Hey there, welcome to Chasing Life. Well, it's Tuesday morning. I gotta tell ya, I just finished riding about 20 miles on my bike. I'm very proud of that. It's usually the best part of my day. That's the thing. I feel so good right after exercise. Very hard to replicate that feeling.

But I'll admit it's not always easy to get motivated to get moving, especially when it's cold outside, freezing winter morning as it has been lately. Sometimes it feels easier to sit around and... Eat some food, watch some television, and you know what? It's February, which means many of you are a month into your New Year's resolutions. So you probably know what I'm talking about.

This is the time when the excuses, especially when it comes to exercise, may start to flood your mind. You did so well for a month. Maybe it's enough to carry you over for the year, you're starting to think. That's not the way it works. You're starting to suddenly feel that it's colder outside, that you have too much work to do, that you're already exhausted from doing your job, or that you even hate to sweat. Whatever the excuse may be. These are going to sound familiar to you. So today I decided to find someone who's gonna help you look at these very specific excuses and help you get over them.

It's not about knowing that exercise is good for you that's gonna necessarily motivate you to exercise, but there's a lot of inner barriers, psychological barriers to moving our bodies.

'That's Dr. Diana Hill. She's a psychologist and she's also co-authored a really interesting book with biomechanist Katie Bowman. It's called, I Know I Should Exercise, but 44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them. 44 reasons specifically.

Today, we're gonna talk about a lot of those reasons and how to motivate yourself to move your body. And also, what I think is the hardest part, how do you maintain the motivation day in, day out, throughout the entire year?

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and this is Chasing Life.

How did you get interested in this, this topic?

'I've been a long-term mover. I grew up loving to move. I mean, my parents used to take me backpacking and we worked in the garden and it was very much part of our family and our lifestyle and joy. And then I actually ended up developing an eating disorder and becoming very inflexible in my movement where I would go on a StairMaster for an hour and a half or wake up really early and have to run a certain number of miles to burn off the calories that I'd eaten. So I'd experienced both the joy of movement and also the inflexibility of movement. And in my career, I started studying something called psychological flexibility, which is your ability to pursue what matters to you in a much more flexible way, as opposed to rigid rules that our mind makes or shoulds. That led me down this path of exploring more nutritious ways of moving my body and helping my clients do so as well.

And then writing this book, which I love the title. I Know I Should Exercise, But 44 Reasons We Don't Move And How to Get Over Them. This book is the culmination of a lot of those experiences you've had.

Well, the book is something that I wrote with Katie Bowman, who is a biomechanist, and her angle is something called Nutritious Movement, where she's looking at not only exercise, but how are we moving our bodies in our lives? And then my angle was, why aren't people moving their bodies if they know exercise is good for them? We know it's good for us physically, exercise all time, mortality rates go down, cancer rates go. But only about a quarter of us are actually doing it.

44 reasons we don't move and how to get over them. How did you come up with 44? Did you just start to listen them off and you got to 44 and stopped or what happened?

We polled our audiences and say, why don't you move your body? Tell us. And people put in, they sent in all sorts of things because my cat climbs all over me when I'm trying to do my exercises on the floor. That was one of them. Because my dog protests when I try and take him for a walk. Because my teenagers won't get off a screen. I'm a hairdresser and I'm on my feet all day. I don't want to go out and get on a treadmill. It's the last thing I want to do. These are real reasons from real people about why they can't move their body. And so we got a number of them in and we chose 44 because it's Katie's favorite number. And I'm like, sure, take it. I don't care, Kate 44.

'You know, it's interesting, for me, and I was just thinking about this as you were talking, I have this bike ride that I'm doing with a bunch of friends in February in Cuba, and it's got a week-long bike ride. And you know what it is, Doc? For me, it is fear of embarrassment more than anything else.

'It gets me riding my bike early this morning to make sure that I can actually keep up with everybody. I set a goal for myself, and I keep sort of establishing these goals throughout the year, a race or something like that. That's what seems to work for me. Most people don't have that. And instead they're sort of balancing this idea that I don't enough time. I have all this work to do. I gotta take care of my kids. And the movement is an add-on to my day and it will be the first thing to go. And when you write about this in the book, you say that's a bit of a mental trap to sort of rely on the idea that the clock just isn't there for you. What did you mean by that?

There's a couple of things. One, movement has been sort of sectioned off into leisure time. And many of us feel like we're having to choose. Like, do I go to the gym after work? Do my bike ride? Or do I get groceries? Do I go my kids soccer game and watch them play? Or do go to my own exercise class and let myself take care of my body?

So we have this either or mindset when it comes to movement. And that's just what the mind tends to do. It tends to be pretty dichotomous. And one of the things that I really encourage in terms of psychological flexibility and cognitive flexibility is to shift from that either or mindset to a both and mindset.

Is there a way you could go to your kid's soccer game and you don't have to choose, you still get to move your body? That may require, as I do with my kids' baseball games, walking around the field, not sitting on the stands in the chair with the cup holders watching your kid exercise while you're sitting there. But maybe standing and cheering and stretching. Sometimes it is about prioritizing our time and how we are using our time. And there's actually some research out of UCLA from Cassie Holmes that looks at perception of time and something called time affluence. Our time affluence is malleable. When we are doing things that are meaningful, we feel like we have more time. So we could work on how could we move our bodies in ways that are more meaningful and more generous. And you might end up feeling like you have more time as a result. And then you do need to look at people's lives and the reality of people's life and do a little bit of a time audit. How are you spending your day? Because there's probably way more places where you can put movement that you are not putting movement. Even just ordering your groceries online, you think it's saving you time, but you know what it's not doing? Getting your body out to the grocery store, walking around the grocery. When I go to the grocery store, I take those like baskets that are super uncomfortable to hold, and I fill it with like my milk and my cans of food, and I hold it in one hand, one arm, and I walk, and then I'll switch arms, and guess what? I'm building up some strength in my upper body. When I'd go on a trip, I will hold my luggage and carry it up the stairs, just like that farmer's carry that I do at the gym.

Airports. I've seen that person carrying that bag up the two flights of stairs. Look the escalator is working perfectly fine. What's what's going on here?

Yeah, well, convenience is a problem for all of us. It's not healthy for us.

And it's going to continue, right? I mean, we are just becoming a more, we want efficiencies, we want these conveniences built into every aspect of our life. As you say, we have cameras in our cars, we have garage door openers, remote controls, all these things, that's gonna keep happening. And the big one, I'm holding up my phone, is the fact that scrolling our phone feels so good compared to heading to the gym. It's that dopamine surge that you write about in the book. Again, we know this, but that's gotta be really hard to fight against, I imagine.

Well, I would first ask, how long does it feel good for? Because it may feel good for a little bit, then there's this point of diminishing return where you actually, it doesn't feel good and you stop liking it. Sort of like when you take three bites of that really delicious, rich chocolate cake, and then like 10 bites in, you're like, that makes my stomach hurt.

The same is true for our phone use that there is something called the incentive sensitization theory, which is basically, we have two systems going on. One system is our dopamine system that is the wanting system. We want it, we want to pick it up. We wake up in the morning, I want to see the news or I want see my Instagram account or I wanna see who texted me because I had a little thing show up in my text.

We want it and then we get on it and we don't quite like it as much because what happens is you get sensitized to the wanting, you're creating increases with these dopamine hits, but you become habituated to the liking. You need more and more to get the same kind of good feeling.

So what I encourage people to do is just first to bring a little bit of mindful awareness to it. Can you pay attention to the point when it no longer feels good for you? And how long is it? Is it like five minutes or 10 minutes? Or maybe it never really feels good for you and then do an experiment. What if you were to give yourself your phone after you move? Or only use your phone if you're moving. I'm okay if you are on the treadmill and you wanna do that temptation bundling where you get to do your like really bad reality TV or YouTube or whatever it is, but you're movie, that's fine. But you only pair it with movement or you only give it to yourself after you move, you use it as a reinforcer. You can use it for that as well. But notice how it feels different when you are engaging a movement because movement and exercise doesn't have that same, I want it but I don't like it. Over time, you will start to want it and like it. And that is the sweet spot.

'I always feel the best right after I finish exercise. That's usually the best part of my day, is right at that moment. And part of it is, I think, all the endorphins and the BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factors. I had control over my time and there was autonomy and it was my time. One of the things you hear besides time is that people, and this is a weird one, but people are tired and they will spend eight hours sort of sitting at a desk or You know, really not moving. Being very sedentary, and then be tired, which seems very counterintuitive, right? Because you haven't really done anything. So why are they tired and how do you overcome that?

There's a line that we say in our house, which is, I'm exhausted from inactivity.

That's exactly what it is.

There's a type of junk food rest that we all know very well, just like there's junk food, that yeah, maybe it gives you the feeling of your resting, but you don't feel really rested afterwards. Just like junk food. It gives you a feeling that you're eating, but you're not really nourished. In the short term, yeah, you may feel a little bit more kind of rested because you're, not working as hard, but in the long term, you know that it weakens you over the time and it doesn't give you more energy. It would give you, maybe if you've experienced a different type of energy, if you walked in the door, you changed out your shoes, and you take your dog for 10 minutes around the block. Try some other things out, because the pull is always towards sedentaryism, both biologically for us, but also just our environments are set up that way. You walk in the doorway and everything in your environment, in many of our homes, is encouraging us to sit down. When you walk into my spaces, in my home, I have big open spaces with nothing in them. I'm a believer in less is more in terms of furniture because if you have less furniture and you have young kids, you can put out a big twister mat. Or at one point we had a ping pong table in our living room when you walked in the door and there'd be like kids playing ping pong. In our tea room, which is our sort of play area, there was a basketball hoop. So anytime we're watching basketball, we're watchin' the Warriors, we're playing basketball. And then we're getting a different kind of rest rather than just like hangin' out watching other people move. We're moving alongside them.

You know, I have to say as well, just that movement that you talk about, even if it's 10 minutes or so after dinner, it is very interesting physiologically how beneficial that is. You're obviously not burning the calories you just ate. The math doesn't work that way. But the idea that you're sending these signals to your body that, hey, you've just consumed energy and that this is a body that is gonna utilize that energy. So don't store it immediately as fat. It's kind of interesting. And the way that they've figured this out, as you may know, Doc, is through actually continuous glucose monitoring. So people who would have a huge sort of sugar spike, glucose spike after a meal, if they walk immediately after or soon after, it really modulates how high those glucose spikes are.

And I look at things holistically as well. Many cultures walk after dinner as part of their community building. They walk around the block, they see other people, their dogs, maybe they're lonely and you're walking after dinner and you are having some social contact. Or maybe that walk after dinners that one time in the day when you can talk to your partner while your kids are kind of like running alongside and you get to actually like have like 10 minutes with your partner where you're chatting. So one of the things that I think is really important is that we look at movement in a much more holistic way of sort of like the whole person.

Okay, when we come back, we'll tell you how to connect your own values with exercise. That's going to help you maintain the motivation throughout the entire year.

You know, I've been a medical reporter for 25 years, and I think this idea, like you stated at the top of your book, that people generally know that movement, they know it's good for you. They know it is good for your physically, mentally. There were studies that also came out about how you actually grow new brain cells when you move, and movement's really the only evidence proven way to do that. So that's been out there for a while, and as you say though still, just about 25% of people actually get enough movement. I've always thought that the message of the benefit is not the problem here, unless people don't believe it. First of all, do you think people believe that they're gonna accrue these benefits simply through movement? Or did you find that that's not necessarily the case?

Sure, I think people believe it, but it has to be individualized and personalized to you. So for example, the statement that exercise is good for heart health. That doesn't move me, that doesn't motivate me, but it motivates my neighbor two doors down who's 77 years old and he goes jogging. I see the guy jogging down our street at 12 o'clock, pretty much every day, reliably, who had a heart attack in his late 60s. He hears movement is good your heart. He knows what it was like to have a heart attacks. He doesn't wanna have another one. He wants to take care of his heart. That is a very personal reason for him that motivates him to go out for a jog. For me, my movement doesn't have to do with either of those things. The reason why I want to move my body is because when I'm with my clients on the mornings that I move, I'm less ruminative in my own self. I'm more present with them. And that's really important to me. So one of the foundations of this type of work that I do is helping people identify their personal reasons that are inner motivations, intrinsic motivation.

I will exercise every day. I'll do something every day, typically swim, bike or run or stretch or lift weights or do something. But when I have events coming up, such as this bike ride, for example, I'm far more motivated. I was up on the Peloton earlier this morning, making sure I got the miles in. I knew I was gonna be talking to Dr. Hill, so I wanted to make sure I wasn't ready for that. But it's just, I think we have to find our own sources of motivation.

Absolutely. For some people, those types of goals are super motivating. Some people love like the 21 day program, right? It's super motivating, but one of the things that we talk about in the book is what happens if you're kind of addicted to 21 day plans? What happens on day 21, 22? Right. You know? So we also need to, you know, we need to know that about ourselves. There's ways that we can add things in that are those types of motivators having a goal, but we also need to combine that. Structuring our environments to support movement, and then also have some deeper motivations that aren't just about sort of reaching the goal that maybe are also about the process of the enjoyment of the movement itself that is motivating in the moment. How'd you feel today on your Peloton? Were you making it fun? Were you listening to great music? You listened to a good podcast? Were you doing what's called temptation bundling where you add in things that are enjoyable to your movement? Which will increase your chances of doing it again. And that's sustained over the long run.

It all makes sense.

I mean, everything you say makes total sense. And yet I keep getting stuck on this idea that people don't do it. And this time of year, it's particularly important because I think a lot of people, they make these resolutions at the beginning of the year. It's a natural sort of part of their calendar. It's not like they're incapable of understanding the benefits of all these things. And then it starts to diminish if not evaporate. Talk to me about that moment. Like, how do you maintain the motivation at that time?

Right, well, motivation comes and goes. After people listen to this interview with you, their motivation is gonna be pretty high, right? That motivation may not even wane by like, you know, February 2nd, it may be waned by the afternoon when they actually have signed up for that class. They're like, why did I wanna do this? I don't wanna do that. I don't have time to do this, cancel.

Motivation is more of a wave than it is a consistent thing. And then we blame ourselves for not being motivated. The thing that I work a lot on with my clients is how do you set up a behavior that is small enough that you will engage in it when your motivation is really low? You're really tired. You had a really bad day at work. Your house is a mess and you have nothing for dinner. How are you gonna get yourself out the door to go on that 10 minute walk? Maybe it's not a 10 minute work. Maybe we commit to when you come in the door, the first thing you do is put on your shoes. And you're willing to go for two minutes. We have to make our commitments to move small enough and throughout our whole day, not just dependent on one hour of the day, which is our quote leisure time that we're banking on. What that looks like in my life is I mentioned, I'm a consultant, I'm therapist, I sit for a lot, but I have a 10 minute break every hour. I am moving my body. Sometimes that's taking a call with a psychiatrist where I'm walking back and listening to my voicemails, walking down my lane. Sometimes that doing some stretching, but that 10 minutes of movement adds up and it's something that's doable for me. So that even if I didn't get my walk in for the day, I walked 10 minutes six times, that's a lot of movement. You'll be moving in lots of different ways.

I think that point about taking advantage of the motivation when it comes is so important. Like you'd know it, you feel it. And that moment, you know, whatever it is, whether it's signing up for a race, going for a run, calling somebody when you're out for a walk that you normally don't call, I think, you taking advantage of that is really important. You write a lot in the book about finding the right movement or exercise for you. You know, I was curious, what does that mean? Is it something that you just enjoy doing or are there certain exercises that are just gonna be the right exercise for certain people? How do you define that?

'Sometimes the right movements for you are beneficial for you because they're connected to something else. So for example, I got a knee injury a number of years back and I had to do that really annoying knee exercise where you sit on the ground and you lift your leg straight up and down, up and up, up, and down to build the muscle on the front of your quad. That was the right exercise for me to help heal my knee injury, but it was not a joyful one. But I connected it to healing this part of my body is connected to other things that I love. That I wanna do. So sometimes the right exercise for us isn't always the most pleasurable one. This is why I'm a little bit hesitant to say only move in ways that you love. So we can think about times in your life when you've enjoyed movement and you may have to go way back to when you were really little. You may have go back to like, were you the six-year-old that was... Rolling down the hill of grass or were you the six-year-old that was dancing in the kitchen or were the six year old that was like me that loved it when my mom sent me out to the garden and I could go pick tomatoes and like look for worms. That may tell you a little bit about the types of movement that you want to incorporate back into your life. The other aspect of it is social because we know that we're more likely to maintain movement when we do it, you know, with. Others, and there's a lot of cognitive benefits to moving with others as well. So are there people that you could engage in moving with? Maybe they'll meet you as an accountability partner to go for a walk every Thursday, or maybe they'll meet you at the yoga class that you're really scared to go to because you've never done it before, but if they were there and maybe they kind of helped you get in and show you how to set up your mat and where to get the props, you'd be more willing to do it. So movement and these sort of practices of learning how to accept discomfort in our body, or learning how bring more pleasure into things, or learning to see ourselves as more holistic humans has such a bigger impact on our life than we give it credit for. Especially when we're just looking at it in this mechanistic ways like calories burned or shoulds or CDC guidelines.

Is that something that you've always incorporated in your own life, this idea that you're basically translating some of those skills that you are learning from movement into other parts of your life?

'Yeah, it goes both ways. I haven't ridden a bike in like 20 years because I don't like going fast and I don't like being out of control and I really don't wanna fall. I have a 13 year old and a 16 year old son. My 13 year goes to this middle school where they go on these bike trips and parents can go on them. And I made it through the whole, my older son going through this school with avoiding all the bike trips. And then finally my 13 year-old this few months ago came to me and said, Mom, will you come on the bike trip with us? So these bike trips have like, you know, you have to go like 30 miles and some of it's off road. And it was this moment where, wow, I've written a book on movement and I'm unwilling to move my body because it's too scary, you now? And I said, yes.

And so for the past few weeks, my son's been teaching me how to ride a bike. Does that translate into my life in beneficial ways? So many beneficial ways. I'm spending time with a 13 year old boy that maybe we wouldn't connect around other things. I'm also learning about myself of how to be taught something, how to do something that's outside of my comfort zone in the service of something I care about. That's a skill we all could learn. And how we so quickly say no to things in life because they're scary or they're uncomfortable or we have a thing in our head, I just don't ride bikes. I just, don't sweat. I just run. But the more willing you are to be, the more flexible you are in life, the deeper connections you'll have, the healthier you'll be, and the more full your life will be.

What I struggle with though is something you mentioned and that is that the motivation is mostly there but it comes in waves, as you said. And I'm looking to make the waves last longer and be bigger. What would you recommend for that?

I think the motivation to have the waves last longer and be bigger for me is to make it about something that's not about you. We're chasing after good feelings, chasing life. Chase after something that is bigger than you. How does your movement, when you feel better after you exercise, how does that impact the people in your life? You know, if I go for a run and I walk in my kitchen and it's a complete mess because my kids are making pancakes. You're gonna get a different mom than if I didn't go for that run. And that matters to me to not yell at my kids, you know? But maybe it matters for you to have the physical stamina to help a friend move and you can go lift a couch or lift some boxes and that matters too. So if you want a motivation that's sustained over the long run, make it a big motivation that's bigger than just you. Make it connected to your values, make it about who you wanna be in this world, how you wanna contribute to this world. And moving your body will help you with that, I guarantee it, for the long run.

That was my conversation with Dr. Diana Hill. Now, if we haven't covered the reason why you don't move, don't worry, you should check out our book. It's called, I Know I Should Exercise, but 44 Reasons We Don't Move and How to Get Over Them. Thanks so much for listening.