So when you said that Thanksgiving was your favorite holiday, I don't know that just warmed my heart because I tend to not celebrate just Christmas. I tend to celebrate the holidays. And the reason for that is I think that Thanksgiving, especially in our culture of crazy Americans,
It has to start with gratitude because I think especially when you have a holiday like Christmas that can tend to be a little bit materialistic, dare we say, maybe not for everybody. Maybe you, you know, escape the material things. I think starting the holidays with a month or a week or one day, even if all you do is you focus on one day, Thanksgiving, you give thanks.
Before, it becomes all about the giving and receiving of gifts. Yeah. You're listening to the Addicted to Fitness podcast brought to you by Elemental Training Tampa. Now, here's your hosts, Nick and Shannon Birch.
Thank you for stopping by and checking out another edition of the addicted to fitness podcast. We have a throwback episode for you today about the benefits of practicing gratitude, especially to relieve holiday stress. But before we get into that, we want to thank you guys for listening each and every week. If you have not done so already, please head to your preferred podcast app and leave us a rating review. We really appreciate it. You can also
contact us or get a hold of us by following us on Instagram at the ATF podcast and then you can just send us a DM and we promise to respond. Last but not least, please share the podcast with a friend, help spread the good word of fitness. Send this episode especially. It's pretty timely because we're heading into Thanksgiving and this is a great episode to learn about how practicing gratitude this time of year
can help relieve some of that stress that's commonly associated with the holidays. So, without further ado, please enjoy this throwback episode of the Addicted Fitness Podcast. Thanks for stopping by and checking out another edition of the Addicted to Fitness Podcast. We are almost to the big day, my favorite holiday. That's right, I'm putting it up there as number one, Thanksgiving.
You know, it's my favorite holiday now is quickly climb the charts and number one in my heart. And a big component of it is kind of exactly what it says, but the holiday name is Thanksgiving. So we're going to talk about the benefits of gratitude in other words, giving things around this time of year.
And it's especially important to note that in Thanksgiving, the thanks comes before the giving, which in my opinion is kind of a larger sentiment of how you should approach the holidays.
Oh, we're going to go there. We're going to talk about. We're going to talk about. Yeah. I thought about that. Wow. Okay. All right. We're going to break down the holidays and how we
We have been there ourselves and also it's just common that this is one of the most stressful times of the year for people. I know I got a text today from someone who is very close to me and who I love very much.
I'm not nearby, but I know that during the holidays, they suffer with bouts of depression, and they even texted me today, and after I sent a picture of us and Ella from yesterday, and they said, this is exactly what I needed. So it is just fact. This is a difficult time of year, and we are
we are trying to kind of face this head on because it's a mental health, which quickly becomes a physical health issue. So we're tackling stress this holiday season with this episode. So join us as we explore a little bit about
Kind of how to mitigate some of that anxiety and just, yeah, really stressed out moments and get back to maybe the new approach for the holidays that thanksgiving really spells out for us. Exactly right. So before we jump into that very important topic, we are going to remind you guys that
As you know, we talked about Thanksgiving already, quickly approaching, which means we're in week four of the November challenge change challenges. Challenge, which means we are up to 40. That's right. I know Shannon and I are working on that ourselves. Hopefully you guys are too. And the nutrition portion of the challenge is no added sugar during the week.
Yeah, which is proven tricky. It's been tricky. It's been tough. I feel like I've been doing pretty well. I think you've been doing rather well. I've been doing better than I thought I would. There we go. I told you this last week, and we say this with all our challenges. It's not about a if you. It's not perfection. Yeah, exactly. You allow yourself to to slip up, but then just jump back on and get back to work the next day. That's the way. Every day. That's a new day. Exactly. So training recap, I will go.
I did some new stuff this week. Last few weeks. I've been doing new stuff called animal flow. It's very, I would say it's a combination of yoga and some
body weight movements. It's very similar, a lot of similarities to wrestling and yoga kind of warm-ups and just like agility drills and, you know, there's things like downward dogs, mountain climbers, things like that, kick-throughs, things you guys would see possibly in yoga or in other arenas. So it's another discipline that's very interesting to me.
That's something I've been exploring lately. I've also been doing something else. I've been running. I was like, what have you been doing? Running. Back to basics. Yes, because we have our 5K coming up very fast. It's racing toward us.
I'm just going to edit that out. So yes, our 5K is coming up November 8th, so that's what? December 8th, actually. Not if we were going back in time, folks. We're going to go back in time for this 5K. So yes, thank you, December 8th. So we got about two weeks, right? Yeah. Yeah.
I'm excited for that. Shannon and I and Ella are going to run this race. That is the plan. That's right now. All right. So what about you? What have you been doing for training?
I've done my kind of my go-to's. I did a hit workout this week. I didn't get on the bike actually now that I think about it, even though I meant to. It was on my list of things, but I have been doing a lot more late night work, which means I haven't gotten to bed until like midnight, which means getting up at 4.35 o'clock is really difficult.
That's my just kind of, I guess it's not an excuse. It's just kind of the reasoning of why. I did see you working with the kettle ball this week. I did hit workout. Yeah. And I honestly, when I go back to hit workouts, it's just like this beautiful sweet spot, you know, because it's, you can push yourself as hard as you need to in that moment, but you don't have to go like,
hard in the phrase, balls to the wall. You don't have to do that. It doesn't have to be a crossfit. It doesn't have to be a workout of a day kind of situation. You can work with relatively smaller weights. Kettlebell is one of my favorite. I do not like free weights in general. The kettlebells are just so freaking versatile, man. And they do just enough. I didn't even use that heavy of a weight.
But it just throws an extra curve into your workout routine where you just need something to further your challenge. And that, yeah, that was it for me. I felt good in sore after that. Then a couple of days later, I went and I ran about half an hour. And I ran with a dog, which I will say,
is very challenging. That's been my training for the 5K has been weekly runs with the dog. You have to pull her for like two thirds of the run. And she's not, I mean, she's 50 pounds, basically. She's not like, she's like a dead weight kettlebell. So it's like a pole in a slot. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. I wish it was the other way around, but no, it's not I pull her. Yeah.
That's good. And gosh, there's another piece I wanted to... Oh, you've been doing some serious decorating.
If that was a workout, then I would be like goals. I remember looking this up for some reason. It was for a post or something related to Christmas, but it actually broke down how many calories, things like wrapping gifts, decorating the house, you know, putting up lights and stuff like it actually broke down how many calories you burned doing that. So, you know, I think I'm sure you got a little bit of a some workouts too. Cause I mean, I definitely broke a sweat. Yeah.
The what you did that tree. It made me exhausted. I was just sitting there. I had to fluff our Christmas tree because we have a fake tree. There you go. That's sounded weird. You said what you did to that Christmas tree. But it is beyond me. You said fluff the tree. So let's be serious. Who's weird here? But you do. Anyways, so that was our training recap, guys. Please share with us your training recap's leading up to the holiday and
Uh, your progress on the November challenges. You guys can send us your, uh, updates at ETT AMPA on Instagram and Shannon JP on Instagram and also the addicted to fitness podcast Facebook page. Yeah. All right. So let's get into the main topic of today's episode. Gratitude, especially gratitude around this time of year. Why is it so important? What does gratitude mean to you?
Well, I've recently read a Peppa book, Peppa Pig book about being grateful. Let's see how you turn this around. And I think that it was very simply explained that it's being thankful for all the wonderful things in our life.
So when I asked you earlier, what is your definition of gratitude? You pulled that from Peppa Pig? Yes. Okay. Yes, I did. Wow. All right. And this is Shannon as a parent. All right. So let's say that. Quoting Peppa Pig. A library, if you will. So I think it's a acknowledgement of appreciation for things, opportunities, people,
anything really concrete, not tangible and tangible in your life. And I think it's also you can't be grateful without at least for a short time while you're practicing gratitude. You can't
be anywhere but right here and right now. So you have to be 100% present when you are practicing true gratitude, which is one of the reasons I think.
It's basically like magic. Yeah, we looked up some, you know me, you guys know me, I'm loving, I love research, and I love to see if there's scientific research done on this topic, or essentially all the talks we talked about on this podcast. So yes, there has been research done on the benefits of gratitude. Now these studies, and they even say in the article, we found a Harvard
Harvard Health article, and he talked about how these studies don't necessarily show cause and effect, but they do have a strong link or association between gratitude and the benefits of certain aspects of displaying or having gratitude. One of the studies which I thought was really interesting is that they had
two groups, one group for 10 weeks wrote about things that occurred during their week that they were grateful for. So for 10 weeks, those people wrote that down, and then another group wrote down things that irritated them, daily irritations. And they actually found out after 10 weeks. And I mean, this is kind of self-explanatory, but newsflash or like breaking news,
The group that had wrote things that they were grateful for had better happiness scores and they also felt better about their lives. They were more optimistic and actually led to them being more apt to go to the gym and had less doctor visits associated with that group.
Um, like I said, this is the association of the gratitude with physical benefits is, you know, it's what it was displayed in an article or a research top research project experiment like that. So, um, I think there are, there are others in, you know, talking about people delivering, um, thankfully you knows the people and getting how much benefit that can be. So, um, when I think about gratitude, it's for me and I know there's different aspects, but it's,
I know like gratitude and grateful, you know, that should be one of the same, but it's always knowing that how fortunate I am with my situation. You know, it's like not that I didn't work hard. I don't work hard, but I know that I have a lot more opportunities, I think, than some other people's.
So in order to be grateful for that and then make sure I try to do my best to help others and may not have the same opportunities, that's how I feel I kind of, I guess, just reading about gratitude. I guess that's my biggest display of gratitude or how I display gratitude is by trying to help others.
You know, so and you know Saying thank you and I've got a client and who always says I love you when he leaves I love you guys as it did now I he does spread it around, you know, I'm not the only I love you slot he says
But that's, that's, that's okay. So, um, but yeah, I don't, I don't go that far, but I always say, you know, want to tell, make sure people know that I appreciate them. So whether it's giving them our holiday car, or even if they're just, you know, cause it's, it's weird for me. I know I'm rambling for a little bit, but.
Ramble on my friend. I was thinking about this because, you know, during this week, well, you know, the Halloween, Halloween goodness gracious. He was really going back in time now. So thanks Thanksgiving is that, you know, try to put posts about being grateful, things I'm grateful for like on social media and whatnot. Hashtag thankful Thursdays. So I know one of those things is, you know, I'm thankful, thankful to my clients. But even though that's a weird way of like,
You know, I feel like it's a weird kind of, I don't say it's a weird relationship, but like saying like clients, like it's like, yes, there is an exchange of money for services, but it's more so. It's like, I am very grateful for them because they are bestowing the responsibility upon me to help them with their fitness. Yeah. And that's something that I'm very grateful for. It shows you. Yeah, exactly. That is something I feel very serious about, very, you know,
It's a, I wouldn't say it in some burdens, I'm not burdensome, it's not the right word, but it's, I feel responsible. Yeah. And that's, and it's good. And I feel like that is very fortunate to have that happen. I know you muse unfortunate a lot, but I'm grateful to those people for giving me that opportunity. You know, so hopefully I display it enough with my actions and things like that. And, um,
Well, what about you? What are kind of ways that you display greatness, gratefulness? How do you smoke? And I think I approach gratitude a little bit differently because in my mind, comparing yourself to somebody else is
immediately takes you outside of what I consider a practice of gratitude. And I see gratitude as truly a practice because the way that I've been taught gratitude in most recent years was through meditation and changing my mindset and
There is a phrase, and I'm sure many people have heard it, but it's one I always come back to, especially when things are going haywire. Energy flows where attention goes.
If you are sitting there and you are focusing on all the negative things, just like the study that we talked about, then you focus and energy in and around you. It's not even just your own mind, but things will kind of continue to spiral in that specific direction if that's where your attention goes.
And you have to disrupt that way of thinking. Like if you think about your thought as like a high speed highway and the more stressed, more anxious, more disruptive, more kind of damaging, I feel like thoughts get.
the more chaotic and the faster your thoughts going. So I mean, think like a wild car speeding down the freeway or something.
And there is no other way to get out of that. Finding a lane to turn off and exit that freeway when you're going 150 miles an hour is really, really hard. But if you can somehow slow yourself down and just be still for a minute, you're going to be able to actually see where you are. You're going to be able to look around.
That's what gratitude to me is because you're not comparing yourself to anybody else when you're really focusing in on gratitude. You are just very carefully and very mindfully choosing to consider all of those things in your life that just bring you joy without strings, without condition, without any sort of
kind of connection to anything else, you're just so happy for them and so grateful for those things. And I think practicing that kind of gratitude that is unconditional and uncompromising in a way, you know, it's just, it's that idea of like, you know, not not unconditional love, but it's, it's like unconditional gratitude thinking without
without what everybody else thinks you should be grateful for, but like genuinely if you, and it's not something that's easy to do. I'll also say this is not something I learned to do in a matter of like someone said, oh yeah, practice gratitude. It's fantastic. It'll make you feel beautiful.
No, like this is taking years, but now I use it to break the cycle of negative thought into slow myself down and get the chaotic crazy mind that can happen into this place of just right here right now forget everything else. What's really important to you and the more you think about those things.
all of the other inconsequential, unimportant, tedious, just ridiculous things that we stress about, that we worry about, they just kind of melt away. Even if it's only for a short amount of time, when you really practice
gratitude, it just makes all of those other things disappear and you just focus on those wonderful things that you do have. And I know that, like we said, at the beginning of the podcast, the holidays sometimes are like a magnifying lens on your life.
And it shines this very harsh light on all of the areas of lacking or all of the empty places in our life, whether it's relationships or stuff. And that's where it gets really stressful. So when you said that Thanksgiving was your favorite holiday, I don't know that just warmed my heart because
I tend to not celebrate just Christmas. I tend to celebrate the holidays. And the reason for that is I think that Thanksgiving, especially in our culture of crazy Americans, it has to start with gratitude because
I think especially when you have a holiday like Christmas that can tend to be a little bit materialistic, dare we say. Maybe not for everybody. Maybe you, you know, escape the material things. But even if it's just things you notice, materialistic things and Christmas and, you know, that just kind of goes hand in hand, I think. Thank you to the marketing world. But
I think starting the holidays with a month or a week or one day, even if all you do is you focus on one day, thanksgiving. You give thanks before it becomes all about the giving and receiving of gifts. I mean, obviously it makes it easier. It makes it like it grounds you.
Yeah. And I think people when they think Thanksgiving, they're like, oh, dinner or food, stuff like that. But I think it's more like turkey and football. Yeah. But usually it's the coming together of you and your family or friends and hopefully having a meal. Yeah. Sure. The, like, I think the food has been marketed very well as the centerpiece, but the centerpiece is honestly interactions between the people you are closest with. You know, they even have friends giving now. That's become a probably another real thing. Yeah.
dictionary, but that's good. I feel like I'm stepping in a good direction. People are just getting together with their friends and hopefully also their family because that's it. People are becoming together and sharing.
gratitude with one another, you know, through food. Maybe they usually there's always a level of gratitude, even if it's not expressed verbally when you go to someone's place and, you know, you get together. It's it. Those are always, those are always sharing a meal, sharing a drink. That is one of those cultural
sort of just baselines in almost every culture. Yeah, food usually unites people. Yeah, I mean, they base Thanksgiving. They said, oh, yeah, the pilgrim and the Indians came together and they had a feast. We're not even going to go there right now. I've got ancestors on both sides and I can tell you who lost. I don't know. Yeah, hell.
Historically, that is but. But the concept is very nice. Yeah, as our traditional definition of family has expanded over the years to not just be your immediate family and has really come. I mean, for me, some of my friends, I consider them
100%, like the only difference between them and my relationship identifier of family is that we're not blood related. They are my family. So friends giving, whatever kind of giving you have, I guess it is. It's just like a really, it's kind of an amazing holiday.
And I mean, ways to, you know, besides getting together with your friends to cultivate gratitude, I know, you know, I mentioned the post, but I think social media is kind of, you know, a lot of people, I know social media gets a bad rap a lot and sometimes rightly so, but I think you can display gratitude on social media, you know, to telling people what they're grateful and then hopefully your gratitude inspires someone else to be grateful.
That's kind of, I think, a thought by a lot of people using social media, use it that way. I mean, they hope to inspire people, not necessarily just with gratitude, but they hope to inspire people in general. And inspiring people to be more grateful, I think, is very noble.
attainable thing you can do to not only show your gratitude, but hopefully, you know, kind of pass the gratitude, pass it along, you know, paid forward to a certain extent. Yeah. I mean, they've proven that, like, happier people, those people more content with their lives, more apt to call themselves successful are actually people who are
that have a pretty strong gratitude practice and that are also very grateful for things in their life. This doesn't necessarily mean that they're the head of some hedge fund somewhere, probably not, but these are the people who have found true meaning and feel, like I said, content.
There's, it's a practice. I think it's something that we all can, if we forget how to do it or we forget to do it because we get busy with everything else in our lives. I think the holidays and starting with Thanksgiving is a great time to sort of reset. It's like we're re-inspired and refilled with hope.
And it's a good time to kind of check in and also refill your gratitude as well. Yeah, I think simple ways we're so connected nowadays with, you know, I know I keep seeing social media, but even with our phones and whatnot, that you can send
small messages of gratitude to those who really mean something to you. But I think you talked about this beforehand. Gratitude is almost like a form of meditation. Because it's like you said, you're completely present when you have to express gratitude. And right now, I talked about it last week, but the food drive I've done last five years for metropolitan ministries, that's something that is my
kind of like my hour display of gratitude because growing up, I mean, like I expressed this earlier, but I know how much how some people don't have the same opportunities that I had, you know, thanks to my family and, you know, my
where the situation I was kind of put into over the years, but I always want to make sure that I don't forget to not be grateful and try to help others. You know, I mean, we don't talk too much around religion on this podcast, but I think something that has stuck with me through my
My decades of Catholic education, and I'm sure this people get this outside of religious education, but is to help others and do on to others. People wouldn't want to do to you, things like that. So I think giving back, especially this time of year, when you already talked about the holidays can be those times where your anxiety can be amplified or is put under a microscope to a certain extent.
giving those people, giving them even maybe a meal can reduce that stress by a little bit, some of the less fortunate, then I think that's a great way to, I believe, express gratitude.
Well, and I think too, I'm not trying to diss at all anything you're saying. One of the things that I know I've struggled with in the past, and I think is the pitfall of thinking about how to express gratitude, you have to feel it before you express it, like 100%. It is one of those things.
If you feel you have to post a thankful Thursday Instagram post or you have to post this like eloquently, you know, poetic.
tribute to all of the things in your life that you're grateful for on your Instagram for Thanksgiving before anyone's going to like your picture or something, that's going to stress you out. And that's not what gratitude is about. If you feel like you have to go and you have to volunteer so many hours, you have to
add the outward showing or expression of gratitude to the laundry list of things that you're already supposed to do during the holidays. I would say be careful of that because gratitude is first and foremost your thing and you have to feel it before you can share it. And I think the biggest reason that
um, learning to practice gratitude on your own and feel it for yourself truly and make it kind of regular thing is that once you do feel it, you want to share it. You genuinely want to share it because making other people happy.
And this was a movie that we recently saw. So it does remind me, making other people happy is one of those things that makes you happy. And I think we forget, we get so caught up in our own stuff that we make it all about the lists and the expectations and
If we stop to actually take pause, take inventory of what we have and be appreciative for that, be grateful. You really want to extend it. And that's when the expression of gratitude and extending it to other people, I think beyond giving like gifts and stuff like that, even sometimes.
It's so much more rewarding because you feel like you're giving more than just a thing. You're giving someone an emotion. You're giving someone an opportunity. You're giving somebody support and you're helping to make them happier during what could be a really difficult time. Yeah, I agree.
Those are some good examples of not only showing you the benefits of gratitude, but maybe how to approach gratitude this holiday season. Yeah, and I actually shout out to my friend Cynthia because she actually has a gratitude box that she and her family keep throughout. I think it's like fall.
and they write down, I think it's like every day through the month of October or something, they have to write down, their kids have to write down one thing that they're grateful for.
And then they go through like during Thanksgiving or go, they go through during November and they read them out, which is really nice. And I read another practice or idea. And this is just a good way to introduce gratitude if you don't have a way that you practice it in life. Just a good starter.
is to just simply write it down. And then if you want to involve your family, I read an exercise about creating a giving tree for Thanksgiving, which is if you're hosting a Thanksgiving meal or attending a Thanksgiving meal, you've got your family together, friends together, whatever it might be, just a really heartfelt kind of way to get everybody on the same page and feeling that sort of
grateful vibe and that grateful gratitude glow is having them write down on a piece of paper, something that they're grateful for. And then you put it on like, you hang the piece of paper on a little like tree. And then you have this little gratitude tree and then just randomly go through and pick them out before, after your meal, which sounds kind of awesome. Yeah, that's a good way to
verbally express. Yeah. And like make it about an experience with other people that you care about. So there's, there's a lot of fun ways that you can do it. You can keep a gratitude journal or diary.
So yeah, there's a lot of fun stuff you can do with this. Yes. So the key is just to find your way of how you express gratitude and explore. Practice gratitude and then figure out if it's something that you can also share with others and how you can do that. Exactly right. So also you guys, make sure you practice those push-ups because we aren't doing a 40 this week. We're getting into the end of the number. The grateful for your progress.
Uh, we're out the, the December challenges will be coming shortly. All right. So, uh, you guys, once again, you can get a hold of us shows your progress with these challenges at ETT, AMPA and at Shen and JP. You got anything else for them?
No, I'm done. You're done? I'm done. Throw it in the towel. I'm grateful for you. Someone of us are just waiting for the opening. This has been another edition of the addicted to fitness podcast and we'll check you next time. Thank you.
For all things addicted to fitness, you can check out our website at addictedtofitnesspodcast.com. You can also give us a follow on Twitter at the ATF Podcast and like and follow the Addicted to Fitness Podcast Facebook page. Last but not least, please give us a rating and review in the iTunes Store. Thanks.
