When you let a lagging indicator dictate your leading effort, you're trying to drive a car by only looking at the rear view mirror. Does that make sense? I'm going forward. I'm going into the future. I'm going to where I want to go, but I'm not looking ahead. I'm looking at the mirror and I'm going over my shoulder to see what's going on behind me. That is an optimization. That's not optimal, right? That is dependency. Welcome to Body Holic with D. We don't do fads here. We give you the facts that move your body and health forward. Wait up, hold up. I'm not a doctor. The information in this podcast is for informational purposes only and not medical advice. So kick back and enjoy the show. Welcome to Body Holic with D. I am your host, Dee. And before we get started, I want to give Ben Gonzales a big thank you because he is the greatest producer ever. And it's not only that he's just very gifted at what he does, but he also deals with me very patiently, also, and with a smile on his face. So thank you, Ben. And then the next thing I want to say is thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in and downloading the episodes and listening and liking on YouTube and et cetera, et cetera. Because of you and because you do that and you interact with our content, Body Holic with D is growing. And that means that we reach and help more and more people. So if you have not rated Body Holic with D five stars, please do that. Please share because if you share, we get exposed to more and more people and can help more people. So a big thank you for tuning in and a big thank you for sharing. All right. Finally, one more intro note is an apology. So sorry for my voice. My sinuses have acted up once again. Those of you who've been following me for a while know that this happens to me often during the winter. But there's no way I was gonna cancel today's discussion because it is really on my mind and it's like on the tip of my tongue, and I've gotta talk to you about this. So here's what we're gonna talk about. If you are checking your wrist to see if you're tired before you check in with your own nervous system, you and I, you and I really need to talk. We are living in the most data-rich era in human history, obviously. We have rings, we have straps, we have watches, we have smart scales, we have regular scales, and we track everything, every heartbeat, every breath. And yet, somehow we have never ever been so confused about our own bodies. Here's the hard truth. We don't know when to push, we don't know when to pivot, we've become experts at reading graphs, and we are actually becoming illiterate, excuse me for being harsh, when it comes to actually reading ourselves. So I'm here to say, and and this is why I could not cancel no matter what, that your body is not the problem. It's that your feedback loop is broken. And of course, if if this doesn't apply to you, but you're seeing it around you, then I'm gonna say, I'm gonna just make sure that we're clear on the fact that I'm I'm giving you the general your. Okay. Maybe you're the exception to the rule. Today I'm going to discuss and show you and break down how we have lost the ability to read our own internal signals and more importantly, how to rebuild that skill without actually rejecting science and uh without rejecting the structure and without rejecting your ambition. All right. Ben, you're not gonna believe this, but did you ever notice that I have nothing on my hands? I don't have a watch. You know? I don't. Nothing. Everybody's shocked when they see a personal trainer, a fitness instructor. Um, basically me. People are also shocked that it's that me who loves the data, who loves the fitness, who loves understanding the body and the physiology. People are amazed that I don't have a watch. I don't have a Garmin. I don't have an Apple Watch. I don't have an anything. I don't even have the health app on my Apple phone. I don't um, I don't have the fitness app on. My husband has the Apple Watch. He has the the app on. My mom has the app on. Everybody, all the people who work out with me send me um the data after the workout. I don't know. Back in the day, I I want to say like 13 years ago, 15 years ago, I remember I put on, remember the polar strap? Do you guys remember? Do you know what I'm talking about? The polar strap. I had the polar strap on. And I remember getting all excited that it would read my, um, it would read my heart rate. And so I knew when to push harder because I want to get to 70% of my max heart rate. And um, I got all excited about the technology. And then I realized that it was just bothering me. I wasn't focused on the actual workout. And I I let it go. Also, I didn't like the sweat in the in the strap. Excuse me. So I had that. And then I remember for, I think as a wedding gift, my in-laws bought me a garmin. But again, this was this is an old garment. And I remember loving it. And then very soon after that, it was just getting in my way of just focusing on my workout, and I got rid of it. What I want to talk about, and the first concept I want to bring up that basically this word sums up what I'm introducing to you. It is the interoception, the concept of interoception. There is a biological superpower that you possess that most people have actually never heard of, and it's called interoception. What it means is it's basically your brain's internal dashboard. It is the constant stream of data that is traveling from your heart to your lungs and your gut to your brain. And that's a lot of data. And it's super, when I say constant, it is constant. It is always happening. And it's what tells you when you're hungry or when you're stressed or when you're recovered. Even when you're actually ready to hit um, you know, full-blown rest or full-blown activity. And it's not, it can the way I explained it, I feel like it can sound like kind of woo-woo, um, artsy fartsy kind of intuition. But no, this is actually a physiological skill. And modern life as we know it today is slowly, quietly killing it. And when you override deep fatigue, for instance, with a third espresso, right? And you know I'm a coffee lover. But when you override deep fatigue or ignore a nagging pain that's constantly on your mind, it's nagging you because the app that you're looking at says that your readiness score is high, for example. I don't even know what that means because that's how disconnected I am from the apps. Um, or your, I don't know, you have to get more steps in your push through chronic stress, pain, going over, overriding your fatigue because um, I'm doing air quotes right now. The program demands that you do that, is not you being um, it's not you not being disciplined, if you will. Okay. What it is, it's you muffling up the signal that your body is giving you. So you're not failing, is what I'm trying to say. And you you're not failing because you lack motivation. That's not it. Okay, so you're not an undisciplined person, you don't lack motivation. You're failing because you've atrophied the part of your brain that knows how to read and interpret its own biology. All right, let me let me say that again. Your brain understands signals innately. And when we keep not listening to those signals and we keep listening to the apps and the watches and the scales and the blah blah and this and that, then we are uh destroying that part of the brain that understands those signals and interprets them in a way that benefits us. So I want to get one thing super straight because I know it can be misconstrued. I believe that data is important and data is not the enemy by any means. I love data, okay? But data without interpretation is actually just noise, right? When we look at uh science and we look at um papers, and when we just see, you know, points on a graph and that's it, but we're not looking at the why and the how and what caused this, what may have caused that, it's just points on a graph. So I want you to think of it this way. Your wearable tech is basically giving you lagging indicators. It tells you what happened yesterday. It's those, it's those dots on the graph. It tells you how you slept or how many steps you took in the past, right? Not how many you're going to take. It tells you how many steps you took. But your internal sensations, the leading indicators, they tell you what is possible right now. Right. The tech is giving you lagging indic indicators. Lagging indicators meaning what has happened, how you slept at night, how uh you did yesterday in terms of physical activity, how many calories you ate yesterday, blah, blah, blah. Um, but the internal sensations, that is your leading indicator. That's what you need to tune into in order to understand what's going on now, what is feasible now, and how to uh curate, if you will, your future. So when you let a lagging indicator dictate your leading effort, okay, you with me? We're clear on the lagging and the leading, correct? When you let a lagging indicator dictate your leading effort, you're trying to drive a car by only looking at the rear view mirror. Does that make sense? I'm I'm going forward, I'm going into the future, I'm going to where I want to go, but I'm not looking ahead. I'm looking at the mirror and I'm going over my shoulder to see what's going on behind me. That is an optimization. That's not optimal, right? That is dependency. And dependency eventually turns into anxiety. And I want you to think about that for a minute. Think about yourself having to uh kind of ask constantly, what's going on? What is this? How do I, you know, you don't know what's going on. That's anxiety, right? When you start asking, what does the app allow me or tell me to feel? What am I supposed to do according to the app? And you're constantly checking instead of actually, how do I really feel? How does my body, what is my physology actually saying? That is anxiety and stress-inducing. And it's the exact moment where you stop being the CEO of your own health and you are just a passenger. And I don't want you to be the passenger of your health and your life. Absolutely not. And certainly, you know, my love for all the tech and everything, I don't want any of these companies to be the CEO of your health and your life and your body. Whenever we struggle, the the world screams the same advice. You need more grit, more discipline. Just do the work. Right? The apps are saying it, the watch is saying it, the social media is saying it, everybody's saying it, the misconceptions, the prejudice, everything is saying when you're when you're super struggling, okay, everybody's saying you need more grit, more discipline, just do it. And I'm here to tell you that discipline without feedback is not strength. Discipline without feedback is blind compliance. And I never want you to be blindly compliant. So if you're driving a car, we're gonna go back to that analogy for a moment, and the engine is overheating, the lights turning on and flashing, the engine is overheating. Do you keep the pedal on the freaking floor? Do you keep pushing down? I mean, how ridiculous is that? When I give you the car analogy, how ridiculous does that sound? And do you do it to prove that you are so incredibly disciplined? Your car is overheating. You're gonna start seeing smoke in a second. And you're like, oh yeah, well, I'm just gonna slam, slam the gas because I'm gonna show everybody that I've got grit and I'm disciplined. Do you realize when I make the comparison to the car, how ridiculous that is? You don't do that. You pull over and you investigate. You pull the fuck over and investigate the situation. Your body is telling you something is going on. So in the fitness world, and this is something that I constantly see, we have fetishized fetishized, that's a difficult word to say. We fetishized the the grind so much that we've actually forgotten that your body doesn't reward effort, it rewards adaptation. And if you are a trainer, for instance, right? I know I have a lot of trainers who listen, and I and I love you for that. You're an amazing trainer for wanting to know more and expand your horizons. So, especially to you, all right, I want to say your body rewards adaptation, all right? It's not the idea of pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing. Look at me. I'm I showed up. I have not been feeling well. I showed up today after a few days of taking it really, really easy because I knew I wanted to show up for you today. And I knew that for that I had to take it easy for a couple of days. So you can't adapt to a signal that you refuse to hear, right? Did am I making sense here? Pushing through every single red light or every single signal, like like the car is overheating, um, isn't mental toughness. It's actually a fundamental misunderstanding of how high performance actually works. Right. I want you to think of like a movie scene where you see the uh soccer player, the basketball player, or oh my God, I even I saw that Simone Biles incredible documentary, she's amazing. Um, oh, I've got the chills on Netflix, I think it was, where she's in Tokyo and she's like, I'm not doing this. And she was in so much pain. I can't remember the what exactly happened, but I think it was her ankle.

Um

She was on painkillers and they were trying to have her push through. And she called up her mom and she was like, I can't do it. And her mom was like, Come home. And which devastated Americans all over America, people were, she was receiving backlash that was absolutely what I feel completely unacceptable. Received backlash that you would never ever want your child or yourself to receive. And I'm looking at that and I'm thinking to myself, of course you went home. You're an Olympic champion. If you don't take care of that poor ankle of yours, then you're you're you're screwed. Right? The right thing for her to have done was to actually turn back. So that's what I mean by ignoring and pushing through the signals as a fundamental misunderstanding of high performance and achieving high performance and showing off your abilities and high performance. At Bodyholic specifically, um, we don't just train muscle. This is uh true for me on all the bodyholic programs and in the studio. It's actually true for all my trainers, which is why I believe I have such an incredible group of people working with me. Because we go by the notion of we train dialogue. Okay. It's not all about the muscle because structure is a container. It's not a cage. Okay. Stra I love structure. I'm a structure person, big time. I'm a habit person, I'm a structure person. Um, people will even tell you that I'm extreme, which I don't feel, but uh so we want to create a container and not a cage. And we want to use metrics that or uh use metrics and any tools that support you. And we don't want those metrics and those tools to be your authority figure. Okay, only you should be your authority figure. You and your wonderful brain of yours. The strongest people that I have ever coached, and I am, I'm gonna take a moment here of gratitude. I have been blessed to coach incredible individuals in incredible spaces. The ones who stay lean, the ones who stay strong and energized. I'm not talking about uh weeks or days, talking about decades. People who have stayed strong and lean and energized and sharp for decades. Those aren't the ones who push hard every single day blindly. Those are the ones who listen the best, who listen closely, who are very, very attuned to the body's signals. They know the difference between, I'm again, I'm doing the air quotes, they know the difference between I'm lazy and I'm underrecovered. The difference between I'm hungry and I'm bored. They have mastered the art of responding to their body instead of reacting to it, really responding, really working as a team. You know, the the brain, the signals, listening in, not doing things mindlessly. Um, the opposite, being mindful about regarding things that are going on in your body. I can tell, I'm gonna say this uh one thing about myself. I can tell that I'm gonna be sick in about three days. It's so interesting. And I'll, I'll say to I'll say I have conversations with my husband. I'm like, uh-oh, I'm gonna be sick. And he's looking at me like, you're so dramatic. And I'm like, I'm actually not. I'm just, I'm just kind of letting you know I'm gonna be sick. Which, of course, you know, as a mom, it doesn't really make a lot of difference that I'm sick, but I'll definitely tone down the workouts, I'll definitely ramp up the tea. Um, but but it's it's interesting. I will really take a moment to, and and I'll tell you how I notice it. I I find that I'll feel a little, little tingling in my chest and a tiny dip in my energy. And I know something's coming if I know that it has nothing to that I'm not sleep deprived or anything like that, right? So I I know how to already put two and two together and see what's what's on its way. And then I react or rather respond in a way that supports this period of time. All right. That's just an example. So again, I said react, but really it's I'm being responsive. Um, I want us to get into a little bit more of the practicality of it all. I want to move away from rules, okay, and zoom into recalibrating, recalibrations. Three recalibrations I'm gonna offer you right now. The first is the analog session. I want you to once a week train without tech. No tech, no tech, no heart rate zones, no uh pace tracking, no chasing any kind of number. Uh, I want you to use what I love. It's called RPE, rate of perceived exertion. I love RPE. That's what I live by. You basically let the sensation lead and notice how much more present you are with your muscles and how you feel after the workout. Okay, with your heart rate, whatever workout it is. So RPE, you're basically paying attention to how exerted you are per muscle, per heart rate, whatever it is that you're doing. And you just go according to your sensations, rate of perceived exertion. That's the analog session, the weekly analog session, if you will. Now, the second uh calibration I want to offer is the nervous system audit. Okay. That that's basically what I'm asking you to do is stop asking, did I rest? Okay. I I find that amazing, but you know, everybody around me is doing it. Did I rest? But I I want you, and so you look to see how many hours you've slept. But how about did I actually down shift? Did I actually take it easy? How do I feel? Right? Not how many hours did I sleep. Check to see if your jaw is clenched. Did I actually relax? Check to see if the between your eyebrows you're feeling all clenched over there, or maybe you're really feeling just loose. Then yes, you rested. You downshifted, right? Not according to the hours or the heart rate in the app on the Apple, whatever. None of that. Maybe you just need to, maybe what you're feeling is just telling you to take a moment and just focus on deep breathing. Maybe everything's so tight and so clenched that the app doesn't matter. Your jaw, your neck, everything's telling you to just take a moment, sit in a little bit of a darker room so that you don't have lights blasting on you, and just breathe. And the third calibrating, well, I don't want to say the the third, I was gonna say the third calibrating rule. That totally defeats what I what I was talking about. The third recalibration, okay, no rules, just a recalibration is pause first. So, and I love this one. If the data isn't clear, right? If you don't know whether you should push or pause, okay, you don't know whether you should push or pause. Everybody knows what I'm talking about. The should I work out? Maybe not. I don't know. Am I feeling up for it? You have to notice the difference between really, I just finished, you know, working and I don't know if I feel like going to the gym. Or are you really trying to understand if your body is fatigued? Is it just too much? And when that happens, when you're really trying to figure out is my body fatigued, then I would actually say, slow down. Slow down before you add the effort. More effort is almost never the answer to something that's confusing you. And you know, okay, I trust you, you know when you're actually confused between the signals and when you so want to just put one leg on top of the other and watch Netflix. I you know the difference. So I'm let's put the Netflix thing aside, all right? Let's put the all that, you know, there's a time for that. But really, when you don't know if your body is signaling rest or effort, then you rest, and later you're gonna understand if you can push through. We've spent so long looking at screens to find out who we are. And today I'm inviting you to look inward, to put the screens aside and look inward. And here's a question that I want you to sit with. If you stopped outsourcing your body's wisdom, outsourcing, meaning looking at those screens, looking at the data, what would your body start telling you again? That's what I want you to really investigate and think about until we meet again. So, again, if you stopped outsourcing your body's wisdom, what would it start telling you again? Listen closely, really closely, because the data is already there. This is how I live my life. And actually, for me to come up and out of the way I live my life and look around for a minute and actually write out today's plan and and the spine of what I wanted to say today. It took me a while because I don't look at the the screens to know how I'm feeling and what I'm doing next. I don't have that watch, I don't have the app, I don't. It bothers me, it gets in the way. And I would love for you to actually go back for a moment and really go deep and listen to what your body is saying constantly, it is always telling you something. So this is it, this today is really about inviting you. And that's that for today. I'm gonna repeat the question because I really want you to sit with it. So if you stopped outsourcing your body's wisdom, what would your body be telling you? That's what I want you to go with today. If you enjoyed today's episode and you feel that it could benefit a loved one, please share this episode. Please visit us on Instagram on Bodyholic D, or on YouTube, Bodyholic, or on the website bodyholic.fit. And we are really all over the place and we love hearing from you. So let us know, ping us, tell us what you thought about today's episode, and thank you so much for joining today. I'm Dee, and this is Bodyholic.