Podcast: Fitness and Mental Health
Tova and therapist, Jacob Williams, discuss the correlations between fitness and mental health.
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Host: Tova Kreps, LCSW
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Guest: Jacob Williams
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00 Welcome to wellspring on the air where professional Christian counselors share practical life and Bible insights. Why? Because hearts and minds matter. We're glad you joined our show today to hear from our host Tova Kreps, president of wellspring counseling in Miami. Tova is a licensed therapist with many years of experience as a Christian counselor. Tova teaches, writes, and consults and life. FM is pleased to have wellspring counseling, restoring hearts and minds in our community. Welcome to wellspring on the air. I'm Tova cofounder and president of wellspring counseling. Today's program is titled fitness and mental health. And with me today, I have Jacob Williams. Jacob, welcome to the show. Thank you. Tova. All right. Jacob is an intern with us, which means he's almost none with his counseling degree and he is a counselor now and at wellspring. We have interns with us in order to have reduced fees for people who can't afford the counseling. And we are really picky about the interns we pick. The ones we have are excellent. Jacob is no exception to that. So Jacob, why don't we just start, I'd like you to just tell us a little bit about yourself.
01:04 Okay. I am from Meridian, Mississippi. I moved to Miami in early 2014 so coming up on my five year anniversary and really invent Miami. I love the diversity. I love the busy-ness. I love the big city and it's much different than small Meridian where I'm from.
01:22 And you all will hear his accent. Y'all will hear his accent and mine will come back throughout the show because I spend a lot of years living in Texas. So there you have it. So this is a Southern show today on fitness and mental health. And so Jacob, like I said, is a great intern with us doing great therapy. And so we have him on the show today. But I asked Jacob to come today because he has some experience in fitness and mental health and has a strong belief that those two things are correlated. So that's what we're going to interview him on today. So Jacob, tell me why I would pick you to have the show on fitness and mental health.
01:54 So it all started. I was a little bigger than I am now. That was the chunky, shorter, yeah. Yeah. Water and I got up to about 235 pounds whenever I was entering college and I did not like that. One second. How tall are you? I am five. 10 and a half. Okay. All right. There we go. And so it was, it wasn't a good look. I didn't like it didn't like how I looked, how I felt and uh, I started making some big life changes and then by the time I was assault in new, my sophomore year, I had lost 70 pounds and it had changed my life.
02:29 That's a lot. So losing weight changes your life. Completely changed my life. All right, so tell us more. How, how did it change your life?
02:37 So, uh, I like compared myself to my friends a lot. They were the soccer players, the track runners, the football players, and it just gave me so much more self confidence and I felt better. I performed a better, I could keep up with anybody playing sports. I'd, I wasn't wore out walking up stairs. It just, it made me feel better about just about every aspect of my life.
02:57 And that's the hint. You're saying that the, the physical change changed your mental attitude. Confidence is a mental attitude, those kinds of things. All right. And then you've had more experience with fitness since then,
03:10 right? So all of a sudden impacted by how it affected me, I thought, okay, I'm nearing the end of my college career. It's time to decide what to do when I grow up. And I wanted other people to experience the same change that I experienced. And so I started looking into, into fitness. I graduated with a business degree and then I worked at a gym for several years, for several months in Meridian. And then I came to Miami and I got hired as the manager of a group fitness center in coral Gables. I worked there for three years.
03:38 So really you went into fitness because you felt like fitness would change people's lives? Absolutely. And then how'd you get into counseling?
03:46 Okay. So I spent three years helping people become the best version of themselves physically. And then I grew up my, my dad struggled with substance abuse. Some other members of my family have experienced some different bouts with mental health, mental illness, and so I thought, well, gosh, the two are so, they correlate so much mental health and physical health and so I've got this experience in the physical health realm. I want to learn more about mental health because I think that if you improve your mental health, improves your physical health, you improve your physical health, improve your mental health.
04:19 They go back and forth and and wellspring. Where we really try to come at counseling from a holistic perspective and I think you've described that very well. Sometimes we get at our mind through our bodies. Sometimes we help our bodies through our minds and so they go hand in hand. Well, I'm so glad you've gotten in the field of counseling and we're thrilled to have you. Like I said, at wellspring, but I think there's something very important about the world of fitness that also is added into your life that you wanted to say
04:43 while at the gym. Not only was it a great place to help people improve themselves, but it was a great place for people to meet others and build community. And it is where I met my wife. Awesome. And what's her name? Her name is Roxy.
04:57 Great.
04:58 She is amazing.
04:59 Okay, well you share that with her and it is a good place to meet people. Um, some people I think only go for that purpose, but in any case, I just got to workout. I, it's like women's gym. I and I'm happily married. I just got to work out. Um, but anyway. All right, so our show again for the listeners just tuning in, this is wellspring on the air and I have with me Jacob Williams and he's, we're talking about fitness and mental health. So I'd like to move a little bit into what does science and research have to say about fitness and mental health and on this show, a wellspring on the air. We always try to talk about what research says. And behavioral sciences says we won't talk about what the Bible has to say and we want to give practical application. So let's move to science and research. What's the connection between fitness and mental health according to science?
05:46 Okay, so there's a lot of different studies and a lot of research out there that talk about the state of your mental health. It's going to affect your physical health and then vice versa. And so one thing is that people with higher stress levels are more likely to have cancer studies show that. And then another one is that depression is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, which is that is what causes about one in four deaths in the U S every every day.
06:17 Wow. All right, so let's stay there for a second. So we're talking about disease, things that are related to mental health and there are actually a great number of pieces of research about this that if you think you're going to get well, you have a greater chance of actually getting well from a genuine disease. So that hope relates to cures and to somehow changes our metabolism in our bodies so that we actually can fight disease off better. And the opposite is also true. Stress absolutely affects our body. It can affect our digestive systems. In this case, you've talked about it affecting possibly increasing your risk for cancer, depression, increasing your risk for coronary heart disease. So there are many, many factors that if our minds are not clear to affects our bodies and the opposite, right? Correct. If our body is not well, it can affect our minds. I know that for instance, uh, after heart surgery, there's a correlation with having depression after that. So when our body's struggling, it can affect our mental health as well. What other research did you find?
07:12 Okay, so those feel good hormones that most people have heard about called endorphins released. Whenever we do exercise, those improve our mood, make us feel better and make us come more alive. Um, whenever you disliked today, we're having great weather, it's sunny and cool, that's going to make you feel better than if it was cloudy and foggy and dark and ugly.
07:34 Well, the great thing about endorphins is that those are the things that get triggered when we have any great experience. These are the same hormones that get triggered, uh, to have a good high or to get on shopping rush or winning a competition or drug use or a lot of these other addictions that we have because we can get addicted to those endorphins. But the truth is we can get that just through the healthy exercise. We don't have to go to substance abuse doing exactly right. Okay. It also, I know affects regular exercise affects our serotonin levels, which is the nothi the high of an endorphin. But the ongoing chemicals we have in our brain, they keep us feeling steady and happy versus depressed. When we get depressed, we don't have enough serotonin, but X regular exercise increases our serotonin levels and so it can literally affect our depression. Right. So what else have you got for us? So
08:27 you don't have to go do an hour long group fitness class to reap these benefits of in pre increasing your mood. Well that's all it would take is for somebody who is completely sedentary. So it does an exercise. So little as a 10 minute brisk walk is enough to boost your endorphins and make you feel better. Wow, that's a really great thing to know. What, well, the
08:56 food studies have shown that we eat. Have you ever heard the quote, you are what you eat. And that's totally true. And there are studies that shown that proper nutrition can help prevent numerous different health conditions and most specifically depression and Alzheimer's based off of what you eat. And then we even have seen studies where smoking, we know, we all know smoking is not the healthiest habit, but it says on the box that after the risk of getting sick from, from smoking, but most people believe that cigarettes are going to relieve those symptoms that they're facing. And although it may make them feel better for a short amount of time, it's not going to relieve the longterm symptoms that they're experiencing.
09:35 It's really true. So, and generally, you know, two of our most common reasons that people come in for counseling are depression and anxiety that and marital, but, but in terms of depression and anxiety, both of those have been shown to be shown to be reduced through regular exercise, both the Mayo clinic, Harvard health, I found a number of research articles on this that you can find. You can just Google it and you can find that for both anxiety and depression symptoms can be reduced is my regular says that some people, for some people exercise can work as well or even better than antidepressants. And I'm not saying we should or shouldn't use any antidepressants because sometimes it's so severe we need those. But exercise which doesn't require the psychiatrist and doesn't require those expenses and chemically changing her body can be a first trial and even that 10 minutes a day, but more than that later, we can actually reduce our depression and anxiety.
10:29 I completely agree where some people, it may be that anti-depressant is the, is the key, but if you haven't attempted to get active just a few times a week, it could. That could change everything and prevent you from having to spend psychiatry bills and spend money on prescriptions.
10:47 For sure. Well, we're going to take a short break if you're just joining us. This is Tova and Jacob at wellspring on the air and today we're talking about fitness and mental health and we will be right back. Wellspring now offers professional Christian counseling at six locations in Dade County. Therapists are now taking clients at toony locations when it crossbridge Miami Springs and Kiva skein for more information, (786) 573-7010 or wellspring miami.org for more information. So welcome back to wellspring on the air. Again, this is Tova Krups. I am the president and co founder of wellspring counseling. And with me today I have Jacob Williams. Okay. He's an intern with us. He's a counselor with us and he is also really knowledgeable in the world of fitness. And so today we're talking about fitness and mental health. So we've talked a little bit about research, the great correlations between exercise and reducing anxiety and depression and other body mind correlations. But now I want to talk about what the Bible has to say about fitness. Does it say anything about fitness?
11:49 It does talk about taking care of your body. Definitely. And it does. There are some specific verses that talk about physical training. Okay. But I was reading, I was doing the, the reading strategy where you read some old Testament, you read some new Testament and it gives you a little mix of both. And I was reading James and Exodus and James is very practical. It's very easy to understand. It says don't lie, don't swear do this, don't do that. It's very direct. Very practical. Exodus is different. It's more stories. It's history. It's telling the story of how the Israelites left over left Egypt. And so I'm asking, I'm in my prayer time. I'm asking, okay God, I understand what James is trying to tell me, but what am I going to apply today from Exodus? So in chapter 38 there are, well several chapters two and from 38 it's the construction of the tabernacle.
12:44 So the temporary temple that the Israelites were building to be able to worship God. And where the presence of God was to be housed. And it has intricate details about the width of the cloths and how many gold rings and how much Acacia wood and it, we could literally build a tabernacle. And so thinking, okay, that made me think of another pretty popular verse that a lot of people know about. It's first Corinthians six 19. That's the verse that says that your body is a temple of the Holy spirit, which is in you. It was given to you by God and that you were bought with a price. And so therefore you should honor God with your body. So if our bodies are a temple, and in Exodus it gives these intricate directions on how to construct a temple. God cared so much about the tabernacle to invest that much time in it. How much more does he care about our bodies, our Cabernet, our tabernacle, that house, his Holy spirit. How is him? And so I thought, okay, well if that's the case, then Christians should be the healthiest people
13:47 we should be. We really should be. If we take that, take that literally, um, you know, I had it a couple of other verses that came to my mind preparing for this and you know, Romans 12 one and two says, therefore I urge you brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, Holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. So us giving our body, submitting our bodies to him and his leadership and his choices for us is a way we worship him by giving him our bodies as his temple and we worship him by, by turning that over to him. I also was looking at first Corinthians nine 26 and 27 and it says, therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a boxer beating the air.
14:32 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. And this is an interesting passage to me. He's really saying, Paul is saying that he's fighting with a purpose in the, in the world he's in, but he's, he talks about striking a blow to his body to make it as slave. And I think that we actually have to be the ones in control of our body often these days, if we are controlled by addictions, by impulses, by these things at cravings, whether it's food or any other thing or even the lack of exercise. If our bodies rule us, we become slaves to our bodies and it's supposed to be the other way around. We're supposed to make our bodies slaves to us. And I think that that's what it's talking about when, why scripture encourages us to do things like fast, you know T a short, fast helps you remind you that food is not that essential that you can live with added. It's not the driving force of your life. These little breaks that we take in the physical realm or places we push ourselves in the physical realm remind us that the body is our tool for God's service, not the other way around. That we give it to God. And we give that over. And so I think these physical disciplines, whether it's exercise or self control or those things are actually ways that we kind of keep our priorities straight first things first.
15:56 That's really good. And I once heard that you just mentioned discipline. The pain of discipline is always easier than the pain of regret.
16:03 Oh, I love that sentence. Say that one more time.
16:06 The pain of discipline is always easier than the pain of regret,
16:10 huh? Well, somebody don't feel like that in the middle of the discipline, but I think that's true. I think that that shaming of ourselves that we do afterwards where we beat ourselves up because we feel so bad and feel sick in our bodies and, and sick about ourselves and discuss it with ourselves is a pretty heavy weight to bear versus really the, the pride and joy that we have when we've mastered something through some sort of physical discipline. Really true. All right, so let's get practical as we, as we start moving towards the end of this show, what practical advice do you have for our listeners about getting started with this? And I know you have at least four ideas here. So what's the first
16:46 four big ones? So nutrition number one, nutrition. And if you'd like to take notes, now's the time. But if you're driving please. So 80% of the battle is your nutrition. The rest is going to be your exercise. It's so important. It's the most important aspect of your, your physical health. And I'm, I personally don't describe subscribed to any diet plan. There's a lot of big fads out there right now, keto, intermittent fasting, paleo, all these things. Me too. And some of them are great for who? For you, depending on who you are, but there's not a one size fits all. So, but there are some, there are some rules to live by that most of them would all agree on. And that's that. Veggies are good for you. Eat many, many veggies, eat a lot of fruits, avoid a fast food, processed foods, things like deli meat and frozen dinners.
17:41 They're usually labeled as healthy and fun and fit, but they're full of preservatives and they're not really real food. Uh, fried foods aren't so good. Um, eat plenty of protein. Our bodies are made of protein, everything from our nails to our organs. So the more protein we have, the better. Keeps those muscles functioning. Absolutely. You know, the processed foods, it's key. They, the easier thing for me to do that I've given up on a lot of those diets, but is to eat just a whole food diet if it's whole and natural away it came, whether it's a meat or a fruit or a vegetable and I take it and eat it in its whole state. I'm doing pretty well. It's really good. It's kind of an easy way to look at it. I heard that a good way to start that is look at the back end.
18:26 If it has more than four ingredients, stay away. I like that. That's really good. Yeah. All those extra chemicals that they have to do to, to put into preserve. Right. All right, so number one is nutrition and I just try and keep that simple. And what about the next point? The next one is hydration. So drink lots of water and one formula that I like to use this half of your body weight in ounces, that's a minimum half of my body weight in ounces. If you weigh 125 pounds, you're going to want roughly 60 ounces of water per day. Okay. And but that's the minimum. And we live in Miami most of the year. It's hot or active. We're sweating, we need more. So drink plenty of water while working at the gym. I saw people change nothing. They didn't change anything in their diet, didn't change their exercise habits, just drank more water and lost weight.
19:18 Hmm. Cause they basically get everything functioning. You know my picture of that, that really held for me this, I do some gardening and my back patio and if my plants go three or four days, the potted plants without water, the plant looks completely different. And I, and I really wondered like why would I think my body's any different? You know, you can visibly see this plant all wilted and slumped over. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, it needs water. But somehow I don't think my own body dries up when I go a few days without drinking enough. You know, we are just like that. Every cell in our body needs that water to, to work and do what it's supposed to do. So, all right, so we need plenty of water. Anything else on that drinking part? Yes, coffee's fun. Tea is good if you can avoid your creams and sugars as much as possible, but everything in moderation and then sodas and energy drinks, those are gonna work against you and actually leave you more dehydrated.
20:11 And then I may be stepping on some toes, but alcohol isn't the best drink if you're trying to reach some fitness goals and lose weight. Alcohol has seven calories per gram, whereas pure fat is nine calories per gram. So as far as the nutrition you're getting, think about that glass of wine compared to a cup of fat. Okay. Well here's one way to think about it. It's, it's, it's just a high-glycemic kind of food and it's not adding much good isn't, that's not worth the calories in terms a little bit attrition. Okay. All right. Yeah, we won't step on dose on either direction. We're going to move right past
20:48 this. All right. What's your third point?
20:50 Okay, then now we're getting to the exercise and so I've also been asked, what is the best gym? Where should I go? And the answer is what is best for you? Everyone has a different lifestyle. Some people need to work out in the morning, some people need to do it at home, some people need to do it in the afternoon. Everyone's different. So it's the gym that's fun and that works for you.
21:11 Fun and works for you. I've tried all the different routes. I've tried working at home, working out. I'll tell you, the one thing I learned that works for me is I need a boss. I am not capable of pushing myself beyond comfort all by myself. Now that's sad to say, but you know, once I just faced it, then I'm like, I need somebody saying do one more. I need that, you know, thing. So I have to go to the gym now just as somebody keeps me going. I will exercise on my own, but never to the degree I do when there's a class or something going on with some sort of an instructor there. So I don't know about the rest of you, but we have to just kind of face if it's, if we're too weak to do it on our own, we need to come up with a way to get somebody to help us or a team to go with us or friend to go with us or whatever we need to make it actually happen.
21:55 Exactly. And that's the right for you group fitness. That's the right answer. It works. It's awesome. You can keep it up and be consistent with it. That's a win.
22:04 It's a win and you know, because because there's only one decision I have to make, which is show up after that, I have no more decisions I'm allowed to make because the peer pressure's too great. Whereas if I'm at home, I can decide to start and I can stop anytime. I have so many decisions. So I do the next one, do I not? And I fail it. All those decisions. So for me it's just about making one decision, making it simpler, you know? Um, so my goal every time is to just show up. All right? But everybody needs to figure out what works for them and in their lifestyle and with their families. And it changes to from different phases in our lives where what I did as a young mother is different than what I do, you know, now as an empty nester. So, all right, what's your fourth point here?
22:44 Fourth point is rest and recovery and stress management. Okay. And how important all of those are. So it is so important we hear that you go to the gym because you want to get stronger, you want to lose weight, you want to get faster. Well, we don't get stronger in the gym. We get stronger whenever we're asleep and our bodies are recovering. So sleep is so crucial. And then stress. Stress is something that is so cumulative. Stress can be. You had an argument with your spouse, you have a deadline at work, you didn't sleep well the night before, you had too much coffee, and caffeine can be stressful. You have all these things going on, so it's important to be able to mitigate that stress and keep it as low as possible because stress is, I've heard it called the silent killer.
23:29 It really, it really is affects all parts of our bodies, so we need to rest and we need to reduce that stress. All right, we're getting close to the end of our show here, so, well, I just have a question. What if you're too depressed to exercise? What do we do about that?
23:42 That is a really good question and that's kind of the opposite of the, the good cycle. If you're working out or if you're physically fit, you're going to be more mentally fit. If you're mentally fit, you're going to be more physically. Well, if you're stuck and if you're in in a depression and you do feel like you just can't motivate yourself, I would try to focus on, or ask myself the questions. Who do I want to be in a year? Where do I want to be in a year? How do I want to look in a year and what am I willing to do or not do to achieve those goals, whatever they may be.
24:17 So I think setting really longterm goals and saying, I want to be there. I think other things that come to my mind because I've had clients like this, it's like they're too depressed to exercise. And so I think making little teeny steps are the way to go that they just do a little, just show up somewhere, you know? Um, the little things, I'm going to put my tennis shoes on when I get home from work because then I might walk a teeny bit. So really bite sized pieces that are tolerable. The other thing is to maybe have people join you in it where that accountability or, or a friend who's coming alongside and say, could you just, you know, go for a walk with me each day. And so starting small and really celebrating and praising ourselves for little, little teeny steps is a great way to get started because people can get stuck. The more I exercise, the more anyone exercises, the more they crave exercise and the less you exercise and stop exercise and you actually crave sitting. And so somewhere there's like there's the stock, we've got to get some momentum going in one direction or another. And that starting is the hard part. So I think the key is to do it with great goals, to do it with accountability and friends and support to do it with lots of celebrations and to do it in tiny little bite sized pieces.
25:33 I love that. But just putting shoes on as a win. Cause one thing I was going to say is if a great thing for someone who doesn't work out and is looking to start a 20 minute walk is a good start. But she took it even further and said, let's just put our shoes on.
25:50 Well, I'm just talking. I've been here, I've been here, done that. And I just like, okay, if I just put exercise clothes on when I come home from work, I might actually then do that next thing, which is a little walk or whatever, you know? And, and uh, cause I messed up my back a while ago and so I really had to start over from scratch and, and it was, it was tough and it's hard for people, I think thinking of shoes, I think you could even go buy exercise clothes as kind of fun people who like a shopping, you know, getting the new exercise clothes as part of the motivation. So some of these little perks of, okay, if I start walking, I get to go get a new whatever I'm going to start playing tennis against, I go get a new tennis outfit or something like that.
26:25 And it's like, okay, now I've got the apparel, I can maybe do that next thing. Right, right. That's fine. All right, well we've come to the end of our show. If you've been listening, this is Tova and Jacob with wellspring on the air talking about fitness and mental health and the correlation between the two of those. If you miss this show or just came in late, you can find us@wellspringmiami.org that's our website and we have links to all of our podcasts here. Or you can find us by podcasts, wellspring on the air, on any of the usual podcast channels, and listen at your convenience at any time and hear that whole show or anywhere other shows on different topics that we talk about with Christianity, mental health, and how those things go together. So Jacob, thank you for being with us. Any last words?
27:08 Yes. If you're thinking about getting in, getting fit, exercising, eating right, I just want you to know that if I could have done it, anybody can do it. You don't have to compare yourself to what you see on Instagram or in the movies you just work on being the best version of you.