From "Can't Do This" to "Just Watch Me" - Midlife Fitness with Laura Dow (Ep. 22)

0:02 When the subject of fitness and sports comes up, I always kind of chuckle to myself, because I will confess to you that I did not play any sports. I was on the flagline in high school. I did try taekwondo when my kids were younger and they were doing it, but I did not grow up playing sports and I did not have a self image that told me that I could, if that makes sense. So I had to work on some mindset there, and you'll hear me talk about that in other episodes, for sure. But, that being said, I feel so strongly about the fact that we need to keep ourselves as fit and healthy as possible in midlife and, of course, beyond.

0:53 It doesn't just stop here. So this is something that I really, really am excited to talk to our guest about today. So let's go. Welcome to Mind your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time, unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and oh my goodness powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife.

1:36 This is the Mind your Midlife Podcast. You heard me say that I never played sports. I'm not a sporty person. I am learning golf now. Of course that's walking I am. Also I have been doing pure bar for five years and it has absolutely transformed my strength and my core, which is huge for me, and so I'm so thankful for that. But I really never. I never have loved exercise. One of the reasons that classes work for me and this is the same reason that maybe a class or a personal trainer would work for you is that once I'm committed, I've signed up, I'm within the window.

2:19 I can't cancel without some sort of penalty, then then I'm going to go, if that makes sense and maybe maybe you know exactly what I mean If I would just be going whenever I wanted to go, like my husband does. He likes to go, he wants to go. That's not me, but what we're going to talk about today is going to show us I think, maybe just underscore for us how important it is to do something, and you'll hear my guest, laura Dow, say maybe it's something very simple and easy. Ideally, it's something you enjoy, it's something and we need to get rid of the head trash about it, to get rid of the head trash about it.

3:08 So we're here to talk about fitness in midlife and how that is related to all the self-talk stuff that might be going on in our head from messages of ageism that we might have taken in about what we should or shouldn't be doing at these ages that we're in now, or what we should or shouldn't be able to do, or we're telling ourselves we're too old for something all that kind of mess. We're going to address that today if that's something you're doing to yourself. So Laura Dow is the creator and owner of Stiff to Fit, which is a fitness, yoga and wellness business that works with older adults to help them maintain their movement. She also is the author of the book Mind your Movement, and this is Mind your Midlife.

3:51 So, yeah, awesome, awesome title, and I will definitely have a link to her book in the show notes for you as well. She loves to exercise, but she also loves to read, cook, travel, enjoy some hot green tea, and she lives near Washington DC. So welcome Laura. Thank you, Cheryl. I'm very pleased to be here on this call with you. Yes, I'm looking forward to this conversation for sure. So let's just start this way. You work with midlife and older women in the area of fitness, so how did you end up doing?

4:34 that. So I had a long career as a classical musician when I was younger and when I moved out to California in the early 2000s I hoped to replicate that career and wasn't able to for a variety of reasons. And at the same time I had been in my own health and wellness journey and had lost a significant amount of weight. So I was still working out and doing all the things that I had done previously. And then I thought you know, I'm spending so much time in the gym, somebody should pay me for all this time that I spend in the gym. And it happened surreptitiously. But I got a part time job in a woman's only health club near where I lived in California and I love talking to the ladies about their own health and wellness journey.

5:19 And from that the owners noticed their two female owners noticed that and said Laura, we want you to do personal training. And I was like I'm not a personal trainer, I don't know how to do this and they said go get certified, we'll pay for it and then we'll, we will promote you. And that actually started everything. And the ladies that were in that club were predominantly middle-aged and older women and they were thrilled to have somebody that looked like them or that was their age or that had their life experience or whatever the commonality was. And from there, after that club closed, unfortunately. I adored that club. It was a great experience. I started working in regular commercial big box gyms and women would find me you know, older women would find me and they would be very happy to know that there was somebody that was, you know, closer to their demographic and their mindset and their lifestyle.

6:12 So it happened from the beginning. You know what I love that and it it makes a difference. I actually do pure bar as one of my main workouts and, and because of where I happen to live, I end up mostly in classes with 20 somethings, maybe early 30 somethings, and listeners. You may or may not know, I am not that age, I'm in my 50s and I can hang in there with them, but I do love it when there are people around my age. It really it makes us feel I don't know more accepted or belonging or something I think. Yeah, yeah, I just I do think that it's a commonality. We've gone through maybe the same type of upbringing or the same kind of life experiences with the music or the shows, or just the values of that time period, cause, you know, every generation's a little different.

7:04 So I've loved working with older women. It's been a real passion for me and I, as I said, just kind of fell into it at the beginning, but it's worked out very well for me and hopefully it's worked out great for my clients too. Yeah, I'm sure it has. And on that topic, as we're talking about liking to be with older women and helping older women, about liking to be with older women and helping older women, what we want to talk about today is focused around really ageism in this whole realm of fitness and sports. So when we even say the word ageism, what do we mean by that? Yeah, ageism is discrimination based on age. Now we look at ageism as discrimination against older folks, but it can be against younger people as well and there are some pretty good examples of both sides of it.

7:51 But because of the demographic that I work with and I'm also not in my 20s or my 30s I'm older than you. So for the folks who can't see us, I represent the demographic of an active, older woman. I represent the demographic of an active, older woman. I look at ageism. The insidious part of ageism is the negative stereotypes that go along with being older, and this is particularly relevant in the realm of fitness or exercise or movement and for women, because women that are typically my age and older did not have access to team sports growing up. So Title IX came into effect in 1972. And there were court challenges to that, especially in the public school systems.

8:35 They were receiving federal money. There were a lot of legal challenges to that so that when I got into high school and beyond, there still weren't really a lot of teams for women. They were just starting to happen, even though I was younger when Title IX was passed. So I still run into women who have never weight trained. They've never picked up a weight. I've run into women that I trained that have never been in a commercial big box gym, that never played a team sport. I mean, this is actually very common in the demographic and they do run into ageism. Shall I give you an example? Please do, absolutely Okay. So I'm on a task force right now. This subject is near and dear to my heart that's dealing with ageism in fitness.

9:18 So we're in the middle of writing a white paper for the industry and we've done a lot of research, and so one of the things that we've found is that the it's interesting how group fitness instructors title their class names for older adults. So you will have something like this, and this is very this seems very mild. This doesn't seem like it's a problem at all. They'll have chair yoga for seniors. Now, I'm a registered yoga teacher and I have some real opinions about that, so let me share with you, if I may, a couple of things, because that sounds pretty innocuous, right? What's wrong with chair yoga for seniors? So I'm going to ask you, and I'll ask the audience, who are seniors? Are seniors 60 and up?

10:00 Are seniors 65 and up? Do you know that we have 58 million people 65 years and older that all the way up past 100? So there's 58 million people in this demographic if we call 65 and older. Older. So like a 65 year old is going to have a lot of different ability than a 90 year old potentially. And somebody who's been sedentary all their life at 70 may be not in such good shape and not function well, versus someone who's 80 and has had a yoga practice for their entire life or for decades of their life. So chair yoga for seniors. So I'm not sure who that's for. Then the title of it it tells you that it's a chair yoga, so it's going to be seated.

10:42 Well, that's not bad. If I have a leg injury and I can't stand and I'm 40 years old, I might want to take that class. Or if I have vertigo from maybe a car accident or whatever, I may want to take that class. So if I'm a younger demographic, should I not take that class because it's labeled for seniors? So our issue with class titles is that it doesn't tell you the level of ability that you need to take the class safely. So our focus in this task force and I fully agree with this is that focus on your ability, not your age yes, the number that you are doesn't matter. It matters, like what's your current functioning and what more do you want to do, or how do you want to live your life, and does your functioning match how you want to live your life?

11:27 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And you know what? I don't think I'm sure I've seen a class titled that. I know I've seen a video titled that because I got one for my mom when she was having health issues and she needed to do something like in a chair, as you're saying. Sometimes it makes sense, but I never thought about the fact that. Yeah, who are we saying this is for and why are we saying that? Yeah, so I can get on my soapbox very easily about this. Because when you say chair yoga for seniors, if I went out on the street and did a little in-person interview, I think most people would come up with negative comments about what chair yoga for seniors is.

12:10 They might say, oh it's gentle, oh it's easy. Oh it's easy, oh, it's for old people, which, by the way, there's no old people, there's older people but not old people, just like there's not young people, there's younger people. So I think the whole ageism issue is for us to get much more nuanced about how we refer to human life, the continuum of human life, that there's not young people and old people. There's tons of folks along the continuum and it's all relative. If I'm 64, which I am 64, then someone who's 65 is older, they're not old, and someone who's 54 is younger but they're not young.

12:50 Does that make sense, the distinction that I'm trying to make? It? absolutely does, and someone who is 64 could be as active as someone who's in their 30s. Yet that 54-year-old could be really incapacitated. Who knows? Yeah, exactly, that's a great point. One of the things that we do mention in this white paper is that you absolutely cannot tell what somebody's history of exercise is, which is really important to how they may be functioning at this point, what their history of exercise is or what their ability is based on. Knowing what the age is, what the number is, right. So the insidious part of the ageism I mean there's blatant ageism where you're not given a job because you're your ex, you know, you're over the hill, which is a terrible phrase.

13:37 I mean there's a whole range of phrases that you don't want to use anymore, that we used to use quite commonly, of someone based on their age for any reason. That's ageism and that's kind of crazy, because I hadn't thought of it like that. You know, prior to being 64, like maybe five to 10 years ago, I this was not on my radar, but as I age and as I continue to help my clients stay active and stay independent and stay functioning, it kind of just, you know, grates my cheese a little bit when we have fitness classes that are not you don't know going in what level of ability you're supposed to have, and we do have people coming into fitness into, like retirement communities now that are 70, that have worked out in commercial big box gyms for years, or they've run 10Ks for years, or they've skied in the Alps for years.

14:32 I mean they've been active, a lot more active than previous demographics. So we need to look at something keep them functioning at the level to which they're accustomed, if there are no prevalent medical or health issues that get in the way. Yeah, so I'm a very big advocate of let's look at our language, let's look at these class, let's look at you know my clients will sometimes do the same thing. They won't dumb themselves down, but they'll undercut themselves about what's possible for them. You know this is not the pink dumbbell. I'm not a pink dumbbell trainer, and what I mean by that is that sometimes in retirement communities in particular, which I've worked in, you get two and three pound dumbbells.

15:17 Now, if you have an injury or you have some reason why you can't lift more, that's fine. But we know that the human body adapts to the exercise that's being put on it over time. So at some point in time, if you're still using three pound dumbbells, you know a year from now, something's very wrong, unless you have a health issue that prevents you from moving up, because your body's gotten used to it in a couple of months. So we need to continue to challenge the human body within reason and safely, and that's kind of what I'm all about. Yes, yes, yes, I really agree with that and in my personal experience, the only types of workouts or exercise that have ever made a difference for me have been weight related either body weight or weight weight related.

16:04 And you do have to keep increasing. 100% agree, absolutely agree. I want to take this kind of in two different directions, so I'm going to pick one and then we'll see how we get back to the other one. So we've been talking about differing abilities at different ages and how it doesn't really go with the age, and when I was getting ready to chat with you, I went to my pod squad Facebook group our little group of pod fans and asked them if they would have any questions for you, and Sarah in the group said well, I don't know how to reconcile what we should be doing at this age whatever age 50, let's pick versus what we want to do or like to do.

16:56 And to me, that question was perfect for this discussion, because what is this? What we should be doing, right? Yeah, it's a great question because that's a very, again, common question across. You know people who start to become more active with exercise. They all want to know. Well, there's too much information. I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to begin. So, yes, let me address that. So, first of all, I don't believe in the word should. I know that we have recommendations about exercising and I think that if you look at some of the organizations that promote their recommendations, which are reasonable recommendations, you'll go down a rabbit hole about. I can't possibly fit in 150 minutes a week of exercise, which is one of the standard recommendations.

17:40 If you're doing nothing, 150 minutes seems like it's four days of exercising. It just seems overwhelming. And, let's face it, most of us have a very full life already with whatever it is that we're doing, and carving out that time to create more space for exercising can be very difficult. So I kind of throw should out the door. If you're an elite level athlete or you're preparing for an athletic event, then there are some shoulds maybe in that scenario or in that equation. But I'm not going to worry about that right now. I want to deal with Sarah's. You know, the more basic issue, which is how do you get started? Like, what do you do to get started? I would say start where you're at. So what does that mean?

18:21 That means, well, is she doing any exercising now? And if she's doing exercising now, what is she doing? Is it working out okay? What are her goals? Because there's movement for movement's sake, which is important, like daily movement is important. So a 10-minute walk, that could be daily movement. Cooking in a kitchen for a couple of hours, that could be daily movement. Playing with grandchildren for a while we know how vigorous that can get that's daily movement. Formal movement is another part of the equation. So does Sarah do a barre class? Does Sarah take a yoga class? Does she have a weight training thing that she does? Does she go for a walk with a friend after dinner for 30 minutes?

19:02 After that, I would say what does Sarah like to do? So the part about liking to do something it's important, as you begin to think about more movement, that it's pleasurable in some degree, some way, shape or form, or else you're not going to do it. If it's really miserable, why were we spending the time or the money to do it? So it's got to have some kind of pleasure to it For me as a fitness professional, I have pleasure in moving my body. That feels good. I have pleasure in being strong, so that feels good. But people are not me. That's why people like me exist, right, yes. So I think it's really important to find something that you enjoy doing.

19:45 Now, if you hate exercise altogether, which a lot of my clients do, then find a workout buddy, somebody that you enjoy their company. You've got to find a hook of some sort or other, right? So if the exercising itself doesn't do it for you, but you know you should be doing it, figure out a scenario that is going to be tolerable for you. So, maybe looking forward to a walk with a friend, maybe you have a dog, you have to walk the dog. Maybe you have a dance class that you really enjoy or you dance in your kitchen, that's fine. So it's the working with yourself that's really critical, and forgetting about what works for you or what works for me, that might not work for Sarah and probably won't work for Sarah.

20:28 So she's got to kind of use a little bit of brain cells to figure out, well, who's Sarah and what is Sarah like? Right, and it makes me think about a quote a confused mind says no meaning. If we throw too much information at people, you can't make a decision, so we don't do anything. And maybe that's what people get stuck in with this. I, maybe I'll do this, maybe I'll do that. I don't know which one's better. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would say that any movement is better than no movement. So we had talked about. You know what's one of the top tips that you can give? Well, more movement is better than no movement within reason. And yes, of course, you want to be a good student or you want to tick the box off you.

21:12 Okay, I got movement today. So what are the things to look for? Rhythmic movement. So we call that cardio or aerobic exercise, it used to be called. So walking is one of the easiest ways to get rhythmic movement. Biking is rhythmic movement. Swimming is rhythmic movement. Dancing is rhythmic movement. So that's all of those things, and we can come up with some more. Those are great. Okay, to do those more days of the week than not would be a really good goal. If you're not exercising at all, okay, 10 minutes, don't worry about the. You know whatever the organization says. And then weight training is really critical, like being able to manage your body weight through different positions with good form, good posture, you know, not hurting yourself.

21:54 So some kind of weight training routine would be really helpful as well, and that could be as little as 10 minutes every other day. It doesn't have to. You don't have to go to a gym. You don't have to spend the money. You don't have to, you know, worry about clothes or other people. You just you can do stuff at home. Body weight stuff at home works really well and during pandemic we didn't have health clubs anyway. So, a lot of us did work out at home. You can get a video, you can have a membership to somebody's channel and do weight training at home. Then we want something to do with your core, which the bar, I'm sure helps you a lot with core, because you've got to have really good muscle control, so you're getting a lot of good stuff I'm sure helps you a lot with core because you've got to have really good muscle control, so you're getting a lot of good stuff right in your barre class.

22:35 And then some stretch and mobility. So some people take yoga class. That would work. But just as we get older, one of the things that we do need to do is we need to prepare the body better for working out. So when we were 20, maybe we could jump right in and just go running. We didn't have to do any kind of nothing, we didn't have to warm up at all. But when we're 50, 60, 70, 80, those joints have seen a lot of life, and so you need to work those joints through their range of motion, which, if that sounds like gobbledygook, all that means is just some unweighted movements with your arms, with your legs. It's very simple. You need about five to 10 minutes of that, and then you're pretty much good to go. That's a great overview and if you're listening to this right now, maybe you save this episode or you rewind back and jot down what Laura just said.

23:22 That was a great overview, because I feel like, okay, I'm thinking about sort of these boxes you gave us, which ones am I checking? I need to do better with my stretching. I know that and I do notice it seems a little more challenging to be flexible now. I do notice that. So I know what you're saying. We need a little bit more maybe. But now that I just said that the other direction I want to take this conversation is self-talk, and maybe we need to be careful with the things we say because, as I'm saying it's harder now, I'm thinking to myself well, should I be saying it's harder now? So I know you work with a lot of your clients on this and we're sort of being bombarded, as we were talking about earlier, with these messages that now we're old or we can't do this or that, and it's young people we see being fit.

24:17 There's just a mix of everything. So how does self-talk and mindset come into it for you? Well, I could do like a week and a half on this, because self-talk is just so critical. I mentioned at the beginning, when you asked about ageism I use the word insidious and that was about the negative stereotypes that we use to pigeonhole people based on the number that they are, their chronological age, rather than what their ability is or what their history of movement is. So the same thing is true with self-talk, and it's probably even worse because at this point we've lived with ourselves for however many decades, and sometimes we're not even aware of the messages we're sending ourselves, and the messages that we send ourselves are often based on the messages we're receiving.

25:02 So it's this big, can be this big negative feedback loop in a really impactful way. That's not good eventually. So self-talk, I think, becoming more aware and slowing down, which is a problem. In Washington DC, which is where I'm located, I have a lot of clients that have very high level jobs and that are very accomplished and that are go, go, go, and their jobs require a lot of intellectual ability, so their brains are always on and this this having having the time and the space to just sit and take a breath and just pause and reflect is basically non-existent with a lot of the clients that I work with. So getting them to slow down and just well, what do you feel in your body?

25:43 Okay, and it's a fairly easy thing to go from what are you feeling in your body to what is your mind saying about this. You know, what, what, what kind of mess? What are you saying inside? Sometimes they actually say it out loud. If they say it out loud, I can deal with it. It's like, okay, you just said that you didn't think you do. You related this exercise somehow to you're too old for this or you can't do this because of your age, like what's that all about? I mean, you just did a 10 pound bicep curl. You know clearly you can do it, so you just disproved yourself. Are you aware of that? So I try to point out the disconnect when it comes out of their mouth. We need to have a conversation and I try to kindly, because I don't think people not to be up in their face.

26:27 I don't think that that approach really works. But kindly say, are you realizing that you just said one thing but your body did something different that was in direct contradiction to what you said. You know there's a disconnect, so maybe you really are more capable than what you think. And again, people hire trainers because the trainer will generally have an ability to see what's possible for that client. So it's my job to challenge. If you were my client, it would be my job to assess you. Where are you at? What's going on, what's affecting your exercising, what are your goals? And then it's my job to help you on that journey, to get your goals and to be able to walk that fine line of challenging you enough, challenging your body enough to make gains, but not challenging you so much that you have an injury.

27:16 You're unsafe and it's hard sometimes, especially with new people that you don't have a long-term relationship with. But, yeah, self-talk and self-image and the whole, you know, whatever your internal dialogue is, I would highly recommend that people just take a breath and look at what they're saying to themselves, particularly when they're getting frustrated or stressed. Yeah, I like sort of the juxtaposition if I may use a big word, I think I'm using it right of this where you're helping them exercise and I think maybe we all need to hear that is it's not a big race to do the most exercise in the most little, the littlest time.

28:06 We need to pay attention to what's going on in our bodies, of course, so we don't get injured, but also all the the head stuff, yeah. Yeah, I think the two things come to mind when you're, when you rephrase that Thank you. One is this is a famous story in my story, my repertoire of client stories I have a client, a judge in DC, who likes to have lists and check off the list, check off the box on the list, and so I'll make up her name. I would say to her okay, michelle, okay, so you just checked off the box of your exercising. I said, but let's back up here for a second. It's not about checking the box off, it's about were you paying attention to how your body was moving?

28:51 Were you breathing? Were you aware of what you were feeling? Were you thinking, gosh, I'm so strong, I can do this. I mean, it's not just do, do, do, do, do. It's also let's have a connection here of the brain and the body, the mind and the body together. And I've been after her for a while. She's a long-term client. I've been after her for a while and now she laughs when I talk about the list. She knows exactly where I'm going, but more often than not she's much more present to what she's doing. So the second part of your reframe that came to mind was that, in my background as a yoga teacher. We spend a lot of time about the breath and about being present to how we're feeling and what, not only emotionally, mentally, but physically.

29:34 That's really the starting point, and the breath is the starting point in yoga, at least the way I was trained and so that's particularly difficult for anybody who lives in an urban environment, who, it's like on, you have to be on all the time just to be able to take a breath and to just kind of slow down and just kind of like stop for a second and pause and be still. I mean, that's really difficult for a lot of people. So I come to training with some extra tools in my toolbox. I was never an athlete myself, as I mentioned about Title IX, so I did not. Typically a lot of trainers come with a big athletic background or they've played sports or whatever the scenario is, and I didn't have any of that.

30:15 I had the discipline of music as my background when I came, and also social work when I came into the field. So yoga has helped me enormously with helping clients to, you know, kind of slow down and pay attention. Interesting, interesting. And it's funny because on the day we're taping this, I just released a podcast episode about the power of music and how good it is for your brain and your body. So isn't that funny that it's all connected. It is all connected for sure. I think this has been absolutely packed full of great information and I'm going to ask you in a minute to give us like our big thing to remember. But first, before you help us pull all that together, because I might need help, tell me where, if someone's listening and they want to know more about you or connect with you in some way, where can they do that?

31:10 Sure, so my company is called Stiff2Fit S-T-I-F-F-T-O-F-I-Tcom, and that's my website. You can find me there. There's a contact form if you'd like to reach out. If you're in the DC area, you can just Google me and you can probably find me online. I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm very responsive to LinkedIn requests. So I'm Laura Dow and you'll see my picture. I'm if you see the lady in the kayak, that's me. I love it, and then I'm also on YouTube. So if you're looking for some actual examples of some exercises that I recommend, I do have a short yoga practice. That's chair yoga, but it's chair yoga.

31:51 It's chair yoga for anybody. It's chair yoga for people who need chair. I'm not against chair yoga, so don't send me hate mail. I like chair yoga. It has its place in the universe. Don't send me hate mail. I like chair yoga. It has its place in the universe. What I'm against is labeling it based on age rather than based on what does a person need. You know, somebody who's 20 might need to be sitting in a chair for lots of different reasons, but I am on YouTube under Stiff to Fit and I have the chair yoga and I have a standing yoga practice, as well as a couple of videos on some mobility practices. Oh fantastic. Yeah, mobility I'm going to have to go and look at, because mobility, I can tell, is going to be the thing I need to focus on for sure. And I also I want to mention my book, of course, because that was a big deal for me in 2024.

32:36 Yes, tell us just briefly a little bit more, yeah. Sure. So I've written a book called mind, your movement. It's six essential physical and mental tools to stay active as you age. It's on Amazon and Kindle and on paperback, and it basically I wanted I'm thinking in terms of my legacy and I wanted to take the 20 years plus of being in the fitness and yoga industry and encapsulate it into some common sense information that anybody reading the book could pick at least one thing that's immediately actionable from the book. I have client vignettes that are based on true client stories. Their identities are camouflaged so that you can see that there are real people with real problems and how we dealt with it, and the book is kind of split up between some physical tools and mental tools.

33:23 So some of the self image things I talk about, self talk, but also how to get your mind on board so that your mind is supporting your body and that your body is responding to your mind, so that you're not at war with yourself. You know what I I'm so glad that we brought that into the discussion, Because when I saw originally when we met that into the discussion, because when I saw originally when we met that the title of your book was Mind your Movement, I said, well, that's a good fit for Mind, your Midlife podcast, isn't it Absolutely Excellent? Well, as we're trying to wrap all this together, what would you say? I always call it the OMG moment. What would you say is the thing that people need to remember from this episode?

34:03 I would say a couple of tidbits of common sense information. First of all, more movement is better than no movement. So if you're laying on the couch for hours, get off the couch every hour and do a something, whether that's you know, dance around your kitchen for two minutes, whether it's you know. People poo-poo very small efforts. They say, oh, that's not going to make any difference. And I'm here to tell you that if you do small things consistently, they morph into big things over time. So and that's one of the themes of the book is that if you have to be, take a small step that you can do and it doesn't matter if it's you know, don't compare yourself to other people, it doesn't matter.

34:48 Take something you can do now, today, and then do that consistently every day or every other day, whatever your consistent is, and then do that for weeks and months and you will start to see change. That's part of change is to do something different. So more movement is better than no movement within reason. Start now is another common sense idea. And try to do things that you feel like you're going to be successful at. That's really important too. This gets into that self-image thing. I have clients again. I live in DC. It's kind of a crazy place where people who have been on the couch for months because of pandemic or they lost their job or whatever the scenario may be, they had an illness they then decide, okay, I've had enough of this, I've been on the couch for a year, I want to go run a 5k.

35:29 Well, please don't don't go from zero to 5k in the space of a month like, like, let's have some realistic, you know, thoughts here. Let's have a plan which is where trainers come in or a physical therapist or whoever your fitness. You know people may be that you can reach out to. I can design a very nice plan for you. You know, couch to 5k you can Google that online. But you know it's very doable. But it has to be done intelligently or you put yourself at risk for injury and you also may not like the process very much at all. So that celebration part of that success part, I think is really key to helping people stay consistent. Yes, I fully agree, and those are things that maybe people can easily remember too, which is really important.

36:12 We are all surrounded by information all the time, so we need things that stick in our head. Oh, I remember when Laura said that more movement is better than nothing, so let me just get up off the couch at the end of this show, or whatever. Yes, fully agree. Well, laura, this has been a fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for joining me Well. thank you very much for having me. I've thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. There was so much to take away from that discussion. I feel like I understand a little bit better what to watch for in messages I'm getting from the media social media, other people about fitness at various ages, and messages I'm getting from myself about fitness at various ages, and I'm just going to kind of let that simmer and chew on that for a little bit, because it's powerful what we're telling ourselves, no matter whether it came from inside or it came from outside.

37:17 It's powerful, and I appreciate Laura's message on that and also the list of the different types of activities that would be good for us to be doing. Oh, my goodness, fantastic. Save this episode, share it with your friends. I think we can all get something out of it. Go to CherylPFishercom slash, read and grab Laura's book, or at least take a look at it, and then, if you want to come, hang in the pod squad with us. You will see the link for that Facebook group in the show notes as well. Mind your midlife pod squad and make sure you have hit the follow button, because we're going to continue this theme sort of next week. We're going to talk about mindset when it comes to sports and activities and basically dig deeper into this idea of are we getting frustrated when we're trying to learn something new?

38:12 What do we do about that? How do we become resilient? Related to that, so I can't wait for you to join me. Oh, my goodness. Let's keep creating confidence and success, one thought at a time.