https://www.listennotes.com/e/d537ac973acc4b08b5bbd25f61dff04f

You know, a lot of people talk about physical health for the physical things, being better fit for aerobic exercise, having more muscle mass on your body. But one of the biggest benefits to working out to doing aerobic exercise or lifting weights or pickleball or any of these racket sports or dancing, you know, Zumba, some of the things people are interested in. is actually the mental health of it. And I think this is something that's often overlooked. And it's alarming how over the past even five years, from 2018 to 2023, depression rates are expected to rise potentially more than doubling, which is very fascinating. So if it was 10 in 2018, well, maybe around 20% of people have some level of depression, anxiety. And the solution is so simple. I'm gonna get into that in today's show. This is another personal episode from me. It's just something that is very dear to my heart, something that I've leveraged and used throughout my whole entire fitness and health career over the past 13 years. And I wanna share with you some tools, tips, insights, things that I've learned. that have made working out so much easier and have given me all those juicy neurochemicals. Serotonin and dopamine and some of the other neurotransmitters that are associated with working out. I got some science backed articles as well. And we're gonna get into how cortisol actually affects the mind and how it affects the body. This is gonna be a fun show. So let's get into it on the Drew and youn Show. Thanks for tuning in. So you've heard me say this on a past episode. If you're joining this for the first time, the Drew and youn Show, then I want to repeat this. Melatonin is that hormone that tucks us in at night. I like to say Mel tucks us in, Sarah wakes us up in the morning. Serotonin is that happy chemical that we get. It's seeing the world through rosy colored glasses. It's feeling better in our bodies. It's feeling lighter. It's feeling more optimistic about what's happening in the world. And did you know that research now shows that working out for 30 minutes, not just any workout, I'll get into that in a second, what kind of workout, but for 30 minutes a day can boost serotonin levels up to, can you take a guess? 80% which is absolutely insane. It's because it encourages the release of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin also reduces stress and anxiety while also boosting happiness and well-being. Regular exercise does this. It boosts serotonin levels up. It strengthens the connection of the body and the mind. It creates this sense of accomplishment for me. So regardless of whether I feel like working out or not, when I do, I notice a 20 to 25% boost or more in self-confidence for the day. Now, if you have more self-confidence throughout.

The day, guess what?

You're making better decisions in the kitchen, you're making better decisions in business, you're making better decisions in your relationships. It literally impacts every area of your life. That's why it's called working out. We're not just working out the muscles, we're working out our life. It's meditation.

It is a spiritual practice.

Regardless of what it looks like for you, it is a spiritual practice that we can do every single day that puts us in a more optimum state. So what kind of workout is best for increasing serotonin levels? Zone 2, cardio. Aerobic activities basically are the best. This is what has been shown in the literature to increase serotonin 80%. And it's Zone 2, if you're familiar, great. If not, it's relatively low intensity. meaning it doesn't require a lot of time. Let's say 20 to 30 minutes. If you can jump even jumping on a treadmill, 3.9 speed, maybe a 6 to a 9 incline. It's the walking pace that is it enables you to still talk to somebody, but it's tough. It's not easy. Your heart rate is probably around 115 to 125, I would say, for zone two for most people. depending on if they're super athletes, it's probably a little higher than that. Or if they're couch potatoes, then maybe it's a little bit lower than that, too. So Zone two activities can help improve overall cardio fitness, which is amazing for your heart, for your tissues, for your cells in your body. And it's also incredible for lowering stress levels.

Who would have thought?

And it improves mental wellbeing. So for me, if I only have three hours a week to work out, what's the most important schedule? I would say one hour of zone two cardio is a must for those positive neurochemicals and the cardiovascular conditioning that it gives you. I would say one hour of lifting would be important, maybe an hour and a half, a little bit more lifting because I'm just in the gym increasing muscle. I think muscle is one of the most under rated organs in our body. It is unlike anything else. We can generate a lot of those neurochemicals from our muscle tissue too if you have a lean body mass. And then I would say one hour of a mind body workout, which would be like pickleball, it would be dancing, choreography, whatever it is, something to where you're involving your mind in the workout as well while you're pushing your heart rate up. so you're at your threshold, you're at your edge. This is so good. And this has been shown in science to decrease mortality rate by 50%, which is incredible. So you literally live longer, you're healthier, you're happier. You get all those neurochemicals just by working out. I mean, in researching this podcast for you guys, I literally wanted to jump out of my seat and go to the gym right away. or go outside and go for a run. It is so beneficial. And flashback, what is it? I started working out when I was 16, but I didn't really know how. It was just witnessing people in the gym lifting and I would just do the same thing that they were doing. And it wasn't until 13 years ago that I really took it serious and I built my first vision board for what I wanted my body to look like. Maybe you've built a vision board or a vision movie. you can put things in a movie, have motion pictures around music that can be more compelling, more emotion. And I took photos of what I wanted my body to look like back then, and I put it in my vision board, and I would visualize this every day before I would go into the gym and on the weekend, and I would put it on my computer screen and in areas where my unconscious mind could pick it up because you want it to be prevalent. You don't have to look at it. every time you walk by it, but your unconscious mind's super powerful. It knows everything in the room, every room you walk into. And if you were put into a state of hypnosis, it could literally count the candles or the flower petals that are outside in your garden without you doing anything. Your unconscious mind is super powerful. So the goal here is to get it in your unconscious mind. This is what my body looks like. And maybe you've heard me talk about the why identity. I've written about it in a few books that I've written in the past. And it, you know, why do you want that body? What does it look like?

What does it feel like?

What do you hear from your friends? And if you can answer these questions and feel it in your body, it's as simple as if you can hold it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand. So you have to go there though.

So what is that goal for you physically?

And maybe for many of you listening to this, it's just the mental health benefits of it. It's just not feeling depressed. A lot of people have anxiety. Like I said, the rates are skyrocketing right now. Whether it's the stress levels of financial difficulties or the markets that we're in a little bit, it's getting a little turbulent or the pandemic and the lockdowns that happened recently or maybe there's other things happening. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, you're feeling stressed out, and you're not working out, you're not getting that aerobic zone two cardio in, I highly recommend it. This is the medicine and it's so simple to do. Build yourself a vision board, build yourself something that you can actually look at. I think that's super key. And like I said, if you can hold it in your mind, you can hold it in your hand. And this is according to a study that I pulled up from the Journal of Health Psychology, when participants visualize themselves engaging in physical exercise, Rather than just thinking positively about it, they saw significant and measurable improvements in overall fitness levels. So this study suggests that even people that didn't work out but visualized it still got some of the benefits from working out, which is insane. And if you flashback to some of the first podcasts I did, one of the episodes was on the universe's mental, it's mind. So everything is created from the fourth dimension, which is the mental realm, and it drops down into the 3D, which is our physical reality that we live in. So if you and I can go there in our mind so much to where we're literally working out for an hour to two hours a day in our mind, well, you're gonna get the benefits of that. Like it's not all for vain, and you should really think about that. Even five, 10 minutes a day. You know, if you're bedridden and you're fighting off something and you're unable to go to the gym and work out and you're feeling the feels, then maybe five, 10 minutes a day of meditation of still getting that workout in your mind. Maybe it's as simple as walking a mile in your mind and see how that impacts your serotonin levels and how you actually feel. Super powerful. And also when we talk about healing, when we work out and we focus on certain muscle groups, whether it's lifting weights or stretching or Pilates, we develop a mind muscle connection, which is so important for healing, I believe. There's been times when I will drop weights on my knee or, you know, stretch my shoulder out a little bit more than it should have been. And I will literally ask my knee what it needs for the next week or two, my shoulder. What do you need from me today? And it has the answer. Your body's super intelligent. It is, I like to look at the body as your unconscious mind. And anytime I experience any issue in the body, it's literally a warning light on the dashboard of my life. Well, what does that mean? Left side, more feminine in nature, receiving, masculine would be right side, more giving to the world of service to the world. Where am I out of balance? And can I really look at that as a symbol, the body as a symbol, and develop more of a mind-muscle connection, which I think is so important for healing. And then one of the things I do to develop more of that mind-muscle connection is taking time out every single day for mindfulness. And it looks different for me, it.

Looks different for everybody that I talk.

To, but one of the things I've done pretty much religiously throughout my life, I haven't done it a lot recently, but for years I would sun gaze. First thing in the morning I would wake up and just go sit and watch the sun come up. And over time I would build up a tolerance to actually looking directly into the sun. and this would basically dissolve any of the etheric energies or the cords that were attached to me. But it also gave me more body awareness to just simply be. It got rid of the past and the future in my mind and allowed me to become more present oriented, listening to the wind chimes outside and the birds chirp as I would sun gaze. A super grounding experience. Some people like breath work, which is a great way to practice more mindfulness, you know, box breathing, four seconds in, hold, four seconds out, hold. Or you can change that time as long as it can bring you into the present moment even more. I believe pets are also super grounding and super mindful. There's nothing greater than, you know, when one of our barnyard cats jumps on your lap and she starts purring on your chest. or starts doing the paw thing back and forth. I mean, they are energetic healers. They are working on your energetic body, and that's powerful. They're little acupuncturists, little Chinese medicine doctors right there dressed up in these four-legged fursuits disguised as cats. How cool are cats? I'm kind of a cat guy, but I'm also a dog guy and a peacock guy and an alpaca and sheep guy and. We have way too many animals on this farm. It's crazy. Grounding, planting your feet in the grass, is a great way to practice mindfulness. Just anything that allows you to be here now, to come back home into your body, to be in the vehicle. Oftentimes when people are depressed or they're sad, they like to escape. They dissociate themselves with reality. They create other realities in their mind. they're daydreamers, they drift off, they're not really here. It's like you have to tell somebody something three or four times, they're checked out, their eyes are up to the left, to the right, they're looking at the past and the future. So it's coming home, it's being here now. And you know the people that have been super present, they ask great questions, they're tuned in, it's just a different feeling. So a study from the American Psychological Association found that practicing mindfulness sedation can actually help people stick to their workout routines. So there's this stick-to-itiveness that comes from the principles and practices that I just shared with you, whether it's sun gazing, the wind chimes, the breath work, pets, grounding, whatever it is, it'll help you stick to your workouts. And it also allows people to cope better with their emotions, likened to anxiety, depression, resenTment, stress, anything that could prevent them from engaging in a regular workout. This is what mindfulness does. Mindfulness also helps us make better decisions when it comes to food choices. So that same muscle we use to scan the body, knee, what do you need? Shoulder, what can I do for you? Is stomach, body, what do you need to eat to feel nourished? to get the most out of your mitochondria, to replenish the bacteria in the gut, the microbiome. What's going to be the healthiest option? Not what do I want in the moment, because my emotions are running my life. If that's the case, well, then one Oreo becomes a whole entire sleeve. And then you're just riding this wave of sugar highs, sugar lows, looking in the mirror three months from now, not even recognizing yourself, 'cause you packed on some LBs. And that's all okay, but realize that you have this precious vehicle, this multi-dimensional suit, and the better you feed it, the more light frequencies it can take on and emit, and the more you clear things from the field, the more powerful your life is gonna be. You're gonna open up timelines of situations and circumstances that were not seen and now are now are seen. Nutrition, mindfulness, working out, it all helps us get to that level. I even use this trick on stage. I've spoken in front of thousands of people. I used to get nervous. In fact, when I was six years old, the first time I spoke in front of my kindergarten class, I think it was, or was it first grade? Whenever I got up there, I stood in front of the crowd and I literally got so nervous, I pissed my pants, which is kind of embarrassing. and I passed out. I literally fell over and passed out, peed my pants, like a Billy Madison moment. Nonetheless, of course, that created trauma around public speaking, so I was always nervous to speak. But ever since just leaning into it, learning how to do TRE trauma release exercises, I'll do that two or three minutes before walking out on stage, flushing out energy, energy that's no longer serving my central nervous system. And then the big thing that helped me in all the mindfulness practices that I've done is literally imagining, going in my mind and imagining people come up to me after the talk complimenting me.

Wow, that was really good.

I learned this X, Y, and Z. What really landed for me was this. I loved how you moved in this and you showed us on the whiteboard or whatever, how that could impact our lives. And it just really hit home. It was really compelling to me and I'm going to implement that in my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I would see all these events happening in my mind. And then sure enough, after the speech was done, it literally got rid of all my nervousness or at least probably 80% of it. You know, there's still a small level of nervousness every time I go out in front of thousands of people or even, you know, 100 or 200 people, whatever it is. Everybody has their own threshold. But for me, it really squashed the anxiety and the nervousness.

If you think of the physical body as a voltage unit that has energy animating it always, well, then it is in any large step to think that maybe anxiety is just an overabundant amount of energy that's trapped in the body that's trying to get out and it doesn't know what to do. It's the shakiness of the voltage. Depression, if you go down the scale from anxiety into depression, it literally is to take a break from who you know you to be. So if you have a soul's calling or you've been on this planet for any amount of time and you feel like, well, you're not doing what your soul is supposed to be up to in this life, well then maybe depression starts to set in because you feel detached from your own hero's journey. And I think that's where a lot of people fall. They've succumbed to Netflix and chilling for three or four hours a day, distracting themselves with sports, alcohol, all the addictions, gambling, you know, pornography, all of these things to disorient them from their true soul alignment. And that's one of the reasons I think depression and anxiety and all these things are at an all-time high.

It's because people have forgot. how to truly be human.

They've plugged into this AI system, this machine world, and it's cold. There's not a lot of empathy in it. There's not a lot of connection, Community. And I think when we go back to the community, community is immunity. We are social creatures. When we can connect to that, it changes everything. So research has also shown that mental health concerns, such as anxiety and depression, can impact the amount of physical activity that Individuals engage in. So again, the topic of this is how your mental world affects your physical world. If you have anxiety and depression, you have stuck emotions, emotion, energy and motion, emotions. It's just trapped, right? So how do you get it out? I've seen people that have been bedridden from anxiety, that have been so scared even to leave their house, then they finally start to engage in a practice of walking for five minutes a day. Six minutes the next, seven minutes the next, and all of a sudden they're running marathons and they become these extroverts when they were once introverts. Everything shifts when you start to move your body a little bit more. Confidence sets in. You start to experience more energy, more of the biological mechanisms that support connection, not only with yourself, as we had talked about in this podcast previous, but also with other people. connection. So to better understand that mind-body connection, it's essential to explore the underlining biological mechanisms that we all have. And one of those, you've heard me talk about this often, is this cortisol that we have in our body. High levels of cortisol decrease our muscle mass. It causes body fat, which overall leads to a degrade in physical fitness. If you don't know what cortisol is, long story short, it's a hormone released in the body. various types of stressors, whether they're physical, psychological, cortisol rushes through that body as a stress response. The problem is prolonged cortisol response running from the tiger every single day that's not there puts us in this state of fight or flight. When we're eating foods that are loaded with endocrine-disrupting hormones, we're wearing clothes that have PFAS in it, Forever chemicals when we're eating glyphosate rich food, you know, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. We got Atrazine in our water, Atrazine in our water. It causes a chronic state of fight or flight biologically.

So what do we do?

Well, cortisol is rushing through, your adrenals are tapped because it's constantly producing the stress hormone. What does your body do? It produces more fat. Fat protects animals, protects mammals. trauma. You know, a lot of traumas are stored in our fat cells. That's why another reason untapped potential is trauma. When we start to burn that body fat, we have more energy than we know what to do with. And actually, people, when they lose weight, they start to think more clearly. Daniel Eman. Dr. Daniel Eman has talked about this. You have more brain capacity the leaner you are for every pound of fat mass that you have. It actually slows down those neural circuits in your brain. So if you want to speed up your flow states, your connection to the divine, your ability to lead meetings and be a leader in your company or even a leader of the household as a mom that has to think quick because she's got her children running all over the place, losing a few pounds might be a good thing to do. Cortisol stimulates the breakdown of muscle tissue and inhibits the growth by promoting muscle loss, which is really interesting. so the higher a cortisol is, well, it eats your muscle away. You start to lose muscle mass, which, as you know, it impacts strength, flexibility, agility, bone density as we age.

Right?

One of the precursors to health is our bone density. It can lower your appetite. I know. I don't know about you, but when I'm stressed out, I don't feel like eating. And that's very rare because I love to eat. I'm a foodie. growing up in Michigan, all the comfort food, which is probably why 13 years ago, I put on 40-50 pounds of excess weight that I had to lose and really study and become a student of nutrition. Because it's amazing. Every doctor I've ever interviewed and I've interviewed dozens of doctors and I always ask them, how much nutrition did you study in school? You know what the answer is? Zero. Like there's no nutritional training in Western medicine. which is sad because not only are you what you eat, but you are what your body absorbs. So cortisol impacts absolutely everything. One of the big things I'm seeing a drop off in is fertility. I don't know if you've noticed this, but the mind-body connection to fertility, testosterone is one of those hormones that is directly impacted by cortisol. The more cortisol we have, the less testosterone we have and it's also an inverse relationship. So, testosterone levels are reduced. I like looking at photos from like the 1970s and 80s of people walking on the beach and there was nobody that was obese back then. In fact, I saw a recent photo of this circus act in the 1930s and it was a guy that was probably 25 to 30% body fat and that was a circus act back then in the 1930s. which is insane. How far have we come? I mean, the obesity rates have literally tripled over the past 15-20 years. What is it?

What is it?

We're disconnecting from that mind-body connection. We're numbing ourselves. Not to mention our environment's completely contaminated. So we have that going for us. So chronic stress at a prolonged exposure impacts absolutely everything. Testosterone, hormones, the way you age. I know you've seen people that have been stressed out their whole entire lives and they just look older. People that live in the desert, you know, their body's stressed, they're a little dehydrated, they can sometimes look a little bit older too from the environment. Your body's ability to fight off illness and chronic inflammation when you're stressed out or cortisol levels of high is high, that's one of the things that goes too. so cortisol, like I said, bone, hormones, skin health, it, testosterone, everything, it can dramatically impact your physical health. So, like I talked about before, when we do the grounding, when we meditate every day, when we have these mindfulness practices that are just baked into our day, they're on our calendar, and we tune into those, when we have animals, there's a reason having a dog adds six years to your life. sun gazing, I talked about breath work, all of these things when we do them, we lower cortisol levels. Not only does that help our body maintain muscle mass, bone density, all the things that we talked about, but it also helps us stick to the program, which improves overall mood. Some of the happiest people I've ever met are these borderline centurions. They're older, 95, 96, 97 years old, but they're with it. They're quick. They can think on their feet. They're functional, just as functional as they were probably in their 50s or 60s. And it's because every single day they have a commitment to work out. They have a commitment to move, not only their body, but their mind. They're moving their minds. They're reading books. They're playing games. They're on the phone with their family members, talking to them constantly. a lot of agility in their mind. The more agility we have in their mind, the more agility we have in our bodies. So don't be so rigid. Pick up some new routines, some practices, try something that really works for you. Become addicted to it. I'm literally a junkie for the gym. I have to go to the gym. If I don't go in like three or four days, I start to literally, I start to feel anxious, like something's off. So there's a reason anxiety, depression, all of these mental disorders are creeping up on us. but we have the ability to change. We have the power. We know what to do, FitLifer. We know that the power is in our hands and now it's just getting it out there to every single person we love. Because when you feel as good as I know you can feel or you're feeling right now, because you've been listening to this and applying some of the principles and practices I've been talking about for years, and you want everybody else to feel as good as you. And that's a beautiful thing. So speaking of that, we've gone over a lot in this podcast. Usually I like to keep my personal podcast a little shorter, but there's just a lot of juice in this. I hope you can agree with that. If there was anything that landed for you, please send me a DM on Instagram. Let me know how it inspired your life. I love reading these messages. I used to get handwritten notes back in the day when I was on YouTube 13 years ago. I had my address on there, which was crazy. I had a few people show up that Scary story. I should tell you guys in a podcast episode some of the scary things that have happened in the past. That'd be fun. But nonetheless, definitely send me a message. Let me know how it's impacted you. Share it with somebody you love. Implement these practices. Remember, your mind creates your reality. The universe is mental. So the more you can work on your mindset, the more you can work on your health set. It doesn't take a lot of time as we addressed in this podcast. Three hours a week is the minimum. It's so easy to do. One hour lifting, one hour zone two cardio, one hour of a mind-body workout. I am obsessed with pickleball. That is my sport. And pickleball and other racket sports has been shown to decrease dementia, Alzheimer's, all the mental illnesses that are out there. And it's fun. You have community. It's fun. if you're ever out in Southern California, let me know. We have a pickleball court at the house. I will smoke you, guaranteed. 100. Just kidding. It's probably my worst sport I've ever played, but I don't care. You know, it's like one of those things that I just roll with it anyway. But every day I'm getting better because I play every day. Even for 15, 20 minutes, the goal is just to get out there, hit the ball around. It's a lot of fun. so pick up something like that for you. Get your vision board ready. Put pictures on the computer. Like I said, if you can hold it in your mind, you can hold it in your hands. If you can see the image in your mindset, you can see it in the 3D world. Bring it in to reality. I'm living proof of that. You can have anything you want in this life. If you're feeling a little down, you've been through a lot, maybe you're dealing with anxiety and stress, Don't worry about it. Just move. Get to the gym or get up off the couch and walk for even five minutes and over time you will build up so much more momentum. Our friend Mo, Mo will be on your side. You'll have more energy and enthusiasm for life than you've ever had. People will come up to you months from now saying, hey, what did you do differently? And they'll be like, well, it was really simple. I just started to move. I couldn't stop. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Let's go. Thanks for listening to another Drew and you, my friend. Hit me up, send me a DM, and we will talk soon. Speaking of cortisol and lowering stress levels, you know I'm a huge advocate of Organifi Green Juice. Why? It's organic, it's glyphosate residue free, it tastes amazing, it's got 11 superfoods in there. One of them is ashwagandha, which lowers stress 29% in clinical trials. Now, we've gone over stress in this episode, my friend. Breaks down muscle, tissue, hormone health, testosterone drops. So one would guess that the more we lower our stress, the more effective and efficient our body actually runs this human multi-dimensional suit. So not only is it good for our body, it's good for our mind. so take a breather. I call this stuff Zen in a cup. First thing in the morning, it helps me get my cortisol levels in check so I can face the day. It helps me focus, helps me play. I love organifi green juice, and I.

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