Why Stepping Back Might Be the Best Thing You Do for Your Health This Year

When was the last time you slowed down long enough to just... think?

Most of us move from one task to the next, filling every quiet moment with work, scrolling, or chores around the house. We stay so busy we never stop to ask: what do I actually want right now?

In this episode, I share how a week of stepping away gave me unexpected clarity about my health, my fitness, my business, and the person I want to become. We'll talk about why rest can feel so uncomfortable, how constant productivity keeps us disconnected from ourselves, and why doing less might be the first step toward real change.

References

Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy: The Simple Art of Taking Back Your Life by Matthew Kelly

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All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

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Transcript

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0:29

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you all doing? Friends, I have a lot to talk about. I have a lot to talk about in a good way, okay? I'm recording this right toward the end of July, and my kids go back to school first week of August. Insanity, like literally in, in five days. And the reason I am recording this is 'cause we got back from a week vacation in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. There are the Smoky Mountains there. It was gorgeous. We did hiking. We just did a bunch of stuff. It was magical. Me and my husband, we would get up every morning at about six o'clock, and I'll explain why. A lot of these trailheads don't have a lot of parking. So if you go to some of the smaller parts of the park, there's this one place where it's like a 20, 30-minute, one-lane little turning road in the bottom of the mountains, and you-- there'll be like one to three spots every, I don't know, fourth of a mile, and y- so you can kinda pull over, maybe look at a little thing. But the main trailhead that led to this really amazing waterfall, every day when we were coming, the spots were full. And then you could park further down and walk, but it was literally like multiple miles down the road and I'm sorry, I wasn't willing to do it. So day three, we finally got there s- early enough. But my point is this, so we're doing all these walks and hikes and all these things, and my husband was great, got me some photos, some videos, all the things. So I'm looking at it a few days in, and I'm noticing, oh, I have calves of steel. And I notice, I didn't say anywhere, "Oh, I need to lose weight," or whatever. I really looked at that and I was like, "That's amazing." And then this thought occurred to me, I, in the next year, by the time next summer rolls around, I would like to become a buff goddess. Now, this is not about weight loss. This is not about aesthetics, i'm not like, "I wanna weigh X amount." No. This is really about how absolutely amazing it felt to be able to hike several miles up a mountain. Now, I'm not saying it was easy. It was not easy. I was breathless, I was sweating, but I could do it, okay? And I want to get to a place where I can do bigger mountains, where I'm even more fit. I wanna keep going in that direction, and I would've never thought that I would say that. In fact, to be honest, there's a part of me that actually really hates going up mountain. I always told myself this growing up. We did when I was growing up, ooh, I don't remember what grade I was in. I had to be five, six, seven. I was something on the younger side, and we went to Colorado, and we were doing these, these hikes in the mountains, and I remember hating every single minute of it. Every single minute being like, "I never again wanna, wanna hike up a mountain." And granted, we had, we... Like literally I wasn't moving much, and then we would go up a hill and it would be wretched, right? But anyway, the point is, I was much more capable on this trip, and I noticed myself saying, "I want to go in this direction a lot more." And that I'm open to that. And that's never really been a goal for me. Fitness has been something that I do because, I do the walks and, I enjoy it, and I've slowly built these things out over time. But I've never had, an intentional, I wanna run this amount of mile, or I wanna be able to lift this. That's been too much pressure for me, and this has been something where I've worked this past year so much on emotional eating and nervous system that it's almost like when you have this history with everything that's not super amazing, sometimes you have to be super cautious with how you approach something so that you do like it and you're willing to keep going at it. So anyway, I have that thought. I realize it's not about aesthetics, that I wanna keep going. And the other thing that occurred is that typically, historically, years ago, my left knee every so often hurts and swells up, and it's kinda like if I overdo it with stairs or something like that. And I kept waiting for it on this trip because each day there was so much physically that we were doing. I was like, any minute, any minute, either later today, tomorrow morning, I'm gonna wake up, I'm not gonna be able to move it. I'm gonna have to elevate. I'm gonna have to be on the couch all day. I was like waiting, waiting, waiting, right? And it didn't happen. So then I talked to my mom who's a physician, and she's like, "Of course it didn't happen. You've been exercising every single day." The point is things change, right? I just assumed I would always get the knee pain. I assumed I would never like a hike. And the reality is that these things aren't true anymore, and things change over time. And everyone's at a different spot with this. I see this with my patients. Some people are at a spot where they are working on getting up Walking a few steps and that's plenty for them. Others are triathletes. It's all great. It's all amazing. Nothing is better than the other. I really think we need to measure things according to what we want, what our values are, where we're at the moment. I think there's different seasons for all of this, and I'm in one where I would like to push it a little bit more physically, not to be doing all this strength training, this and that, but it's very appealing to me to get my endurance up right now. So not just the capability, the capacity of my body, but being able to have an easier time with breathing and that aspect, 'cause I've always had a hard time with, lungs and breathing. It's always been a whole thing. That past vacation has helped me to have total clarity what I'd like to do over the next year, and I would not have had that if I didn't have time of being off of social. I think there was, like, maybe a minute or two per day that I would do, make an Instagram story, but I even actually had those delayed. I would make some of them, and then I, I don't like to post stuff right when I'm doing it. It's kinda like a security thing. It's, uh everything was a few days delayed from when we actually did it. But the point is, I was not watching videos on the trip. I was just very, part of what was happening, right? And having that silence, not having something constantly playing. Even in the car, I didn't have podcasts playing, which I'm always listening to a podcast. There was this silence, this time to reflect, this time to think, and it showed me so clearly what I want. And I know we talk about this a lot, but you need times of rest where there's unstructured activity, maybe where there's some silence. Maybe for you it's a walk. Maybe for you it's going to a different restaurant with your spouse. I don't know what your version looks like, but you need that time, otherwise you will not have clarity what you wanna go for, why you wanna go for it, how things are changing over time. To be honest, I thought I was still in the mode where me and working on the emotional eating with food and nervous system, I thought that's what it was all about. But a few months ago, something kinda broke free where I was like, "Oh, I am working much more often on just being in a calm spot." I do these meditations. I do the walks. I've been practicing so many different things I remember meeting with my coach a few months ago and I said, "There's just no problem here." And then we talked about, okay, so when things are going great, what's actually happening and, all of that, 'cause there's also stuff to learn when things are going good. And so it gave me the room then to now to be able to set another milestone, another goal. And before I actually... I'm just someone who's not concerned with how my body looks. I've talked about this, that it's almost like I wish I cared more 'cause I just don't care. And I feel like that might motivate me more. But I'm very motivated at thinking about, okay, a year from now, could there be like a 10-mile hike that I do or something where it's no problem, like I've figured out the right shoes, I've figured out the nutrition, endurance part of it. I figured this out, figured that out. That's super appealing to me. And I think that we need to slow down enough to even notice when things change, and to be able to have that clarity and then be able to take really focused actions, and to be able to build in the seasonality. So let's slow that down for a minute. If you don't get enough rest time, and rest is different for everyone. Rest could be you doing the dishes if that's a time when you can think and you can process. Sometimes, don't hate me, I actually love doing laundry. There's something so fun about it. You're just sorting who goes into what room, and then I go into my son's closet and I'm like, "Oh, this is really fun to figure out like, okay, where are we gonna keep this? My mind is checked out, right? It's just this like you're doing something, but you don't have to think about it. When you get that rest, you get clarity of where you wanna go. Usually that clarity, you get some really focused actions. Now I'm thinking about what types of things am I gonna go try to do? Am I gonna do more incline walking, more stairs, look up a program for how to increase hiking capabilities more, I'm gonna look into all this But through that clarity comes that focused action, and then the seasonality being, I know for me, June and July, quieter months because there's so much happening with the kids over summer, and I wanna be present. It's like everything kinda slows down when it's hot out. I don't know where you guys live, but everyone kinda checks out around summertime. August, I kinda reintegrate again. My kids go back to school. I feel things kinda get settled again. And then September through December, it's pedal to the metal. I love it. There's something about fall heading where I'm like, "Here's my goal. Here's what I wanna do." And I've always thought, is it 'cause that's when "3030" is running? I don't know. But don't question it if it's working. So that's a time when I really dig in. But again, there's, because of that clarity, because of being able to know what I wanna do and then accepting the different seasons and what's happening, you end up with th- these amazing things yearly that happen. I bring this up because I really think that we all need enough rest time. We need to decide what it is we do or don't wanna do. I do think you need to have a vision in order to get anywhere, and some of you have a harder time than others with envisioning that. It's hard for you to think a year out, five years out, but your vision could be just for the rest of the day, how would I like it to go? How would I like to feel? What do I wanna put my head down on the bed tonight knowing that I felt today or knowing that I was willing to experience? There's many versions of this, but at some capacity, you have to know who you're wanting to become to change in that direction. I've always said this. In the beginning it was, I wanna be someone who moves her body daily. I wanna be someone who doesn't always use food for entertainment, for fun. I wanna be someone who,, is in tune with the hunger signals. There were these stages and different things that I'm working on and every so often urges and cravings are like, brr, the head comes up and I need to work on that again. But there are these different phases to things, and I think that you don't know the next thing if you don't slow down some. There's that book, "Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy" by Matthew Kelly. I think it's great. I didn't realize until I finished the book how religious it gets at the end, so sorry about that to anyone that's listening that's not into it. But I think a lot of the points are really valid that he brings up, where if you don't slow down and get that time to ponder unstructured, like you're not having to be anywhere, do anything, get anything done, that you get to marinate and reflect and ponder, and through that you're able to find your purpose. You're able to find the things that you wanna do, and I think a lot of us don't give ourselves this because there's a to-do list that's a mile long. And the reality is, when you start to get ruthless with that, that I'm gonna take my rest time, you start to figure out all the things that really just don't matter. And I had this big moment in my business where- I just went through it and I was like, "I want things to be simpler." And I also want people to actually have transformation and not just consume more information. And so guys, there's some massive changes coming in my world. So up to this point, I've had a lot of these different little offers, whether it's a Five Mistakes mini course or the Behind the Scenes podcast or the Body Composition course, right? There's these little things, and they come out because there's a need. With the Behind the Scenes podcast, there were different clinical scenarios I wanted to go through. With the Body Composition course, I really thought people really need to understand how to look at skeletal muscle and body fat, all those kind of things. But what I realized with time is people do not need more information. They need the right information at the right time. They need community to support them as they're implementing this stuff. And ultimately, it's more connection and getting the right tip at the right time compared to just randomly doing a course. So I was like, you know what? We're getting rid of all these little things through August. If you were wanting to do something and you wanna do it, okay, go ahead and do it. But as of September, they're not gonna be up on the course site anymore. They will be bonuses within, next year, so 2027. I'm only gonna have two groups that I run. It's gonna be January and then the second half of the year. They're both gonna be five months. We're gonna be doing really fun, different themes for the month. It's gonna be decluttering. We're gonna do a vision board thing. You're gonna get sent a package that has all this stuff in it of what I think is the best planner in the world. It's a dot grid planner. I'm bringing in someone to run a workshop so that she can teach us how to do these different things. I actually, in Seattle, did her workshop. It was phenomenal, and so I want to bring all these different aspects in. But a lot of what's happening is helping people, hey, here are some techniques for nervous system. Let's practice it together. Hey, we need to envision the future. Here are some questions to ask yourself. Here are some different ways to approach it that are not cognitive. Okay, hey, nutrition's a problem. Hey, let's bring in this chef. Let's learn a few different things. Let's get excited about this and not make this, "I have to try three new things." I want people to experience it, to be part of a community that's not diet culture, to actually do these things. And the reality is it's just so diverse what you need to do, but you don't need to be burdened by random things that might not be applicable to you. So I'm taking away all those little mini offerings. Next year, You can join either one of those cohorts if you wanna work with me or if you wanna be part of this amazing community, but it's just a lot simpler what's happening. And I got that clarity too because of taking this time and just simplifying it, and I, for months, to be honest, I've been wrestling with this as like, okay, I knew I wanted to change the program a little bit, but it's like, how do I change it and what do I change? And so the September 3030, that's a 12-week, so a three-month thing. I'm super excited for that too, and there's a lot of different things we're gonna do there too. But I knew, I've just known this, and you see this evolve with every single Cohort that I run, the length keeps getting longer because I realize people need time to implement for things to change, for problems to occur. You just need time, and you never know what the thing is gonna be. So it's really interesting. I think a lot of what I'm going through, I see that in my community, and then I always think, "Okay, so how can... You know, what things worked for me, and how can I bring that in?" And a diversity of things, because what worked for me might not work for you. And so anyway, hopefully you're still following me, you're with me. But I want you to get some free time. I need you to have some time where you can just think. And you know what? It's gonna be so weird when you do it. You're not gonna be used to it. You're gonna feel uncomfortable. You're gonna feel agitated. You're gonna be like, "I should do something. I should clean the table," da da da. No. No to all of it. Start practicing with five, 10 minutes of just sitting still on the couch, and when that voice comes up, "I should be doing something else," you say, "No, this is exactly where I am and what I'm supposed to be doing." Maybe you go to a bookstore. Do you think that's fun? Let's go. Let's just go look. Let's have fun. You don't need to purchase anything. Let's have you take a walk in a different neighborhood. Let's do a different trail. Let's mix this up a little bit for you, because there's different energy in different places, and we need to figure out what's actually there for you. You don't know the next version of who you can become if you're not doing different things, not challenging yourself a little bit. Think again, a lot of what's gotten all this going for me is that I first started out, "Okay, we're gonna go to some independent bookstores this year, and then we're gonna do this, and we're gonna do that," and suddenly I'm like, "Who is this girl?" You're showing yourself what's possible. You need some rest to figure it out. And again, make the rest what works for you. It can be reading a book. It can be sitting in silence. It can be playing with your kid. I don't care. But I need you to do what's restorative for you, and it cannot be focused on getting something done. It's not cleaning the house most of the time. It's not getting more work done. There's this fallacy, the more I do, the better I'll feel. It's not true. So starting to create these boundaries of being like, "No, this is where it ends. The day ends at this time, and I have to force the work to stay in it," otherwise it's never gonna get better. Life's never gonna change. You have to have that snapping moment. Okay, so getting back to what this episode's all about, I wanna challenge you to think about the last week or two. Have you taken any time to rest? It matters If you are frustrated that you are not getting where you want to health-wise, and I'm just gonna go where you all go. Say okay, you wanna lose those 20, 30 pounds, whatever it is. It's really not about that. There are-- There's the thing under the thing. I always like John Delony always says that. The thing under the thing, like what is actually the problem? And many of us, it's we're kinda low-key unhappy. There's this like hum of dissatisfaction or restlessness, and we have interpreted that as a problem. Sometimes we grab a snack because it kinda gets rid of that, or we actually were overworking, but we still gain so much value in the savior complex, that's actually a problem when you think that you're like, "I'm gonna be the one to help everyone." No, you're not. It's a problem there's like victim, villain, savior. There's all these, sort of like archetypes that actually get us down and that don't help us. But if you don't take the time to rest, you cannot see what's on the chessboard. You have to step back. You have to have that 30,000-mile view in order to be able to know what's going on. It does not occur when you're right up in it. We have no logic, no reason. We cannot change anything when we are eyeballs to it. It's when we step back, and then things break loose. We just allow it to marinate a little bit. We start to say, "Hey, this is something I wanna solve. Here's where I'm at with it. Do I believe that? Do I not?" We just start to wiggle it loose like a tooth But rest is where it starts. Okay, I hope that this was helpful for you today, and I don't mean this to be another, preachy episode at you, but I guess my hope is through hearing an example for me of how it's taken me from A to B, there might be some message in there for you of, "Oh, I've actually been looking to solve XYZ, and maybe I could try insert the blank." What is that for you? And for most of you, it's doing less, it's doing nothing, A lot of it just really doesn't matter. I think I've talked a lot on the podcast about this, but me and my husband, we've been watching, industrial amounts of the show "Alone." I think I've talked about it, but just to recap, in case you missed the episode, they take 10 survivalist experts, drop them in these really harsh, remote locations. They're all by themselves, no camera crew, anything. They're recording it with, like, a GoPro on their forehead and a camera that's on a tripod, but no one there. L- like, there'll be, like, bears circling their camp. It's raining 24/7. It's, 20 below zero. You name it. Like, all the seasons are horrendous. And what it always comes down to is that people They do not know what to do when they have no distractions, a phone, talking to someone, whatever it is. All these emotions come up. They've never processed these. They've never thought about them. Some can work through it, others can't. And obviously, these are, like, really extreme scenarios but what always comes out, not only the emotion coming up and what you do or don't do with it, and some people leave and some don't, and there's no right or wrong. But the second thing that always, always, always, always, always comes out is what actually matters. They all sit there and they're like, "I've not spent enough time with my mom." "I wanna be a better dad." "I regret XYZ." And then they learn how to kinda let go of that. But it's like this clarity comes because they slow down enough. I'm gonna stop the episode here, but I hope that this gives you some insight if you are wanting to participate in the last version of how it's gonna look, this 30/30 program as of now, at least in 2027, I won't be running it again the same. That starts in September. It's 12 weeks. Again, we do a lot of great things in there. If you have questions, let me know. But that's the last time I'm doing it in that way. And then starting in January, we'll have five-month 30/30 momentum. And again, it's gonna be very different what we do and how we do it, and I'll tell you about more of that coming up because I've got a lot of great ideas, but I just wanna make sure to fully flesh it out before I talk about it anymore. I hope that you all have a great week, that you get some rest time And that you start to get some clarity from it, and then you know that the actions you are or are not gonna take are aligned. I hope that can be this week for you. All right. Have a great rest of the week, and we'll talk soon.