Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Guy: This week welcome to the show Katy Bowman. She is a biomechanist, movement ecologist and author of books on natural movement, human development and diseases of captivity. In this show, she introduces a new concept called movement-based lifestyle. It is one that keeps all of you moving—from your arms and legs to your microbiome—gives you large doses of “Vitamin Nature,” and “Vitamin Community.” It is the addition of movement back into life.
Katy Bowman, M.S. has earned an international reputation for achieving unprecedented results in reducing pain, increasing bone density, improving metabolic health, and solving pelvic floor mysteries. She is the founder and director of the Restorative Exercise Institute, a large organization and online training program that teaches the biomechanical model of preventative medicine to health professionals and laypeople worldwide. The author of Every Woman’s Guide to Foot Pain Relief: The New Science of Healthy Feet (2011), Alignment Matters: The First Five Years of Katy Says (2013), and Move Your DNA (coming Fall, 2014), Katy’s writing explore the relationship between cultural habits, movement, and disease. She is the creator and talent of the Aligned and Well DVD series and blogs regularly at Katy Says.
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Audio Version
Questions we ask in this episode:
How important is footwear?
What’s the difference between exercise and movement?
Why is gym-focused fitness unsustainable?
We live in a world where everything is outsourced and done for us. How much do you think this is effecting us?
Society encourages us to move less, how we can reverse that trend?
Get More Of Katy Bowman
https://nutritiousmovement.com/blog/
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Full Transcript
Guy:
[00:00:30] Hey, guys and girls. Welcome to another fantastic session of the session of the health sessions. A bit of a mouthful. I’m allowed to say they’re fantastic because it is our podcast, but I think they’re fantastic anyway. Of course, we cut the confusion by connecting with leading global health and wellness experts to share the best and the latest science and thinking that is there for you to help empower everyone, including myself and Stewart, to turn our health and lives around.
[00:01:00] This week we’re doing it with the awesome Katie Bowman. Now, if you’re not familiar with Katie, she is a Bio-mechanist, by training, and she is a serious wealth of information. An awesome lady, and a very passionate, and I thoroughly enjoyed this interview today. She is the author of 7 books and we got her on the podcast today to chat about a new book, “Movement Matters,” and I will say this much about the interview, it has really continued to get me thinking about how I spend my day, and essentially on whether I’m moving or not, you know, and obviously, you know, I’m here now from a stand up desk. That’s what I’m doing, recording this from, but what Katie was really stressing and getting across today is to actually look at the way we’re actually not moving at all and stillness.
[00:01:30] Me in the standing desk, yes it is a solution from sitting down, but I can still remain still standing, which might not necessarily be helping the cause, and that’s just got me thinking about that after the podcast anyway. I am going to be looking at Katie’s work much more closely and how I bring more movement into my day. It’s one thing I’m very passionate about, because ultimately what Katie will explain today is movement and exercise are 2 different things from a technical standpoint too.
[00:02:00] It will definitely get you thinking. There is loads of nuggets of wisdom in there, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, and please let us know if you do. 2 things guys; hit me up on Snapchat. My username is guyl180 or even Instagram stories. It you will reach me. Let us know which content you’re enjoying at the moment, you know, what podcast are you finding interesting, you know, we’re always on the hunt to bring in more guests.
[00:02:30] We’ve got some phenomenal guests lined up over the next 2 months as well, which I’m very excited about, but ultimately as well we want to make sure that we’re providing in value and content for you guys to listen to, as well as myself, cause you know, there’s nothing that pleases me more than being able to reach out to some of these people and get them all, and be able to spend an hour with them and chat to them, and pick their brains really, and share across the channels.
[00:03:00] Yeah, please let us know if there is anyone in particular that … Or the type of content we do, and cause we’re exploring all avenues, because you might know I’m very passionate about meditation, but we’re bringing in movement, and then, you know, mindset and obviously the health aspects as well. Yeah, let us know from that and of course, if you listen to this on a regular basis and you’re not subscribed to our iTunes channel, we’d love it if you are. Just hit the subscribe button. 5 star it, if you think we’re worth it. It really just helps rankings.
[00:03:30] I ask every week. I’ll continue to ask, purely because it just helps drive this message out there more and more, and leave an honest review. We read them all. We do read them out now and then on the podcast. I’m not set up for it now. I completely forgot, because I was going to read one out, but I’ll do it in the next episode. Anyway, let’s go over to Katie Bowman, and all your support is greatly appreciated guys. Enjoy.
Hi, this is Guy Lawrence. I’m joined with Stewart Cook. Hey Stewart?
Stu
Halo Guy.
Guy
Our lovely guest today is Katie Bowman. Katie welcome to the show.
Katy
Hey, thanks for having me.
Guy
[00:04:00] Fantastic. You know it’s interesting Katie. Your name kept coming up on our podcast, sort of over the last 6 to 9 months, with different interviews, and I thought, “Wow. I’ve got to check this Katie out,” and I looked on to your website, and I saw, “A day in the life of Katie Bowman,” this great big blog post, and I thought that was absolutely fantastic, so I was hooked from that point on, and then obviously researched you, and you’ve currently come on today, so yeah, appreciate it mate. Thank you.
Katy
Oh very well.
Guy
[00:04:30] The first question is, just to … Because I’m pretty sure we’ll be exposing you to a new audience as well, if a stranger stopped you on the street and asked you what you did for a living, what would you say?
Katy
Well in one word I’m a Bio-mechanist, you know, career wise I’m a Bio-mechanist, but then that word usually requires lots of other words to explain what it is, but it’s someone who studies the mechanical nature of living phenomenon.
Guy
Right.
Katy
Anything that’s living Bio, so whether it’s plants or animals or all of it together and mechanics, Newtonian Physics, pressure, forces, friction, but what are the mechanics of living systems, you know, living systems have rules, and everything living falls under the laws of the physical universe and what does that mean for how they work. That’s what a Biomechanist is interested in, and then I personally studied human mechanics, you know, was my university training.
[00:05:30] It’s a branch of Kinesiology, how humans move, injuries, sports, anatomy, all those things is going to get clamped in, on your Bio-mechanics.
Guy
Take me back, what led you on the journey to get into where you’re at now and what you’re doing, because you’ve written now, is it 2 books? “Moving DNA,” then you’ve got “Movement Matters.”
Katy
[00:06:00] 7. I have 7 other books. [Crossovertalk 00:05:51]. My first book was on feet. Yeah, my first book … I started with “Feet: Every woman’s guide to foot pain relief,” was my first book, and then it just got re-released as something new, “Simple Steps,” a gender neutral book, and then, “Whole Body Barefoot.” I’ve always been a Biomechanist of the whole body, but because feet was my first book, then … It kind of came out around the same time as the Minimal Footwear push, you know, right when vibrams were hitting the market?
Stu:
Yeah.
Guy
Yeah.
Katy
I kind of … I would say that a lot of people know me most for … That I’m a minimal footwear proponent, you know, like that’s where they started.
Guy
I have to ask like you know, cause if your first book is not often you’re going to hear somebody say, “Oh yeah, I wrote a book on feet,” you know, and that’s where that started off. Why that? Why feet?
Katy
[00:07:00] Oh that’s a good question. How did that end up my first … I don’t know how that ended up my first book, except that … You know I had a blog. The blog was where I started, you know, I was in graduate school, and I was writing this blog, and then I got out, and I was working … I was teaching a lot of different people, this now we call it Natural Movement, right? It wasn’t a thing 10 years ago.
Guy
Correct.
Katy
[00:07:30] It was a thing, but it wasn’t widely known 10 years ago. I guess it’s always been a thing, actually, Natural Movement, but capital N, capital M is somewhat new in being a common thing to discuss in the health world, but I would just, you know, teach people, you know, your ankle really should be able to do this, and I did the whole body, but it seems like everyone always needed to start with their feet, because whether they’re having a problem of their shoulder or their neck or their knee or their hip, as far as the loads created when you’re moving, everything passes through your foot.
[00:08:00]
[00:08:30] No matter what corrective you did for you knee or your hip or your back, it was constantly thwarted by the fact that they were coming in with feet that could not do anything. I said, “Well since your whole mechanics are being affected by how you’re essentially pushing off on the ground, and what your ankle can do. Let’s start with your feet,” so maybe that’s why that ended up being … You know, publishers reached out and they said, “Hey, your blog, you’re really popular. You want to write a book,” and in our world health and fitness seems really big, but health and fitness is actually pretty small, as far as all humans, you know, and at least, you know, the Western, North American, European world are concerned, there’s not that many people exercising or …
[00:09:00] It’s a small culture, but foot pain is a huge culture. Doesn’t matter if you’re an exerciser or not, and one in 4 women, I think, have foot pain, debilitating, whether unable to exercise or anything, so they say, “How about you write a book geared towards foot pain,” and so that book is essentially the first thing I ever put out, for the general public, which was, “You should all maybe be wearing minimal shoes, not for running, not for health or fitness or performance, but simply for, you know, the basic functions of your feet,” and so I entered into what is now maybe the paleo world, kind of?
Stu
Yeah.
Guy
OK, yeah.
Katy
Because I happened to be barefoot minded, but it wasn’t because of that, it was simply because this is the only way, geometrically, these bones can operate.
Stu
I’ve got a question for you Katie, just on the foot thing. Given the fact that we’re in Australia right now, and a very large percentage of the Australian population spend a lot of time wearing these. People on the podcast I’m holding up a thong, a flip flop heavy [honor 00:09:45]. Are they good are are they bad? Because they’re minimal, but there’s that grippy thing going on where you kind of pinch you [crossovertalk 00:09:52] yeah.
Katy
Well, so minimal, and that’s what I wrote in, “Whole Body Barefoot.” Minimal has been, I think, interpreted as meaning minimal materials, where I would define minimal as; interferes with your physiology the least. You can put on something that is of very little mass, but if it’s causing a large disruption of your natural [day 00:10:21] pattern, then that’s not minimal, as far as Bio-mechanically it’s concerned.
[00:10:30] As you know, probably, since you lose you’re probably leading the question, is you have to essentially hold them on, by gripping or clinching your foot. While they’re minimal in mass, they’re not minimal in effects.
Stu
Right. I guess-
Guy
There you go. You’ve just devastated about 3 quarters of Australia.
Katy
[00:11:00] Well, so I love an open, strappy shoe, you know, I think … I mean, what is … Is it because they’re fast to get on or is it because you have good airflow, like easy to kick off at the the beach when you get there [crossovertalk 00:10:59] The nice thing is people have been wearing, you know, a minimal shoe like that for a long period of time, and all you have to do is add a simple strap around the back.
You can take your entire collection of thongs or flip flops or slippers, depending on where you live, and just with one small piece of material, relax your foot while you’re wearing them, so you don’t need to buy all new shoes. You just need to change the geometry, just a little bit, so that the shoes connect better.
Guy
Just don’t wear white socks under them. That’s the other thing as well.
Katy
Oh, always. No black socks. It’s black socks.
Stu
[00:12:00] Pull them up to your knee. That’s the main thing. I wanted to kick off, Katie, talking a little bit about exercise and movement, and it got me thinking this morning, you know, as I was looking at some of the questions that we wanted to ask you, but there is a very big shift on how we move, from the time that we’re born to present day, and I’m thinking about this because I’ve got 3 young daughters, and they’re like Tasmanian Devils. They get up and they move, they roll, they fight, they just … They do not stop. Jump, crawl, whatever they’re doing, and then it seems that the older we get, we transition through to this period of, “Well. Let’s not …We don’t move quite as much, and then we are, you know, sitting down more,” and then we transition into adulthood where it seems that we’ve move far less than we ever used to.
[00:12:30] We compensate that with going to the gym and just doing our workouts. What’s the fundamental difference in your mind are between exercise and movement?
Katy
[00:13:00] Well, exercise, by clinical definition, is engaging in a repetitive movement for the sole purpose of extracting a health benefit from it. That is what exercise is. Your children aren’t exercising. My 4 year old and 5 year old, they’re never exercising, because they don’t even have the notion that they’re doing it for some other reason, you know, like they’re doing it because it’s a natural reflex to move, and there are signals to move and they’re hitting them, and they’re following them, and it’s a very organic relationship between many human, the systems, you know, within a human and movement. They go together.
[00:14:00] Movement is any physical change in position. Just for people who are more like Venn Diagram or math-minded, exercise is movement, but … Movement is … Exercise fits into the category of movement, but all movement is not exercise. All exercise is movement, because there are changes, but all movement is not exercise. There are many things that people do that are movement. They do not fall into the exercise category.
[00:14:30] I mean, for example right now, if I scratch my nose while we’re doing this podcast that’s clearly human movement, but I’m doing it to take care of some other biological need. I’m not doing it to reap my bicep curl strength or shoulder muscle, right? We’ve projected … There’s many different reasons, different health qualifications you’re exercising for, but as long as that’s your motivation, you’re exercising, not moving. You’re exercising, which is a category of movement.
Stu
Got it.
Guy
What would be the outcome then of people that listen to this that do not move all day and then exercise at the end of the day, and then do not move anymore after that, till the next day and repeat? Is that exercise, which is focused with a health outcome going to improve their health, help the health or hinder if they’re not moving?
Katy
Well, it always depends on what the 2 scenarios you’re comparing, so if you’re comparing not moving at all to moving or to … If you’re comparing a sedentary personal day to someone who’s sedentary, but then who has one bout of exercise within an otherwise sedentary life, clearly the person who’s exercising is going to be better for it. That’s why we all do what we do.
[00:15:30]
[00:16:00] We’re all interested in fitness and health and exercise. What I’m trying to do, I think professionally, is really help people understand that there is a difference between being sedentary all day and exercising versus having a life that’s just filled with more movement. That exercise itself is a pretty unnatural construct. It’s a temporary solution. It a … I guess to [palay 00:15:54] it into a different example, it’s the equivalent to eating kind of a heavy junk food diet, but then making sure you take your supplements on top of it, meaning you haven’t really changed very much about your day to day diet, but you’re worried about these nutrients and so you’re supplementing.
[00:16:30] You’re supplementing a sedentary diet, if you will, with exercise vitamins, rather than learning how to, what is the equivalent of shopping, cooking, selecting better quality food, preparing them yourselves right? That’s what a movement based lifestyle is. It’s really the equivalent to a whole food, natural diet that you eat all day long, cause then you don’t need supplements really, when you’re really eating at that level.
That’s really all I’m saying with what I’m doing.
Guy
[00:17:00] You’re looking at the whole approach and making sure, cause like I worked in the fitness industry a long time and I could see the mentality that would come in quite often is that, “Oh my God. I haven’t done anything for 6 months. I need to start exercising. Get myself in shape,” but they’re stressed out. Their diets are bad. They’re deprived of sleep, generally, and then they throw in an exercise on top of all them stresses that are happening at the same time and then it was, you know, trying to get through [crossovertalk 00:17:11].
Stu
Are there any, I won’t say it well, I don’t like the term quick fix, but in terms of incidental movement are there any obvious strategies that you have found to be the most successful, when trying to introduce more movement into your everyday life?
Katy
[00:18:00]
Well, we end up at the feet again, right? One thing that I love about non-exercise movement is that, since you’re not living your life to go do this thing of exercise and then coming back into your life, you’re able to get more physical movement when you learn how to move while you’re accomplishing something else in your life. In “Move you DNA,” the example is, you can climb a tree and like I’m going to climb a tree, you know, because it’s an ancestral movement, I want to strengthen my arms and my legs, exercise, or it’s I’m going to climb this tree because there’s pears at the top or apples at the top, and once I get up there I’m going to accomplish this other thing. That’s not exercise.
[00:18:30] The things are exactly the same, but it’s very hard … You need so much movement to stay well, like really function well. You’d either have to leave your entire life and move into a gym, which just … It only works for health professionals who live there, right? Because your life is there.
[00:19:00] Your partner is probably there. Your friends are there. Your kids can come to the daycare. You can live there and so you’re like, “Why can’t everyone else get as much exercise as I am,” because your life is in the gym. That’s the difference between fitness professionals and everyone else. Everyone else you’re asking them to leave their families, their work, their productive time, their life, their relationships, they can’t get anything else done, but they have to like go for an hour or an hour and a half and so they’ll never be able to get 8 hours of movement if they’re approaching it as an exercise mindset.
[00:19:30] All of the strategies, this is to go back to your original question, the quick strategies involved, how can I get more movement while I’m already doing my life? Minimal footwear, we’re back at the feet, right? A non-minimal shoe is limiting how much your body is moving. There is in exercise, I think right now there’s this idea that we need that we need to move more, yes? We need to move more.
[00:20:00] I would also add that you need to move more of you. That moving more of you is another dimension to the move more problem, right? If you’re diligent about walking 3 or 4 miles everyday or you’re running for 30 or 40 minutes a day, your footwear might be limiting how much of you is going on that run or how much of you is going on that walk. In fitness or exercise, we’ve reduced exercise to a whole body state, right? Because our variables of assessment.
[00:20:30] Your heart rate is whole body. Your blood pressure is whole body. Your insulin resistance is whole body. We keep [palaying 00:20:20] whole body states, but it doesn’t really work that way. You’re really a body of many smaller bodies that are adapting to either activity or not, even though your whole body has moved from point A to point B does not imply that all cells participated in the bout of exercise and it is the bout of exercise that is protective, right? It’s the actual physical movement.
That’s one of the arguments for mobility, right? You know, you’re trying to get people to improve their mobility so that more of them is moving to receive those protective benefits of movement.
Guy
Got it.
Katy
[00:21:30]
Shoes is a good way, switching or transitioning to minimal shoes. Another big strategy I have is not dropping into you furniture. You might have seen on that, “Day in the Life,” that we don’t have furniture in my house, because you could have exercised and when you exercise it’s almost like you justify your desert and you justify your reclining in the couch, because it feels like you’ve checked off the movement box, like, “I did my movement for today,” like that your human need is an hour, rather than 8 or 12 hours of movement a day.
I got rid of my furniture, so that when I sat down I wasn’t outsourcing the work to get down and up or just support my own body to a device, a technology like a couch. I move more simply because I don’t have anything else to do the work for me.
Guy
Well what’s the reaction you get if you invite new friends home?
Stu
Do they come back?
Katy
[00:22:30]
Exactly. That’s a good question. Do they come back? Well, it’s a little bit different because I am who I am, so most people, they know what they’re getting when they come over, but we have introduced new friends into our abode, and just to get a mental picture, it’s not a décor free house, right? You’re not walking into a [stark 00:22:21] house. I have cushions and floor pillows. I mean there’s definitely things to sit or lounge on. They’re just not all at the same exact height, right?
[00:23:00] That’s the biggest thing, because, you know, most people listening, maybe, are maybe given some sort of exercise by their trainer or their physical therapist or their physio to improve their hip and knee mobility, right? You know, “You need to do this stretches for your hip, do this for your quad.” All of those corrective exercises are movements that you would do, were you to not stop your hip and knee action at the couch level.
Guy
Right, yeah.
Katy
[00:23:30] It’s like they’re not only engaging regularly in the behavior that limits the motion, they’re then trying to schedule in the motion to repair it, so I said, “Why don’t you just put the 2 together, what I call, you know, stack it back up and just get your movement therapy. Put it back in your life, so that you don’t need the therapy. Just put those movements back into your life and then you get the same results, only without having to leave your family for the appointment, right?” You don’t have to keep doing movement outside of the rest of your life.
Guy
Yeah, brilliant. Random question just came in, you’ve written 7 books, how do you write?
Katy
I get that question a lot.
Guy
Yeah, right.
Katy
[00:24:00] There are entire web pages dedicated to … You can actually watch a 30 minute … I wrote a book called, “Don’t just sit there,” which is how to apply all these things that I’m talking about when you have to be at work for 8 hours a day, like so many people, right? You’re in a cubicle. I have a dynamic workspace, which is a couple of different … I have a low desk and a standing desk and a sitting ball, right?
[00:24:30] Right of the bat, I don’t have to assume … Most people have a work configuration that is one geometry of the body. My office, when I come in, has 3 basic ones, but then you think at my floor desk, I can sit cross-legged. I can sit in a, “V.” I can essentially do everything that I would go to an exercise or stretching class for, I can do right there at my seated desk.
Guy
Correct.
Stewart
Right.
Katy
[00:25:00] I also am a big proponent of the idea that a lot of us are productive, in front of the computer. That seems to be a big amount of time, but for as much time as you spend, in front of your computer, very rarely is there a minute by minute, equal exchange of input to output, meaning when you’re on your computer working, and I’m doing air quotes for working, every 2 or 3 minutes you’re like cycling through your social media, right? You know, you’re like working, you’re producing something and you’re like, “Well let’s see what’s happened in the last 3 minutes?”
[00:25:30] You’re doing what I call the, “Social Media Lap.” If you’ve ever gone to the zoo and you see a leopard or an animal in the zoo, it walks this little circle. They all in captivity, they just trace this circle path. They never walk off of it. I call it the, “Social Media Lap,” right? You get your phone and you have this like routine thing.
[00:26:00] You go to Twitter, then you go to Instagram, then you go to Facebook, and then you go to email, repeat, repeat all through the day. Once you recognize that a bulk of the time that you’ve spent allotted to productivity is actually not productive, I think you’ll feel better about taking breaks away from your computer, without you know like … There’s walking, and certainly walking outside boosts creativity, so because I’m a writer, because I produce a lot of written interviews and written content, I can’t sit there and for hours drop things off.
[00:26:30] I know when I’m hitting a low, and nothing helps me organize my ideas than these short walking breaks or I’ll take phone calls. I take all my phone calls. I save them up for walking outside, you know, so like little strategies like that allow me to be hyper productive. Some would argue hyper productive while not really increasing my [centertirism 00:26:38]. I have … I think I managed to become even more of a dynamic person through writing my books, just by changing the idea of what working looks like.
Guy
[00:27:00] Yeah, got it. What … There will be people listening, might be exposed to this for the first time or they haven’t even entered in their head that the fact that they’re not moving daily is affecting their health, well what effects does not bring in movement in today … How does it affect the body? How could you summarize that? If possible.
Katy
[00:27:30] Well, you know, your … In movement research, which is really has been exercise research for a long time. Only now is it starting to go, there is other types of movement besides exercise, right? We’re culturally all conditioned to perceive exercise as the only mode of human movement, right? It’s in the textbooks I can say that I’ve gone to college for it, and dance, fitness, and what’s the 3rd one? Dance, fitness and athletics are listed as the 3 types of human movement.
Guy
Yeah.
Stu
Right.
Katy
[00:28:00] Clearly that’s not the case, but when you have a whole department of people who really, you know, embody that, because these are the fields in which we come from, then it doesn’t really occur to us to look at … What we’re now starting to look at the activities of daily living. For a long time there were 2 types of people, active or sedentary, right? Clearly sedentary people know that they need to get exercising, right? That’s clear. What are the side effects of not exercising? You can … I mean it’s everything right?
[00:28:30] Everything seems to have exercise as a decreasing in risk factor for cardiovascular disease, cancers, muscular skeletal ailments, but what I’m trying to do is add maybe the numbers to it, saying, “Well, even if you’re exercising, by definition you’re still sedentary all the other time,” meaning the difference between exercisers and non-exercisers is very small in terms of percentage of movement.
[00:29:00]
[00:29:30] I mean you’re talking maybe 4 to 10 percent difference in terms of movement, and clearly moving that 10 percent or 4 percent of you day, that’s about one hour a week of exercise, is quite protective, but when you consider all the stillness that happens all of the other times that’s the area in which is really kind of under-researched at this point. To your question of what is being, they call it actively sedentary, so let’s say we’re just talking now about the people who are fit, they’re fit. They’re exercising an hour or 2 a day, yes they’re sedentary the rest of the time.
[00:30:00] They can see that people who sit, you know, kind of all that sitting is the new smoking, I’m not sure if Australia was hit as much with the headlines as it was in the United States, but that’s what that research was really pointing to, meaning even if you’re exercising, if you’re sitting copious amounts, you’re not really coming out of the risk of these ailments as much as we thought you were initially.
That’s all maybe in the last … It started 20 years ago, but it’s really been in the last 2 or 3 years that research has homed in. Now they’re starting to figure out,”Well what are the effects of continuous sitting, even in exercisers, and just getting up every 20 to 30 minutes seems to offset adaptations to prolonged sitting, right?
[00:30:30] We’re not even talking about that you need to exercise more. It’s simply … I’m a Biomechanist and I think in terms of geometry, it’s like you have to break up your geometry after prolonged periods of time. There is … When you’re still, let’s just put sitting as the stillness for right now, because it’s what most people are … That’s how most people are going to consume their stillness, what is the actual problem with stillness?
[00:31:30] You start delineating that and is it the fact that you haven’t moved, meaning that you haven’t asked your muscles to contract, you know, the contraction that supports the heart isn’t happening or is it the repetitive positioning, meaning … A lot of this is kind of outlined in, “Move Your DNA,” a little bit, meaning like what happens within a still body? Are you … Is there repetitious loads in a particular way that’s causing the adaptation or causing your cells to behave in a particular way.
All of that is kind of wide open right now, like there is so many questions to ask, and it’s going to take probably … It’s interesting being involved in something like this where the answers to these questions are 40-100 years away from where we are right now, but at the same time clearly humans have always moved more than we move more right now.
[00:32:00] Humans have never moved as little as they’re right now, and it doesn’t really seem like humans have ever been as ill as they’re right now. That’s kind of all lumped together of like where … What does most being still or sedentary most of the time, where is that getting us? I feel like the answers are somewhere having to do with all those metabolic and geometrical.
Stu:
If I was to move that then onto the topic of outsourcing and you just mentioned that we’ve never moved less and we seemed to be more sick than we’ve ever been. I always move this back to my grandparents, because they had no idea really of the concept of exercise. There weren’t gyms. They didn’t go to the gym. They certainly didn’t run along the street. They would’ve been looked at like they were lunatics, I would have thought.
[00:33:00] They had manual jobs. They tended to the garden. They grew their own vegetables. They cleaned their own house, and nowadays we seem to be outsourcing a lot of these tasks and I know that I’ve got friends that have cleaners in and gardeners in and they shop online. They get more time to, I guess enjoy their family, but there must be a connection then with outsourcing and these lifestyle factors that you’re talking about in terms of we’re just not moving anymore, because everybody is doing everything for us.
Katy
[00:33:30] Right. Everyone and then everything, you know, as far as stuff. There are people moving on our behalf. If you consider all the things it takes for you to survive, right? If we just went with the basics, you need water, you need food, and you need shelter. Those are like the super basics, so even if you just took the movement that it used to take you to get food, the difference between you and your grandparents is huge right now, and you know, in terms of the trucks driving your food into you.
[00:34:00] The fact that your food comes from all over the planet now as opposed to … You know, and it might be a little different in Australia than it is now, for example, I just posted, maybe 2 years ago a picture of canned pumpkin, and so many of my friends in Australia said, “We would never have canned pumpkin.” The United States I would say has even gone further in outsourcing, so I’m not sure how much of what I say pertains to Australia, but certainly, you know, carrying your kids in your arms, right?
[00:35:00] Now you have a plastic device with wheels to do that, so then you can go, well, there is either someone else mowing your lawn for you, right? That’s a direct outsourcing. You know who’s doing it, but then the work you that you used to do to carry your kids around is now done by this device. Where did that device come from? You go back to the raw materials of that device and you find that somewhere someone is exchanging their physical labor to make the things that make not moving easier on you.
Stu
Right. OK.
Katy
[00:35:30] It’s in everything. Your shoes have outsourced the movement of your feet. Your couch has outsourced your movement. Your walls and your thermostat outsource the movement of your thermal regulation. You can just buy now a down jacket, but where did that come from? You know, someone somewhere is plucking a goose, you know, to get that down, and so we have no idea of the movement it still requires to keep us alive, nor who is doing it on our behalf.
[00:36:00] All of those are behind the curtain. We have an issue here. We have one, we’re not moving at all and we’re ill, and we’re needing to exercise, but the luxury of getting to exercise was brought to you by all these people behind the curtain that you have no … It’s just so culturally normal. It’s just shipped right to you and so … You know, I work in Natural Movement, it’s an office, and so a lot of times there is this understanding that or this belief, I would say, that natural movements are archaic in nature, yes?
Stu
Yes.
Katy
[00:36:30] They’re what cavemen used to have to do to survive, but when it comes down to it is someone is still digging, clamoring, climbing, hauling out of the ground, the things that you still consume today, as a human being, you just no longer do the work for it, and so those natural movements … Your survival is still based on those natural movements, you just get to sit back, let someone else do them, while you pick what fun thing you’d like to do to get the movement that your physiology still requires despite your ability to outsource the movement to get the thing.
Guy
Yeah, right. [Crossovertalk 00:36:53] Yeah.
Stu
I feel like you need to set up a commune, I think, and we can all come and live with you, because it seems like much more of a healthy place to be.
Katy
[00:37:30] Well you know, I think it feels overwhelming, you know, when I put it into those words it’s like, “Oooi,” you know like it’s so many things, but what I love about this idea of movement ecology, really which is that in Biology, you know you’re considering the collective health of a species, right? In that case if humans are one particular organism right now, there are some parts that are thriving and some parts that are not, and in the same way, you have parts of your body that are thriving, but then you’ve got something that isn’t and when you have something that isn’t within your own body thriving, it kind of brings the whole body down, right?
[00:38:00] You can have an otherwise healthy body, but if you have a bum knee or hip or throw your back out, the whole body is affected, and it’s very similar that way in terms of, you know, human species. There’s lots of ways to start reclaiming outsourced movement that is part of the strategy of you moving more. In that way not only are you moving more, you’re distressing someone else and particularly the environment, you know, the environment, as we have more technologies, so many of us are concerned about social and environmental and personal physical issues, but it might be that movement itself is the solution to all 3 of those at the same time. That’s what, “Movement Matters.”
Guy
[Crossovertalk 00:38:30] We live in a world culturally where we make choices that are easy for us, not necessarily best for us, and until our mindset changes though. You mentioned … Yeah, sorry. You were going to say something.
Katy
[00:39:00] Well, I was going to say, you know, it might even … I think it’s human nature, so it’s human nature to choose the easiest. You know it’s like, I think we have to recognize that human, you know, we reach for simple sugar, we reach for the couch, because we might be programmed to do just such. It’s just that it’s never been easier to not be aware, and I think that most people with a little awareness do choose the healthier thing, and that’s why you guys are making a podcast and you’re informing, and somebody is saying, “I never knew that,” and then they can make a more informed choice.
I do think the information is pretty powerful.
Guy
Yeah.
Stu
I think so, and I just think that even acknowledging the fact that there is a need for information like this, and I think we’re in a little bit or at least a tipping point of the health shift is at least a light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s not all bad.
Guy
Yeah.
Katy
Yeah, I don’t feel like it’s bad at all. I feel like not knowing what the problem is, is a challenge. As soon as you have it, it’s just endless opportunity for the wellness that everyone’s been looking for.
Stu
Yeah. Exactly right.
Guy
[00:40:00] Yeah, so Katie I wanted to mention you book, cause you just mentioned back then, “Movement Matters,” your new book, Is it out yet? Has it been released?
Katy
It’s publication date is November 30th, but in some strange anomaly it came a month early, so amazon is already … People are tweeting pictures of it and I haven’t even seen it yet, and everyone’s like, “I got it. I’m on page 90,” and so yes it is out now. It’s circulating in the world.
Guy
[00:40:30] It’ll certainly be out by the time this podcast goes live anyway. What can a reader expect from the book, if they were to buy it?
Katy
“Movement Matters,” is different than my … My other books are exercise based. They’re corrective exercise, you know, in the way that you’re used to seeing it. Here’s what to do with your shoulder and your hip, and you know, here’s how to transition to squat or minimal walking. “Movement Matters,” is really just discussing what we were just talking about, this idea of outsourced movement.
[00:41:30] How … It explains the Bio-mechanics and also the implication of, when humans kind of moved or migrated out of nature, how a sedentary culture developed, and so it is probably my most [heady 00:41:16] book, you know, I don’t know if it’ll be the right book to start with. If you’ve never heard anything from me, I don’t know jumping in, “Movement Matters,” would be the best place. Probably, “Move Your DNA,” is better, because it just starts with, “Hey, this is exercise and this is movement, and sit on your floor, and,” … It has a lot of strategies in it, where, “Movement Matters,” is much more about humans in and out of nature.
Guy
[00:42:00] OK. OK. You … I’m sorry I thought I was frozen in. Another question popped in, with your movement daily, cause you are so, you know, you turn, you set your house up and everything, outside that do you do exercises and what exercises would they be?
Katy
[00:43:00] I have … I’m trying to transition, you know, I was a super exerciser before, a fitness trainer, competitive athlete, but I wasn’t very healthy, meaning I didn’t … You know, I had injuries and I wasn’t really thriving physiologically, so after I had my first child, which has been about 5 and a half years, I started transitioning more towards movement and I was interested because, you know, I’m proposing a big thing that you can be healthy moving as opposed to exercise, you know, so I, myself have to be able to do it, meaning is there a way to setup my habitat, which would be my house, my children’s schooling, our hobbies in a way that would get me the abundance of movement that it really does take to maintain all of my systems that were previously targeted by my exercise.
In that way, I don’t really exercise in the way, you know, I don’t go out and do anything for an hour or an hour and a half. I have no routine or program, but I have clay equipment in my yard, right? I have upside down ladders, you know I have trees and I do make a conscious effort to go out and do many things daily.
[00:44:00] We walk, you know, 3 to 5 miles every single day to do our chores, meaning I like going to the grocery store, getting to and from school or work is done on foot, so the amount of movement I do is quite large and philosophically I’m still doing it for the health benefits, so in that way it is still exercise, but it is not the only thing I’m reaping, like I always do something else with my movement time to make it not exercise, meaning I’m accomplishing something else in my life, and that’s the only way I can fit the abundance in, but it would mostly look like a natural movement program, and then I teach classes.
[00:44:30] When I teach movement classes, I’m working, but I’m also facilitating some sort of corrective for people who’ve always worn shoes to be able to transition into not needing them. For people who can go across the monkey bars or do a pull up, for them to be able to transition to be able to do that, so in that way I’ll get extra movement, because I’m teaching classes, maybe 2 to 3 a week to be able to do so, but that’s really what I do everyday.
Stu
Are you as mindful about the food that you eat, as you are how you move your body everyday?
Katy
[00:45:00] I would think so, because now I really understand the relationship between movement and foods. As you’ve read, “Movement matters,” it’s big and, you know, so food we used to have to move to eat, right? Food and movement have always gone organically together. You woke up hungry and that’s what set you out on foot, was to be able to get your food, so climbing, running, sprinting, walking, those are all strategies for getting sustenance, also maybe safety, but it doesn’t matter if you’re safe, if you’re starving.
[00:45:30] Movement has always been food driven. Once I realized that I needed to change my habitat to not make food as abundant. In terms of diet, wild food has made a reappearance, I mean, reappearance. I [inaudible
00:45:33] wild food before, but now we’re looking at, you know, hiking for and moving for our nuts, and buying things less processed.
[00:46:00] Instead of squats done in a gym without any context, I will squat for 20 to 30 minutes harvesting walnuts. That’s not exercise any more, right? My squats and my practicing sitting positions that you do, you know, for a natural movement hip workout, I do to be able to eat. Now part of it is a façade, cause I can just drive to the store and get my food, but I limit myself and I’m doing this with my children. It’s not only that I’m doing it, we’re doing it together, you know, starting to develop hunting and fishing skills.
[00:47:00] I happen to live on the edge of the national forest, so you know, there’s all types of those things, and then we just kind of make mini-scenarios to have to move on behalf of the foods. I would say that I am super mindful in terms of wildness of food, the processed, how processed is my food, right? I don’t … You know, I think over the last 10 years I’ve transitioned from eating a regular, go to the safe way store and buy all of the things in the boxes and take it home and you know, prepare them for getting the whole ingredients and then getting the even … You know, I would say that nut flower, you know, I don’t know if you can buy omen flower, I would consider that a whole ingredient, right?
[00:47:30] You can buy omen flower or hazelnut flower. Well, I see that as less whole now, because someone else did the movement of gathering the nut and cracking it and milling it, like they just … I just bought it in a plastic bag. I drove to the store and bought it in a bag. I strive for an even more whole food diet, meaning less processed by someone else, somewhere else, eating things that only come from our regions, and once I did that, you can’t get any junk food that way. You know what I mean?
Stu
It sounds to me like you’re eating a highly processed food diet, but you’re just going through the process to get your food, rather than actually processing the food itself.
Katy
Yes, yes, I’m all about the high process. I just do all the processing.
Guy
[00:48:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100 percent. Last thought that occurred to me, and I just bring it back to our listeners right? Just to tie or summarize everything that we’ve kind of covered today. If someone has a sit down job, they’re not moving through the day, they’re not even exercising and they’re like, “Oh my God where do I start? What should I do?” We live in a culture that is expected to go to the gym and flog themselves 3 times a week to start burning the calories, to lose the weight and so forth, right?
[00:48:30] What would you advice be to that person that said, “Hey, what should I do? Should I just start moving more or should I go to the gym or what can I do?” How can you distill that for someone, in an easy way?
Katy
[00:49:00] Steps are important. You know, we just say, you know, start exercising, but you’re basically transitioning from someone who’s never moved to someone who’s competent in movement, right? That’s a transition. No matter where you’re starting, whether you’re on the couch right now, wishing that you could start an exercise program or someone right now is like, “I exercise all the time, but I’d like to start moving more, right? Everyone is transitioning. No matter where you’re starting, this pertains to you. Find just one small thing.
[00:49:30] If you’re fairly sedentary, non-exercising, then go take 5, 5 minute walks today. As soon as you get up in the morning, just go out and walk around the outside of your house 3 times and go back in or if you have a neighborhood or some place where you can walk pretty easily, go do that, and then do it again at lunchtime, do it again right after work, and maybe do it one other time before you go to bed. 5 minutes, it’s nothing, because you can’t, you know, with exercise, motivation is a big deal and when you’re first starting, there’s extrinsic motivation, right?
[00:50:00] You’re exercising because you read something or some authority told you that you’re supposed to, but once you do that and you feel the difference of moving, then you have this intrinsic motivation and then your body gets more oxygen and it just start breathing on a cellular level in a way that it never had before and then you start motivating your self to do that, and after you’ve done your 5 minutes, 4, 5 times a day for a week, you’re naturally going to just start reaching your arms up over your head, right?
[00:50:30] Every time you walk through you doorway, just touch the top of the doorway, right? Because all day long you hands are down by your side, on your computer, on your steering wheel or on the arm rest, so how about … You don’t need to go do 20 pull ups, you don’t need to start an overhead shoulder routine, just put your arms over your head, more than once a day, and this goes for even people who are already body building, right? Who move their arms an hour a day.
[00:51:00] Break up your geometry more. Create … I like the doorway because you’re going to walk through … I’m looking at my doorway right now. You’re going to walk through your doorway 20 to 40 times a day, so if you associate that with like,” I just want to,” … It’s a stretch. It’s a muscle contraction. It’s all those things you don’t have to start big. You really just want to start small and then just start looking at what you put on your feet everyday.
I’ve gone … I might just be able to switch something in my closet and get more movement just by a decision that I make in 30 seconds, right? You don’t even have to start moving more. More of you will get to move, simply by making that small transition. Those are 3 strategies.
Guy
Perfect.
Stu
Right. That’s good advice and we always say motion equals emotion as well. If you’re feeling a little down or tired or lethargic, then like you said, walk around the block. Just do something and it always makes you feel great or at least better than you felt before.
Guy
Absolutely.
Katy
Absolutely.
Guy
Katie, we’ve got a couple of questions we finish up on the show with everyone, and the first one is what are your non-negotiables to be the best version of yourself?
Katy
[00:52:30]
Oh. Nature time. Walking. Lots of walking, I mean, I’m a 3 to 5 miles minimum. 10 to 12 a day is better for me, like I can move mountains if I get 10 to 12 miles a day done, and my family with me, most of the time while I’m doing all of my work and my movement is really a non-negotiable. I do almost nothing without my pod, whether it’s my family and friends or community. Community is definitely a non-negotiable for me.
Guy
Yeah. Perfect. Love it. The last one, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Katy
[00:53:00] The best advice I’ve ever been given, question everything, and question everything does not mean, that doesn’t sound right, the end. It means when you hear something that makes you feel a certain way that you want to give it attention, meaning that like whether it sounds right or wrong, like this, you know, that you hear this right now that I’m speaking and you’re like, “That can’t be right. I’m not sedentary.”
If it’s like you’re subconscious giving you a little flag, this is something that you need to heed, whether you need to clarify it through yourself through more reading, headlines, it doesn’t matter. Go deep into things that move you.
Guy
[00:53:30] Yeah, brilliant. I hear the term the other day, keep a healthy skepticism to everything and then that’ll make you curious. Yeah, fantastic. Everyone listening to this, if they want to buy the book, want to find out more about Katie Bowman, where should we send them to? What would be the URL?
Katy
Nutritiousmovement.com.
Guy
OK.
Katy
That’s the best place to find everything.
Guy
Yeah, and the book is available now, obviously on Amazon, before you get a copy, so-
Katy
Exactly. Everyone else read it before me.
Stu
Great. We’ll put on the links in the show notes and blast it out to everybody that we know.
Katy
Thank you so much.
Guy
You’re Thanks for coming on. That was brilliant.
Katy
All right.
Guy
Cheers Katie. [Crossovertalk 00:54:03]
The post Katy Bowman: Why Exercise & Movement Are Two Very Different Things appeared first on 180 Nutrition.