Good Neighbor Podcast: North Shore
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of North Shore
Good Neighbor Podcast: North Shore
EP #73 - From Marine to Wellness Guru: Mark Anderson Reveals why Mindfulness and Mental Resilience are Just as Important as Physical Fitness
Mark Anderson, owner of MWA Health and Fitness, redefines wellness beyond the gym, blending physical training with nutrition, sleep optimization, and mental health. His journey from Marine to holistic wellness advocate fuels his mission to debunk fitness myths, such as the misconception that calorie counting alone guarantees results or that weight training makes women "bulky." His studio embraces a personalized, whole-body approach, emphasizing that exercise alone isn't enough without proper recovery, nutrition, and mindfulness.
Beyond fitness, Mark’s insights into mental resilience and mindfulness offer practical strategies for improving overall well-being. His focus extends beyond traditional training methods, treating each client as a whole individual rather than just a body to be conditioned. Whether you're frustrated by fitness misinformation or seeking a more balanced approach to health, his expertise provides valuable clarity. Learn more at MWAfitness.com or follow Mark on Instagram at mark_anderson_mwa.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Yuwan Godfrey.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Joining us in our studio is Mark Anderson. He is the owner of MWA Health and Fitness. Hello, mark, how are you today?
Speaker 3:I'm good, Yuwan. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate you having me on here.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. We're so excited, and we can't even wait to hear what it is that you have to share with the community about your business and about your service. So let's just jump right in.
Speaker 3:Awesome, I love it. Yeah, we're in the health space, health and wellness space. It's in the name, right?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. So tell us about your company, please.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you know I started this.
Speaker 3:I've been the owner now for four years, but the location I'm at in the south end of Boston, which is one of the most amazing locations, I think, in Boston it's been here since 2007.
Speaker 3:So over the years, you know it started off as a one on one personal training studio and through the years it started to evolve into more than just training but more health and wellness based practices. You know so integrative health, ayurvedic health, using functional medicine practices because you know it's great to do one on one training and work the body and move the body and exercise, but you know it has its limits. You know if you're not doing the right things nutritionally to then recover from the workout, or you're not doing the things you need to be doing at nighttime going to bed earlier, getting good quality sleep or you're not looking at these underlying health concerns that you might have, they all impact your training, they all impact your life, and so we've kind of combined that all together here and you know I don't know of any other place really in Boston that combines everything we do into one service, which is why I love our community and that's what we're doing here at the studio every day.
Speaker 2:I love it. It sounds like you are not just focused in one area, but you're focused in many areas for the good of the individuals. Thank you for sharing that information with our listeners.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course my pleasure.
Speaker 2:So how did you get into this business, Mark?
Speaker 3:You know I was a defense contractor. I was in the military for four years and then I got out of the military.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was my pleasure, I loved it, it was great. And then I I went into the defense contracting world and I love that to you know, still a way to serve, just at a different capacity and wearing a different uniform. And so then, but when I was doing it I said you know, my real passion is working with people one on one. I love that and I've loved, you know, the coaching and I've always loved looking at really kind of life fulfillment for people, and health is such a huge component of that and you know mindset, all that stuff. So when I work with people one on one, I mean they're doing the whole package, you know. I mean some people call it life coaching. Whatever they joke about it, they're a life coach. I'm like, yeah, well, you can call it whatever you want. I think of it more like life fulfillment for yourself. I think everyone has a life fulfillment fanatic inside of them. They just sometimes don't bring it out till the end, till it's kind of too late, it's like the end of their life. They're like, oh, I wish I would have done a bucket list or whatever. I wish I would have spent less time at the office and more time with my family and friends. So when I was doing this defense contracting job, I thought, man, I really want to be working more with people. And you know, personal training I thought that's pretty personal. I mean, that's one on one. You know I'll do that.
Speaker 3:So I started to get my certification as I was transitioning out of the company I worked for and then I started as a trainer. There was a joke with my wife we were expecting our first child at the time and she goes. So let me get this straight. You're going from a really good income to no income. And I said, yeah, pretty much. Yep, that's it. This is a personal trainer. You know, if anyone's listening, it's like you start off, you're working the floor, you're not making a lot of money, you know, and you're like, hey, you want, you want to go do some training. And you're like, who are you? Oh, my God, just a trainer here, you know. And so that's how it started and I transitioned that way, you know. So there was that learning curve and but that's, you know, that's where it started for me.
Speaker 3:And as I became more into training and doing one-on-one stuff, I kept seeing I had limits. You know like I would do training and people would get some good results. But I wasn't combining nutrition, um, because I didn't know a lot about it at the time. This was like 14 years ago. And I said, you know, I think one of my like, uh, superpowers or something is like looking at my faults and being really good at understanding that I and I think a lot of us can relate to this it's I see my faults and you know I, I know what they are. The question is do I want to do something about it? Right? Am I going to just put it on and hide it in a closet somewhere? And so I thought, man, as a trainer, what am I not doing? Well? And I said I'm not coaching people with nutrition that well because I don't know it and I want to get better at that.
Speaker 3:So I started to get more into the nutritional side of it. Once I got really good at the nutritional side, I thought, okay, how can I coach that with? Because then it's one thing to know something, but it's another thing to coach it. And then I started doing nutrition coaching. But then that had its limits, you know, and I thought, okay, so is there another thing I could learn? And that started to go into wellness based practices.
Speaker 3:You know how well sleep doesn't really matter, it's not really a big thing, yeah, whatever, just you can sleep when you're dead, right, isn't that? I was like no, that's one of the most important things is sleep. You sleep. Our body recovers when we're sleeping, and so if we get three hours of sleep every night, it's not going to recover the way you want it to, I'm sorry. And so I thought, yeah, I need to learn more about this wellness, everything else I think in life you get really into, whether it's a hobby or a job or a passion, or you just keep wanting to know more and more. And I keep wanting to know more and more.
Speaker 3:And you know, just going back to it, it's like really looking at the most fulfilled life we have in the time we're here, and if you're not living a healthy life, it's hard sometimes to do that. There are people that can do it and I admire those people. They push past all their physical limitations, all the pain they're in, but I always think, if you're not in pain and you can you could just be elevated at such a higher level. Um, and so I also love and that's part of what we love about our community here myself and all the trainers we're just focused on how it elevates our clients and they become like high performing athletes.
Speaker 3:You know it's not always looked at that way because, oh, I'm a corporate lawyer, I'm a dentist, I'm a doctor, I'm a whatever. You know it's yeah. But if we could get you to perform at a high level, you'd be a really high function, a highest level functioning lawyer, doctor, dentist and or mom or dad, you know, you'd have all this abundant energy. Maybe you would do something else. So I think it's really fun to have that approach to it and that's really how I transitioned and what's kept me going so, so for the past 14 years, I guess.
Speaker 2:So what are some myths and misconception in your industry, Mark?
Speaker 3:You know, one of the big ones, I think, thinking about this calorie counting, right, that's, that's a fun one. Calories, calories in, calories out, they all mean the same thing. Or, you know, and and I think that again it goes back to you know, out, training. Bad diets is another one. There are. There are so many different ones. I think we could pick from here. But you know the myth of, look, I'm going to offset bad things I'm doing by working out and exercising and, and you know, doing random saunas and whatever that's, it's still better than not doing it, don't get me wrong. But you know, I think we have to shift the focus of this whole thing of like, well, if I eat a certain way and I count my calories and you know, into something more like I count my calories and you know, into something more like what is the food that I'm putting in? Is this actually real food? And if we're eating real foods, a myth a good one here is you know, if you eat more fat, you're going to become fat. If you eat more carbs, you're going to become overweight. And if you eat animal protein or you do certain things, you know you're going to get too big and bulky. If sometimes women are afraid of that, you know. Or if you lift weights and you're a woman, you're going to put on weight and you're going to look like the She-Hulk or whatever, and it's not. These are all myths, you know. So part of what we love to do is myth busting and understanding. Like, if you're doing higher rep ranges with weights as a woman, you're not going to get big and bulky. And if you're counting calories and they're crappy calories and you're just eating Snickers and popcorn and everything else under the sun that's processed, how do you feel? I feel horrible. So we don't want to count calories. We want to look at the good foods that we can actually be using, the vitamins, the nutrients that are in those foods and absorbing them through the body and understanding the digestion better, all that stuff.
Speaker 3:So there's a lot of things out there right now where you know, without going too far down a rabbit hole, it's just saying the best things you can do, I think, right now in the health and wellness space is educate yourself and find. If you don't know anything about it, then you know. There are so many good resources. But finding a good resource to that's that can be challenging as well, because a lot of the time people well, I heard someone say this you know there's and with social media it's hard, I'm not knocking anyone here but you see someone with a six pack and their shirt off and they've got these huge muscles and, oh, I want to look like that. Well, if you just eat a salad every day and you wake up and you have a glass of water and you're going to look like me and it's kind of misleading, it's confusing, it's misleading. Not everyone that looks like they do on a social media feed is doing that well inside.
Speaker 3:So, again, these are myths, I think, where people need to really focus it to what they need personally, not what the external world is necessarily showing them, and you base your health and wellness off the best thing, how you feel. If you're feeling happy and healthy every day, then you don't need to have a six pack or you don't need to be. You know, zero percent body fat. If anyone was, they'd be dead anyways, but that's a different story. You want some body fat on you. You know, it's like I mean, 10,000 years ago we needed body fat for the winters because we couldn't survive. It was scarcity.
Speaker 3:So I think, looking at a lot of the nutrition things out there, the supplement industry. Unfortunately it's not really regulated the way it needs to be, so there's a lot of myths out there with supplementation. If you take this pill, you're going to look like this If you take this pill, this is going to do this for you. It's promising a lot and sometimes it's not talking about the the adverse health effects from it you know. So there, you know there's a lot to go over there. But what I would say is, when, if there's a myth you you have a question about, you know, find a good resource, like I mean, if you want to message us, you could message us.
Speaker 2:I mean if you want to message us, you could message us. Okay, thank you, mark. So, outside of work, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:This is it. You're looking at it. No, just kidding. I love what I do, so it's hard. You know, health and wellness is everything in my life and not I try. I've learned over the years you could ask my wife no-transcript. This again sounds like a complete nerd dork thing to say.
Speaker 3:But I love practicing being in the moment. You know, like talking to you, it's fun. It's like we're not geared to do that. We're geared to look at our phones and we're geared to. You know what time is it I got to get going, you know, or what times. What's going on tonight? I got to get home and Netflix and stream my you know binge watch my show there. So I love trying to practice the moment that's here in front of us and it's one of those things that took 13.8 billion years, you know again, to get here and we're talking about. You know we're upset because of traffic or we don't like that. It's cloudy out today and I'm like, all right, well, how can I have fun with this? I could have fun being in the moment. I could have fun talking to my kids about it and they tell me I'm crazy. Or my wife, you know, and so and and doing when you get into something.
Speaker 3:I think everyone should do what they're passionate about, and sometimes it's uncomfortable and it's challenging, but you know, when you love it, you persevere and you push through and it just becomes fun. You know so when you're not at work per se. I always like use air quotes. Work is is not work, it's just your passion, it's fun, and when you leave you know if you're not having fun. I think that's that is the thing we need to focus more on as a, as a world, not just a country or it's. How do we have more fun, especially when life is challenging? You know it's, it's a very I don't say that like jokingly or anything, it's, it's really going. Yeah, there's a challenge here, but you know there's been plenty of examples throughout the billions of years that this planet, you know, has been here and the 13.8 billion that we know about this. You know existence, but you know there are people that have gone through a lot of challenges, that have found humor, that have found fun, that have persevered and used these great things, this great body and this great mind that we've been given to, to enjoy life and and have fun with it. So my fun is meditating, learning more about personal development, I mean life fulfillment, anything like that. It's that's, and when I'm not doing that, which is also, I think, an important thing to note.
Speaker 3:There are times where we all go through these moments where we're just not having a good time in life and you know, it's, I, it's self-awareness being hey, you know what, I am having a rough time right now and, um, I, I mean I've just worked with so many different types of clients before, but, uh, you know, everyone needs something different, you know, and I always like thinking about the end. You know the end, and a lot of people don't like talking about death and all that, but you know, I remember it's just sometimes in life you go but you could be dead. I mean, you're alive, that's first thing. You're alive, it's amazing, you know. So let's take, let's appreciate that simple fact and we're having this present moment here and I love it. So, yeah, that's my fun right there. Long, long winded. All right, mark, let's change gear.
Speaker 3:Can you describe one hardship or one of life's challenge that you rose above and can now say because of it? You know, when someone has cancer, they're like, they're like they have cancer, like it's okay, you know. But when someone has a mental health issue. It's like, well, you know, they kind of have a mental health issue. Is it a real thing, you know? And I don't think there's enough. You know there's, it's definitely made. You know, it's definitely going, hopefully, in the right direction.
Speaker 3:But I think, challenges with mental health and you know I was in the, I was in the Marines for four years and I remember I did three months of boot camp and I thought, oh God, I can't wait. Once is three months. Three months of someone yelling at you, swearing at you, telling you you're a piece of garbage and you're just like. I'm a piece of garbage Really, huh, and then that not nice, that that's a nice way of saying it like. And then they're pushing you physically, you know, and physically, you know, okay, I can do this. Mentally, I don't know, Like. So even back then I was like I'm gonna have a game, I'm gonna play life as a game. I read this book. I forget the author, florence I can't remember her name off the top of my head, but I think her book's name is. You know, life is a game or something like that.
Speaker 3:And I thought in boot camp this is, this is a challenge, it's, it's a real mental thing. I can't and you know it can cause I saw a lot of guys drop out because of mental health issues and I thought I'm going to make this a game and I'm going to try to move through this and understand that this is just a mental thing. But once I got through that three months, I the four years was hard to do, you know, in the military, because for four years you're being told what to eat, when to eat, you know when to get up, when to go to bed. Uh, you're told where you're going to be stationed, all that stuff. You don't have freedom, you, you're told what you're going to be doing, and that caused a lot of mental health issues, I think with service members too, and so when you're talking about any person, I think someone who's struggling with anything when it comes to your mental health, it's really important to understand.
Speaker 3:That is the number one thing I think to, to try to work on and for me that's what I've always tried to work on for myself is like okay if I'm not having some great thoughts, if I'm having some really bad emotions and some really bad feelings. And you know, boot camp and the military was four years of that, you know. So really, that was a that was a challenge, and I said, if I can do this, if I can make it through this, I can make it through anything, you know. And so anytime anything's gotten challenging in my life, I've said look man, you were in the military, you've been through this before. And then the thing I love to do is perseverance, persist right until you succeed, and and then helping other people with that. You know.
Speaker 3:So if someone is struggling with mental health, or you know someone's struggling with mental health, it's like how can we be the people, even if we're struggling with it ourselves? You know? It's just understanding more that we have thoughts that come up every day, we have emotions that get tied to those and and those emotions create feelings, and then then our body does something with that. We go eat some food, we go not exercise, we go do some self-destructive thing, and it's not the best thing for us. And so if that was one challenge, the biggest challenge, I think, was understanding that the mental health and mental game that can be had in our lives, especially when we're under a lot of stress, it's real.
Speaker 2:It is real. You never know what people are going through, and even when they look like they have it all together, they're still battling something inside. So thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. It's such a true thing.
Speaker 2:So, mark, please tell our listeners one thing they should remember about MWA health and fitness.
Speaker 3:Well, you know you're talking about myth and myth busting and all that stuff. If you are looking for some advice or you want to start a training program or any of that stuff, we would love to have you, of course, but if you have questions or anything like that, you know this is a resource. I think this is what's great about the podcast that you guys are doing. It's just beautiful. It's you're giving a resource to everyone and connecting them with the things they need, you know all around. So if it's health and wellness and fitness, or if it's, you know, a dentist, a doctor, real estate, whatever you guys are, you know expanding and doing on the podcast I think is amazing because it's giving people resources and people that they can trust to go to for questions they might have.
Speaker 3:And you know, typically what we always do here is a complimentary consultation and it's like no pressure ever. So people come in, they they usually do sign up, um, but you know we always say it's like there's no pressure. So you come in, you tell us your fitness goals and you know that's what we want to be as a resource for people, especially when they don't know what to be doing, what's the right diet plan. What's the right exercise plan? Should I be doing CrossFit? Should I be doing Peloton? Should I be doing Orange Theory? I mean all these different programs out there. We just love being a resource, however that can be, and you know that's what we built our community around. It's been here since 2007. This is an amazing community. I've taken it over for the past four years, so it's just been amazing, and I love our message and how we share with people, and it's something that I'm grateful for every day and I just think it's a, it's a beautiful part of the journey we're on.
Speaker 2:You know what, mark? I couldn't tell that you're enjoying all of this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, it's not, you know, I love it. It really does Like one of my. Do you always love everything? I said, yeah, I love everything, because it's all happening for us. Love everything. I said, yeah, I love everything because it's all happening for us, you know it's like.
Speaker 2:So, Mark, how can our listeners learn more about MWA health and fitness?
Speaker 3:I mean, I tried to keep it simple. Uh, if you go to MWA fitnesscom and there's a big orange button at the top or at least it should be there, uh and it says book your consultation now the top, or at least it should be there, uh, and it says book your consultation now. But you can book a consultation or you can ask a question Uh, I see the things that come in. So if you want to fill out a uh consultation form, that's great. But you can also just ask a question in there and, uh, you know, just get a real answer.
Speaker 3:And I've had some really funny stories about people finding me online and, yeah, and they just fill out that questionnaire. So, yeah, fill out a questionnaire. Or, um, if you want to go on instagram, if you're on instagram, mw or mark anderson, so just my name, mark anderson, underscore mwa, and you can message me directly there too. But we love questions, I questions, I ask a lot of questions and you know you on it's the what I told you before we started. I love, I love chatting and talking to people.
Speaker 2:Well, it's all good. I mean, how else are you going to get the information out unless you have the conversation right?
Speaker 3:Totally.
Speaker 2:And we're grateful that you're on this platform with us. We've come to the end of it, but I really appreciate you being on the show with us today. We certainly here wish you and your business all the best moving forward, and we look forward to part two some other time.
Speaker 3:Awesome, yeah, me too. I look forward to that as well.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Mark.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPNorthshorecom. That's GNPNorthshorecom, or call 85, 5, 7, 7, 0, 3, 9, 4, 0, 6.