Tiny Movements, Massive Impact: Reclaiming Your Energy in the Digital Age | Manoush Zomorodi

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Episode Transcript:

Manoush Zomorodi 00:00:00  When this research started to come out that a workout in the morning didn’t make much of a difference. If you then sat for the rest of the day, he like decided, well, that can’t be right. I’m going to disprove it. And he couldn’t study after study. Since then has shown that even if you like, kill it at boot camp in the morning. If you then go on to sit for the rest of the day, you face the exact harms.

Chris Forbes 00:00:31  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:15  There’s an idea most of us have been taught for a long time that being productive means sitting down, focusing, and just pushing through. But what if that’s actually working against us? In this conversation, Manu Samadi, author of The Body Electric, shares research showing that the way we structure our days hours of sitting, staring at screens isn’t just tiring. It’s fundamentally at odds with how our bodies work. At one point, she describes the body like a kinked garden hose where everything starts to back up, and once I had that image in my mind, I can’t get rid of it. But the solution isn’t extreme. It’s small, repeated Interruptions, moving, listening to signals that we’ve learned to ignore. We talk about why that’s so hard to do, and how even a little bit of change can shift how we feel. Think and show up. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:12  Hi, Manoush, welcome to the show.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:02:14  Eric, I’m so excited to be back. It’s been a while.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:16  It has been a while and we are going to be discussing your new book, which is called Body Electric The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and the New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being. Yeah, but before we get into that, we will start, like we always do with a parable. And in the parable, there’s a grandparent who’s talking to their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:03:07  Well, right now, I guess it’s on two levels. One is like putting out a book into the world. The thing that I’m trying not to get overwhelmed with feeding is what the algorithm wants and, you know, outrage to try and get people to pay attention to my book. But, you know, that’s also how publishing works, which is exhausting. So really, I’m trying to feed the wolf. The one where I remember why I was obsessed with finding the answer to the question I had that really is at the heart of the book, and connecting with the material that I think other people really need to hear, not because I think it will sell, but because I found it so life changing Myself. So I actually wrote myself a note to remind myself every day. Like the core purpose of the book, and that as long as I feel like I can connect with that on a daily basis. The other wolf sort of hangs out and lurks in the background.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:09  Yeah, we were talking about that before we started, how I had a book that came out, boy, a month and a half ago, almost something like that.

Eric Zimmer 00:04:16  You’ve got a book coming out and just kind of how crazy a time it is, and how easy it is to get lost in all sorts of things. Like I, for one, have not asked for any sales numbers because I’m like, I don’t really. Yeah, I’m like, if they’re not good, I don’t know what to do that I’m not doing. And if they are good, my brain will probably be like, but they could be better. And I’m like, I’m just I generally am like, well, I just don’t need information that I, that I’m not going to do anything constructive with. And so I just haven’t asked and I’ve instead tried to, like you say, focus on what’s important about the book. Focus on the kind words that I’m getting, the people that it’s helping. Yeah, it’s a more difficult time. So for you, what was the thing you wrote down that you wanted to come back to and remember about why you wrote the book?

Manoush Zomorodi 00:05:03  Yeah, it really actually reminds me of the title of your book, this idea and the parable that you talk about, this idea that little by little becomes a lot.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:05:12  And in my case, I really felt like something very human had been drained out of me, which was that I was spending day after day on my laptop, and I would end the day feeling like I had just enough energy to crawl over to the couch, to then scroll on my phone or watch a show, or both. And it just didn’t feel like the life that I wanted to lead. And I felt so tired and drained and exhausted and like I couldn’t focus. And like a lot of people are talking about just feeling like crap. Yeah. And, you know, I think combine that with the headlines and with the feeling that the economy is beyond your control and all of these things, and you just sort of it makes you want to give up, right? Just think, well, I’m on this ride. I have no agency. There’s nothing I can do about it. And when I found what is a very small, not hugely groundbreaking answer that actually felt very extraordinary to me and brought me back some optimism and made me feel like I had energy again in the smallest possible way in my little world.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:06:26  That parable makes sense because it was changing a habit that, little by little, made me feel like I got back my energy, that I could focus again, that I was more optimistic, that maybe I could, you know, talk to the school board about making that change. Maybe I could reschedule a meeting just because I needed time. So this idea that just teeny little things you do to change your life, which we can get into what that teeny thing is that made such a big difference.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:53  Yeah, and you’re right that that is right in line with the you know, the core idea of my book is that little by little, a little becomes a lot both in the positive and the negative. And so let’s get into kind of what you found. And I want to start where you talk about early in the book. You said you were afraid to write this book.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:07:16  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:07:17  So obviously you’re not afraid of the powers that be coming to lock you up. Why were you afraid to write the book?

Manoush Zomorodi 00:07:23  Thank you for that reminder.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:07:25  I was not afraid to be censored. Or that as a woman, I couldn’t express myself. So that is a good reminder. I was afraid because I would have to sit on my ass for hours, weeks, months, years, even to write a book. And the entire premise of the book was that we needed to get more movement into our lives in order for our brains to function properly, and to feel good about ourselves and good in our bodies, and not hurt our mental and physical health. And so the very thought that I was about to commit myself to sitting and working on a laptop, while also writing how I shouldn’t be sitting and writing on a laptop felt like kind of like a meta mind screwy thing. So that was what terrified me. But I decided to walk the talk, as it were, or and talk the walk. So the entire premise of the book is about trying to not feel like crap and trying to understand what happens in our bodies when we are on our screens for hours and hours on end.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:08:30  And it’s based on research that I came across and a guy named Keith Diaz, he is a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center, and this is a guy who has dedicated his life to figuring out what is the minimum amount of movement that the human body needs, so that all the sedentary screen time we indulge in doesn’t send us to an early grave. And I when I heard this research, it kind of shocked me because what he had found was that five minutes of gentle movement every half hour during those long periods of sitting had outsized results. It slashed people’s blood sugar, their blood pressure. It regained their focus, it steadied their mood. And it seemed to me like, well, it’s free. It doesn’t sound that hard to do five minutes of like, not burpees or sprints. Like, it just seemed like, oh, what you’re saying is that the human body craves movement throughout the day and that our tools, our innovations, have engineered what we need biologically out of the way. We construct our lives and this world that is built around sitting and looking at screens.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:09:47  And so I actually called him up and I was like, this is fascinating. Does it really work? Because I’m pretty healthy. And he said, well, you know, come and join the study. So I went up to Columbia and one day I sat on my butt on my laptop and worked for eight hours. I had a lunch break, went to the bathroom as they monitored, like all my vitals, my glucose, my heart rate, blood pressure, quick checks on my mood, ability to focus, fatigue levels, etc. and then I did another day where every half hour, his assistant kind of tapped me on the shoulder and led me over to a treadmill, where I walked for two miles per hour. So that’s pretty slow. It’s a stroll. And I again, I thought I was like, I noticed that I definitely felt more positive and my mood was so much better, and I actually had energy at the end of the day. So that was a huge like. I could feel that.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:10:42  But then when I got the actual results back, my blood sugar had dropped nearly in half, my blood pressure dropped by five points, and my fatigue levels, like as I measured them were like also essentially cut in half. So like the results were so amazing for something that felt kind of stupid, you know what I mean? So I was like, Keith, why aren’t we all doing this? And he’s like, well, we have created a life where we are told that from the minute we go to kindergarten, sitting in a chair and looking ahead is what a good, diligent worker does. This is how we’ve been taught that butts in chairs. And you know, I’m actually with you right now from San Francisco, the place where they’re developing surveillance technology to mate, you know, to see how long fingers are on keyboards and how long a cursor is in a dock without moving. So like, this is how we measure efficiency and good work is butts in chairs, eyes on screens. He’s like, I don’t think people can actually accept that.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:11:45  These interruptions not only will they save your health, but they will also make you a more productive worker. It’s very counterintuitive to how we think. I said, well, well, let’s just ask them, because it seems ridiculous to me not to try when you have found the answer. So we did a study together, NPR and Columbia University Medical Center, where we reached out to NPR listeners and said, Will you join a clinical trial to see if you can intersperse these movement breaks into your day, and you can try it every half hour, every hour or every two hours, five minutes of movement. And people could like, walk and talk on the phone. They could walk around the house and collect all the dirty dishes to put in the dishwasher. They could march in place. If walking wasn’t an option. They could also use their arms. Just the idea to build up circulation and get things moving. And we had over 20,000 people sign up. And at the end of the three week period, we found that 80% of the people who’d committed to doing movement breaks stuck with it.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:12:50  82% actually liked them. Fatigue was down by up to 28%. And interestingly enough, productivity slightly rose. All those interruptions did not make people feel like they got less work done or worse quality work done, which was kind of amazing. But we also just heard from people who were like, I feel like I’m connected to my body again. I can think straight. My back doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. My eyes don’t sting. At the end of the day, I am more positive. I’m around for my kids, you know, and can go outside and play with them after a day of work. And so it really seemed like just this idea of explaining to people the biology and how it is not compatible with the technology, and that, you know, your computer can be upgraded all the time, and all you have to do is plug it in to power it up. Unfortunately, your body is a little more finicky and works on ancient operating systems as opposed to 5G. So it was an extraordinary experience, and I’ve spent the last few years looking beyond the data and more into the stories to understand how did people do it? How did they change the structure of their days? What did they have to tell themselves to convince themselves, or their boss, or their kids, or their elderly parents? That movement needed to be part of their lives, and that it was something that wasn’t what they had to do, but what they got to do that it brought back this sort of sense of joy.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:14:28  That’s simply.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:47  So I would love to get into some of the how this happens, how people have done it, what has worked for them, what hasn’t worked for them. But before we do that, I want to go a little bit more into the science of it.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:15:00  So yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:15:01  The first thing is that we’ve heard a lot about how sitting is like the new smoking. Yeah. And it sounds like this gentleman, Keith Diaz, had done a lot of research that showed that it didn’t matter if you even had a very vigorous, once a day exercise routine. That’s good. Very valuable. But it did not offset the dangers of sitting for so long. Say a little bit more about that.

Speaker 4 00:15:29  Yeah. So Keith, as a physiologist.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:15:32  When he was getting his PhD, that research came out, the idea that sitting was the new smoking. So this was like over a decade ago, 12 years ago. And he didn’t believe it because he’d been taught that exercise was golden. It was the ticket to health that anything could be fixed with exercise.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:15:53  And so when this research started to come out, that a workout in the morning didn’t make much of a difference. If you then sat for the rest of the day, he like decided he’s like, well, that can’t be right. I’m going to disprove it. And he couldn’t study after study since then has shown that even if you like, kill it at boot camp in the morning. If you then go on to sit for the rest of the day, you face the exact harms. So first of all, we should say don’t stop working out like you obviously increase muscle mass and cardiovascular capacity and all those wonderful things that happen. However, what then happens if you then sit for the rest of the day, is pretty fascinating. So you have to think of your body as like, this is Keith’s metaphor a garden hose that’s kinked.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:43  That metaphor has really sunk in around this house.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:16:46  Like, can’t unsee it.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:48  Can’t unsee it. Nope.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:16:49  Totally.

Speaker 4 00:16:50  So your body is.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:16:51  Kinked like a garden hose when you sit at your waist and at your knees.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:16:56  And if you think of like a garden hose, that’s king like, the water starts to back up and pressure begins to build. Okay, so that’s blood pressure building. Blood flow doesn’t go through muscles. The leg muscles need to be stimulated in order to pull fat and sugars out of the blood and process them. If you don’t do that, where you start to see people who don’t move a lot, they over weeks, months, years become pre-diabetic or they build up plaques in their arteries. The other thing that happens is that the muscles need to stimulate in order to push oxygen up to the brain. Right. So when the brain is, you know, firing like switching from email to over to Instagram and should I answer that email? And I’m going to go over into this document. And over there, every time you switch you’re using glucose. You’re using oxygen to burn glucose. If you burn through all of that, you start to get CO2 buildup in your brain. That’s when you start to feel foggy.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:17:56  You get tired. You can’t think straight. What is the thing that gets more oxygen up there and refreshes it? Movement. I can keep going. The other thing is, when you sit for a long period, you are like kind of curled, like a boiled shrimp, is how I think of myself. Yeah. Sorry. Yep. There we go. And when you do that, your diaphragm is constricted and you can’t get again those full, deep breaths up into your body to oxygenate your brain. And then the final thing. And this is really where screens create insult injury is there’s a sense that it’s relatively new sort of thing that people are studying called interception. So this is what the body tells the brain you need. So the body might say, okay, you need to take another breath. It doesn’t usually you don’t really register that right. You just kind of do it automatically. Maybe you need a snack or maybe, you know, you need to go to the bathroom, right? These are the signals.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:18:55  This is your introspective sense telling you, your body saying, this is what I need to feel better. But what do we do when we’re on screens? We’re so externally focused. We’re so enthralled by what we’re doing. We’re so captivated by the work we do that we start to ignore what our body is telling us. So your body could be begging for a break. I’m anxious. I’m uncomfortable. My back hurts. My shoulders are curved. I can’t focus anyway. Can we please have a break? And we just ignore it and we power through. Or we tell ourselves, no, I’m just gonna, you know, answer five more emails and then I deserve a break. When really all we’re doing is like, making it less possible to actually write good emails and get our work done anyway. So, like all of these reasons together, if we combine them, it makes you wonder, like, what the hell are we doing? Why or why are we sitting and telling ourselves that we can just grind through, get it done? Because that’s what you know.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:19:55  That’s what a good worker does biologically. That is just incorrect. So once I learned all that and once I also explained a lot of that to listeners. I think that’s why people were willing to experiment with their behavior, because once you understand those things, you’re like, well, I don’t want that. Let’s try the alternative.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:15  Yeah, I’m stretching my legs out right now to try can at least.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:20:19  If at least two.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:20  We should. Well, we’re at the 230 mark. We’re at 30 minutes of sitting, so. But we could.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:20:25  Hang out at eight and keep talking.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:27  We could. But first let’s talk about standing, because just standing won’t solve the problem. Correct.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:20:33  That is correct. A standing desk is stillness just in a different form. You still don’t get that muscle stimulation. So if a standing desk is a way of sort of urging yourself to get more movement, a reminder to get more movement, then great, like stand up and do the shuffle, the zoom and shuffle, as I like to call it, where you just go back and forth while you’re on a zoom or march in place, while you’re talking on the phone.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:21:01  Like, that’s fine, but a standing desk actually meta analysis. And it’s been shown that if you stand for over two hours a day, you actually start to increase the chances of having cardiovascular issues, blood clots and varicose veins. So that’s fun too,

Eric Zimmer 00:21:18  So yes, I tried. My life has been kind of chaos. You and I were on a crazy boat recently. Life has been very interesting. Yes. You know, I mentioned my mother passed. So yesterday was like the first kind of day. Like normal day. Back to work. I’ve had in a while where I was like, okay, I’m about to do what I normally do, which is sit down and be in front of a computer most of the day. And so I tried to try. I tried to try. I tried. There is no try. There’s only do I tried to do every 30 minutes. And I did generally good except for a two hour spot right in the middle where just went right but didn’t happen.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:04  Didn’t happen. And so I’ve observed a couple things from this.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:22:08  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:09  Tell me some of what I’ve observed ties right in with what I talk about and write about in the book, which is that first I need to be reminded. If I’m not reminded, it simply doesn’t occur. Now, maybe over time I will begin to. I’ll start to tune into the signals. But right now, being reminded is really critical. So if I sit back down and I don’t set my next 30 minute alarm, that’s how the two hour block happened.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:22:37  Yeah. So things that you’re starting to observe in yourself, we saw across the board with our people. So first of all, that’s totally great that you skipped a movement break. I’m actually really proud of you.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:51  I skipped two of them.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:22:52  That’s totally fine. What we found was people saw the mental health benefits with even just 4 or 5 breaks per day. And the people that were able to keep up the movement breaks showed themselves some grace. If you’re in flow, if you don’t feel like it.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:23:10  Guess what? It’s okay to skip a break. The point here is not to be perfect. The point is to just do something. Once in a while we are setting the bar incredibly low. It’s to feel good in your body, not to punish yourself in some way. So if that means taking two breaks today, great. That’s two more than nothing. Great. Good job. Yay! You can’t lose it. This, right? Yep. The second thing that you talked about with a timer. Absolutely. The number one way people were able to kickstart their interaction, getting movement into their lives. Their move break habit was by setting a timer. However, what we did here was that by the end of the two weeks, that sense of interruption was developed to the point where many people said, I actually don’t need my timer anymore. My body tells me when it’s time to get up so I can see that in myself. Right now. When we hit the 45 minute mark, I’m going to turn into like a squirmy eight year old boy, essentially, because that’s my rhythm.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:24:14  About 45 minutes to an hour is when I need a break. If I had health issues and, you know, for now, I don’t. But if I did, I think I would try to stick to that five minutes every half hour. Like, for example, we had a woman, amazing woman, who works in HR at a big hotel company who had major health issues, and she just she was doing her morning walk that her doctor had recommended. The numbers just weren’t changing. So she went to her doctor and she’s like, I think I want to try this experiment, this body electric thing. She did it. And within two weeks, her blood pressure dropped by 40 points and she went back down to tapering her insulin. And what ended up happening is it sort of kickstarted a sense that she and her body were not at odds with each other. She started. She did great. She saw results quickly. She felt more positive. She ended up paying more attention to her sleep. She started doing meditation, she changed her diet and she texted me last week.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:25:18  She actually got certified as an official health coach. So over her three year journey, she just she is a happier person. She feels better in herself and in her body. And she just decided that this is and well, and also she doesn’t need to. She’s off all of the medications she needed to be on to manage her biomarkers. So huge result for her. For me, it’s not that dramatic, but it’s enough that I don’t feel like I want to cry and throw my phone into Walden Pond. every day. You know that, like, I can do this. I can work and not hate it. And on the day, there are still days where I’m like.

Speaker 5 00:25:58  Oh, I don’t feel like getting up. And I’m like.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:26:01  But you know how you know you’re going to be back in love with the world after five minutes? So just do it. Just do it. Come on and I’ll do it. And I’ll.

Speaker 5 00:26:09  Be like, oh.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:26:10  Yeah, it works.

Speaker 5 00:26:11  It’s easy.

Speaker 5 00:26:11  It’s free.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:12  Hey, friend, before we dive back in, I want you to take a second and think about what you’ve been listening to. What’s one thing that really landed, and what’s one tiny action you could take today to live it out? Those little moments of reflection. That’s exactly why I started good wolf reminders. Short, free text messages that land in your phone once or twice a week. Nearly 5000 people already get them and say the quick bursts of insight helped them shift out of autopilot and stay intentional in their lives. If that sounds like your kind of thing, head to one. You feed, SMS and sign up. It’s free. No spam and easy to opt out of any time. Again, that’s one you feed. Tiny nudges, real change. All right, back to the show that all or nothing thing is so pernicious. I’ve seen it again and again over the years with coaching clients. I’ve seen it with so many different people that if we can’t do something exactly right, we often just conclude we shouldn’t do it.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:27:19  Is that a particular like personality thing, do you think, or cultural thing, or is it like, what have you observed?

Eric Zimmer 00:27:26  I really don’t know. I mean, I know that, you know, as far back as say, you know, Aristotle was talking about the golden mean right about, you know, right. Don’t go too far this way or that way. You know, the Buddha was talking about the middle way. That’s just one of the permutations of the middle way that I’ve seen. Somebody sent me an email the other day and they said, you know, I’ve gotten a lot out of your book. The thing I’ve gotten the most is that I can show up and do part. You know, I don’t have to do a perfect workout. And this is a person who is a personal trainer. And she said her thing is that if she doesn’t feel like she can really do it right, she just doesn’t do it. Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of that. I noticed this in myself.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:11  I’ve been really trying to spend a little time in somewhere like Colorado, where there’s so little water, you become even more conscious. I mean, I’m always a little bit conscious of become even more conscious, like, okay, how can I use less water? And I notice this in myself. I will forget for a second. Let’s say I didn’t turn the tap off while I was scrubbing something. I noticed it was running, and there’s just this little part of my mind that’s a little bit like why you screwed up, but doesn’t matter. And then I’m like, hang on a second. Like, every little bit matters, you know? It all adds up. So that I think is a real thing to watch for is if I can’t do it right, I don’t do it at all. And yeah. And it sounds like that’s a lot of what you were working with people to understand.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:28:52  Yeah. And I think I’ve seen it in myself for certain, like go big or go home. Right.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:28:58  And it’s taken me a long time to think like moderation. Maybe not as sexy.

Speaker 5 00:29:05  But probably.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:29:06  More effective. And honestly, like this is I want to find things that I can do for the rest of my life. I think as I’ve gotten older, you know, there’s this moment in your 40s where you’re like, this workout is not getting easier. I am just working to maintain at this point. And then you’re just as the years go on, you’re working to not lose what you have built. And so I think that’s like actually a really helpful mind shift for me that like, I’m in a point in my life where I want to maintain and continue to feel good, as opposed to learn how to windsurf and bench press. However many pounds like those are all great goals. But for me right now I’m about feeling good in my body, feeling connected to the world, feeling, like I can think straight and feel positive and stay healthy for as long as I can, and that feels more reasonable and manageable and, and less punishing of myself.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:30:12  Like, I went through my bootcamp phase, Eric, where I was like killing it at the gym. And, and I was really tired the rest of the day. It did not give me energy. That is for sure.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:24  I was I took up surfing in my 50s. Not windsurfing. Did not windsurfing, but regular surfing. So.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:30:30  Wow.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:31  Okay, but I live in Ohio, so I don’t get to do it all that often. But just in case anybody out there is like it’s too late for me to take up windsurfing, I’m like, no, no.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:30:39  Good point.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:40  There was something else I was going to say about what you just said there. Oh, we had a woman on years ago and I’ve kept in touch with her. Her name’s Michelle Seager, and I want to say she’s a researcher at the University of Michigan. I’m not sure, but she said something that I just took to heart all those years ago and continue, which she just basically said, move in whatever way you can as often as you can.

Eric Zimmer 00:31:02  Like that’s the whole game. Just move in whatever way you can as often as you can. And I was like, that’s that’s just solid advice.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:31:11  It’s solid advice. And then of course, my warped mind will be like, well, then I should just be moving all the time because I can move all the time. And so that is actually what Keith would say said was that there’s a fine line. Right? Like people want a dose prescription. Yeah. That they want to feel like there’s some sort of structure that’s scientifically verified, that they can sort of hang their hat on and used to guide themselves. And once you have that, though, that’s where the customization has to come in. Right. And that depends on your schedule, your genes, your setup at home, what feels good to you, what doesn’t feel good to you. There’s so many variables. And I think on the one hand, you know, we always talk about averages in science and talk about the best for you, but we kind of are all special little snowflakes.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:32:05  Yes, we are. And we need to experiment and find out what works for us, because it’s not going to be the same for each of us. I’ve had two children, and my diagnosis means there’s no way I could get myself up on a surfboard, so I got to work on that. I would love to, but that’s okay, I can pretend.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:43  I do think that the five minutes every 30 minutes is a nice thing to aim for. Now, as I’m looking at my life like, right now, I’m like, okay, well, we are at 45 minutes. Ideally, we would have moved 13 minutes ago and being precise and I’m like, if I stand up, then I’m going to be too far from the microphone.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:33:01  And yeah. Right, right, right. It’s the whole thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:04  Now I’m suddenly like, oh, maybe I need to be wearing a headset. But the the point being, when you and I wrap up here, I will have time. I will go out now and.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:13  Yeah. And I’m like, do I go outside because my allergies are so bad? I’m gonna walk. I’m gonna walk somewhere some way for five minutes. And I’ve found that helpful. I’ve been doing it on planes because I’ve been traveling.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:33:25  Oh. Nice. It’s addictive. Right? Like, don’t people sort of look at you or, like or not addictive? It’s a contagious. That’s what I meant to say, that people see you moving and they start to, like, crack their neck and, like, roll their shoulders. And maybe a couple more people get up, too. And like, because I can’t sit now in airports to wait for my flight. So I just walk with my luggage in circles. And I’ve noticed that a lot of other people sort of stand are watching me and then start moving around too.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:51  I’ve mostly just noticed people watching me. Like what? And I’ve just interpreted like, why is this guy going in circles? Why is this guy going up and down this aisle for the fourth time? You know, like but perhaps it is contagious.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:34:07  I love.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:08  It. Yeah, I like traveling with Ginny because one of us can sit with all the luggage, and the other can just move, and then we switch, and then they switch.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:34:17  Yeah. Perfect, I love that. I mean, that I think we saw a couple things too, which is like. So, for example, like people who are in a power position, if you’re the boss and you say walking meetings are acceptable, then you set the tone for everyone. Or if you say, we’re going to change our Google Calendar settings so that all meetings are 55 minutes instead of 60. You know, that’s a power move, right? And I think it’s a good one because it actually shows your team. Like I understand that we are asking a lot of you, the average, you know, information worker uses between 11 and 13 different software tools and platforms every day. And like the way I’m going to use them is going to be different than you. But we all need breaks.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:34:59  Yeah. And then we also saw other people who are like, well, I don’t know what my boss would think about this, but if I see that I’ve got 16 minutes until my next meeting, that’s all fit in a quick movement break and then come to the meeting or I’ll say, like, I’m going to turn off my camera just because I’m not feeling well, and I’ll move around like people just found ways to sort of integrate it into their day as well. I mean, I’m a big fan. Video podcasts make this difficult, but I’m a really big fan of can we not do a zoom call? Can we do a phone call?

Eric Zimmer 00:35:31  Yes.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:35:31  And walking and.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:32  Talking me to and back when I used to work in an office, I used to do as many of the meetings as I could. I’d be like, let’s go for a walk. Let’s go for a walk.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:35:41  Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I actually, you know, we also know that when you walk side by side and your bodies sync up, that actually sinks up your brainwaves, which is fascinating to me.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:35:52  So, you know, you’re not having eye contact, so there’s not a confrontational feeling to it. Your bodies are sinking up. You might find some breakthroughs that you wouldn’t necessarily have if you’re both staring at each other, sort of staring at each other on zoom, which, by the way, has been shown to increase your cognitive load and wear you down even faster.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:11  Have you heard anything about. And I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s essentially the a disorder that comes from staring at yourself all the time.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:36:21  Oh, like body dysmorphia or more just distraction.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:25  It’s not quite body dysmorphia, but it’s something about the fact that, like, right now I’ve maximised you. But yes, at least on Riverside, I can’t get rid of me. So I see myself all, all the time. Some people have theorized that’s not good for us in some way, but I can’t quite. I can’t quite remember where I read it or what it.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:36:45  Was like Narcissa or something like that, but like, I don’t know about the mental health effects, but I can tell you, there’s a guy that I spoke to for the book who’s an Austrian researcher, where they studied the effects.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:36:57  So like how we talk about zoom fatigue. And they were like, well, what? It really is fatiguing and is that real? So they actually did a study where they measured it. And he said that what they saw was even just the slightest mismatch of timing. Like we wouldn’t notice it consciously, but our brain registers a slight change and it’s constantly adjusting for that change that also when you’re in person, you’re getting so much ambient data from someone, from their body language, you know, a furrow of the brow, the tone in their voice, and you’re not getting those over zoom. So you’re you’re constantly scanning, looking for other indications of what someone is thinking and feeling that you wouldn’t get just sort of very quickly if you were in person. And the third thing he mentioned was being distracted and seeing yourself because you’re then having I mean, I don’t know about you, but the conversation I’m having is like, Do I really look that tired in real life? My hair. I love the idea that the researchers studying zoom fatigue.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:38:03  How do they take their zoom meetings? He says that they get on their zoom, they keep their cameras on, and they say hello, just so they, you know, have a minute. And then they all shut their cameras off and they limit their meetings to they try to stick to ten minutes.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:19  The zoom fatigue piece makes sense to me because I do video interviews all the time, and I have found it hard to banter in the same way that I can in person, because there’s the slightest delay. We don’t notice it, but it’s there. It makes it just hard to interrupt you to say something clever Without interrupting you. Whereas in person, somehow we would read that between us and it and it would work. And it’s it’s one of my, one of my frustrations with this format is exactly that.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:38:55  So you and I actually had this experiment because we were on a panel together in person, and I remember looking across to you and having like, the slightest flicker of eye contact about whether I should answer the next question or the other guy on the panel should.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:39:18  And I wouldn’t have noticed if we didn’t then have zoom to compare it to in some ways, like, you know, the things that you just don’t even realize are things until you realize you don’t have them. And there was this philosopher, Tobias Reese, on the boat talking about how nobody talked about the need to get out into nature Until the middle of the 1800s and the Industrial Revolution. And then there was an alternative. People were living in cities and suddenly you realize, oh, nature is a thing. Or like, you know, David Foster Wallace, that story where the fish says to the other fish, how’s the water? And they’re like water. What do you mean, what’s water? And I think it’s the same thing that’s kind of happened for movements. Nobody said like a hundred years ago. Like, did you get enough movement in today? They were like, what are you talking about? But now, since we’re using technology to the point that we barely need our bodies, we’ve gotten so efficient at not needing the human body to do labor or to entertain or connect or get our information.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:40:26  We now have to talk about it. It’s something we have to be intentional and have language for which I find absurd. But, you know, this is where we are, and I. I’m not a Luddite. Like, I love my tech. I love the fact that you are in Ohio and I’m in San Francisco and we’re on a freaking call and people are gonna listen and hopefully they get something out of this. And we’re also dealing with real life and this crazy fire alarm and all the rest of it. Like, it’s kind of awesome. So totally not to be different about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:40:56  Yeah. You mentioned that you discovered a book. I don’t know how old the book was, but a book that essentially talked about a lot of the science that you’re talking about now and the actual remedy for it, but it was not a recent book.

Speaker 6 00:41:13  Oh, yeah. This was really quite funny.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:41:16  Strange. So I was going for a movement break on my block where I live in Brooklyn, and it’s great in my neighborhood, everybody puts books out on their stoops when they’re done with them, you know, take a book.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:41:27  And this book was from 1995, which didn’t feel like that long ago to me. But it is. It’s a that’s a long time ago now, 30 years ago. And it was about repetitive stress syndrome. So, you know, RSI and people. So my whole thing that I had concluded was like, we need to be treating ourselves even if we are, you know, laptops are our football or our violin or our jumbo jet. We have to be treating ourselves like people who use a tool to express themselves, a professional musician or an athlete or an airline pilot. We have to be treating ourselves like information athletes because our brain is our tool, and we’re not treating our brain right when we don’t give our bodies what it needs. And I was like, we gotta be information athletes. And then I came across this book on a stoop, and it had the same concept from 30 years ago, and it didn’t have the studies, but it said, based on what we now know, we think taking a break every half hour is probably a good idea.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:42:35  And I was like, how many times do we need to be told that our bodies need breaks and we just don’t listen? And I think what’s dangerous now is there are some people peddling this idea that AI will set us free, right? That, you know, it will take over all the drudgery and all the annoying stuff we have to do on our devices, and that will give us back our free time, and that this will mean that we can be fully self-actualized humans who can go frolic in fields and write poetry and watercolor and, you know, back to the land sort of movement. And as we know throughout history. And I chronicled this in the book, like going through every time there is an efficiency or an innovation that comes along. If anything, we just move less, you know, from the Threshers that you could sit on to call to. I don’t even know how to speak. Agriculture, to harvesting the wheat to drive through movie theaters and escalators and remote control monitors. And now even less so.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:43:47  The human body has been taught over evolution to save energy, to save calories. And so we just tried to move as little as possible. But we’re at this point where we need to, sort of defy the way that we’ve been. We need to do it on purpose in many ways.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:07  I came across a study. I’ll send it to you, afterwards. That debunks everything. You know, I’m just kidding.

Speaker 7 00:44:17  I’m kidding. I would’ve been like, oh.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:19  I’m kidding.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:44:20  You didn’t tell me that sooner.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:21  Yeah, exactly. I set you up, I let you lay out your case, and now I’m about to take it apart. No, it it’s, it’s in mice. It’s interesting in that it says here’s what it says.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:44:33  Is this mice or rats?

Eric Zimmer 00:44:34  Is it I don’t distinguish rodents. Yeah.

Speaker 6 00:44:37  Okay.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:38  Scientists found that abdominal muscle contractions compress blood vessels connected to the spine and brain, pushing fluid that gently moves the brain within the skull. This physical swaying provides evidence for how exercise might benefit brain health by washing away cellular waste.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:44:56  That is fascinating. Yeah, I would love to learn more about that, I think. To your point, there is so much we are learning about the interconnectedness of our organs. I’ll give you another example. Doctor Peter Strick at the University of Pittsburgh, his who’s this curmudgeonly guy whose kids were like, dad, you got to do Pilates. You got to do yoga to manage your stress. And he was like, why? There is no scientific evidence that shows that that actually reduces stress. It’s all woo woo.

Speaker 6 00:45:27  And then he was like, wait a minute. Is could we find biological proof that this actually.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:45:33  So this happens to be what he studies, which is the connection between the different organs and the brain. And so he mapped what happens when there is muscle contraction in the torso, abdominal region, how that affects the adrenal glands, which squirt, you know, cortisone up to the brain and tell us, you know, fight or flight sort of thing. And he found that there was a conversation going on between these abdominal muscles, the adrenal gland and motor cortex in the brain.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:46:02  So they actually are all talking. And there is a very good biological reason why you feel more relaxed and calm. Or as my Pilates teacher calls it, the Pilates high. After you’ve done it, they these things are all connected. And he says, you know, even if you just stand up and move, you can feel a bigger sense of relief. Now, there’s many reasons why you’re getting more oxygen, all of those things. But there is a conversation happening. So another, one that they’re starting to map over in Pittsburgh is the connection between, leg muscles and the colon and the brain, because we know that, if you are sedentary for too long, you know, you don’t have to go constipation, which can also be a contributing factor to colon cancer, actually. So not the factor, but a factor. You know, it’s just really exciting times in terms of mapping the conversation that’s going on between all the different organs and areas of the brain and muscles. And I think, you know, somebody said to me, he’s like, yeah, I think that we need to rethink it.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:47:12  It’s not a conversation between the body and the brain. It’s just one thing. And they’re all talking to each other all the time.

Eric Zimmer 00:47:19  I agree, I mean, that seems to be, at least to me, that like to talk about a body brain connection is to kind of separate them. I often think this way also about thoughts and emotions. I’m like, I’m not sure we talk about them as other separate. I’m not sure they are. Do you ever get one without the other? Like they tend to travel together? I mean, there are at least, you know, very good friends. There was another fascinating article in the New York Times this weekend about certain researchers think they found a third system in our body. There’s the circulatory system, there’s the lymphatic system. They’ve begun to think that there’s another system. They’re calling it the interstitial system that is passing fluid through the body. And it is an explanation for why acupuncture works.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:48:07  So like facial.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:08  Yeah. But but fluid passing through the fascia.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:13  Yeah. or or between the fascia and the muscles. I haven’t read it fully.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:48:18  Oh, okay.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:19  And I’m like, how do we miss an entire other.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:48:22  I mean, this is where, you know, it gets blurry, right? Like, on the one hand, like, my Pilates instructor is all about the fascia and melting it and soothing it and how that, like, releases tension throughout the body. And for the longest time, there wasn’t any research. And then the last few years there started to be research that says like, yeah, actually that is pretty important. But then we also have other people peddling all sorts of other names that are not scientifically proven in the slightest. And so.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:54  It’s.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:48:54  Tricky. It’s tricky. And it’s like, you know, something ancient wisdom. Maybe we don’t have the scientific proof, but we have centuries of, of of trying things out. And then we have other things where it’s actually very dangerous. Like it, it worries me like, you know, because maybe the people who can give raw milk as an example, I was talking to someone who was saying, you just need to try raw milk.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:49:20  It’s the way to go. And I was like, yeah, but what about the bacteria? And he said to me, well, you need clean cows. I’m like, okay, guess what? I don’t have any clean cows. And maybe the people who do and whatever fancy people can pay for their extra special clean milk. But when we’re talking about the majority of people who do not have access to even basic health care, I think we have to be looking out for the most vulnerable and the people who could use the most help. there’s always going to be people who can take crazy peptide shots and see their gurus, and they’ll probably be okay, even if they do some of these less scientifically convincing things, because their basic health is cared for majority of the time. So that was my little soapbox there, Eric.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:11  Well, I agree, I think this is part of what’s so challenging about science and and trying to sort of base your life on. What science is sort of saying is that I feel like it’s always incomplete, meaning something we know today to be absolutely sure.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:30  I don’t know what thing that we believe. To be absolutely sure today that science is telling us is wrong. But some of them are. Yeah. You know, I wish we knew which ones they were because you’d be like, discard that. But some of the scientific consensus around something is wrong. We just don’t know what it is. It’s why I always have been like, I kind of love it when, like, multiple things verify something for me. Yeah. So for example, I’m like, okay, well, oh, you know, Buddhists have been saying this for a long time. That’s interesting. Okay. That’s that’s one source of information. Okay. Oh, and now science is coming along and sort of saying like, yeah, a lot of that I think is true. Oh, and then the third sort, you know, the third source is like, oh, I seem to get benefit from when I do it and when, when I get that, it’s sort of like ding, ding, ding.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:17  Then I’m like, okay, this I feel like I can sort of trust. So like this 30 minute movement break, like there’s good science to show it. I think it’s common sense. And I’m going to try it and see for myself. Like, do I feel better if I do it, you know, on a regular basis? And I think that’s kind of what we all have to figure out is what science do we trust him because it is just so hard to know.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:51:41  Yeah. Be skeptical, then verify and then experiment. And I think.

Eric Zimmer 00:51:45  That’s a good way to say.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:51:46  It. Yeah, it reminds me that I love this high school teacher who took the body electric study and decided that she was going to use it in her classroom. She didn’t want to be like kids. We’re all moving now because they would have told her to f off, right? But she decided to use it as a way to teach data journalism, and health and wellness claims to question things. So they did it in sort of a meta way.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:52:15  They were like, okay, if we take part in this experiment, what is the data collection? How is the data? Good data. What does it mean to do an experiment over two weeks? What’s a baseline establishing week that they’re talking about. How does that work. How do we collect our data. How do we process it at the end? What are the claims that they’re making and why are they making those claims. Can we trust them? And then also where does the placebo effect fit into all of this? Like you feel better. Is that because you’re being asked like whether you feel better? Is like, you know, where does that fit into it? So I said to her, I was like, do you think that you change their habits in the end? She’s like, I think I taught them to be better consumers of health journalism. I think I taught them that they don’t have to be passive consumers. They can question these things themselves. And also if they’re like, oh no, my chargers upstairs and they’re like, Actually, it’s a chance to get in a flight of stairs if they think that once that is a win as well.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:53:20  And I love that idea that like media literacy, it is health literacy these days.

Eric Zimmer 00:53:27  As we wrap up, take one thing from today and ask yourself, how will I practice this before the end of the day? For another gentle nudge, join good Wolf Reminders text list. It’s a short message or two each week, packed with guest wisdom and a soft push towards action. Nearly 5000 listeners are already loving it. Sign up free at once. You feed us. No noise, no spam, just steady encouragement to feed your good wolf. That is a great story, and I think that is a great place for us to wrap up. Thank you so much much. I really enjoyed the book a lot. As I said, I cannot get the garden hose kinked garden hose metaphor. Both Jenny and I are like kindergarten.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:54:13  And you’re welcome.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:14  Yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s a good one. But the book is really good, and I learned a lot from it. And I always love talking with you.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:22  So thank you so much, Eric.

Manoush Zomorodi 00:54:23  You know, I’m such a big fan of you and your work and your book and the community that you have grown and tended like a beautiful garden over the last decade. Really.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:34  Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking. I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.