The Mind Performance Health Podcast

You Are Where You Live: The Hidden Connection Between Environment and Obesity

• Michael Pritchatt • Episode 27

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The modern obesity crisis isn't just about what we eat—it's fundamentally shaped by where and how we live. Drawing from research published in the Australian Journal of General Practice, this episode explores the powerful connection between our built environments and expanding waistlines.

With 70% of Australian adults now overweight or obese, we're facing a health emergency that's largely influenced by environmental factors beyond individual control. Post-pandemic lifestyle shifts have dramatically reduced daily movement, with many people trading active commutes for sedentary home offices. Urban sprawl has created car-dependent neighborhoods with fewer footpaths, limited green spaces, and reduced opportunities for natural physical activity.

Perhaps most insidious is our modern food environment, where fast food accessibility combines with constant digital food imagery to influence our choices in subtle but powerful ways. The compounding effect of these environmental factors creates a perfect storm—every 5,000 steps equals roughly 250 calories burned, meaning reduced daily movement adds up dramatically over months and years, especially when paired with easier access to calorie-dense foods.

The solution starts with recognizing that information alone isn't enough. Despite unprecedented access to health and fitness knowledge, obesity rates continue climbing because we're fighting environments designed to make unhealthy choices easiest. By deliberately engineering our spaces—both physical and social—to support better habits, we can create sustainable change. Whether removing temptation foods from your home, finding supportive communities, or making small nutritional substitutions, environmental adjustments yield powerful results because who and what we surround ourselves with ultimately shapes our health more than willpower alone.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Mind Performance Health Podcast. I'm Michael Pritchett, owner and founder of MPH Personal Training and MPH Supplements. I'm a coach to everyday Australians fighting the battle against obesity, elite athletes, bodybuilders, and the goal of this podcast is the fact that 7 out of 10 Australians are obese and overweight. 1 out of 4 kids are obese and overweight, and this can actually lead to early death. It's a problem. It can lead to a lot of diseases blood pressure, cholesterol issues, blood sugar problems and on this channel or on this podcast, I'm going to share my knowledge. I want to motivate you to take action on your health and fitness goals to reverse the trend. So let's lock in Today's episode. We're going to talk about a new idea on obesity, and that is you are where you live. You may have heard the saying before you are what you eat. I'm going to reframe that a little bit with a new idea you are where you live. Now I've got a research paper in front of me from the Australian Journal of General Practice, april 2020. And the topic was the built environment and obesity. And it's the exact Journal of General Practice, april 2020. And the topic was the built environment and obesity. And it's the exact title of this episode. You Are when you Live and the research shows. Okay, environments make it harder to stay fit and unhealthy choices are the easiest choices.

Speaker 1:

I've also seen this in the field. Aside from the research, that environments now, and you think about it, even if you were to recall back to lockdowns here in Australia, we had less movement staying at home, but ever since then as well, the work environment changed. I sit down with clients where they mentioned that. Yes, and you may notice this as well is that you were walking more between work, maybe going for walks on your lunch break, but now, working from home, you're sitting down, you might get up, go to the office, the home office, come back on the lounge, you may be snacking a bit more too. That's a change in environment, a big change. And what I also found is that with a lot of Australians I'm sitting down with busy professionals, with work parents. They're mentioning that, yeah, I've just noticed my weight. This is in their words. My weight has crept up. I've been putting on more weight ever since that environmental change, since lockdowns, because I'm just not moving as much. The habits have changed.

Speaker 1:

But with the research papers too, they noticed that city growth and urban sprawl. There's longer commutes, sometimes between work now, depending where you're at which could equal more time sitting in cars. So for some there's longer time commuting between going to work and for others they're staying at home and not moving as much. But both is involving less movement, less walking, less cycling to work, transport issues as well. It's a big problem with our environment that there's limited public transport options, poor destination accessibility and fewer facilities for things like bicycles, which will help improve your output for the day. Neighborhood infrastructure, less green space, fewer footpaths. We're turning into more of a dense society, dense infrastructure, but with that there's less environments for us to actually promote movement. Used areas to that encourage walking. It's just not happening. Or most suburbs are designed for cars, which equal more time spent in a car and more driving, and also, too, food environment.

Speaker 1:

Food environment is a big one and, I think, one of the biggest issues we face because, at the end of the day, if we have less output combined with more input being the food we eat, that equals a higher amount of body fat. So there's more fast food outlets that you have access to, whether it's at work, easy to access restaurants, but also think about it as well at your phone, right. You go on Instagram, you go on TikTok, you go on Facebook, you get ads in front of you or your. Your algorithm has picked up things but you're getting pushed. And it's business, I understand. But you're getting pushed viral pieces of content that want to grab your attention and this could be in the form of crazy burgers, where they have the lot, the greasy cheese, they have glazed buns. It could be the acai revolution at the moment, where they're putting all the crazy toppings on top of ice creams and acais, if that's how you pronounce it. I always get that wrong, but we'll see if I'm right in this case but it's the more crazier toppings that's on the desserts, or the more grease and junk that's on the burgers or junk food. It grabs your attention and can influence your behaviors. So it's not just the environment of work and space, it's the social media, it's everything trying to grab your attention which can influence your decisions, whether for better or for worse. And work and education spaces there's less encouragement for movement and fewer dedicated areas of quality environments Now, gyms are environments, but if we needed more gyms, why is the statistic going up when more gyms are being created?

Speaker 1:

I mean, you can walk down the road and see how many gyms there are. There's always gyms popping up, whether it's membership gyms, group gyms, bootcamp gyms. Now, I'm not opposed to any of those models. I think they're fantastic. But how many times do you go to the gym? And maybe this is yourself where you notice that. Well, number one, 95% of people aren't going. They got the membership and you might be just paying it and staying at home and keeping them in business without actually showing up, which is a problem to your health and fitness, and you know that. Or you're going there and not really making any noticeable changes. You might be just maintaining or even regressing your body fats coming up, even though you're going to the gym and exercising. It needs to be a quality environment.

Speaker 1:

At Mind Performance Health, we complete 500 PT programs each year. At the moment, we have a team of eight coaches. We help clients face-to-face and online. Now the difference is the environment. I believe the difference is the environment. We do things one-on-one. This is just the way we do things. There's great places that have great results, with clients getting to healthy body fat ranges as well. But I'm just going to explain what we do and the idea we work from. Really wanted to make a place where it's more one-to-one focused. We need to tailor a plan so you can have ease with decisions and be consistent and compliant. We need to have an environment where it's normal to execute your health and fitness goals and stay healthy, because if it's not normal at home to be healthy or make healthy choices with food or even at work, it can impact your willpower Because, once again, making unhealthy choices can be easy. So here at MPH, we create an environment where it is healthy and normal to be healthy, all right, to stay on track with your goals, and we want to create an environment where you have support.

Speaker 1:

Delayed gratification is going to be important, but I want you to remember one thing If you're moving less at the moment due to your environment, like you're not going out and getting as many steps, one key metric here I want you to remember is going to be that it compounds for better or for worse. Let's look at steps, for example. Some studies show and there's plus or minus with this by maybe 20% or more, but I just want you to understand the point of this every 5,000 steps burns around 250 calories. So every 5,000 steps I'll correct myself burn around 250 calories. Now if you've gone from doing 10,000 steps per day and your environment has changed, now you're only doing 2,000 steps per day, that's a big decrease in the amount of calories burnt per day just through movement. But that's one day and you might be like, okay, look, one day doesn't really matter. But if you were to do that seven days a week with less movement, every month, every year, that's going to compound up. So simply, you're moving less. You're now eating more.

Speaker 1:

Because the environments are just in your face. It's more easier to make poor quality decisions with your nutrition. You're eating more junk food. Your body fat's coming up. You're moving less. It's just compounding up in a negative way on your health. You've got to understand that being overweight and obese it's not just the look in the mirror, it has an impact on your health. It's the second leading factor in early death, only second to tobacco. That's bad. That's not good. Your quality of decisions now are either compounding for you or against you with your health and fitness, and your environment can influence that.

Speaker 1:

What are some takeaways? Fitness and your environment can influence that. So what are some takeaways? I'm going to give you three takeaways to help you. One is that there's so much information so much information. You can pull out your phone, you can type things into AI these days, you can get the information even quicker than ever but there's not enough guidance or you're not in the right environment, and that's why you're not achieving your health and fitness goals. It's not an information issue, it's the quality of environment and quality of guidance issue. So you need to put yourself in a position to have success and to do so, you need to be in the right environment and have the right guidance.

Speaker 1:

Another thing as well is with all the information. What I find with clients when we sit down with them is that they're confused. They often say look, there's so much information on TikTok, there's so much information on Instagram, the internet chat, gpt, but maybe I try something and it doesn't work for me. Maybe I'm just so overloaded by the information that I have a lack of action. It might be one of those two boats. So you need to cut through the confusion and you need to find what works for you at this given time and you need a clear plan. What works for you? I always say in consults with MPH we try to see where you're at now and where you want to go when you're at now and where you want to go, because that will dictate the steps or the vehicles that we use to help you get there. And it's not just more diet or exercise tips you need to consume. You need a nice, carefully formulated plan that's tailored to your lifestyle, to your preferences.

Speaker 1:

Foods that don't cause issue, foods you enjoy, the accountability, the support to make sure you stay on track with both training and nutrition to help you get there. More than ever, I think, as the trend of obesity and being overweight as Australians is only raising, I think more than ever, the most important thing you can do right now if you want to break that trend is get into the right environment or make the right environment at home, and that may include taking away foods that you have less willpower. It's simple, guys If there's food and rubbish at home where you just find you get up from the lounge, you're watching TV, you just grab it. You have poor lack of self-control. Get rid of it, throw it out. Throw it out. It's not helping you or your goals. Don't purchase it. That's one simple way to make sure you don't need motivation or willpower to stop you from grabbing something because it's not there in that environment.

Speaker 1:

If you want to have a better life for your family, kids, members, in terms of them being healthy and fit, start working at your home. Start working on your home environment, because you're a product of what's around you and if the junk food's around you, potentially, once again, if you don't have the willpower or discipline and you're finding these habits, you're just grabbing things for the sake of it. Get rid of it and it will help you stay on track and just keep in mind your environment, even with where you live. The neighborhood Is it designed for more transport to jump in a car, sit in there and move around? Is there parks or are there parks for you to move around and go to? Or is it really just high density suburbia? Just look around but, once again, just realize you may be battling an environment that is going against your health goals.

Speaker 1:

If fast food is more accessible than fresh produce, it is getting harder to get quality food. They're a business. Fast food foods these are all businesses that need to make money to survive. They may put lack of quality ingredients into their foods fillers which potentially are hurting your health. Okay, potentially hurting your health, but it's getting harder to make quality decisions with any food around you, and if you change your environment, it will dictate your performance, but it potentially can change your life. Make healthy choices, the easiest choices.

Speaker 1:

Replace things at home, even little replacements For sugar hits. Sometimes we'll have clients that say, hey, what's an alternative to a sugar hit? I'm not opposed to using in moderation and making sure it doesn't cause any inflammation, digestive issues. Replacements, such as if you were drinking soft drink, a minimum amount of sugar-free soft drinks, can be okay. Are they probably the best thing for you? No, but is it better than having the soft drinks? Potentially for you, yes. So making small adjustments like that can help, especially if it keeps you on track, getting to a healthy body fat range, things like even hot chocolates there's sugar-free hot chocolates. There are some great supplements out there that will help those cravings when they happen without actually causing as much issues.

Speaker 1:

Now you've got to make sure that the foods digest well, that you don't have any issues with the artificial sweeteners all this kind of stuff too you don't get bloated. But there are alternatives out there. It'll just take if you don't have the knowledge. Find the support to get the knowledge, but also to just make a decision that you're going to be better and start making these adjustments and purchase these kinds of foods to help you stay on track with your fitness goals. Once again, removing the unhealthy choices and putting the right choices in your environment will help you stay on track.

Speaker 1:

All right, so there's a few tips and just some ideas, but, as a summary for this episode, who you surround yourself with and what you surround yourself with is going to make the change. It's not just who. It's also what it needs to be a combination. So start taking action on your home environment. Start taking action on realizing your social, your work, your family environment, and start putting yourself in those quality places that will help improve your chances to win. It's not just here at Mind Performance Health. There are some quality places as well that you can get amongst, whether it's community groups. I recommend that but find somewhere, or friends or family members that will keep you accountable to your goals, especially if you lack the willpower to stay accountable yourself.

Speaker 1:

One thing that helps me is realizing a couple of things. Number one what will happen to my own health and fitness if I don't take action? And I do that because of proof, from what I've seen, yes, in research, but also what I've seen from my grandparents family, what I've seen with clients, what can happen if you don't take action and I really don't want that. And also, too, how I want my kids to grow up and live and what habits, beliefs and values I want them to have. It's going to start with me, I believe, and also mentally. How do I want to feel on day-to-day? Yes, getting to the gym. Sometimes I'm not as motivated, but what keeps me going is not the reliance on motivation, it's knowing how I feel mentally and physically by getting to the gym. Without that aside, without the motivation, I know I feel better getting to the gym, getting my workouts in, versus not.

Speaker 1:

So make sure you take action on your health and fitness goals. If you ever need any help, feel free to reach out to our team. You can book in a discovery call. We have our links in our show notes. You can check out our MPH supplements as well to help you perform better at work and your fitness goals. But yeah, ultimately, guys, I just want you to take action on your health and fitness. Here in Australia it's a big problem, but also in modern society around the world it's a big problem. It's not slowing down, but the power is up to you, whether you want to make a difference or not for yourself and your family's life. So make a decision, get started on it, and if you need any help with our team, please feel free to reach out. I'll see you guys all in the next one.