, “At first I started with just a little bit of walking every day, like in the evening just 20 minutes, in the evening. Then I ditched the crappy TTC, (which is the Toronto public transit system) and started walking an hour a day way to and from work. Then I started tracking both the pace and length of my walk with an app that gamified my walks and made me self-complete, wanting to out-do my previous week’s numbers. Then on weekends I’d pool my errands together and would walk around the city, sometimes walking upwards of 35km in a single day. Before I knew it, I was walking anywhere from 100km to 170km each week,” yadda yadda yadda, lots of walking. “Anyway, today I noticed that I achieved/surpassed my New Year’s Resolution of wanting to walk 2,015 km in 2015 and I did it 6 months quicker than I thought I would. I’m posting this note to inspire those who have struggled/are struggling with trying to get healthier – you can do it. Trust me. This is coming from someone who never thought they could get fit/would be fit again, less than 5 months ago I was totally out of shape. Honestly, I was resigned to the fact that fitness was something in my past while my present was just work and stress and obligations, etc. More importantly, you can get fit easily, as in it can be a pursuit that’s easy on your schedule, easy on your body, and easy on your wallet, done by integrating just a little bit of natural movement into your lifestyle. You don’t need gear, you don’t need courses, you don’t need private instructors, you don’t need pills, you don’t need boutique gyms – you’ve just gotta move. For me, walking was the simplest thing I could do to just get moving, but it has been powerfully transformative: biomechanically, physically, and mentally because of what it ushered in – and he’s going to list some things here that it ushered in.
- I lost 80 pounds in under 5 months, naturally. It took diligence, but wasn’t hard: that said, to see results you can’t cut corners, which leads to my next point:
- Getting my heartbeat up inevitably inspired me to put crappy food down. Walking ushered in a new fascination with food, nutrition, and health, and this produced big results. Nutritious, whole, plant based foods powered me to better health by giving my body what it needed for optimal operation;
- Putting in the work inspired me to put down the smokes and quit pack a day habit. Although I still enjoy a few cigs a month – I believe in vices – but today it’s about enjoying them in moderation versus than being a slave to them (god, I love that);
- Because I listen exclusively to podcasts while walking, walking increases my curiosity, awareness, and knowledge. Listening to podcasts expanded my mind and inspired me, and in turn I feel more creative than I’ve ever felt. Are we on 5?
- Walking around your community makes you feel more connected to your town/city/suburb environment. You see cool sh!t, you see terrible sh!t, you become less judgmental, you become more empathetic, you realize the privilege you have and you take less for granted;
- Walking, nutrition and getting lost in podcasts relaxed me. Collectively it has made me feel better in the head and mind and diminished the stresses that kept me up at night;
- When I ramped up my walking and began to master it, it gave me the confidence to try to master other athletic pursuits like swimming. I don’t know – 14? I don’t know what point I’m on;
- Getting in shape and in tune with my body - I should have numbered these! – Getting in shape and in tune with my body inspired me to see a nutritionist and learn, inspired me to see a chiro and learn, inspired me to try a sensory deprivation tank and learn. Inspired me to try – is it no-otropics?
DANI: You know what? I don’t know.
KATY: You don’t know?
DANI: I don’t know-oh
KATY: I don’t know-oh either. It’s n-o-o-t-r-o-p-i-c-s so clearly what I need to do is go learn…
DANI: I live in the mountains, so I don’t know!
KATY: well, he lives in Canada, is there a tropical Canada? Anyway, so he’s learned these other things of which we’re going to have to do research when we’re done, and maybe we can ask Ben and find out about what that means. The pursuit of health becomes the pursuit of learning – oh my gosh, I love this! I’m going to say it again. The pursuit of health becomes the pursuit of learning, and that’s been one of the coolest unforeseen outcomes I’ve experienced: an awesome barrage of information and knowledge that improves you as a human being. Health gives you energy – I never lacked energy – this is - this is critical – I never lacked energy when I was out of shape, and when I unhealthy, I wasn’t sick or apathetic or unhappy. But now that I am in shape, I have what feels like an inexhaustible gas tank.
DANI: That’s awesome.
KATY: I know! And it’s, it’s one of things, like, if your whole - it’s all relative. How you feel is all relative, so if at your best, compared to at your sickest – so if you understand – I don’t know if you’ve had flu. I’m at my lowest, I’ve been vomiting, I’ve been terrible, but today I’m at work. I feel pretty good today I have a headache or whatever. Compared to then this new experience - if you’ve never really experienced being someone who has walked everywhere and moved everywhere and felt really good, then you’ve kind of pushed the bar on what good feels like. But an “inexhaustible gas tank.” Who doesn’t want one of those, right? And when you have the juice to do more – you do more – and therefore get so much more out of life. So getting fit gave me more happiness. Anyway, I just wanted to share my story because we’re all capable, when we’re ready and willing, to break bad habits and improve ourselves. It’s never too late, never too old – you’ve just got to voluntarily arrive at a place in your life where you want to make a change, and your willpower will carry you through the rest. If anything, just start with a few steps. They may cumu – I always have a hard time with this word
DANI: it’s a tough one
KATY: cu-mu-la-tive-ly cumul-. Say it for me real fast?
DANI: Cumulatively
KATY: Cumulatively
DANI: Excellent
KATY: Add up – I’m going to paraphrase here – They’ll add up into carrying you to unimaginable places, like my initial steps did.
(Dani and KATY: gasps, sighs of awe)
DANI: Ben!
KATY: Beennnnn!
DANI: Wow, man.
KATY: Now, ok, we should tell the non-30,000 people who read this post – there’s more to his post.
DANI: yeah
KATY: He goes on to list a bunch of people that assisted him in this transformation.
Dani – a lot of gratitude. A lot of gratitude in this post. It’s very cool.
KATY: A lot of gratitude. But also, the picture. The picture! There’s a picture – so we’re going to give you information on where you can look to see the picture, right?
DANI: We’re going to put a link to that post in the show notes that we’ll put on Facebook.
KATY: Great. Well, what did you love most about his post?
DANI: Okay. Well, I loved it all. I read it a couple times. The things I liked the most about what Ben put out there was how he simplified the process of getting better, of living a healthy life. You know, he didn’t make it complicated. It was very simple: just walk. You know, how he said it doesn’t cost anything, you don’t need equipment, you don’t need gear, you don’t need courses, I loved that. I mean, that could be a tagline for life. And then, how frank he was in his post – just – he didn’t pretty it up. He was just very matter of fact, just: this is what I did, this is how I felt, and I liked that, because I myself am a bit of a frank-talker. I also liked how his use of podcasts added this whole new dimension to his movement, how it made him feel more creative than ever before. That’s just – that’s so cool. What about you, what did you like?
KATY: Oh my gosh, well. You know I’m big on whole body, this idea of whole body. But I feel like his post expanded on it not being just a whole body transformation – it was a whole life transformation. We’re like, do these exercises so you can be a better walker and walking is just part of a whole body system - - he changed his habitat, he changed so many things, but he really I think just started with a conscious change of a single thing which then snowballed. So I like that, where taking a few steps ended up impacting these other areas that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with walking, like creativity and connection to the community.
DANI: I love that part.
KATY: Yes!
DANI: The community part is so great, because everybody has their head down, and just by going out and walking around he learned to – he saw new things and learned about this place where he’d been living and I just – that’s – that’s priceless stuff.
KATY: I don’t think you can really know an area until you walk through it. I lived in an area for 7 or 8 years, driving, and it’s only when I became almost an exclusive walker that I was like, I never knew these businesses were here! You know, it’s so easy to drive from big box to big box to big box, but walking on these side streets you just realize – wow! – what people are capable of – it’s not just that there’s stores here that I didn’t know, but there are talents in my town, that I could possibly be associating with that I didn’t even know. People whose gardens and art is all around you when you stop to see it.
DANI: Exactly. When you drive down a street, you just see the front of a house, but when you walk down you see alleyways, and how people are living in their back yards, and it is cool. You learn about streets you never knew about and pathways that you couldn’t get to by car, and I’m glad that he appreciates that so much.
KATY: and he just teased it out, he saw it in his ability to articulate it. Just that, and I liked his use of technology. I read someone’s quote they’d put somewhere – it wasn’t like a widespread quote - it was just some guy, said, your use of technology should facilitate your human-ness, not remove you from it. And so he took a screen device, you know, there’s so much ‘get off the screen,’ which, I like that, but he used a screen to help restore some of his function. It didn’t take from that, it only added, and I like that use of technology, and I was very inspired. I’ve been on this, how can I keep teaching about natural habitats and movement through these mediums of technology? Well, this is how – this is how you can. This person got better for technology. I love that, and his gratitude, and then his use of technology to express gratitude.
DANI: that’s true, yeah. I mean, he didn’t just tell the guy sitting next to him at lunch; he shared it with all of us.
KATY: He did, and there’s a lot of people out there who have Bens – Ben – Ben! – they have Ben in their minds – and they use themselves as a tool for inspiration. You know, Ben’s a technology. He became a technology of inspiration.
DANI: Ben’s awesome.
KATY: Ben is rad.
DANI: Ben is cool. And you didn’t read this because you’re just awesome, and you’re not a horn tooter, but in his thank you, he’s got this huge list of thank-yous. And at the very end of this list of gratitude, he says, “lastly, a huge shout-out to Biomechanist Katy Bowman, whose articulation of – is it – mechanobiology on Joe Rogan’s podcast was the Eureka! moment this past January that kicked my ass into gear. So you were on Joe Rogan’s podcast – it was a 3-hour – (Katy laughs) it was just phenomenal that you did that. It was a 3 hour podcast with Joe Rogan, and you can watch it, too, which is great – you can just listen or watch – and that’s what he said is his Eureka moment. And I have actually arranged for Ben to just join us briefly on this podcast
KATY: yay!
DANI: I know – it’s exciting – one, Ben will be our very first guest that we’ve had. We’ve been doing this a year, and so he marks the beginning of our second year as our very first guest ever, and then we can just ask him, you know, either some things that weren’t all explained in his missive online, or just ask him whatever you want to know. So. Ben, are you there?
BEN: I’m here, hello.
DANI: Hi
KATY: Hi, Ben
DANI: Thank you so much for coming and talking with us
BEN: Thank you for having me
DANI: I just have this big old smile on my face; because there’s no way to get around it, it makes a big smile.
BEN: it’s amazing, I never thought this would have kind of the reverberations that it got, but obviously it makes me happy. Some little note that I thought would be shared by or read by friends and family is traveling around the world and inspiring people.
Katy – it’s great
DANI: Very inspiring. The Joe Rogan podcast, let’s talk about that for a second. Were you a regular listener already to his stuff?
BEN: Yeah, I would say I started getting into podcasting maybe last summer. I’d always been an avid reader of books and a big fan of documentaries and I started listening to podcasts last year, and I pretty much started just going onto the ITunes store and seeing what the kind of highest ranked were and his were up there and I tried a few out. I became a fan of his conversational style, and range of guests that he had – from comedians to people in the science world. And I just started listening every week and, was on public transit. I think January of 2014; very early probably the first two weeks of the year is when I heard Katy on the show. That’s when she did it, too, was in January.
DANI: So is that how you find your podcasts, is just kind of - ?
BEN: Yeah, I think, like, when I first started I would just kind of go through search tools, on iTunes, but now I talk to people who know I’m a fan and they’ll suggest podcasts and then obviously there’s a search field where you can type subjects or people’s names. So if there’s a philosopher or theme that interests you, it’ll either find episodes or shows that’s based on that, so what I like is to explore – I can hop around – uh, you know, podcasts don’t cost anything, so if you don’t like anything you can delete it.
KATY: I like your comment about being free content, because you come from the music world, right?
BEN: I come from – I work, yeah, I’m a busy person – I work as a creative director for an agency in Toronto and I work in the music world there’s obviously been a paradigm shift with piracy and free videos on YouTube and whatnot, and I think once you get into podcasting, I mean there’s weeks where there’s 24 hours in a week and I consume 24 hours of content, and when I think about the breadth of content out there and the depth in which people discuss topics, like Katy yourself, having gone to school, your learning gets distilled into hourly podcast and I get to benefit from that from you. It’s really incredibly powerful to think about when you think about all the information people are putting out into the world, so I’m a fan of podcasting and am in turn supporting podcasters that are making fantastic content.
KATY: yeah, I’d never really thought about it before, it was just – I started podcasting, I asked Dani to do a podcast with me because blogging was making me sit and look at a screen more, where podcasting has a little more freedom but yes! that’s what you’re doing, you’re putting it out there and people can download it and own it forever. These – your ideas and your, like you said, I’m taking my education and experience and putting it in – I – it just made me appreciate what I do more, you know, because you get, I’m producing so much of this – I wish I could actually - I don’t think of the podcast of a product when I’m done. We just do it and publish it and then I’m on to making dinner, you know, or whatever else needs I have to do for the day. But I listen to other podcasts all the time as ways to fulfill my desire for information, so I just wanted to say thank you to all the people out there who make podcasts. Ben, what are your, like if you could list out 4 or 5 of your favorite podcasts, what are they?
BEN: Oh, gosh, it’s kind of hard to be held to that. Coming from a music background, there’s a podcast out of California called A Hundred Words or Less, which profiles people from the punk community telling really interesting stories. I think The Moth is an incredible podcast, which is live storytellers that are unedited – storytellers from all walks of life telling funny stories, sad stories, from all walks of life. It’s the one program I listen to where you can laugh and cry all within the span of an hour. RadioLab is one – I don’t have a strong background in mathematics or science. RadioLab is a phenomenal show that presents scientific stories in a real, like, palatable, entertaining, quirky kind of way. Last but not least I think This American Life is a real beacon of podcasting in terms of the story telling and the editing. They’ve been doing it for a long time and they do it in a master way, essentially profiling different, eccentric kind of American stories.
KATY: Is there a This Canadian Life?
BEN: There might be, but I feel like growing up in Canada we’ve always been in the shadow of everyone else, forced to consume so much Canadian content that I use podcasts as a way to listen in on different conversations in other countries. That’s what I like about it.
DANI: I like this podcast conversation. I want to know, Katy, what are your five favorite podcasts?
KATY: I don’t’ even know if I listen to five. I, too, am a fan of This American Life, and I would say that my favorite This American Life episode is when they did one on Canadians and how they see themselves relative to the rest of the world. If you haven’t listened to that one, all my Canadian friends, listen to that one, it’s good. Serial – Serial was the big one - did you get on the Serial wave, Dani?
DANI: I did not! I know!
KATY: Really? Oh, well it’s there.
DANI: I’ve heard of it, I just haven’t gone there.
KATY: Ok, well, you can just go there much faster than everyone else who had to wait; now you can just binge Serial listening. Ok, for using actual podcast in the way that people use this podcast, Modern Farmgirls, because we moved into a rural area and bought a farmhouse and there’s just all these things that I don’t know anything about like composting and gardening and animal husbandry and I’ve just found that instead of doing what I used to do which would have been going to the library, or ordering a book on poultry, now I can listen to it while I’m walking and I can just listen and laugh a lot and hear these people’s stories. There’s one thing about listening to an actual expert trying to describe something technical, but what I like about RadioLab and the Moth, which I also love a lot, is just the ability to make a story out of it. They make learning enjoyable, like you’re just sitting down with friends and explaining something to you while you’re getting something else done. I love that. What about you?
DANI: For me? I love the Moth as well, that’s just - stories are my favorite thing ever. I love stories; And of course, RadioLab and one called Grammar Girl, because I’m a big word nerd and you can just learn so much in that 5 minutes that you spend with grammar girl. But there’s one that I think is not very well known but I love and Ben, I think you might have mentioned that somewhere but it was Invisibilia – did you listen to all of those?
BEN: Yeah, I think I consumed it regularly as they came out. I think they took a break in production -
DANI: They did, yeah
BEN: I thought it was once again kind of like RadioLab, an interesting entry point to science of that if you’re not scientifically minded.
DANI: Exactly.
KATY: What is, what is that?
DANI: Invisibilia is about the science of things we can’t see, so they talk about psychological things, it’s very well done. I’m not sure if it’s produced by RadioLab or This American Life, if it’s an offshoot of that but the production value is awesome. It’s just great – you learn so much. Great stories.
KATY: Awesome.
DANI: Invisibilia. I mean, there’s so many podcasts out there and it’s something we can all share as well. We’ll talk about it at the end of the show. I have a couple questions for Ben – can we ask you a couple of quick questions before you have to go?
BEN: Absolutely.
DANI: Ok. Katy, may I go first, because I gotta know this.
KATY: Do it.
DANI: Ok, so the Joe Rogan show, so you said that was a Eureka moment. Do you remember exactly what you heard during that podcast that just made you slap your forehead and go, oh, yeah!
BEN: I don’t know if there was one salient point that lit the light bulb off. It was just the common sense of Katy’s articulation of the need for moving. And when I thought about it after the fact, in an evolutionary sense of humans being hunter gatherers and looking at my own lifestyle at that specific moment, how I was always either sitting at a desk or on the couch, it ended up illuminating being how unnatural modern lifestyles are in terms of how they lack movement.
DANI: Okay. That’s what it does for me, too. That was my eureka movement, listening to her. And then you also mentioned an app that you use to kind of up your walking game What is that app called?
BEN: I use an app called RunKeeper, which I think once again I found online; I did try the Nike app but didn’t find too intuitive. RunKeeper is just a simple app, you almost use it in a manual way – for your walk you hit the equivalent of a ‘Start’ and when you end your walk you hit the equivalent of a ‘Stop’ and it tracks the length of your walk using some sort of map technology and can calculate calories burnt in relation to pace, distance, obviously the information specific things about your body like your height and weight.
DANI: Awesome, thank you for sharing that. We’ll put that in the show notes, too. I don’t want to take up all the time – Katy?
KATY: Well, I just had - the one part that resonated with me – well a lot of parts did – but I thought was interesting and I think that a lot of people out there, it either did resonate or will resonate with them, is this idea that – I mean, you’re young. How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?
BEN: I’m 33.
DANI: Awwww
KATY: Ok, so you’re young, but yet you had already “resigned to the fact that fitness was in your past and your present was resigned to work and stress and obligations” and what I’m most interested in would be, do you have, like, a range in your life, it doesn’t have to be the day that you’re, “I’m going to work, and I’m now I’m someone who has a job” -- is it just coinciding with, “I’m someone who has to work, I’m not a youth, I’m not someone who has free time, I’m a worker bee, and that doesn’t lend itself to movement.” If you can recollect that phase of your life when you moved into not being a mover, but then also: why 2015? What was the moment where you were like, and “now I am no longer resigned to being someone who is always at work and always at stress and always under this load of constant obligations?” Do you have any insight into that?
BEN: Totally. I think my natural curiosity is kind of a double-edged sword. It’s what keeps me inspired in life. It’s led me to take on a lot of professional commitments, so I work quite a busy job as a marketing director at an agency in Canada and I run a record label and a publish a little quarterly and I take photos, so having all these different tasks cobbled onto me meant that I was working a lot of hours and was stuck at a desk or whatnot. So in 2014 I was brought back to Toronto to start a new agency and what I found really inspiring was that when I worked with millenials who I feel get a bad rap online, what I thought was incredibly fascinating about my young colleagues was how health-oriented they were. People work at computers and stand up, use weird ergonomic mouses, their commitment to being really wholesome in what they consumed. We’d go to work events and they’d be like, oh, sorry, I’m only going to have 2 drinks because I have to go home and get some rest. And that was so amazing – it made me kind of feel old, like, everyone existentially has this moment where you feel like, your young generation bumped one over and now there’s a young generation. So moving to this new town and being surrounded by new, younger colleagues definitely inspired me. There was just a bunch of different inputs that overlapped and inspired me to start moving. Working with colleagues who were running to seem as millenials, standing up and typing. Podcasts. You just get to a point once you arrive at wanting to get healthy where there’s no more excuses left. There’s sensible forces driving you, and at that point when you have the will it’ll carry you through.
KATY & DANI: Wow
KATY: So it’s literally changing your environment that led you to change your environment.
BEN: Yeah, I had been living in Montreal for 7 years and I don’t want to badmouth Montreal because it’s a culturally beautiful place but it’s a total indulgent town where it feels like you’re in the 16th century; a lot of red wine at dinner and a lot of rich foods. I love that joie de vivre, I love that love of life but moving to Toronto was being around more healthy people and I never thought that environmental factors could have such an effect. I mean, I thought that I’d be unhappy if I was in jail in Siberia, but moving between two domestic cities wouldn’t change that much, but I was actually surprised at how much environment - especially so many new people and information around me, kind of through osmosis really greatly affected my lifestyle.
KATY: So would you say, as someone who was extremely busy, who had a lot of work tasks, did you become any less successful at your job by carving out more of your life for movement?
BEN: You know what’s funny? I would say that my apprehension in getting fit was always like, I don’t have the time, this is going to take away from the hours that I can put to my job, but I find that the time that I put into moving gave me unexpected forces that made me smarter, more responsive, and have a longer gas tank. I think there’s so many mixed messages in society trying to keep you in stasis, trying to keep you consuming bad foods, and if you can break free of that and find health and wellness, it’ll unlock you in unimaginable ways and make you more successful and happier. I know that sounds very New Age, but I can’t reiterate enough to your listeners – 5 months ago I was laying on my couch with a large pizza on my chest watching Game of Thrones, sore to the touch. My experience has just been transformative just through walking.
DANI: Wow
KATY: Wow, I love it.
DANI: Well, it is your transformation and you can call it whatever you want. The fact that you shared it, I think, gives it even more power; not just for you but for so many people who just don’t know where to start or what to do. “I’m too old, I can’t.” Your generosity in putting that out there means a lot. I want to thank you for sharing that on Facebook and for calling out to Katy so that we knew about you, and for coming and talking to us and being our first guest ever!
KATY: Yeah. Thank you Ben, so much. Thanks for the initial Tweet and for sharing so openly. It’s great.
DANI: Mm-hmm.
BEN: Thank you for having me!
KATY: Of course!
DANI: Take care and keep us posted, okay?
BEN: Will do. Thank you!
KATY: Bye, Ben!
DANI: Take care.
BEN: Bye.
DANI: So Ben’s awesome
KATY: Yeah, that was. Wow.
DANI: I guess I have to thank you, inadvertently, for talking and changing his life.
KATY: That’ll be the first time ever!
DANI: You’re good at it!
KATY: Do you know how many times I’ve been told to be quiet in my life? So many times.
DANI: Yeah, but how crazy is that to get a post like that? That’s something – because you’re not just touching that one life by him doing that and being so generous. It’s a whole lot of people that maybe might look at getting well or feeling better differently now. And that’s maybe that’s something we should wrap up this podcast with because we’re almost at time -- is that those simple behavior changes – all he did was take off walking, right?
KATY: Yeah, and I think he hit on really a couple of key points. I think many people still are approaching what we talk about in the same way that he initially thought of as, “I’m a very busy, successful person. I’m successful, whether it’s at work or parenting or volunteering.” Whatever it’s your do that you devote a lot of a bulk or your time to, whatever you’re seeing as defines you. Whatever that is. People don’t want to pull time away from that because it’s logical to assume that if you’re going to be doing it less you’d become less successful. But I think why I asked Ben that question specifically is because I myself have found the opposite to be true. The amount of time I spend working is full of dead space: where I’m dead creatively; where I’m dead mentally; where I’m take a long time to accomplish a thing because my mind is sluggish. I end up working better when my movement time is greater than my – it doesn’t have to be greater than my work time but it has to be greater than it was before. Instead of trying to go, I don’t have enough time to exercise – you’re not adding exercise time. You don’t have to do anything with your exercise time. He took the time that he was normally riding the subway to work and just walked to work. He figured out a way to replace lying on the couch with a pizza watching Game of Thrones --
Dani – which is not such a bad plan occasionally --
KATY: Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with a pizza and a couch and Game of Thrones, which, I didn’t even know what the Game of Thrones was. I hate to even put that out there. You know, you were a part of that conversation. We need rest, but at the same time it’s hard to parse the sensations coming from your body. Is it that I need to rest or am I sluggish because I haven’t moved at all? Sloth breeds more sloth and it’s easy to get into the cycle of, “oh, I just need to keep sitting here! I just need to keep sitting here and I don’t feel good so I’ll rest,” but sometimes getting up and moving through you’ll get more energy side from expending energy. I know this seems counter-intuitive, but just do it, and you’re likely to experience what it is that we’re talking about.
DANI: Mm-hmm. I’m so glad we got to talk with him today.
KATY: Me too.
DANI: In honor or to give a shout out to his use of technology, let’s throw in a little of our own: if you want to reach out to Ben via twitter, we’ll have this in the show notes but you can get him at @BenPobjoy (that’s B-E-N-P-O-B-J-O-Y, so @BenPobjoy) if you want to give him a shout out or some props, and you can also reach out to us on Twitter. So Katy is @AlignedandWell and I am @Restoremovement. A huge thanks to Ben for taking the time to share this and talk with us today, because I’m sure it’s inspired tons of people – I mean, like you said, it was what, 30,000 views?
KATY: Yeah, that was just in the first week, so I don’t even know what it is now.
DANI: And it keeps popping up here and there. It’s great.
KATY: He’s all over the world.
DANI: Ben. We’ll put that link to his Facebook post in the show notes as well as the podcast list and things like that.
KATY: I have an interesting bit, though, as we go out. I had a friend who was like, the most interesting thing I’ve found about that post was how his tattoos looked, because he has a lot of cool tattoos, as does my friend. She said, I would have assumed that losing so much weight would have changed the shape of the tattoo, and she said it didn’t. They held perfectly as they moved over. I’ve had a conversation with other people where they’re afraid to change the shape of their body because they’re worried that it’s going to affect their tattoo. So I just thought that was interesting.
DANI: It’s funny, I actually had my husband read the post and the first thing he said after, “awesome!” was, “whoa, his tattoos look awesome.”
KATY: I know!
DANI: They got very defined. Someday we have to do a show on skin!
KATY: Skin skin!
DANI: Okay, well, thanks for listening. For more information, if you want to find out more about us: books, online classes – you can find Katy at KatySays.com and you can learn more about me, Dani Hemmat, movement warrior and mistress of puns at MoveYourBodyBetter.com. You can follow us both on Facebook. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
KATY: Sweet!
Show notes:
https://www.facebook.com/benpobjoy?fref=nf
@BenPobjoy
@NutritiousMvmnt
@restoremovement
Podcasts:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org
http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/
http://realfoodliz.com/category/podcast/modern-farm-girls-podcast/