Walk this Way: How Walking 30 Minutes Could Improve your Mental and Physical Health

On this episode of Inside the Texas Heart Studio, Dr. Joseph G. Rogers interviews Lisa Wright, the President and CEO of Community Health Choice, about the #WALK30 campaign.

The #WALK30 campaign creates a pathway for CEOs, organizational leaders, families, and individuals to “Take the Healthy Pledge” and inspire others to walk for 30 minutes daily.

Dr. Rogers and Lisa will discuss:

• Work-Life Balance
• Being Selfish with Your Own Time
• Relationship between Exercise and the Mind

For more information regarding #WALK30, visit  texasheart.org/tag/walk30

Watch the sit-down interview here.

Visit Our Website: texasheart.org

Transcript

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I'm Joe Rogers president and CEO of the Texas Heart Institute. I'm joined

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 this afternoon by Lisa Wright. Who's the CEO of Community Health

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 Choice and we've been talking this afternoon

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 about the walk 30 program and the things that

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 you're doing personally to integrate exercise into

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 your life. And then some of the things that you're thinking about

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 in terms of stimulating our community to

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 spend more time exercising. So we're very happy

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 to have you thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. Well, thank

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 you. I'm very happy to be here before we came into the studio.

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 We had a conversation about your very

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 busy life and and your philosophy

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 on exercise for yourself and

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 and I thought it was a different perspective than we've heard

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 from others who we've talked with about the walk 30

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 campaign. I wonder if you wouldn't mind just sharing kind of

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 your thinking about about your own personal Journey with

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 walking and exercise. Sure. Well as I

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 have to run a company every day, it's really important that I

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 am present.

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For not only my staff but most importantly I'm

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 the mother of two kids under seven. So it's important

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 that I'm here for them. And so as we talk

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 about work-life balance and I try to make sure that my team is

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 focused on work-life balance and you know taking PTO one

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 of the things that I realized for myself was that

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 I had to be more selfish with my time and for

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 me as a mother I'm making certain that

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 everyone in my family is getting to their appointments and that everyone

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 in my family is exercising and taking the

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 best care of themselves. And what I realized is that

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 I probably was not taking the best care of myself. And

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 so I carve out an hour every

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 day.

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For myself and for that hour I exercise

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 so I walk not only do I

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 use that time just for walking but also for meditation

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 and it gives me a chance to really sort

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 of slow down my life and really think clearly about

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 not only my day but just about my life. I think

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 that we've heard a number of other leaders in the

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 community talking about this relationship between exercise

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 and the mind and I

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 think it's probably something that we haven't spent enough time emphasizing

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 but but there is a this period of

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 of clarity when you really have a

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 chance to just think and and walking

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 seems to everyone that's commented on

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 that has said the same thing and that is I have this opportunity to

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 clear my mind and really solve problems as I as

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 I exercise. Yeah, it's this great opportunity at

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 least for myself to really be able to slow my

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 mind down from just thinking about everything that

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 I have to do everything that's on my plate.

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Everything that's coming up to really take that

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 moment and think about just the now to

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 be present and to really think about what

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 it is that I need or that my family needs

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 or that my company needs.

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I think it's brilliant. So you have responsibility for

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 over a half a million individuals in the

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 Houston Community. Yeah, and you were talking

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 a little bit about some of the exciting.

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Programs that you're beginning to think about or that you're

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 beginning to implement to facilitate and

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 Foster exercise. Maybe you could

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 just expand on that a little bit for us. Yeah. So Community

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 Health Choice, of course, we're Managed Care Organization, but I

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 always say that we're more than a Managed Care Organization because you

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 know, we were built on our mission of not only

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 looking at members from you know, a health

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 related but more so from social and what we

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 really focus on is how do we Institute, you

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 know more of those social determinants of

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 Health in their day to day and so exercise is

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 a part of that and so one of the things that we're

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 thinking about is, how do we start without a

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 lessons? How do we start them out earlier thinking about exercise so

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 they can really start to incorporate that in their day

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 to day and then they just grow up with it and you know,

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 the walk 30 is an excellent way to do that because it's

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 30 minutes. It's 30 minutes a day

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 and it doesn't have to be

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All at once you can break it up and so not only

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 that but we live in Houston. We have great weather. And so

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 it's easy to say well, let's go out and do

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 this outside and let's spend 10 minutes here. And so

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 one of the campaigns that we're building is really something for children.

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 I love this idea of focusing on

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 our young people too because I

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 think so often we're assuming that our kids and

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 our adolescents are healthy and they're getting exercise at

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 school, but it's not the same

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 as it was in the past and so often during Kids

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 free time. They're doing other things

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 like working with either doing homework, hopefully or

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 they're or they're on their

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 electronics and things and they're spending less time being

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 physically active. And so I think this is a great initiative

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 to try to get our young people, you know

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 back exercising again and and have them recognize that

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 it's a reasonable part of their life and

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 it's and walking is something that they can do.

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To you know until they're until they're quite old right and also

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 it's a way for us to help just, you know, we don't

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 we know we're not going to be able to pull all their electronic devices

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 away. But how can we safely help them incorporate? And

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 so that's one of the things that we're looking at, but

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 we know that they need to get out. We know that that leads

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 to long-term, you know, positive Health outcomes, and so

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 we want to start them as early as possible because we want kids to

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 be on the right track Lisa. I can't thank you enough

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 for coming in today to talk a little bit about your own personal Journey

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 with with health and exercise and what you're

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 doing for the community. Thank you very much, and I'll look forward to continuing working

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 with you. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

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It is.