Hey there, I'm Amy Connell. Welcome to Grace Health, the podcast for women who want simple and grace-filled ways to take care of themselves and enjoy a little chocolate. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who wants you to know your eating, movement and body don't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to do what you're called to do. Okay, I am coming in today a little more uncut, kind of like what I have in my podcast subscriptions, a little more raw, and I wanted to talk some today about why right now is the perfect time to adopt the blue zone. I guess we can call it lifestyle Way of thinking maybe is another way to say it. I have a couple guests coming up over the next couple months who referenced the blue zone, lifestyle and blue zones. I thought today what I would do is just quickly go through that so that way, when it's mentioned in the future through guests and an upcoming podcast episode that I have, that we're all on the same playing field. So what I want to do is go through the blue zone, just the kind of the nine essentials of it, get us all on the same playing field and talk some about why right now is the right time to do this Now, as this is dropping. This episode is coming out right in the middle of the holiday season. I know a lot of people. A lot of people approach this episode or approach this season with an all or nothing mentality, and most of the time it's nothing and it's like I'm not going to worry about that right now. I'll deal with it in January, I'll think about it in January, I'll take care of myself in January, I will work on my sleep or eating more plants or something like that. And I invite you right now to hear these principles and see how you can apply them in your life, because I think I in fact, I don't think, I know that if we were to take these principles and embrace them, that we might have the most enriching and nourishing holiday season yet, because so many of these principles are intertwined with what we will often approach the holiday season with. Now, I don't know about you, but I try and be intentional. I focus on my family, I try to have some peace as much as possible. I know it can be a little difficult with a lot of the different things that are going on and, believe it or not, these are the kinds of things that those who live in the blue zones experience and are, excuse me, and are intentional about all the time. So the blue zone areas if you're not familiar with them, these are the areas in the world where people are living the longest. Quite honestly, they live very long, full, fruitful, healthy lives, and there's been a lot of research done looking at what's causing this and what are the commonalities of this. So I'm going to go through some of these and offer a little bit of my own perspective and my own thoughts and then I'll just do a little wrap up at the end. So the first one is move naturally. This is basically just that moving naturally. So this is not and look you guys, I'm a personal trainer. I love moving unnaturally. I mean not unnaturally, but like I intentionally move. I love how. This is from a beach cities health district. I had to look that up, so this is just from a blog post that they did, but these are like a couple of the beaches in the Southern California area. But this is what they said. I love it to start moving naturally. Consider making things a little inconvenient, and that's what we're doing. This is where, like, I use the example that my printer is not on the same floor. My office is on the second floor and so I go downstairs to my printer to get that. It is taking my dog just on a little walk, and when I say a walk, I mean like three or four houses down and I turn around and come back. This is just getting up and moving around and being inconvenienced and being okay with that. Now, do I think that it's helpful and beneficial to move in more structured ways, like through strength training or through a like an intentional cardiovascular walk or run or swim or whatever you'd like to do? Absolutely yes. But what the people in these zones are doing is they're just allowing movement to work their way into everyday lives rather than Siloing. Okay, I'm exercising now, I'm not exercising now and, of course, when we're not exercising, often we're doing exactly what I am doing right now, which is sitting, and what I have been doing. So getting inconvenient or allowing yourself to be inconvenienced and moving around is One of those nine main principles of the blue zones. Number two know your purpose. Now I love this one. In fact, on my website, you at over at grace health comm, you will see what I have written, and I worked really hard on this, but it is. I help women take care of themselves in Simple and grace-filled ways so they can fulfill their purpose. I believe that we all have a purpose in life. Now, my Faith drives that obviously, as a Jesus follower, I believe that God has a purpose for us, but, according to statistics, 81% of Americans, whether or not they even have any faith at all, believe that there is some sort of Purpose in life. And I will also say sometimes that can be a little confusing I offered five different I call them callings, but purpose is another way of saying it that we can explore in my book. Your worthy body. It doesn't have to be the big, huge. Okay, I'm gonna go build a well in an underserved community Overseas. That might be a great one, or it might be smaller ones. So, having a purpose when you get up in the morning to drive you, and going outside of yourself to Love others, to serve others, that is another one of these nine principles of the blue zones. Number three they call it downshifting and it's basically Lowering our stress level. Now I am going to have a great guest on this month. In fact, next week we will be. I would be talking to with Mandy Marseille and we'll be talking about stress and I'm working on trying to get one other person on early in the year to talk about stress as well. Managing that is so much easier said than done, so much easier. So I am really trying to find some people to help us manage that in simple ways, where it doesn't seem so overwhelming, because, let's be honest, we can get stressed out about being stressed out. That really is a thing. So in the blue zones, they really focus on Downshifting, on lowering that stress which, of course, can lead to Inflammation. It can. It's just related to every kind of major age related disease. You know, I don't need to tell you like I just don't even tell you that stress is not great for you and we all know that we need to do less of it. But it's hard to find the right tools and resources to do that. So I am planning on bringing some people on and we're going to have more conversations about that in the future. But doing what we can to just regulate that down a little bit is helpful. Number four is the 80% rule and I am Remember I'm going to get back and I'm going to wrap this all in and as why we need to be thinking about this right now during this season. The 80% rule basically says stop eating when you're 80% full because that's normally enough for you. Typically I shouldn't say typically, but often Americans in particular will overeat and there's a lot of different reasons for that, and I am guilty of it too. But if we can stop when we're 80% full, then that will help. Just give us what we need, but not necessarily more than what we need. What I love about this is this is right in line with one of the principles of the intuitive eating method, which is something that I have been learning more about. That I respect. I think it makes sense. Sometimes it's a little harder to implement, but again it's a journey. It's something that I'm working on. But principle number six is feel your fullness under in the intuitive eating method, recognize and listen to your body's signs that it's done eating, and my body will often give me signs that it's done well before I'm full, and so just paying attention to that. The other thing, or the other principle in the intuitive eating method is discover the satisfaction factor Eating is. It should be a pleasurable experienced and be enjoyed. So kind of combining those two. I think that we can achieve that 80% relatively well. I think it's also a learned behavior. We were born with it. We were born with it. I mean, how many of us have fed babies either through the breast or through the bottle and they get enough and they turn their head away from it? I mean we used to have that and then diet, culture and a lot of other things caused us to not pay attention to our body. But if we can pay attention and just stop at that 80%, I think, well, the Blue Zone statistics tell us that that is optimal. Number five is eating a bunch of plants. If you have been with me and been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you have heard over and over and over the benefit of eating plants. Plants have a lot of nutrients, but that is a staple for your get health. It's a staple for your mental health. I mean the get health gosh. We talked with Dr Richard Harris. I will put the link in the show notes. This was several years ago. He talked about the importance of eating a lot of plants. Halle Brooke talked about the importance of eating a lot of plants, again for our get health. Ruth Opeo came on and talked about it for our mental health. So I don't think anyone's going to argue that, oh well, I don't really need a lot of plants. No, we know this, we know this. But it's one of those things that sometimes we have to be a bit more thoughtful ahead of time to make sure that we have them. And, by the way, frozen fruits and vegetables are a fantastic way of getting your micronutrients in and your plants in, and it's a little bit easier to keep handy. So I have been known to make a chicken fiesta tortilla type soup with 100% frozen vegetables between onions and okra and zucchini and corn. Well, and then, of course, I pulled out some black beans. Anyway, frozen fruits and vegetables Great stuff. Okay, number six they call it friends at five and basically that is sitting down with people enjoying a meal, meeting up with others and just having that daily connection. Connection is so important. I know that Apple News, which is where I get my news. I know they have all the algorithms that know what I'm interested in and they keep showing me all of these articles about how important connection is, especially as we get older and in terms of longevity. We were not designed to do life alone. God did not want us doing life alone, and so finding those friendships and really having people who you truly trust and you don't have to have 20 of them, I mean just a handful is really beneficial. I like to say that I think a great place to do that if you don't have any, is in a Bible study. I just feel like I've counseled both of my boys about finding small groups while they're in college, because I think that that can be really helpful in peeling back that top layer really quickly. But finding connection is so important. Number seven is just being around positive people. Our mind guides us so much and I have talked with Dr Michelle Banks and a lot about the power of positive thinking while being real and being realistic, so I don't want to negate that there absolutely is toxic positivity. However, when appropriate, choosing positive thoughts and positive responses can be very helpful as well to our physical health not only to our mental health, but to our physical health as well and hanging around people who are positive as well. Number eight is really talking about belonging and particularly to some sort of faith based community. Again, like I said, my faith is highly important to me. My faith in Jesus drives everything that I do and I and what this is saying. Number eight is that belonging to some sort of faith based community really can impact your health in so many different ways. In fact, it even said all but five of the 263. So what is that? 258 centenarians? I did not say that word. Well, people who live to be 100 will just call it that they belong to some sort of faith based community. And in fact, one of the blue zones is in California and it's an Adventist community. So obviously faith is very important in that community. But then of course, there are others around the world. So you know, really, having that faith drive what you do, super helpful, super important. And then, finally, number nine is focusing on our loved ones. People in blue zones put families first. Now I will say I understand that not all families are what's the right word to say this constructive, functional, cohesive. I mean like there's a lot of crazy family stuff. In fact, I had a pastor one time say every, every family has a crazy person. Like, every family has at least one person who drives everyone else crazy, and if you can't think of anyone in your family, then that means you're the one. I don't know if that's true or not, but I say all of this and I report all of this with the full understanding that not all families work together really well. However, there are absolutely people I have to imagine in your family who you do want to prioritize and who you want to just really focus on. Right, it doesn't have to be if. If if you have a really dysfunctional relationship with one particular family member, then that's maybe not the one where you're who you're prioritizing, but you can prioritize other ones. And you know what does prioritizing mean? Well, that is kind of up to you. But maybe it is checking in via text or through whatever social media. Of course I'm a huge proponent of face to face, if that is possible, having phone conversations, facetime, I mean. You you've got to figure out how that is, what meaningful is to you. But but putting your loved ones and prioritizing your loved ones is important. Okay, so now those are the nine. Now let's zoom out and remember this is dropping during the holiday season, so we are smack dab between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this can be just as applicable if you are coming up on a summer vacation, if you are looking at spring break, if you are looking at any of your holidays you know Easter or I mean there's so many different ways of looking at this. When I think about the Christmas season, this is what is important to me. I love getting together with friends and people who mean a lot to me. I love enjoying different kinds of foods that I don't typically have throughout the year. You know, I enjoy a little bit of it, but I don't enjoy. You know, if I have too much of it, then I don't feel very well. I love the connection. I love pouring into my faith and exploring other ways to connect with Christ. Right now I'm going to be doing this with a or actually, as this airs, I'll be doing this with a new study by the Daily Grace when I think about what I envision as a successful holiday season and what is the nine, what are the nine principles of these blue zones? They're pretty much the same and, yes, I do love, you know, moving, but I typically don't move the same way. During the holiday season, I will move a little bit differently and sometimes just a stroll around the block is all I get done, and I'm okay with that and I hope that you're okay with it too. So these blue zones, I think, are a great model for us to remember, and especially for those of us who get focused and caught up in following the quote-unquote rules and making sure that we're having all of the right you know the right protein or fats or carbs, or that we're exercising a certain way, I believe that keeping these nine blue zone principles in mind can help us give us the grace that we need, and I would almost say it's not even that we need the grace, it's just that we need the reality check of how are we physically and mentally and spiritually vesting in ourselves now and for longevity? Because, if you think about it, we talk a lot about eating on here, we talk a lot about movement, but that's really not very many of these nine. In fact, that's kind of only two of them. Moving naturally is one of them, and the eating plants that's the other one. I mean, I guess, if you wanted to, you can consider it. You could throw like the 80% rule in there, but that's really not any kind of what or even how. It's just how much. So I hope that you keep that perspective in mind as you go through this holiday season, as you think about what your new year wants to look like, or even your new day if you are not listening to this real time. Remember that what we eat and how we move is influential, but it is not everything. Connect with your people. Pull down your stress level. Have your faith, lean into Jesus, manage your stress so much easier. Send the done, I know that, but these are the things that will help us thrive and encourage longevity, not just getting into the micro details of micronutrients. So I hope that gives you something to think about, and this is an episode I will be referencing when I need to, particularly on the next one that I drop. That is another solo episode, because I will be talking about this just shortly in the next episode that I do. Okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a grace today.