Hello and welcome back to the Solon Motion podcast where we deconstruct fitness
industry myths, talk about positivity in your body and in your life, and a whole
bunch of other things. I am so excited to be back. We are going to put a wrap on
season one of this podcast that was focused on taking care of your body in some
special ways, taking care of your life in others and just generally checking in and
connecting your body and your brain in some new and unique ways. I am officially
back from maternity leave in most ways anyway. I am back in the studio a little
bit, connecting with my staff and a few clients. I am also putting together a bunch
of other really exciting products and offerings, and I can't wait to share those
with you. But for now, I am living on a little sleep and a lot of baby giggles.
Super excited to be at this point in my life and to be able to share it with you
all. So without further ado, we are going to hop right in.
Today, we are going to talk about the most recent diet that I have been on
postpartum. So throughout my pregnancy with baby Josephine,
I consumed. I consumed a lot. I consumed a lot of social media. I tried to consume
less than I have in the past, but it is really tempting to dive in and scroll and
scroll and scroll. And on a couple of occasions, I did call myself, I took it off
my phone and then found myself jumping back in either because I was there for work
or for pleasure and it just, you know, it spirals. It's easy to start scrolling. So
the diet that I am on currently and hope to maintain and sustain for quite a while
is a social media diet. And what that means is that I went on a cleanse for a
while so all these behaviors that I used to apply really unhealthfully to my food
and nourishing I am applying to my social media intake so I went on a cleanse. I
spent at least a week I want to say it might have been longer with zero social
media intake. I took all the apps off my phone I logged off of my browsers and
changed my passwords to something I couldn't remember so I couldn't just log in on
my phone and I made sure that when I was on my laptop, if I needed to be on for
work, it was like get on, post the thing and then get off without actually doing
any exposure. And I will tell you that that week was incredibly uncomfortable. The
first couple of days I spent feigning like hard. I would find my phone in my hand.
I would find myself looking for the Instagram app without really meaning to, or just
kind of scrolling through my screens because I was so used to just scrolling and
getting some light exposure in that way. You know, in the next couple of days after
that we're a little better. It wasn't quite so mindless, but I was looking for
something and I couldn't figure out what the craving was. And on day five or six,
I realized, oh, I'm craving a super quick mean hit. I'm craving a super quick pick
-me -up and it hit me just how much social media exposure and leaning into picking
up my phone when I want a quick pick -me -up or a little dose of energy or a
little dose of joy was taking away from my capacity to do that in my day -to -day
life. And fortunately, I'm incredibly blessed enough to have this education in
neurology and bodies and how they work to understand this. So it wasn't shamey,
it was just really interesting to step back and watch and go "oh this is what's
happening in my brain, this is what's happening in my body" and it can feel very
similar to food cravings when we want to eat emotionally or when we want to lean
in and have more than we know we need because it would just you know scratch an
itch. And so I spent some time just sitting with it and recognizing what was going
on and how it was feeling in my body and this is kind of what I came up with
and wanted to share and why I would encourage a social media diet and at the end
of this we'll get into how to implement this in a way that feels sane and
manageable but here are the takeaways. There are four of them. One,
When we have high levels of exposure to social media or to the internet, it could
be things like Buzzfeed or fast news sites or really anything that you can scroll
quickly. There is a decrease in mindfulness of your surroundings, not just when
you're on your phone but at large because there's this software program basically
running in the back of your head looking for, waiting for that next round. Your
neurology is starting to wire to look for that information flow, that big bolus or
megadose of information and photos and words and news and new things,
variety, right, to come into your brain. And so we're less mindful of the world
around us because the back of our brain is looking for this other thing that it
thinks is going to come. And I noticed this, especially while I was nursing Joey, I
was like, oh my goodness, I am not paying attention to the sweet, sweet, wonderful
baby with her chubby little fists and her sweet little sounds because I am looking
for something else that's like fast food for my brain. The second thing that this
starts to do to us is it actually decreases our joy from the real things around
us. So our set point, our neurological set point for joy,
for happiness, for ooh, right, for that novelty feeling,
starts to shift to look for something faster, higher input,
and lower risk, lower stakes than the world around us. So instead of getting joy
from the incredible curl of the petal of a flower or all of the shades of green
in a tree or just the sun on our face, we get less joy from that because our set
point for looking for that is actually changed from this flashing constantly novel,
constantly new input that we're feeding ourselves. So be like eating junk food for
quite a while and not being able to quite taste the subtlety in something that's a
little healthier or more nourishing. Number three, the problem that comes up is
visual fatigue. So our eyes are actually incredibly expensive to operate and to
process light and metabolize enough energy to process light is very expensive.
And when we start intaking light and highly saturated colors in unnatural ways and
really high doses our eyes fatigue faster and not just you know my eye muscles are
tired right but the the nerve the optic nerve gets fatigued the whole eye structure
that part of your brain that takes things in gets more and more tired so we
actually can't take in as much of the world around us because our visual system is
fatigued which gives us this overall sense of kind of mellies for some people.
And lastly, the problem is that we get really poor at inhibiting, meaning our brains
get less and less skillful at stopping something we don't want and starting something
that we do want. So how often have you said, "I'm just going to watch this last
reel or read this last news article and then 16 reels or articles later, we're
still going. Me too. This is like not throwing stones here. I live in a glass
house.
So the inhibitory process in the brain, which is incredibly important for neurological
health, starts to atrophy. So that's all the reasons we want to do the social media
diets, right? So what are we going to get out of it? You are going to notice,
first of all, you're going to get the social media deities. Your brain is going to
start freaking out looking for these high doses of stimulus, these high doses of
information, these quick fixes for boredom, for feeling disconnected,
for these other things. But over time, we're going to start to notice an increase
in mindfulness around the world around us. You're going to notice that the trees
look a little greener or that you hear the song that you're listening to a little
more clearly. You'll get a more joy from those things. It was nuts how fast I
realized how much more joy I was actually getting out of my day -to -day life when
I wasn't on my phone scrolling at all. Your eyes will be less fatigued.
Your neck will be less fatigued. You'll have more energy to expend on the things
that you want to spend it on, whether that's growing your business or working out
or paying attention to your kids or managing your kids nonsense. That's where a lot
of my energy goes sometimes. But that visual fatigue lessens and leaves you more
bandwidth for the rest of your life. And lastly on the social media diet we get
this inhibition practice. We get more practice at oh my phone is in my hand.
Okay I'm gonna notice that and I'm gonna put it down. or oops, I opened the
Instagram app without even noticing it. I'm gonna pay attention to that. I'm gonna
choose to not do the thing that I'm reactively doing without paying attention to it.
I'm gonna turn on my prefrontal cortex, turn up my executive function, and choose to
set that down. And long -term neurological health is really positively impacted by
choices like that. And short -term, We get a sense of satisfaction from, "Oh,
I did the thing I was trying to do." So both short and long -term, super healthy.
So while I will never, again, should never say never, but as far as I can see in
my life, recommend hardcore cleanses and dieting from food, I will highly recommend
stepping into something like this. Ways that you can approach this reasonably,
Right because for a lot of us the idea of just taking all social media off of our
phones putting our phones down not scrolling Can feel really overwhelming. It is a
really effective coping tool and Just deciding to not do that at all Doesn't really
work so three steps one Take the apps off of your phone Just uninstall the apps
and instead force yourself to log in through the browser because that will give you
less access immediately. It'll force you to log in at least once and maybe you know
log out enough that you have to put your password in every time and give yourself
just a couple barriers to entry. Okay so that's number one is to uninstall the apps
and log in on the browser instead and just see what happens. Number two is to get
into your phone and change your settings so that the app timers go off.
So in an iPhone it's called one thing, in Android it's called another, but there
are apps that you can, or settings that you can, activate that basically darken the
screen and say hey you've been on this app too long, it's time to get off. You do
have to pay attention to those and listen to those and that is a commitment.
But go ahead and activate those, start with 30 minutes less per day than you're
doing now. And if you don't know, look at your screen time. If you really want a
reason to do this, go look at your screen time and see exactly how much time
you're actually spending on social media and news apps. Once you get that number,
again, go down by 15 or 30 minutes, 30 ideally, and then kind of work it back
from there until you're at an amount of time that feels reasonable for your
lifestyle. For me, that's about 30 minutes a day these days. It's enough time for
me to kind of like check in, see what's going on, get my little hit of puppy
memes. And I like watching cake decorating for whatever reason, it's just, I find it
soothing. So get your fix and then get out.
And ultimately, maybe keep a journal of what you're noticing,
if not just pay attention to what you notice as you cut that back because if you
don't give your brain, give yourself reinforcement, oh look this is actually changing
my behavior. This is changing my capacity. I saved myself 45 minutes today and I
spent that time with my kids. I spent that time working out doing the workouts I
said I've been meaning to do for however long now. I spent that time or that
mental energy going for a walk outside instead. And I got to see beautiful things.
Make sure that you are cognitively noticing and writing down, if possible, the things
that you are getting out of this step away from social media. And that is all I
have for you. The internet is a wonderful and beautiful place. Social media
definitely has a place in our life and in our society and it is a really hefty
drug. It gives us dopamine in unnatural levels unnaturally quickly and it's up to
you and you have the capacity and the opportunity to come back to getting that
high, right, that joy, that sense of purpose and excitement and oof novelty from the
natural world around us and from interpersonal connection.
And with that we are wrapping season one. Thank you so much for being here for our
mind -body exploration for the last season. I am so grateful for the patience and
the staying with us while I was on leave and I am so excited to bring you season
two and some wonderful new things in the coming months.
Thank you for being here. Please make sure that you hop over to Spotify or Apple
Podcasts wherever you're listening, rate us, follow us, like us, share us with your
friends, and hop over to forestcoachingandstudios .com and get on our email list if
you would like access to coaching and inspiration, motivation, and some really cool
upcoming opportunities. Thank you so much and we'll see you in season two.
