Ep #208: 5 Things I Stopped Doing to Get Healthier

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #208. Today, I’m sharing five things I stopped doing that made me healthier, and none of them involved a detox or a complete life overhaul. Because when I look back on the last 15 to 20 years, some of the biggest improvements in my health came from changing my mind about things I thought were true.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland. 

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? Well, today, I thought I’d do something a little different. So, I’m sharing five things I stopped doing that made me healthier. And to be clear, these were not changes I just up and made overnight, and they most definitely did not happen all at once. And I’m doing this partly because I often get asked, what do you do? or what changed for you? And honestly, when I look back over the last 15 to 20-ish years, most of the changes I made that had the biggest impact, they were actually pretty small. They weren’t super exciting at all. But they were shifts. They were shifts in how I thought about exercise. They were shifts in how I approached food or how I trained, or even how I looked at my health overall. And so, that’s where we’re going today.

I’m sharing five things I stopped doing that genuinely made me a healthier person. And to be clear, this is not a list of things I think that everyone should adopt. I’m not at all suggesting that you should go and copy my routine or eat exactly what I eat or train the way I train. But what I hope these examples do is get you thinking about your own habits and what changes might be possible for you. Because sometimes the biggest changes don’t necessarily come from adding something new. Sometimes the change comes from questioning something that you’ve assumed was true for a really long time. And you’re going to see what I mean here shortly. All right? So, let’s go.

So, the first thing I changed was that I stopped treating running like it was the only exercise that counted. And this was admittedly a very hard one for me. So, if you’ve listened to this podcast at all, you know that I love running. I’ve been running for decades. I did track in high school and college, and then I started running cross country in college too. I coached middle school track and cross country now. My sons both run. My husband runs. In fact, our first date was a 16-mile run along the Chicago lakefront when I was training for the Chicago Marathon about 20-ish years ago. So, I think it’s fair to say that running has been a significant part of my life for a long time now.

But for many years, I had a pretty narrow view around this. In my mind, if you said exercise, that meant running. And if it wasn’t running, it didn’t count. Like it was somehow less valuable. And sure, I might occasionally lift weights, I might take a walk, I might stretch here and there. But mentally, I viewed all of that as secondary because to me, running was the real workout. And I am guessing that I’m not alone here because I have heard this from many women over the years. We create a hierarchy in our minds where certain forms of movement count and others don’t. So, maybe for you, it’s running that counts or bootcamp counts, Peloton counts, or CrossFit. But walking the dog or taking a walk after dinner or 10 minutes of mobility work, those get pushed into a different category all together. And often that category is nice, but doesn’t really count. Not a real workout.

The thing is, and the big lesson I’ve had to learn was this, different types of movement do different jobs. So, running improves endurance and cardiovascular fitness. Strength training builds muscle and strength. Mobility helps you move better and improves your range of motion. And walking helps you stay active. It also builds endurance and accumulates movement throughout the day. And none of these are competing with each other. Instead, they actually complement each other. And that was the big realization and the big shift I had to make. Your body doesn’t see movement in the same way your brain does. Your body benefits from all kinds of movements. So, that means walking matters. Strength training matters. Mobility, which is still a hard one for me, that matters. Recovery matters.

And honestly, probably the most important shift I made in relation to this is that I stopped asking if it counts, because it all does. It all counts. And once I really accepted that and accepted that it doesn’t always have to be running, now, I see my workouts a little differently. And I know that every workout I do serves a different purpose depending on the day. Sometimes, it’s that I want to go hard and push my limits and see what I can do, and running will most certainly give that to me. Other times, it’s that I am completely exhausted, but still want space for myself, so a walk it is. And then other times, I want to go back and forth in the pool with just me and my thoughts. Other times, I want to sling heavy iron around in my home gym. And none of it is less than.

And once I stopped putting running on a pedestal, I became much more open to other forms of exercise. I started strength training much more consistently. I appreciated walking more and even a stretch routine, as much as it hurts so good, I even appreciate that more. So, I stopped viewing exercise as only one thing. And instead, I now see it as a whole bunch of tools that each serve a different purpose depending on the day and depending on what I need from it. And don’t get me wrong. I still run and I still love running, but I no longer believe that running is the be-all, end-all gold standard and that everything else is somehow less valuable. Because the real truth is that there are a lot of ways to take care of your body, and one of the healthiest changes I made was expanding my definition of what exercise actually is.

So, here’s the question I would ask you to consider. What forms of movement have you been dismissing because they don’t count in your mind? And where might you be missing out because of that belief? And once you’re truly open to considering other options and seeing the benefit other kinds of exercise brings you, it might actually help you more than you realize.

So, the next thing I changed was what my idea of lunch looks like. And by that, I mean I stopped calling a sandwich and chips lunch. And I know, this one sounds incredibly boring, but stick with me because I think there’s a bigger lesson here. So, for most of my life, like literally since kindergarten, if not before, my lunch was a sandwich and chips. And maybe a little Debbie treat, like a star crunch in grade school, that eventually evolved to a more sophisticated granola bar once I got older. So, that was lunch. That was what I grew up eating. That’s what most people around me ate. And honestly, I never questioned it, not at all. That’s just what I thought lunch was.

And is there anything inherently wrong with a sandwich and chips? No, not at all. But over time, I realized a couple of things about that lunch. First, that was not enough food for me. I’d eat my sandwich, which usually had a few slices of deli turkey and maybe a piece of cheese on it, and then I’d be hungry a few hours later. And second, it wasn’t particularly nutrient dense. And third, it wasn’t really supporting the goals that I had set for my health and fitness. I needed more protein. And yes, even with the serving of deli turkey, that is not enough. That’s not enough protein in one meal. Second, I wanted more fruits and veggies. I wanted meals that kept me fuller longer and didn’t leave me scrounging for food a few hours later.

And here’s the thing. The challenge with this wasn’t about willpower or knowing what healthy food is. That wasn’t the issue. The challenge was that I had an outdated, very old definition of lunch that I was carting around with me since childhood. I accepted an idea decades ago, but never bothered to revisit it or question it. But once I did start questioning what an actual lunch could look like, my meals changed and things got a little more interesting. And if I’m being honest, they got a lot more filling.

Now, most days, lunch actually looks more like breakfast, but that’s only because I love eggs. My lunches typically consist of eggs, veggies like broccoli or cauliflower, and Ezekiel toast most days. So, it looks quite a bit different from a sandwich and chips. But you know what? That change most definitely made a difference. I feel full and it lasts longer. I eat more produce. I have better energy. My lunch helps fuel the muscle that I have worked so hard to build. Lots of good things came as a result of this small but impactful change. It was just lunch. And it all started because I was willing to question an assumption that I had carried around for decades.

And I think this happens all the time with food. We develop these ideas early on. Breakfast has to look a certain way. Lunch has to look a certain way. Dinner has to also look a certain way. And we rarely stop to ask whether those assertions are actually helping us.

So, as an example, I have a client who said she can only eat hot foods for dinner. And immediately, my question was, why? Not in a confrontational way, but in a curious way, because I just thought it was interesting that she made this assertion about herself, that it had to be this way. And to be clear, it is totally okay to have preferences and wants. But sometimes, those preferences might come in conflict with our real lives, like if you’re on a road trip and you don’t want a greasy spoon meal for dinner, but you only eat hot food for dinner. So then what? And we had to get creative and find a solution that worked for her. And it was a compromise where she would get something from a drive-through, like a grilled chicken sandwich, so that it was hot, and then supplement with things she packed in a cooler.

So, with that in mind, here’s the question I’d ask you to consider. What assumptions about food are you still carrying around that you’ve never actually questioned? What does a healthy meal have to look like? What foods do you think you should eat? What foods do you think you shouldn’t eat? And where do those ideas come from? Because as far as eating healthy goes, for me, one of the best things I’ve done for myself over the years was not finding the perfect meal plan. Really, the healthiest thing I’ve done was being willing to challenge some of the ingrained food rules I didn’t even realize I was following.

All right. So, the next thing I changed is that I stopped using exercise as a vehicle for weight loss. Now, before anyone gets upset with me, let me clarify. Exercise is good for your health. Exercise can certainly support weight loss. So, exercise matters and I definitely want you moving your body. But for years, I equated exercise with weight loss. I believed that if I wanted to lose weight, the answer was more exercise. Run more, lift more, burn more calories, just more. And I know I’m not alone in that. In fact, I still see this all the time with the women I coach. There was one client in particular who swore up and down that if she could just get back to running six miles at a time, the weight would come off.

When we started working together, she was already running. She wasn’t sedentary. She was doing three or four miles at a time pretty regularly. But in her mind, six miles was the magic number. And if she could just get herself there, everything would fall into place. And you know what? She did it. She worked her way back up. She got to six miles at a time. And do you know what happened? She was hungry, like really, really hungry, as she should be because she was doing a lot of running. And the weight did not magically fall off like she was betting on.

And I’ve seen similar versions of this story over and over again. We add another workout, increase our mileage, buy heavier dumbbells, start a new class, add another day of exercise. And while all of those things can be great for your health, they often get added into your routine with the expectation that it will result in weight loss. But often, what happens instead is disappointment when the scale doesn’t respond in the way you expected. Because exercise and weight loss are not the same thing.

And once I really understood that, and once I stopped using exercise for the sole purpose of moving the scale, it changed how I see exercise. Because exercise really gives us so much more. It improves your mood and your sleep. It builds strength. It keeps us independent and mobile as we age. It reduces disease risk. It helps us think more clearly. And that is a pretty great return on investment. And yet, despite this, so many people reduce it all down to one question, did I lose any weight though? Or how many calories did I burn?

And when I stopped expecting exercise to do the job of my nutrition, I actually started liking exercise a whole lot more. I stopped using it as something to make up for something else. I stopped using it as a way to earn food. And I started using it as something I do because it just straight up improves my life all around. And that is a much healthier relationship to have with exercise. So, if you’re someone who keeps thinking that maybe the answer is one more workout, one more class, one more mile, or one more piece of equipment, I would simply encourage you to ask, what job am I asking exercise to do? Because yes, exercise, it is amazing, and it’s a powerful tool. But sometimes, we’re using it to solve a problem that really belongs somewhere else. And exercise, it is way too valuable to be reduced to a calorie burning tool.

Now, the next thing I changed is that I stopped trying to make every workout super hard. And this one took me a while to learn because for a long, long time, I believed what a lot of people believe. If some effort is good, more effort must be better, like all the time. So, if a workout felt hard, I felt productive. If I was sweaty, red-faced, and breathing hard at the end, I felt like I accomplished something. Every time I ran, my goal was to get a faster pace per mile than the day before. And as you can imagine, that plan did not work out well.

And if a workout felt easy, well, then maybe it didn’t really count, and I would be disappointed in myself. And the problem is, this is not how training works. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes many runners make, like I did, is that they turn every run into something coaches call gray zone training. And that is where it’s not easy enough to truly recover, but also not quite hard enough to truly improve your performance. So, just kind of moderately hard all the time. And I have absolutely been guilty of this. Our whole family did a turkey trot last Thanksgiving. And when i started out, instead of having easy days and hard days, every workout ended up somewhere in the middle.

And the tricky part is that it feels productive. You finish the workout feeling like you worked moderately hard, but not like a max effort. You feel like you’ve done something. But over time, you often end up accumulating fatigue without seeing the improvements that you’re hoping for. And this is true for activities other than running too, for sure. It’s true for biking, swimming, weight training, really anywhere you want to improve your athletic performance.

But remember an important principle of training. You don’t improve during the workout. You improve after you recover from the workout. So, the workout itself is the stimulus and the recovery is where the adaptation happens so that you can come back and work harder next time. That’s why athletes have easy days. That’s why they take recovery days. And that’s also why sleep matters and nutrition matters. Because recovery is not separate from training. Recovery is part of training.

And once I started really understanding that, things changed. My hard workouts actually became harder and more effective because I wasn’t coming into them as exhausted from going moderately hard in the gray zone all the time. And then, the hardest thing for me was letting my easy workouts actually feel easy. That was really challenging. It still is. I even set my watch to buzz me if my heart rate got too high when I was training, and I kept doing it until I got the hang of it. And by sticking with it, my recovery actually improved and my performance improved. My hard days felt better because I wasn’t coming into them gassed from going moderately hard for days leading up to it.

And then exercise got a little more fun because I wasn’t constantly trying to prove how tough I was in every single workout. I was trying to train smarter. And while I learned this lesson through running, I think it also applies far beyond exercise. A lot of us, we approach life the same way. We push hard all the time. We work at a seven to eight out of 10 every day. We never full out sprint, but we never fully recover either. So, that means you’re almost always on, always pushing, always producing, always trying, no rest days. And eventually, that catches up with us.

So, sometimes more effort isn’t the answer. Sometimes better distribution of the effort is the answer. That means work hard when it’s time to work hard and recover when it’s time to recover. Because the goal is not to see how much exhaustion you can tolerate. The goal is to perform well over the long haul. And one of the healthiest things I’ve learned is that recovery is not weakness, it’s part of the process.

All right. And the last thing I stopped doing was I stopped making heavy lifting optional. And if you have listened to this podcast at all before, you probably knew this one was coming. Because if there’s one thing I wish more women would do, it’s strength training. But to be fair, I did not always feel this way. Like I said earlier, I spent years thinking that exercise meant cardio, a run or biking, the stair climber, sweating. And while I occasionally lifted weights, I didn’t really put much thought or energy into it, and I definitely did not really appreciate what strength training could do for me. But with time and some exposure to some really cool gyms and fun equipment and a coach and feeling the need to challenge myself in a different way, I went all in on strength training, and I will never look back.

So, yes, strength training changed how I looked, and I wanted to look different. I wanted to have muscle. I wanted to look strong. All of that is true, and all of that is nice to have. But strength training also helps me to be able to move furniture and carry heavy things. And I like feeling capable in my body instead of feeling limited by it. I like knowing that as I get older, I’m actively doing something to maintain and preserve my independence. And muscle will help you do all of those things.

And maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough because strength training isn’t just about right now, it’s really about 20 years from now, or even 30 years from now. Meaning, the strength and muscle you are building now is not just about being strong today. It’s really about being strong when you’re 80 so you can keep doing the things you love. So, it’s about preserving options.

And aside from that, let’s not forget about the confidence that comes from this. Not just because you look different either, it’s more than that. There is something really powerful about doing something that before felt impossible, like your first pull-up or the first time you deadlift a weight that you never thought you could lift, or when you realize that you are so much stronger than you used to be and you are twice as old as you were when you thought that you were at your peak. Or is that just me? That does something to you and you start to see yourself a little differently. You stop seeing yourself as weak and you start seeing yourself as capable. And that mindset most definitely spills over into the other areas of your life.

So, I know that some women, despite me saying all this and despite knowing all the benefits of strength training, some women are still hesitant to lift weights. They’re worried about getting bulky. They’re intimidated by the gym. They don’t know where to start. And I understand all of that. But after years of lifting weights myself and coaching women around this, I can safely and confidently tell you that no woman I have ever worked with has ever regretted getting stronger. Like ever. And what I hear instead is, I feel better. I have more confidence in myself. My back doesn’t hurt anymore. My running is better. I can do ballroom dance for longer. I look like a badass doing pull-ups. I can do things I couldn’t do before. I wish I had started sooner.

Those are the things I hear from people who got into lifting heavy weights. And honestly, I feel the same way. Of all the changes I have made over the years, strength training is one that I fully plan to do for the rest of my life because the older I get, the more value it has. And if there is a category for the 80 and over crowd in the natural bodybuilding world, you might just see me there. Who knows? I may take the stage again in another 40 years. We’ll see.

All right. And now I’ve got a bonus one. I was going to end at five, but there’s one more thing I want to add here. There’s one more thing I stopped doing. And this one is less about fitness, but more about how I think. And honestly, while I made it a bonus, it may actually be the most important one on the list. So, the last thing I stopped doing was I stopped treating every piece of data like a verdict. So, what the heck do I mean by that? I mean, there was a time when I would take one piece of information and immediately turn it into a conclusion. So, if the scale went up two pounds, something is wrong and I need to tighten it up. If I had a bad race that didn’t go as fast as I wanted, my training isn’t working. The output on my Peloton wasn’t above a certain number on my hit and hills ride, it meant I’m slipping. The red ring on my Apple Watch is only at this number today, it meant I didn’t do enough.

And those are just fitness examples. There are plenty of others, like this podcast. If an episode gets fewer downloads, people don’t like me. A client says no, I’m doing something wrong and I stink. I get rejected to be a speaker at a conference. I am washed up. And the common theme here is that I was letting one piece of information very quickly turn into a story. And not just a story, but a verdict, a judgment, proof that things were either working or not working, that I was succeeding or failing.

And what I have learned over time with a lot of work and a lot of coaching, if I’m being honest, is that one data point rarely tells the whole story. A single weigh-in really does not tell you anything. One workout does not determine your fitness. One race does not define you as a runner. One meal doesn’t define your nutrition. One potential client who says no does not determine your business. And one podcast episode does not determine whether you’re helping people. It is all just information. That’s it. And information becomes much more useful when we stop turning it into a moral judgment on ourselves.

Now, that doesn’t mean I ignore data. I still weigh myself. I still pay attention to my output on the Peloton. I keep track of my business metrics, and I still monitor what’s working and what’s not. But I’ve gotten a lot better at asking, what does this actually tell me? instead of, what does this mean about me? Because those are very different questions. One leads to learning. The other usually leads to unnecessary suffering at the hand of self-judgment.

And when I look back at everything I’ve talked about today, this lesson really is woven throughout all of it. Running is not the only exercise that counts. Lunch doesn’t have to look the way I thought it did. Exercise was not the answer to my weight. Not every workout needs to annihilate me. Strength training is not just about how I look. So, over and over again, I had to take one belief, one experience, or one piece of information and stop treating it like the absolute truth. Because like most things, it is not that black and white. And honestly, the healthier I’ve gotten, the less dramatic I’ve become about data. I don’t freak out as much, and it’s not because the data stopped mattering. It’s because the data is just information. It’s not a conclusion. It’s not an assertion, and it is not a judgment.

And if there’s one thing I want you to take from the episode, it’s this. The next time you find yourself upset about a number, a result, a workout, a weigh-in, a performance review, a race time, any piece of data, fitness-related or otherwise, take a pause and ask yourself, is this a verdict? Or is this just one piece of information? Because those are not the same thing.

So, when I look back at the things that have actually made me healthier, it really was not about finding a plan or a supplement or a system, or really anything that suddenly made my health and fitness all fall into place. What honestly made me healthier was being willing to question the things that I had accepted as truth for a very long time. It was proving to myself that running is not the only exercise that counts and that exercise is not just for weight loss, and that every workout doesn’t have to be so hard, and that lunch doesn’t have to look like I thought it did, and that strength training isn’t just for bodybuilders. And maybe most importantly, that one piece of data is not a verdict. And none of these lessons changed my life overnight, not at all. But they did change the way I approached my health, and it was definitely for the better.

And if you’re listening to this and wondering what to do with it all, the question is not, what should I start doing? Maybe the better question is, what rules am I living by that aren’t really helping me? Because sometimes, the biggest breakthroughs don’t come from learning something new. You already know a whole lot already. Sometimes, the breakthroughs come from being willing to let go of something old that doesn’t work for you anymore, so you can try something new.

And if you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, we look at the habits, patterns, and beliefs that shape your choices. And then, we decide what to keep and what to let go so you can stop spinning your wheels and start making progress. Check out my website, send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching can help you build a stronger, more sustainable approach to your health and fitness. Thank you again for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

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Hey if you want to build muscle but don’t know where to start, I’ve got you covered. Head over to CarrieHollandMD.com/buildstrength and download my free guide to help you maximize your strength training. Inside, you’ll find the essential exercises for building muscle, plus simple one, two, and three-day workout plans you can follow with just dumbbells and a bench.

You’ll also find strength training tips to help you train smarter and see real results. My goal is to help you get strong and this strength-training guide will help you do it. Go to CarrieHollandMD.com/build strength and check it out.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.