Krisna Hanks: Even Professional Athletes Can Be Metabolically Ill - #74

For some people, being healthy is always associated with weight loss. Krisna Hanks never had that problem. Having spent 30 years of her life as a professional dancer, she was a vegetarian, did Pilates and swimming to strengthen herself, and took care of her body as her topmost priority.

But at one point in her life, a bad joint pain made her struggle to stand up or sit down. For 2 years, doctors can't diagnose what was wrong with her. With all tests exhausted, her physical therapist friend recommended changing her diet. From vegetarian to meat-centric, the change didn’t happen overnight. It was a process.

Now as a health coach, she has a deep understanding of the different struggles of each person. Overall wellness is in body, mind, and spirit. In this conversation, she shares her mindset as a professional dancer helped her to be the health coach she is now, how social connections are important for our well-being, and why mindset is a big factor when one decides to change.

Quick Guide:
01:01 Introduction
07:19 The perspective she carried as a dancer to being a health coach
10:35 Favorite choreography
15:36 The health issues of a professional dancer
25:26 Shift of identity based on their diet
29:13 Wellness is body, mind, and spirit
31:16 Simple, doable, and actionable steps help with change
34:41 Social connections matter as much
47:10 Movement heals
52:47 I Fix Hearts coaching program

Get to know our guest
Krisna Hanks was a professional dancer in USA and Europe for more than 30 years. She now spends time coaching people and she’s part of Dr. Ovadia’s I Fix Hearts coaching program.

“I think that's something that I learned early in my career, the more you're consistent with taking care of yourself, the less chance you're gonna have risks. There's going to be risks. Yeah, I had a couple of injuries, then you have to learn how to take care of yourself to come back from those, having also good team around you is helpful.” - Krisna Hanks

Connect with her
Website: https://www.square1wellness.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Square1Wellness
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/square_1_wellness/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisnahanks/

Episode snippets
14:47 - 15:36 - T

Chances are, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't need to change your life and get healthier.

So take action right now. Book a call with Dr. Ovadia's team. 

One small step in the right direction is all it takes to get started. 

How to connect with Stay Off My Operating Table:

Twitter:

• Dr. Ovadia: @iFixHearts
• Jack Heald: @JackHeald5

Learn more:

• Learn more about Dr. Ovadia's personalized health coaching
• Get Dr. Ovadia's book Stay Off My Operating Table on Amazon.
• Take Dr. Ovadia's metabolic health quiz: iFixHearts
• visit Dr. Ovadia's website: Ovadia Heart Health
• visit Jack Heald's website: CultYourBrand.com

Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings

Transcript

Announcer  00:10 

He was a morbidly obese surgeon destined for an operating table and an early death. Now he's a rebel MD who is fabulously fit and fighting to make America healthy again. This is Stay Off My Operating Table with Dr. Philip Ovadia. 

Jack Heald  00:37 

Well, Phil, we got somebody today who has an entirely different background than almost any of our guests before. And I did a little bit of research and I've got all kinds of questions I want to ask her. But why don't you tell us why we've got this interesting woman here with us today? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  01:01 

Sure thing, yes. And Krisna Hanks, very excited to introduce her to the audience. A number of reasons why she's on, as you said, very interesting background, I'm going to say, certainly the first professional dancer that we've had on the show, and very well, very good depth of knowledge around nutrition and fitness. And that is what led me to hire Krisna as one of the health coaches in our new group coaching program. So, for both of those reasons, I'm very excited to have this conversation and to introduce Krisna to the audience. Krisna, why don't you start by giving us a little bit of your background? 

Krisna Hanks  01:56 

Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Philip. It's an honor to be here. And I'm certainly very excited to be part of the Ovadia I Fix Heart Health team here to help improve, let's say the nation's, I'm going to be bold here, the nation's metabolic health as we go further in this process. So, I would see, in the words of my mother and my mother was right about everything, I'm very eclectic, that's for sure. I grew up in the Midwest. And I'm going to make right away the coaching link. Both my father and my brother were basketball coaches. My father is one of the most successful basketball coaches in Illinois, I think he still holds the record for 20 consecutive seasons of 20 wins and more. My brother also coached on the international scale in Venezuela, in England. Anyway, I grew up with coaching, let's just say it's kind of in my genes that I think is the link. But anyway, I started dancing professionally in the Midwest at the age of 15. And that took me on quite a journey through lots of American cities from Chicago to New York. Different companies, different productions, ended up the latter part of my career in the Netherlands, working also with a variety of companies from the Dutch National Opera to a choreographer named Lisa Marquez, different productions, so a 30-plus-year career as a professional dancer, but like any good dancer, you have to do all kinds of other things along the way to survive not only financially but mentally and physically. So throughout that period, I not only got certified in various different things from my younger yoga to classical Pilates... 

Jack Heald 

What kind of yoga? 

Krisna Hanks 

A younger yoga.  

Jack Heald 

Okay. 

Krisna Hanks 

Yeah, this is a special sort of very much orientated on alignment. It's founded by a man named B. K. S. Iyengar who wrote pretty much the bible on yoga called Light on Yoga. Very anatomy-orientated. That's something that always fascinated me that how does the body really work in alignment and physically? So personal training led me to one of the jobs that I worked for as a dancer in New York City was more in the realm of what I would call worksite wellness helping companies develop their wellness programs. So that led me down that path of working with corporations trying to improve the health of their employees. And then there's seeing all the struggles that individuals have. Then I started veering more into the coaching realm. So, I've had several decades of all just executive coaching as well as health coaching, trying to be that person to help people figure out a plan. I'm putting all these pieces of health together. This kind of that little bit of the story. I have a couple of educational degrees. 

Jack Heald  05:33 

We need to address the elephant in the room. I want you to tell us, which part of Illinois your accent comes from? 

Krisna Hanks  05:44 

Well, my accent remember I said my mother was right, eclectic, comes also because I speak Dutch. Right? So, I lived two decades in the Netherlands. So yes, I have underlying Midwest from Quincy, Illinois. I went to school in Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. So, Illinois, Indiana, and then ended up in the Netherlands. So yes. 

Jack Heald  06:10 

Okay. Yeah, reminds me, quick story that has nothing to do with any of this, except it's just it tickled me when it occurred. I worked in England 20 years ago. And while I was at the office one day, and one of the guys who worked there, he knew I was from America. And he came in, and he said, oh, I'm going to America for holiday. And he said now, where do you live? I said, I'm in Phoenix. Well, now, where is that? Well, it's about 300 miles east of the coast of Los Angeles. You know where Los Angeles is? He says, yeah. He says, I'm going real close to there. Where are you going? I'm going to the Midwest. And obviously, it's stupid that as Americans, we call that part of the country the Midwest now. I guess it was 200 years ago. But anyway, so I was thinking maybe that was the part of the Midwest you were from where that particular accent was dominant. Okay. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  07:19 

Very unique combination. So, Krisna, what would you say some of the takeaways were from the many years you spent as a professional dancer, and very similar to professional athletes’ fitness, nutrition. These are things that I'm sure were emphasized. And you probably saw a lot of your fellow dancers doing a lot of things around that. And I'm wondering what, when you look back at sort of as you were ending your professional dancing career, what some of your ideas around that may have been? And then we can probably talk about where they may have changed over the years since then? 

Krisna Hanks  08:14 

That's a great question. I'm not sure anyone's ever asked me about that. So that's fun. Well, first, I would say, one of the most important, I think things I took away from three plus decades of professional dancing is, as a dancer, your body is your work, is your machine, it's your livelihood. So, your priority on a daily basis is taking care of that. It's trying to make sure you don't get injured. It's trying to make sure you're fueled not only for rehearsals, but for touring, for productions, for everything that comes along. And working, I worked in the modern dance world, where it's not that we have this huge team of physical therapists following us along and everyone, you have to be pretty much self-sufficient yourself. So, I think that level of being, of the priority that you must take care of your body has carried on with me consistently. I also think that you're highly aware as a performer professionally, of that it's more than just one thing. You train, obviously in movement day in day out as a dancer, but all those other pieces, your mindset, your food, getting good sleep, being able to have some periods where you're also being able to enjoy your family, community, those things. You see the importance of all that, and I think that's something I tried to take with me also as a health coach is just that, we all, especially as health coaches, we're trying to help everyone be a little more self-sufficient to not think that there's just a medical system here. So, I think those are some of the links that I've carried on. Also, just the passion for the human body and all its complexity, and that we're also unique not only in the way we move, but how we just operate on a daily basis. 

Jack Heald  10:35 

I want you to do a little bit of name dropping, but doesn't have to be name dropping. What's the favorite role you ever danced? And what's the favorite show you ever choreographed? 

Krisna Hanks  10:51 

Well, I'll start with the choreography first. So, I choreographed a piece for a company in London. And that was owned and operated by Joseph Busch Domingo who used to work for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and her husband, Stephen Carlsberg. And it was based on the story, particularly the relationship between Rosa Luxemburg and her lover. So, it was a little bit political, but it was very interesting piece. It was also on location. And then there's a difference between performing on stage and we do these things we call location pieces where you're go to a place, it might be outdoors, or it might be this abandoned warehouse. This was set on that location. So, we got to make it right specifically for that piece. So that was super fun. One of the most interesting choreographers I worked for was in the Netherlands. Lisa Marquez, she's actually an American who had been there for years. And we did several productions together in there. And maybe the same kind of most bizarre. I don't know, it's bizarre, but there was a film director named Peter Greenway. I don't know if that rings a bell for any of you, he did a couple of productions for the Dutch National Opera, which I was a part of, that was kind of very unique, having a film director do a dance. So those are kind of some highlights. 

Jack Heald  12:35 

What about roles? Did you have a favorite role, a role that you, it was like, oh, I finally got to dance that role. 

Krisna Hanks  12:42 

We, those in modern dance, we don't really get... 

Jack Heald  12:46 

It's not the same in modern dance? 

Krisna Hanks  12:48 

We don't really have names. But there was a, there was actually very many. I think part of the reason I had a 30 plus year career is I just loved it forever. So yeah, hard to pick one. 

Jack Heald  13:06 

As I understand it, and I don't understand much about dance, but it's extremely difficult on the body. So, my assumption is you must have been taking very good care of yourself all along anyway, because you hear stories all the time about dancers reach their early 30s, and they realize that they're done, and you clearly went far beyond that. Did you happen to have any specific, any special genetic advantage? Or was this just strictly you took better care of yourself? 

Krisna Hanks  13:52 

I would say, probably somewhat both. First, having witnessed, having had a father who was a coach, I saw the importance of cross training. I saw the importance of being very disciplined, I'm still very disciplined. That discipline is maybe placed in different buckets these days. And I think being aware throughout my career, being more conscious of that. Also, the other pieces that I mentioned to you that nutrition, that you get adequate rest, and that you don't take, you don't do those risky things, particularly the older you get. You weren't going to be seeing me on the ski slopes. That was not something I was going to be doing. I was not going to be running a marathon. I took a real priority to not put myself in risky places. But I think the fact also that I grew up doing a lot of other physical things, I would swim, I did Pilates as I was dancing, which is another form of movement, but not as strenuous as dancing, so a form of movement that could repair yourself and just being consistent. I think that's something that I learned early in my career, the more you're consistent with taking care of yourself, the less chance you're gonna have risks. There's going to be risks. Yeah, I had a couple of injuries, then you have to learn how to take care of yourself to come back from those, having also good team around you is helpful. 

Jack Heald  15:36 

I'm thinking about who the typical listener to this show is. And most of the time, it's, and this is a gross overgeneralization, but it's still not inaccurate. Most of the time that people who are listening to this show are looking to do one particular thing above all else, and that's lose weight. And I'm guessing that that has never been a struggle for you. So, the average listener is going well, what is, what can I learn from her? I need somebody like Dr. Ovadia who struggled with this, that same thing I struggled with, and he understands the pain and the frustration and blah, blah, blah. What do you say to those folks that see that you haven't struggled with the weight issue like they have? 

Krisna Hanks  16:30 

So very good question. Because I think, if anyone is going to delve into my story is that I have my own health issues, particularly towards the end of my health career. And that health is not only about weight, I have severe joint issue problems. And this is a sort of combination, again, my opinion, combination being 20 years vegetarian, which depleted my body of a lot of nutrition. And this created severe joint issues, I had some digestive and skin issues. So, I had gone from the state of being, asking my body to do anything and everything it wanted to do and it always did it to basically struggling with daily motions of sitting up, standing up. So, it was dramatic, both from a mental state, from a physical state. And, as it turns out, I was probably pre diabetic. I was not metabolically healthy, right? I was consuming massive amounts of carbohydrates, and sugar because I took the meat away, and that it filled it up with all kinds of other things. So, I think, what is, I think, important, we all have our own sort of history of maybe health things we dealt with. Yes, you're right, weight has not been something that I have struggled with. But I've certainly had my periods where my mom would say, oh, you're kind of chunky, or where weight and because of my profession, you’re kind of always, we're obsessed with it. But that's really normalized. But I think I experienced, what I hope to share with a lot of people is I've experienced some bad periods as well. It wasn't necessarily on the scale; it was in a different form. 

Jack Heald  18:36 

Well, I think, when you talk about somebody who struggles with pain, there is no one on the planet who cannot relate to that. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  18:48 

And you’re now, I would say, the third, maybe fourth kind of high level, active athlete that we've had on the show now, with a similar story. People have the, we've been told that if you're active enough, it really doesn't matter what you eat, you can outwork the bad diet. And just balance what you do with what you eat, as we hear so often today, but you're now, like I said, we've had a number of other high-level athletes on who were very physically active well beyond what the average person does. And yet ended up with health challenges related to what they were eating. Is that something you observed in many of your colleagues as well? 

Krisna Hanks  19:46 

Oh, dance is notorious for unhealthy behaviors. I think we've gotten better over the decades. And I think one of the saving graces for me is finishing up my career in Europe as opposed to in America. There's still a little more nuance around meals should be enjoyable. Right? Everything doesn't have to be about takeout fast food, that there's still a little more what I call humaneness around food and nutrition. And that could all have changed, right? We left the Netherlands in 2004-ish, I think. So, I have no idea what, how they are now. But that said, I think we often look at the athletes in exactly, Phillip, isn't it you say, look at that body. It's amazing. It look, what it's doing. We don't know, often the backstory of some struggles they might have, whether it be skin, or digestive or focus even. And one of the reasons I went down the vegetarian path is the dancer brain thinking, oh, that's gonna help me keep my weight at what it is now. There were a lot of other people doing it. Being on the road, I thought, well, maybe this is easier and long hold than I did for 20 years. But it took I think, the dance obviously on number, I'm not seeing causation. But the dance took its toll. I stopped dancing at 43. That's pretty very, very long. But the 20 years of vegetarian, it just really, like, was a kind of hammer on my joints and tissue system. And you don't, you wouldn't see it because I wasn't overweight or something. And no, not one doctor in the two years I was in my sort of what I called the medical hamster wheel trying to figure out, do I have some rare form of cancer, some autoimmune disease? Not one person asked me about my nutrition. 

Jack Heald  22:00 

You need to unpack that. There's more of a story there. And people are gonna be interested in that. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  22:05 

Yeah, I wanted to hear more about the process that you went through to figure this all out. 

Krisna Hanks  22:12 

So, when I started having these bouts of really bad joint pain, and that, for me, it was particularly located lower back spine. And were feeling like it was almost immobile to sit down and think not sure if I can stand up. So, I spent two years going from various different doctors, being referred, this, that and the other and also, they went through the whole thing's strange autoimmune disease, it's some form of rheumatoid arthritis, but we can't figure out what it is. Maybe we need to do kind of some other kind of cancer testing adoptable, those kinds of things. Anyway, at the end of two years, I had dinner with a dear friend of mine who’s a physical therapist, and he said what, you know what you've done everything we can't do. I don't know of any other tests you could do. Have you ever thought about your diet? Right, you know how people, I was particularly like, what do you mean, my diet is perfect, been vegetarian for 20 years. All bristled up, really very defensive. First thing I did the next morning was calling him, apologizing, but I said, I'm thinking about it. And then just a bunch of sort of cascading things happen in. My husband read the article by Gary Taubes. It said, what if it's all been a big fat lie? And we're both kind of light bulbs going off about this. Huh? What about inflammation, right? 

Jack Heald  24:03 

We don't know what that, I know Phil knows the article. For the rest of us, what was the gist of the article? 

Krisna Hanks  24:09 

Basically, sort of said, what if we've had it all wrong, saying that it's saturated fat and fat isn't the problem and maybe it's carbohydrates and sugar that are causing some of the issues here. And I’m, I just completely reflected back home. My whole diet is basically carbohydrate and sugar. And maybe it's because he talks a lot about the inflammation, different things that maybe I've got some similar things, but haven't maybe necessarily just put on weight, but I've got some similar issues, and then we went down the whole rabbit hole. 

Jack Heald  24:49 

Isn’t that interesting? So, most folks are looking at a weight gain and it's kind of oh, my problem is I need to lose weight, and they try a zillion things, none of which works because they’re just eating crap? You didn't put-on weight instead you had this breakdown that I gotta think I'm, that had to be pretty scary. There had to be... 

Krisna Hanks  25:17 

Totally. Yeah, it was very frightening, especially after my whole lifespan moving. 

Jack Heald  25:26 

So, talk about that period of time when you began to consider putting animal products in your mouth again, what was going on? And how did that all, take us through that process. 

Krisna Hanks  25:44 

It's not an easy thing, because many of us have these identities that your nutritional path is who you are. I’ve had to reinvent myself several times. I’m not a professional dancer anymore. I'm a health coach. And part of that was just spending time mentally talking with different people. And it wasn't like an overnight thing where like, the next day I start went out, loaded a ribeye or something. You kind of sneak into it a little bit, you have some eggs, maybe go for some fish, those kinds of things. And then sort of the bouillon, stark, and it was more of several months process of getting comfortable. Also, actually, I think it’s other people, sometimes who will cut, what you're eating meat? That, I think that’s a lot of these experiences that I think I've had, the times of reinventing myself, whether it's going from vegetarian to a meat-centric eater is understanding that we all struggle with different things from time to time. And coaching gives you the opportunity to be able to work through things with individuals. 

Jack Heald  27:16 

Phil, I want to ask you something related to what Krisna just said, about her identity, when the idea of not being a vegetarian, was brought up, it was a threat to her identity, but she was able to make that change, that shift. Did you have an identity change? When you started this different way of eating that led you to where you are now? Were you aware of something like that? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  27:49 

Well, I would say I wasn't necessarily, I guess for me, diet wasn't really part of my identity, what I was eating wasn't part of my identity. So, I wouldn't say I had to undergo that change. But what I, where I have undergone a very dramatic change along the same lines is, how I work as a doctor, how I function as a doctor, my mindset of that surgery was the answer to our problems and whatever problems surgery couldn't fix, medications could fix. That was very much my identity as a physician and I think that's the common identity as a physician and to now be in the mindset that diet and lifestyle will, can and should be fixing most of our problems. That is where I have undergone a major identity shift. 

Jack Heald  28:58 

With your coaching clients, Krisna, do you see, I think maybe it's related to mindset, but do you see problems that are also rooted in identity that have to be changed? 

Krisna Hanks  29:13 

Very much. I think that coaches are very sort of separate from the great work that the medical individuals do where they treat, they prescribe, they diagnose. What we do is we really try to look at the whole person. What is their mindset? Are they ready for change? There's even something very academic, which is called the stages of change that you go through where you're contemplating it or pre-contemplating it, contemplating it, right, you're ready for action, you're taking action, then you're going to maintain it. We go through these... Life is not linear. Yeah, it will oscillate back and forth between that. And I think mindset is also, I like to use the word performance mindset, obviously, I was a performer that you can make equal with what's called growth mindset. That's opposing to fix mindset. When I was vegetarian, I’ve a very fixed mindset. I thought this was it, I had it figured out. Somehow, a little later in my 40s, my body told me something different. It said this is not working. And I think the mindset is very important. We talk in wellness, body, mind, spirit, very hard to separate them. And I think, particularly when you're trying to make changes in your health, we work on the body part, right, we work on the spirit part, and we try to support people on the mind. We're not telling them what to do, we're helping them figure out what it is they want to do.  

Dr. Philip Ovadia  31:16 

Thank you, I was gonna kind of follow up on that a little bit. And get into how important the mindset is to all of this. Because ultimately trying to, you can't make people change, you have to help them change. And they have to want to change and be open to your help. And I know that’s something that you utilize in your coaching all the time. And like you said that assessment of if the person is ready for change is a very big part of it, and getting them to the point where they're ready to change. How often do you see people come to you, and they're telling you I want to change. I want to change. I know I have this problem; I want to change. And yet they’re not ready to change. And you have to, your first job as a coach is to get them ready to change. Talk about that a little bit your experience with that. 

Krisna Hanks  32:23 

And that's why I think coaches, that's their forte really is being able to have those interactions with people because helping them realize what their strengths are, and helping to sort of build those up, work from our strength-based perspective, because so much health orientated has been, oh, you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong. And we tried to help them with that. But then we have to also help them realize, what are the barriers? What you're recognizing this is a change you want to make and where's the disconnect? What are those barriers that are preventing from you? And also, to help them break it down easily to sort of doable pieces. It's impossible to tackle it all at once. And I think that often is what happens particularly in America. I think we're very much an all or nothing. Well, if I can't work out for two hours, I'm not going to do anything. I suppose you can take a walk. Go take a five-minute walk. And I think we're where we do with that with this desire to change. Maybe not being able to do it is to that piece it out for them, break it down, help them see, well, you can do this. Right, that's already a step forward in that direction. And then there's a word we even used in coaching called stacking, which is try to get comfortable with that little piece. Maybe, for instance, I give a good example. When someone says I can't cook. Okay, well, if you're not taking charge of your food, you're missing out on being able to be in charge of a certain aspect of your health. Let's break it down. Do you not like to do the planning, the shopping? Let’s break all those pieces down and maybe we can help you figure out what pieces you need support with. Right? Or are there other people in your household who can help you do certain pieces of it? So, making it more simple, doable, and hopefully then actionable. 

Jack Heald  34:41 

You said something when you were talking about your history, that broadly, this shows about metabolic health, but you touched on several other behaviors that affect overall health. You talked about as a professional, I think of you, I think of a professional dancer as a professional athlete, in my mind it’s just like that you're an athlete. And you talked about sleep. And we've had lots of folks talk about the importance of sleep. And you talked about mindset. And lots of folks talked about mindset. But you said something that really struck me, you talked about social connections, how you became aware of how important that was to your well-being? Is that a problem for people today? 

Krisna Hanks  35:40 

I think so. And I think COVID has really put a heavy hammer on those social connections, and something, maybe growing up in the wind gusts to small town, seeing file with teams, I was kind of getting a feeling there's all these little communities. So as a dancer, you make productions with people, you work very intensely with them, you’re physical, you’re round, and that is a social connection, very strong correlation of that. I also think, having had the experience of lived into in America, as well as in Europe, both for long periods of time, you're able to see the variety of social connections and a different aspect of that. And I think that's part of health and wellness. Built feeling that you've got people you can communicate with, feeling people that are there both to support you, maybe challenge you from time to time. The Dutch are very good at giving you right away their opinion, they're not gonna sugarcoat it. 

Jack Heald  37:02 

My son in law is Flemish, which is almost Dutch, and I understand what you're saying. 

Krisna Hanks  37:07 

It took me a while to get used to it, but then I grew to like it. And I think the things like our hobbies, our passions. For some people, they're very connected to their church, because of the community, because of the social connection. It helps. It's part of our DNA, I think. 

Jack Heald  37:30 

What do you say to somebody if you, as a coach, and I realize this might be a real, individual, specific type of answer you'd have to give. But when you recognize this is somebody who's suffering from a lack of those social connections, as a coach, how do you help? And I know there's people listening who are going, this might be me. 

Krisna Hanks  38:03 

I think the easiest way to explain it is I’ll just give you an example. And I know he would allow me to share this because I had a client that was struggling severely with weight issues, and had done even poor in COVID because of not being able to get out. Our first breakthrough for him to be able to not only start to see weight loss was he went back to volunteering at an organization that he was working with where he was mentoring students. He was very good with electronics. And he was mentoring a group of kids that were learning skills, technology and that. And it was reigniting this hobby passion of his and him being able to feel good about sharing some of his skills with others that kickstarted his ability to be very sort of conscious about his health and markers started to improve. He then started using that skill to do some food planning. We got the focus on protein. I mean, you just never know for any individual what is going to be that one thing that helps them start making all the other connections. 

Jack Heald  39:37 

But it started with this getting back involved as a volunteer. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  39:43 

And I think that's a great example of as much as diet and lifestyle is the most important determinant of health, there's a lot beyond the food that you're eating that goes into diet and lifestyle. And I think a good coach and quite frankly, a good medical practitioner should be able to understand that and help you to understand those aspects of it because it's not always as simple as saying eat this food, don't eat this food. 

Krisna Hanks  40:26 

It's so true. And I would say also, the advantage we have as coaches is we have more time than medical individuals do. Their time is very limited. And part of our processes to get to know the whole person. It’s not just maybe their struggles with weight, or their struggles with food or like my struggles with my joints. But what other things are they even interested in that can help them stay motivated on improving all the other pieces of their lifestyle? Because we know it is the whole picture. You can't just improve one thing and expect everything else to come along. 

Jack Heald  41:08 

Have you both seen a rise in social isolation related health problems over the last three years? 

Krisna Hanks  41:20 

Dramatic in my business, just dramatic. I have never just, and I know many individuals I work with, not only other coaches, but other therapists. We talk about the acuity level, the stress level as we know it. In metabolic health, if your stress is up, your cortisol is up, very hard to lose weight, hard to change some metabolic markers when you've got that constant. And for some people, it's staying up there. It's having little downtime. And that's why I think it's great we've had this conversation about social connections, because I think the mindset, the social connection, that's all going to help people sort of try to lower some of those stressors that the lockdowns, the closures, the loss of your social groups, just the change. We started talking about at one point about identity, many people lost their identity with their groups that they were involved in. 

Jack Heald  42:30 

Yeah, absolutely. You're seeing it, too, Phil? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  42:34 

Yeah, I mean, certainly where you're seeing increase in many diseases, whether physical, health-related and mental health related. And there's a very obvious uptick now in just people being sick, and part of it, I do wonder about the impact of if all people hear about is sickness for three years, that's going to have an impact. If we just think that the messaging is that everyone is getting sick, everyone is sick, that in a lot of ways ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it may or may not be COVID, that's what everyone was discussing, but I think the bigger issue is just all we've been focused on is people being sick for the past three years. And I think that is now becoming a bigger problem as to what that has led to. So, there are definitely challenges ahead. And it's even more of a reason that people need to be focused on their own health in a positive way. And I think that's what we're trying to do here. That's what the program is all about the coaching program. And really everything, the mission behind everything that I'm doing and everything my team is doing is to get people thinking about their health in a positive way. And Krisna is such an amazing resource for that that is available to people. 

Jack Heald  44:29 

Well, it occurs to me that that just having a coach like it appears Krisna would be, and I know you would be, having that coach in your life, for many people that might be that connection back to a social world that has been lost. I know loneliness takes a toll that is measurable in the body. And maybe a health coach is going to be more than just eat this and lift that might actually be a lifeline back to life. 

Krisna Hanks  45:08 

June 2021, The New York Times came, had an article titled we could all use a coach. And if you think about it, we've always had coaches. We’ve got executive coaches, we've got life coaches, we've got sports coaches. We talk, we use the word mentor and coach interchangeably, and trying to navigate your own health. I mean, it was lonely trying to figure it out. Luckily, I had some very supportive, smart people asking me questions, trying to work with me. But our current system is a sick care system. And it doesn't have a lot of space when you have questions about something you might try. Do you have somebody to talk to about it, to work through things because you change? And I think the great thing about Phil's also is you can do one on ones, or you can be in the group, because we all learn different ways. Some people love the group camaraderie, some people don't, they like more of the individual. But there's not a single process of life where we don't need support tools, or support people. And health isn't any different. And it is just gotten so complicated. And what we're trying to do is help people see there are a lot of things you can do. And some might even be, some might be a little more challenging than others. And also, to help them realize there might even realize that they're already doing that's really good. No, I had a presentation last week where I talked about, if you make that list of things you're doing, I bet the list that is good is a little longer than the other ones. So, let's focus on that longer list. And we're gonna, by osmosis, get to some of those other ones. 

Jack Heald  47:10 

Yeah, focus on the positive, strengthen the things you're good at and see if that momentum can help to strengthen the things you may or might not be so good at. I was just reading a little book. Just finished it last week, where it was a guy who grew a tiny little air conditioning company to a multi gazillion dollar powerhouse. And that was one of the things he was talking about. Strengthen people's strengths and the weaknesses will kind of strengthen themselves. I thought that was a fascinating perspective. I wanted to go back to a comment you made earlier. You talked about a type of movement that helps you repair yourself in your in reference to Pilates. That phrase, repair yourself with movement really struck me. I've never heard that before. Would you mind kind of expanding on that? 

Krisna Hanks  48:11 

Well, as someone who spent most of their life communicating with their body, I've come to appreciate the phrase, “movement heals.”  

Jack Heald 

Movement heals. 

Krisna Hanks 

And I think the perfect example is when you're not feeling so good, and your mood is so bad. What do you do? You go take a walk, right? Get outside, get a new focus, get a new perspective. But on a more concrete way, where I was coming from with that was dance like competitive sports or anything like that, it can be very repetitive, where you're doing day in and day out, month in, month out the same movement. That's like a car that is having to do the same things, but you now need to take it to the mechanic. For dance, what that can be is doing other types of movement that are different from that that you're performing in. Be it like one of the two, my two big questioning things as a performer were swimming and Pilates. Because Pilates is a little more three dimensional, is not as impactful. You're still utilizing your whole body, but it's not under the stress of jumping, all kinds of things that have harder wear and tear on the body and other movement modalities be it some people use yoga or things like that, I think where we feel those of us are sort of very movement orientated is getting input from other modalities. 

Jack Heald  49:57 

I never thought of it, I've never thought of actually, I know this just to hear this thought in my head just seems so dumb, but I'm gonna say it anyway. I never thought of exercise, the things we do physically to get fit, I never put them all under just the category of movement, obviously, you're moving, but to use that phrase “movement heals,” that reframes it for me. That reframes the whole thing for me, because I can look at my own life and obviously, yeah, just moving will help get me out of a funk. Yeah, that's cool. All right, I did that. Thank you for sharing that. 

Krisna Hanks  50:47 

And on the practical way, for coaching standpoint, I like to emphasize to people think of movement also, particularly in just daily, straight, you've got your structured exercise, maybe you like doing weight training, or you go to some class at the gym or something. But then you have to think about how much do you move during the day, right? We know, and I don't like to go into the fear campaign of sitting is the new smoking, we all sit too much. So just breaking up your pattern, getting people up, getting a new perspective, that has to also have some good attention. 

Jack Heald  51:31 

I have to think that it's not so much the sitting as the not moving because if I had a standing desk, and I stood at my desk, not moving for eight or nine hours a day, like I sit at my desk without moving, I can't imagine it'd be much better. 

Krisna Hanks  51:52 

Standing desk is great. I would just say how, however you can move during the course of the day, make it happen.  

Jack Heald 

Very good. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  52:05 

Definitely. Definitely would agree with that. 

Jack Heald  52:08 

Well, Krisna, tell us about where you can be found online, how folks can, what the best way is for folks to connect with you. 

Krisna Hanks  52:19 

Ah, absolutely. My website is square1wellness and is the number one with the whole intention of trying to get back to square one, make it simple, make it doable, make it fun. And same handle on Twitter, same handle on Instagram. 

Krisna Hanks  52:39 

I like repetition. I like to repeat things. And of course, I'm on LinkedIn but just by my name. Krisna Hanks. 

Jack Heald  52:47 

Very good. Well, Phil, anything you want to say to wrap it up today? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia  52:54 

Just we'll also put a little plug in here for the coaching program at I Fix Hearts, if you want to be able to work with Krisna in a one-on-one or in a group coaching setting, I would encourage everyone to come over and see what we're doing there. The motivation I had for starting that coaching program was to get people the help that they need. Not everyone needs to work with a heart surgeon like myself or has the opportunity. Physician support can be very difficult to obtain these days for diet and lifestyle issues. So, the purpose, the mission, the goal of starting a coaching program was to get this help available as a resource for anyone who might need it. 

Jack Heald  53:48 

Very good. Well for Krisna Hanks and Dr. Philip Ovadia, I’m Jack Heald, this has been the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. Go ahead and visit Dr. Ovadia’s site at ifixhearts.com Take that metabolic health quiz, sign up for a coaching program. Like and subscribe to this podcast and build yourself some good karma for the future. And we'll talk to you all next time. 

Jack Heald  54:21 

America is fat and sick and tired. 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy and at risk of a sudden heart attack. Are you one of them? Go to ifixhearts.co and take Dr. Ovadia's metabolic health quiz. Learn specific steps you can take to reclaim your health reduce your risk of heart attack and stay off Dr. Ovadia's operating table.  

Jack Heald  54:49 

This has been a production of 38 atoms