Sitting on our butts — it's something most of us do for hours on end. We sit at our desks and in meetings. We sit while parked in front of screens at home. We sit while eating, drinking and socializing. We sit while driving cars and riding in planes and trains and — well, pretty much everywhere, most of the time.
Given how much of our lives we spend sitting, it’s worth knowing how it affects our bodily systems — not just our musculoskeletal health, but our metabolism, biochemistry, and more.
One expert quoted in The Washington Post asserts that after 30 minutes of sitting, your metabolism can slow by as much 90 percent, and that after two hours, the good cholesterol in your blood stream can drop 20 percent. Yikes!
So in this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we offer insights into the damage done by prolonged sitting, plus an explanation for why simply swapping sitting for standing isn’t an ideal solution, and some simple, doable ways to keep your body in motion at healthy intervals throughout the day.
Dallas suggests:
Establish a rule: If you’re going to watch TV or play video games, stand up while doing so.
Pilar suggests:
Take a look at the environments where you spend most of your time seated – both at work and at home – and evaluate how you might be able to adjust or redesign those spaces to encourage more frequent and regular movement.
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We live in a culture that encourages us to consume far more than we create. That's a dynamic that directly undermines both our health and happiness. Learn why, and how you can achieve a more empowering balance.
Creativity — whether preparing a delicious meal or exchanging witty banter with an old friend — can bring deep satisfaction. Consumption — whether enjoying a fine wine or a riveting Game of Thrones episode — can also be a delightful experience.
But when creativity- and consumption-based pleasures get out of balance in our lives, our health and happiness start to suffer. Giving without receiving can be exhausting, while consuming without producing can feel aimless.
In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we explore the dynamic relationship between creativity and consumption, the historic events that have led to our modern-day imbalance, and some strategies for establishing a healthier equilibrium.
Dallas suggests:
Identify one or two places where you mindlessly over-consume, and pick a creative replacement activity instead.
Pilar suggests:
1) Reduce your in-car media consumption, and instead make a creative effort to drive with exceptional kindness and generosity.
2) Swap some TV time in favor of an activity that improves your personal environment or quality of life.
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the "Share This" widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.
We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.
From a health perspective, what comes out of your body is every bit as important as what goes in. So we think it's high time we gave poo the respect it deserves.
Look, we know, it's an awkward topic. And that's why it's so rarely discussed among friends, lovers and family members, or even with health care professionals.
The problem is, when we don't talk about it, we don't learn about it. And when we don't learn about something as important as healthy digestion and elimination, we get into serious trouble.
That's why more than 60 million Americans suffer from constipation, and far many too many endure oppressive bowel related discomfort, toxicity and related inflammatory diseases.
So in this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we have a frank conversation about feces, defining what’s “normal” — in frequency, form, and yes, even aroma. We also offer some helpful counsel on identifying and resolving common poo problems, and more.
Even if you're a little grossed out, you're not going to want to miss this essential wisdom for improving your digestive process, your elimination experience, and your overall health.
Pilar suggests:
1) Incorporate a good-sized serving of fresh, non-starchy, leafy-green, or other fibrous vegetables with each meal of the day.
2) Notice and immediately respect your body's first-inkling signal that you need to poop.
Dallas suggests:
1) Drink at least one to two glasses of lukewarm water within 15 minutes of waking up in the morning;
2) Consider using a Squatty Potty.
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (check out the "Share This" widget and other social-media tools on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot.
We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.
Can you ever have “enough” — money, time, energy, love? Do you trust that you will have enough in the future? Do you believe you are enough, right now, just as you are?
Your answers to those questions can have a profound influence on your health and happiness.
In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we examine the opposing mentalities of scarcity and abundance. We explore how they affect our experiences in the present moment, and how they can impact our future.
Research suggests that worrying about "not enough" — or even focusing on on imaginary "not enough" scenarios — can reduce both our available IQ and our ability to respond to real-life challenges.
As Pilar says, “scarcity mentality tends to produce scarcity results.” That's why we're excited to offer up insights and experiments to help you evolve your mindset in more rewarding directions.
Dallas suggests: Explore and reframe your scarcity-driven feelings.
Pilar suggests: 1) Adopt a posture of plenty; and 2) ask, “What am I missing?”
Visit livingexperiment.com for links to Resources!
In this week’s episode of The Living Experiment, we dig into the fundamentals of Paleo and Primal eating approaches — their origins, similarities, and differences, plus practical steps for integrating them into the way you eat today.
We also examine the modern nutritional reductionism that led us to think about food as merely a sum of its parts (macronutrients, calories, and so on) rather than considering the value and integrity of whole foods in their natural state.
In addition to evaluating the differences between Paleo and Primal dietary strategies, we explore their key principles in the context of the larger ancestral nutrition movement — arguably the most significant dietary trend of the past two decades.
Contrasting the hunter-gatherer diets our ancestors consumed for most of human history (2.6 million years) with the more processed and grain-heavy diets we've embraced over the past 10,000 years, we offer up insights about why some foods seem to reliably produce health and vitality, while others consistently produce distress and disease.
Dallas encourages listeners to take on the Whole30 nutritional program:
Pilar suggests going a week without grains or sugars:
If you're enjoying The Living Experiment, please tell your friends about it (just click the "share this" tool on this page). People are always looking for great new podcasts, and your personal recommendations mean a lot. We'd also love to have you connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, share your thoughts, stories and reflections there.