There Is a Statistic That Should Stop Every Man Reading This
Laura Burdick was running a hot yoga studio, coaching nutrition clients, and on the path she had carefully planned. Then a drunk driver hit her. She woke up paralyzed from the chest down. Most people would call that the end of the story. Laura calls it the moment her purpose got louder.
On this episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast, hosts Dave Rodriguez and Dimitri Snowden sat down with Laura, a quadriplegic yoga instructor, fitness and nutrition coach, and founder of the Let’s Go Initiative. What unfolded was less of a recovery story and more of a working philosophy on what vitality actually requires.
The takeaway is uncomfortable for anyone using fatigue, age, or circumstance as a reason to stay stuck: vitality is not built on willpower. It is built on purpose, paired with the boring discipline of paying attention.
This post is inspired by our latest episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast. Watch the full conversation here.
The Reframe: Health is not the Goal. Purpose is.
Most wellness conversations start in the wrong place. They start with a number on a scale, a body fat percentage, or a step count. Laura starts somewhere else.
“I am interested in health and wellness because I don’t think your health and wellness should get in the way of you living your purpose. So you should take care of those things.” Laura Burdick
Read that twice. Health is not the goal. Health is the platform that holds up your purpose. If you want to play with your grandkids on the floor, your nutrition either makes that possible or makes it impossible. If you want to lead, build, coach, or contribute, your body either supports the load or buckles under it. The body is in service of the mission, not the other way around.
Laura lived this principle before her accident, and she lived it from a hospital bed two months after. Recording a video on a trach, unable to move her arms, she challenged her network to a 90-day commitment to work hard alongside her. People quit smoking. People started exercising. People walked into churches they had been avoiding for years. Her purpose did not pause. It scaled.
Three Insights From Laura That Will Change How You Think About Wellness
1. Honest Assessment Beats Wishful Thinking
When a new client arrives, Laura does not start with a meal plan. She starts with a question: when in your life did you feel the best, and what were you doing then. That single question pulls a person back into a memory of capability. Then she pairs it with a brutal time audit. Every minute of the day, on paper. Every client leaves the meeting saying the same thing: oh my gosh, there is time. The problem was never time. The problem was attention.
2. The Ingredient List Is The Truth
Forget the nutrition facts label. Laura wants you reading the actual ingredient list. Her rule of thumb: if it has more than five or six ingredients, or contains anything you would not keep in your own cabinet, put it back on the shelf. Two jars of peanut butter sit next to each other. One says peanuts, salt. The other has ten ingredients including palm oil and food coloring. Same product, different food.
3. Are You Hungry, Or Is It Just There
This is the question Laura makes her clients ask before every snack. Not, is it healthy. Not, how many calories. Just, am I actually hungry, or is this food simply available, and am I bored, fidgety, or emotional. If hunger is real, eat protein and produce. If hunger is not real, the snack was never about food in the first place.
How to Apply This to Your Week
If Laura’s philosophy lands for you, here are four moves you can run inside the next seven days.
- Write down the season of your life when you felt most alive. Identify two habits from that season that are missing from your current week, and reinstall one of them.
- Audit a single day of your time in 30-minute blocks. Find one block currently spent scrolling and replace it with 30 minutes of deliberate movement.
- Walk into your pantry and read the ingredient list on five items. Replace the worst one this week with a version that has five or fewer ingredients.
- For three days, ask yourself before every snack: am I hungry, or is it just there. If the answer is no, do not eat it. Notice the pattern.
Two Myths Worth Dismantling
First, the myth that limitations end your purpose. Laura was a yoga instructor before her accident. She is still a yoga instructor. Her students show up because they work harder when she is in the room. The body changed. The vocation did not.
Second, the myth that more protein is always better. Laura does not push protein hype. Most people are eating enough already. The marketing exists, in part, to distract you from the rest of the ingredient list. Read the label, not the front of the box.
The Bottom Line
Vitality is not the result of a perfect plan. It is the byproduct of a clear purpose, an honest assessment, and the willingness to pay attention to what you are putting into your body and your day.
Laura Burdick built a coaching career, kept teaching yoga from a wheelchair, started a 501c3 to fund wellness for people with physical disabilities, and is finishing a PhD. Most readers of this post have fewer obstacles than she does. The question is whether the purpose is loud enough yet.
Your Next Step
If you are ready to go deeper and take an honest look at all six dimensions of your vitality, explore The Calling Quilt™ coaching at destiny-works.com/the-calling-quilt
Full Transcript
DAVE (NARRATION): Imagine being told that your physical limitations are going to define what’s possible for you for the rest of your life. Well, our guest today has proved that that doesn’t have to be true. We’re sitting down with a remarkable young woman who is a yoga instructor, fitness and nutrition coach, who also happens to be quadriplegic. We’re going to discover what she has learned about resilience and healing and mindset and wellness. What you hear today may completely change the way you think about vitality. Welcome back to The Vitality Journey Podcast.
DAVE: All right, Dimitri, what’s the hardest physical struggle that you’ve ever had to face? I’m looking at you and your sculpted body. But at some point you did have a physical struggle, right?
DIMITRI: Absolutely.
DAVE: So tell me about it.
DIMITRI: It might sound a bit trite, but it’s when you have been working out or you’ve been moving a bit and then you stop and you have to restart again. That is so hard, especially when you know what you’re capable of. Whether it’s you stop because of injury or you can’t afford to go to the gym, that restart is both physically taxing and mentally taxing too.
DAVE: Yeah, that mental part. Ever since I’ve known you, I believe you’re a person with a really high level of motivation and personal discipline. Have you always been that way?
DIMITRI: I think so. I think it’s just been driven. My father was just, he really instilled in me, no one’s coming to save you. No one’s coming. So that self reliability bolsters, right? It gives you, sometimes you even go too far. But I’ve had to just prepare myself. Everything’s about preparation, just in case they can’t, or someone won’t come save me, then I have to be able to do it myself.
DAVE: And you’ve taken care of your body pretty well.
DIMITRI: I tried to. Because listen, there was a point where as an entrepreneur, you just can’t, I can’t afford insurance. I can’t just run to the doctor. So I’m like, all right, well, let me run an extra mile. Let me eat a little less sugar. Or I can’t even afford the things that have. So just been very mindful of that. Because if I can’t get to the doctor, then I have to be able to take care of myself.
DAVE: I’ve been thinking lately, you and I have talked about this, but I’ve been thinking, asking myself the question, what is it that gets a person to say, I’m going to do this thing. I’m going to discipline myself. I’m going to motivate myself. How do I change my mindset, especially when it comes to physical fitness, for instance?
DIMITRI: Yeah.
DAVE: For me, it’s interesting that we’re having this discussion now about fitness and facing challenges. Our guest today has faced challenges that you and I couldn’t even fathom. Yet she has a level of motivation about it that is amazing. I can’t wait to talk to her about it. But for me lately, I have been really working through aging. I don’t like to say this out loud, but I’ll be 71 years old in a couple of months. And aging is awful.
DIMITRI: Yeah, that’s, I should have said that, because it’s the same thing. It’s a sad, it’s different, and you look different. Yeah, man. It’s everything’s changing. You don’t have to do about it.
DAVE: Yeah. I got a bum knee. I got bum blood apparently now. The thing is, the last five years, I think I’ve suddenly started facing some body limitations, because the body is designed to wear out. And it keeps score.
DIMITRI: It keeps a score.
DAVE: Yeah. So over the last couple of years, honestly, to be honest, one of the motivations for this podcast was the transformation, the vitality journey of my own life I needed to invest in, especially in my physical life. So I’ve been paying very careful attention. I work out three times a week, which, believe me, anyone watching this, that’s amazing that I’ve done that three times a week for the last two years, because up to that point, I wasn’t taking care of my body. But what I’ve discovered is even when I’m working out, whether I’m walking or lifting or doing mobility training and those kind of things, my body is still, because I’m older, it’s harder than before. So for me, it’s got to be a discipline of my mind. When I get out of bed in the morning, I don’t want any video of me getting out of bed. Actually, I don’t want any video of me getting out of a chair, for heaven’s sake. I am so creaky. I am, and there’s lots of groaning. So I am paying very careful attention to what’s going on inside of my mind and heart, and motivation, because it’s getting easier to say no.
DIMITRI: That’s all I’m saying, right? It’s getting easier to say. Something you just said, and I think there’s a common thread and theme between both of our expressions, in that the thing I think the catalyst to change is the baseline of survivability. When the thing that you want to do is now impeding and encroaching upon your survivability, you’re going to fix it. I can’t get up, or I’m winded after four steps, or I couldn’t lift this. Then you’re like, oh, this is crazy. Especially when it gets down into that basic stuff. We’re not talking about sprinting or running seven miles and doing a marathon. We’re talking about, I just want to be able to walk up the steps or carry a couple of bags of groceries without fatigue. That baseline will drive someone to do change, to make change.
DAVE: I hope so. And I believe it’s what is driving me. Everyone my age, I want to be able to get on the floor with my grandkids and get back up. By the way, the other day, Henry decided he wanted to play backgammon. He crushes me in backgammon. He’s six years old.
DIMITRI: Wait, he knows how to play backgammon?
DAVE: Oh yeah, he crushes me in backgammon.
DIMITRI: Smart kid.
DAVE: But he wanted to do it on the floor. I was like, really? So we’re playing. Then me getting up, that was like a whole movie.
DIMITRI: Oh no.
DAVE: At any rate. The point is, the idea of maintaining physical fitness and even nutrition, there’s a level of motivation and discipline that will always be necessary, especially when it gets harder and harder.
DIMITRI: Absolutely.
DAVE: So anyway, today’s guest is not only skilled and educated, I can’t wait to talk to her. Today’s guest is not only skilled and educated in fitness and nutrition, but maybe more than anybody is learned in the art of motivation and perseverance. Laura, let me tell you about her. Laura Burdick has an undergrad degree from Notre Dame, went on to earn a master’s degree in public health from St. Louis University. And she turned her interest in nutrition and physical wellness into a career. She has led yoga studios in Chicago and Indianapolis, managed about 60 employees, started her own business as a health and nutrition coach. She helped people overcome eating disorders, rebound from injuries and illnesses, and encouraged and pushed them to live their dreams. And on top of all that, she has a remarkable story of resilience. So I’m anxious for our viewers and our listeners to meet Laura Burdick. Welcome, Laura.
LAURA: Thank you. It’s nice to be here.
DAVE: It’s great to have you. We’re going to talk about vitality and we’re going to talk about yoga. And I got questions about hot yoga because I don’t get it. You’re going to have to explain that to us. And nutrition and fitness. But let’s talk about the obvious. Let’s talk about your story. Could you give us your story, how you got to where you are today?
LAURA: Yes. I mean, that can be an hour long podcast in and of itself. But I grew up in Indiana in Terre Haute, and very close family and friends, and always just felt very supported in whatever tasks I wanted to do or accomplish. I also grew up with a very black and white mindset of, okay, here’s, you go to school, you go to college, you go maybe to grad school, you get a job. Just a very traditional path in life is kind of how I would explain what I grew up with and understood and thought of for my life. That was how I was going to go. And so I did kind of follow that. I went to college at Notre Dame, then I went to grad school at St. Louis University, got my master’s in public health. And then I did the next adult thing, which is moved to Indianapolis and got a job, Monday to Friday, eight to five kind of career, office job. And I was working in that world and I was doing wellness consulting for companies. I was helping companies design employee wellness programs. And so I loved that work, because my passion was already kind of on the path of health and wellness. I was interested in it personally. I loved to encourage family and friends to get involved in it. And so I kind of was able to make a career out of it, which was great. But after a couple of years of working in that world, my dad tells me this, I kind of came to him and was like, I just don’t feel like I’m helping people. I’m not the one delivering the wellness programs on site. So I was consulting and helping things become present for people to make changes, but I just didn’t feel like I was really helping people get better. And I knew that I could do that, in the best way, because people need help in all sorts of ways, but I knew that I could do that in the best way through health and wellness, like nutrition and physical activity, because I had experimented with all of that in my own life and I enjoyed that. I was passionate about that. So I kind of threw a curve ball into that whole career planning business and started my own company where I would actually be on site delivering wellness programs to employees. And at the same time, I was offered to get started part-time at the Hot Room, the hot yoga and Pilates studio. So it was a good balance of having some income while I was starting my own business. And so that’s how I got involved in that world. Then I was in it completely. I loved everything I was doing. I loved that interaction I was having with people, trying to get better and be healthier and make changes in their life. I was working in that field and I had no intention of leaving any of that behind.
LAURA: And then after doing that for about five or six years, I was in a devastating car accident. It was actually May of 2020, so it was COVID time. So everybody was already in a very weird mindset and very weird place dealing with how life was different. And I was out of town at our Chicago location and I got hit by a drunk driver. I was heading home for the evening after work to stay where I stayed with my friend when I was up there in the Chicago area, and got hit by a drunk driver. And I don’t remember any of that because I had a brain injury in addition to my spinal cord injury. I don’t really remember about two months of time. I wasn’t in a coma. I was awake in the hospital, but I don’t have any recollection of this period of time. It was COVID, so I couldn’t have visitors. So I kind of think maybe God was protecting me. Like, okay, we’re not going to remember all of this. So then I went from the ICU for a couple of months to therapy for a couple of months. And then I went to inpatient rehab in Omaha, Nebraska for nine months. So it was over a year before I ever really even returned home after my accident. And I still loved health and wellness. I still love the topic.
DAVE: Yeah, that’s going to be my next series of questions. So anyway, I didn’t mean to interrupt you there, but you’re still involved in health and wellness. What are your limitations now?
LAURA: Yeah, so I am paralyzed really from the chest down. So I’m a power wheelchair user. I don’t have use of my hands and I can move my arms pretty well. I’m able to do some things, but I need full assistance with my cares and whatnot. So I’m able to use the computer on my own and I can feed myself and I’m able to, because my brain injury healed completely, fortunately. So I’m able to socialize and do all the things like silty yoga, but I have limitations just on scheduling and time and my ability to get places and go do things.
DAVE: Your resilience and discipline and passion is simply remarkable. To be honest with you, we were talking about earlier. It’s just amazing.
DIMITRI: It is amazing. Question for you is, we’re going to get into the journey of, now what right after this happened, but how did you reconcile what happened to the person that did this to you, right? It was kind of the result of negligence, right? It wasn’t like their tire fell off and we couldn’t control it. How did you cope with that? How did you press through that?
LAURA: That’s a good question, because I have been asked that a lot. How did you deal with that? How did I find forgiveness, or how did I get answers that I wanted to get for what had happened to me. And I just never really let myself get caught up in what the action was that created this. My understanding was that, okay, this is the reality now. And what can I do moving forward? I was just able to keep my eyes focused forward and not look back, because I wasn’t going to find answers and I wasn’t going to be happy with any of the answers that I did get. So the woman that hit me, the night she hit me, her car kept rolling and she was thrown from her car and she died. So she didn’t make it through the accident. And so I think I’ve always kind of held a space in my heart of sadness for her and her family that they had to experience that side of the accident. And so I just kind of put it all back onto me, what happens in the rest of my life. That’s me. That has nothing to do with her.
DAVE: Full stop, I think. Right there. That’s enough. That’s a lot. That’s powerful. So thank you. That’s amazing.
DIMITRI: What gave you the strength and that mindset before all this, right? What was your upbringing like to give you this look forward attitude, and just say, hey, just take extreme accountability and say, okay, what can I do now? I mean, that didn’t develop then. I’m sure you had pillars and foundations of that mind before now. Where did that come from? Was it from parents? Was it from school?
LAURA: Yeah, I think that because I have such a strong support system, I have family and lots of friends that I just knew were going to be surrounding me, and they were, I always knew that whatever I set my eye on or wanted to go towards or move forward, I would have full support in doing that. So I wasn’t ever worried about coming against barriers to what was going to come next for me. I knew that whatever could happen, I had the right people around me to make that happen. So that’s definitely how I was able to keep my eyes focused forward.
DAVE: Yeah. Relational health. There is nothing more important than having real relationships. That’s right. No matter what we do, we’ve talked about that.
DAVE: I did some reading of some of the interviews you’ve done, Laura, in the past several years. And one thing that stood out in some of the interviews is your insistence on calling and purpose and how important that is. Can I read you what you said?
LAURA: I always get nervous when people read what I said, but I’m going to.
DAVE: Here’s what you said in one interview. And so my question is, was this something that got stronger after the accident, or was this always important? Here’s what you said. You said, the why is so important because it helps you get in touch with what you’re able to contribute to the world. Your why comes from a skill set that is specific to you and brings you joy. It is your why that is the reason we are all here in the first place. Then you said, certainly there is a plan and something I’m supposed to do to help a lot of people, because what would be the point otherwise? So that’s powerful. Right? So have you always been purpose driven?
LAURA: Yes, I have. Absolutely. I have. And I always used to say, so many people work in a job and they don’t like the job. And I never understood how someone could pour their time and energy into something that they weren’t even enjoying. So it wasn’t necessarily the word purpose or mission initially for me, but it was just finding joy in delivering something I was good at. And so the hybrid of those things was my purpose. And so I put maybe that word with it later. But definitely before my accident, I had already known that you should operate from a place of your purpose and what your mission is, and what are you trying to accomplish? Why are you here? Why does God have you here, and what can you deliver to make everyone’s life a little bit better?
DAVE: I’m assuming, I think you said this, sorry if I’m repeating, but the accident, did the accident put an exclamation point on that? In other words, made that even stronger?
LAURA: Yes, yeah, it did, because, gosh, my sister managed a Caring Bridge page for me when I was, after my accident, so that people had updates. Because I fortunately have a very large network of individuals who wanted updates. And so she managed a Caring Bridge page for me, and she was updating it every single day. And about two months after my accident, I was actually able to Zoom with her where she could record it, so I could speak to people. And I just kept thinking in my mind, okay, I have people watching. There’s people looking. I should use my purpose to inspire them to get more well, to be more well, to do something about their fitness or nutrition. Just because that’s the only thing that made sense to me at that time, as to why God would have me in that scenario. And I still have my purpose, I was alive. So I still wanted to find out what would be the reason for all of this, and I kept tying that back to what would be the purpose of this. What was my purpose, and how can I execute my purpose better now?
DIMITRI: That’s amazing. I just can imagine, even myself, I’m sure we all at some point, when we face a limitation, it can derail your purpose, your objective, you know, we get derailed. By, you’re like, well, yeah, like now what. Now, instead of wrapping it into our purpose, whatever is holding me potentially, that’s a part of making my purpose stronger, right?
DAVE: Right? Yeah. Which is what she did.
DIMITRI: So beautiful.
LAURA: Yeah. So there’s actually a video of me, I have it. I’m laying in a hospital, I can’t move my arms yet, and I’m in a hospital gown. I have a trach coming out of my throat, and I’m encouraging everyone to set a goal for themselves for 90 days to work really hard, and to work with me, because I was going to have to be working really hard too, to get back whatever I could physically. And so that received a lot of attention because people were kind of like, how is this possible? And it also made people shine a light on themselves to say, okay, if she’s going to work really hard, I’m really capable of also working really hard with something right now. So the stories that came out of that 90 day challenge: people quit smoking, people started going to church, people started exercising. It was incredible. And I was like, okay, so my purpose keeps it living on.
DAVE: And keeping stronger. It’s like it’s on fire. And I’m hoping that the same thing happens with our listeners and viewers hearing you, that changes they make. Yeah, well, I heard Laura, right, I can do this.
LAURA: Right. That applies to in my yoga classes that I still teach. I was worried about teaching it for several reasons. One is, I’m in my wheelchair and I go in there and I was worried that students would be like, she can’t do this. Why is she asking me to do this? Or, you know, not having an understanding of my history with yoga and how much of it I did, but I have been so well received the last several years there. And I actually think that maybe it makes my students work a little bit harder.
DAVE: Oh, man.
LAURA: And so that’s a positive too.
DAVE: I have one of your students I live with. My wife has been to an ungodly amount of yoga classes.
LAURA: Yeah. My wife has been with your wife.
DAVE: That’s right. She went with her. We’ll talk about yoga in a minute, because I tried once, Laura. I promise I tried, and I thought I was going to die. We’ll get to that in a minute. And Penny loves you, by the way. The reason why you’re here. Penny said to me, you need to have Laura on the podcast. I’m like, all right, let’s go.
DAVE (NARRATION): We’ll go back to our conversation in just a moment, but I want to make a personal invitation to you to attend a workshop that I will be doing. It’s actually The Vitality Journey Workshop, where we’ll sit down for about 90 minutes or so, and I’ll help you craft a strategy to address the six factors that define your vitality. The six health factors: physical health, emotional health, relational health, behavioral health, financial health, and vocational health. The workshops are going to be held, there’s going to be an in-person in central Indiana on June the 4th, and there’s going to be a virtual workshop on June the 6th. Both of these you can find on our website. Go to our website and it’ll tell you where they’re going to be held and how to sign up for it, how to register. Honestly, it’s free. No charge to you other than a small charge for the journal or the workbook that we’ll be giving along with it. I would love to have you join me at that workshop. I think it could be transforming in your life. So please join me either June 4th or June 6th, and I hope to see you then. But now let’s go back to the conversation.
DAVE: Let’s talk in general about health and wellness. Obviously these are core values of yours and they form the part, it’s what you’re good at. How would you define health and wellness? Are there terms that you would use, so that the average person can look at themselves and do some assessment of their self. So how would you define health and wellness?
LAURA: Yeah, so the way I view health and wellness, it’s not a Webster dictionary type of definition, but I see health as the biometric numbers. What’s your height, weight, your cholesterol, your blood pressure. And the wellness is your approach to creating your health and your life. And it’s a bigger picture, because we’re not just talking about numbers. We’re talking about mental wellness, emotional wellness. A lot of the things you talk about on these, like relationship, there’s wellness in how you approach your relationships. All of that kind of encapsulates that wellness approach. So I always knew that I was interested in and able to help people kind of change their nutrition, or change how they approach physical activity. But all of that is with the goal of creating a life where you can do anything you want. If you are healthy and you are well and you’re grounded, then you can set a goal and you can go for it. You shouldn’t allow your health to restrict you. You shouldn’t be eating foods that make it not possible for you to get on the ground and play with your grandchildren, if that’s what your goal is.
DIMITRI: Yeah. So what I hear you saying, Laura, correct me if I’m wrong, is it’s not just crude discipline, right, to drive you to a baseline of wellness. It’s also our health is also purpose. What are you trying to do, in order for you to do the thing you want to do, you have to eat better, sleep better and do all these other things. I love what you’re saying.
LAURA: Absolutely. Because how I would explain is that I am interested in health and wellness because I don’t think your health and wellness should get in the way of you living your purpose. So you should take care of those things.
DAVE: That’s good. That’s really, I like that. And it’s true. If that’s not correct, and we’ve talked about this, if any of these health factors are incorrect, we can’t even get to the good stuff.
DAVE: So Laura, let’s say somebody comes to you and says, look, I’m out of shape. I really haven’t paid attention to my nutrition. Look, I need a coach. Do you have a process or a prescription, a prescriptive way that you work with a client who would come to you and say, help me out, Laura?
LAURA: Oh, absolutely. So right away, I try to get people to reflect on the time in their life that they felt the best, and try to get them to remember, what were you doing at that time? What was happening at that time? Just so we can start to, okay, let’s pull those things forward. But then more so than making changes right away, I just try to get people to be aware of, what are you consuming? Are you reading your ingredient labels? Do you have any idea what you’re putting in your body? And just getting people to start to focus on, okay, what is that chemical that’s listed on this food? And I’m consuming it all the time. Before I’m like, okay, now let’s remove that chemical. And my baseline for everyone is I get people to remove added sugars from their diet. It’s like, that’s like a joke about me, that I’m the no added sugar queen. But that’s the first thing that I’m like, no one needs any of that. So let’s get rid of that. And then I just get people to be aware of what are you consuming?
DAVE: It’s like, we’ve talked about this before. It’s a heightened paying attention. You just need to pay attention. You need to dial in. And in our parlance, the way we talk about the vitality journey is, you have to start with an honest assessment. But then I also like how you said, talking about when did you feel the best. And that would be like us saying, we need to dream a little bit. Let’s go back and look, when was your best day? So I love that juxtaposition: honest assessment, but also dream a little bit about what you want to be, right?
LAURA: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Then I ask people questions, like if they’re coming to me and they say, I want to lose weight. Okay, why? Let’s get real about why you want to lose weight, because when it’s not happening or it’s happening, how motivated are you going to be to do the behaviors you need to do, if we don’t really even know what we’re after.
DIMITRI: Yep. And Dave, I was actually going to ask, so again, person comes to you and they have the woes me, oh, everything is so hard, or I just can’t, how do you overcome the mindset first to even get to some of those removal or behavioral changes? How do you coach in that way?
LAURA: Well, a lot of people don’t even come to a health coach, or don’t even come to talk to someone, because they’ve kind of already beaten themselves up about it not being possible. So one thing I do a lot with people though that have a million reasons why something can’t work for them, is I start to catalog every minute of their day. And really clearly and quickly, we find the gaps where they are available to do some different things, to make some changes. I can’t tell you how many times someone’s like, well, then I just kind of scroll on my phone for a while. Okay, well, what could we actually do during that time? Just get really scheduled.
DAVE: So you’re chronicling your life, and then you help them, and you look at it and ask questions, what does this mean? What does, and all of a sudden their eyes are opened. How much…
LAURA: Oh, the response that I get every single time is always like, oh my gosh, wow. No one has ever left a meeting thinking, oh, I was still ready, I don’t have time. Everyone always leaves a meeting with, okay, there is. That’s why I joke with people who always say, I’m so busy. I’m so busy. I’m like, how is he?
DIMITRI: Right. It’s prioritization.
DAVE: Yeah. So what she’s done here is she’s brought in that health factor that will be in our next episode, we’re talking about behavioral health: how I manage my time, how I manage my space, how I manage my impulses. You’re doing the vitality journey already. You’re covering all the health factors. But what I’m hearing you say is behavioral, if you don’t manage your behavioral health, your overall wellness, you’re not going to be able to increase in that, right?
LAURA: Oh, absolutely. And that’s why nutrition and physical activity are such modifiable risk factors for creating bad things that happen in people’s life or really good things that can happen in someone’s life. They’re so modifiable, and people can do something about it. So I kind of think I address the easy stuff.
DIMITRI: I love too that you wrap tangible metrics around it like time. So I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Well, when you put it, when you journal that and put 24 hours on a clock and right now what you’re doing, you can’t negate the number, right? The math is there. Same thing with the removal of ingredients. So as you remove added sugars and now we remove the strange chemicals, it’s like these are tangible things you can see and do.
LAURA: Yeah. It makes it easier to grasp. Yeah, for sure.
DAVE: Hey, can we talk a little bit about yoga? And why the heck it has to be 1000 degrees in there? I know that’s an exaggeration. So Penny did get me to come once to the Hot Room. I don’t think you were the instructor that day. And I’m glad you weren’t, because I was so embarrassed in myself. Because I was such a wuss. I was like, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I literally know your wife went and enjoyed it. All right, Laura, tell me why I’m wrong. What is so good about screaming hot yoga?
LAURA: Great question. So when you were starting out in the physical activity world as a kid and you had to do, say you’re doing basketball practice or whatever it was, they would tell you, go for a run and warm up, right? Take a few laps, warm up. Well, your body does better when your muscles are already warm. And so you do that activity to help warm the body up from the inside out, so that you can safely manipulate and move your body however you need for the activity you’re going to do. So at the Hot Room, we warm it up from the outside, so that you are able to safely go farther than you would if you weren’t warm. So you get benefits and results faster, because you get further along.
DAVE: I never understood that. Now that makes sense to me.
LAURA: It makes sense.
DAVE: I still don’t like it.
LAURA: I know. But it makes sense.
DIMITRI: There’s a lot of cleansing benefits, right, to the heat? You’re sweating, your body, your heart rate. Everything has to accommodate the heat. And so you’re pushing, to her point, your body to this thermal threshold. The heat does help your heart rate go up a little bit higher too. So you get more cardio work involved in your yoga class. And then you will hear people say things like, it’s good to sweat that much because you’re detoxing the body, and that may or may not be true. But it’s definitely good to sweat for your skin health.
DAVE: So in general though, yoga, like I do, I do fitness training and my fitness coach helps me with mobility and stability. I’m assuming yoga helps with mobility. Is that the prime benefit of yoga, or are there other benefits of yoga?
LAURA: Well, there’s really a lot of different kinds of yoga that maybe target different stuff. But I would say that one of the biggest benefits, one of the first things that you lose as you get older is balance, which is why you hear more about people falling and hurting themselves. And so yoga really helps you get in better control and maintain balance, which is one of the safest things that you can work on as you’re aging. And so it does help with that. I also think it just makes you hyper aware of how you feel, how you can move, and just gets you really in touch with if something doesn’t feel right. Can I make it feel better? Improve this. If this mobility in my, say, hamstrings is not good, can I get better mobility in my hamstrings, so that I can do everything else better?
DIMITRI: Yeah, that makes sense. One of the things my wife actually spoke about when she went to the Hot Room was, she went for like 12 or 15 sessions, but she couldn’t do things. She had a limitation. Her mobility was at a certain range. And after a few sessions, she was able to extend that range. And so the realization that she could move farther or reach deeper actually became exciting to her. And it kind of reinforced why she went and she kept going. I could see the change in her. She loved it.
DAVE: Honestly Laura, it’s affected, she wouldn’t mind if I told you that. Penny going as often as she does. Yes, it’s helped her mentally and emotionally too. Can you speak to how yoga or any kind of physical fitness affects the mind?
LAURA: I admire Penny so much because she is so in touch with what her body needs. She’s dealt with the different injuries in her body, and she comes in there and she does exactly what she needs. She gets exactly what she needs out of the class. And she’s just so good at showing herself grace, but also knowing that she needs to keep coming and doing it and trying and building that strength. So I love having her as a student.
DAVE: That’s good. By the way, thank you. On behalf of my wife, thank you.
DAVE: Can I, you said, is it a core value of nutrition? Let’s talk about nutrition for a second here. Core value is eliminate the added sugars. Do you have other core values in nutrition that you would help somebody with if they say, I need to change my nutrition, what would you do?
LAURA: Yeah, so I do say eliminate the added sugars and not get rid of sugar completely. Like bananas and fruits, they all have sugars in them. You’ll hear some people say, if you do a sugar detox, you don’t eat fruit. Well, fruit is good for you. So eat fruit. It’s more like the way sugar has just been added into products to make it more addictive, and those types of things that I say avoid. To eat your fruit. Another thing that I tell people is, when they’re buying something that’s in a can or a box, read the actual ingredient list. Not the nutrition facts label, but the actual ingredient list. And if you’re reading something and you’re getting above five or six ingredients, don’t buy it.
DAVE: Okay, so the amount of ingredients.
LAURA: Yeah. And if you don’t know what it is, if it’s not something that you would keep in your cabinet, like salt, pepper, different seasonings, if it’s not something you would keep in your cabinet, then why would you eat it out of a box?
DIMITRI: And Laura, just going back to the nutrition, I think, correct me if I’m wrong, the ingredients are listed from the amount down to the least. So if you’re eating peanuts and it says peanuts, but then right after that it says some other long chemical name, that means that’s the most, the second most abundant thing in there. And that means we need to not, right? Define like just organic or regular peanuts. So for our guests, they should just really look at the order of those complicated ingredients, and try to stick to the core thing that they’re actually wanting to get, which is the peanuts or the banana, or what have you.
LAURA: Yeah. And if you pick up two jars of peanut butter, you will see how much food is not created equally. You will pick up a jar of peanut butter and it’ll say peanuts, salt. Great. Or you’ll pick up one that has like 10 ingredients, palm oil and coloring, for shelf stabilization.
DAVE: Wow. So this is bottom line stuff from nutrition. Pay attention to the ingredients. Eliminate added sugar. Would you also, it seems to be a hot thing right now, up the protein?
LAURA: That is a really hot topic right now. And it just so depends on what your goals are and how much you’re already eating. I’m not exactly sure why there is the huge protein hype. I think it’s to draw your attention away from other bad ingredients, which is positive. But I think in general, we’re probably eating enough protein. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be something that you focus on. I’ve never really prescribed keto or any of those specific diets, because it doesn’t apply to everyone, and not everyone needs all of that. But for some people, sure, more protein is necessary. But if you are eating a snack or a meal, there should be protein involved. And the reason that I say this is, ideally it’d be protein and produce, because then there’s fiber too, is because if you are going to eat a snack, I ask you, are you hungry or is it just there? And if you’re actually hungry, then you should have some protein and fiber to actually satisfy your hunger.
DAVE: Are you hungry, or is it just there? That’s a great question. I don’t want to talk about that. You would have seen what I had yesterday. I would avoid asking myself that question.
LAURA: Are you eating because there’s some other emotion, or whatever, or are you actually hungry?
DAVE: Or are you fidgety. For me, if I’m fidgety and I’m trying to figure out what to do with myself, it’s way too easy to go grab a handful of something.
LAURA: Absolutely. And I also tell people, this is always the example that I use. If you know that your aunt makes the best chocolate chip cookies, then when she makes them, enjoy that. Enjoy a chocolate chip cookie. You should enjoy tasty foods. They bring a lot of joy and they’re delicious. But don’t grab that Chips Ahoy in the break room.
DAVE: There you go. Be selective.
LAURA: Be picky. Be picky.
DAVE: And this is just my bias here. Whenever possible, cook your own. Yeah, because that way you can manage the ingredients.
DIMITRI: I was just going to say something about the protein. I really appreciate your comment on that, because this drive for the consumption of protein. A lot of it’s still synthesized, which brings it back to your point about all these strange ingredients. Great, it’s got 16 grams of protein, but what is the protein made out of? What constitutes it? It’s not like you got it from a piece of chicken. It’s in this can or box of stuff that I’m reading, and it’s still got 16 grams of protein, but I have all this other stuff in there. So I just really appreciate you highlighting that.
LAURA: Yeah. Protein powders, that people, that’s another thing. Make sure you know what’s in there.
DAVE: One of the things that stood out when I was doing some reading about your stories, there are a number of stories online about you because of your focus and obviously the accident. But one of your therapists, you’ve probably heard this, but one of your therapists you had said this of you, Laura was always asking, how is your day going? How are the kids? What are you doing this weekend? I think that’s why everyone loved working with Laura so much. She’s just so interested and invested in other people, even while she’s going through the hardest thing in her life. That’s quite a statement for somebody to say about you. What compels you, this is shifting gears to the more relational aspect of wellness, what compels you to invest so much in others?
LAURA: It’s interesting because that’s such a natural thing for me. Of course, I’m going to ask about their life. Because I think that I understood, yes, I was going through something horrible, but I wasn’t going to get better unless I had these other people investing their time and energy into helping me. So I just became curious about them. Wow, you are putting your time and energy into helping me. Well, I want to know about you too. And you can get kind of tired of talking about yourself to a therapist, you know, like telling, it’s always like, how does this feel? How are you doing this? Or, blah, blah. And so it’s nice to just have human conversation that’s not, that wasn’t just about therapy or my body or what was happening. I was just curious. Tell me about life. So I’ve always been interested in other people and their stories. And I like to hear people’s backgrounds and how they arrive where they are. And that just kept going even after my accident, because these people are pouring time and energy into trying to help me and make me better. So I wanted to know more about them.
DIMITRI: Right. Which just speaks to her nature. She was in the hospital bed urging other people to accomplish their goals. That’s just what you do. That’s how you roll, Laura. I love this.
DAVE: She also said, I’ve realized how valuable it is to consistently show up in whatever way that person that you love needs you to show up. And then you said, I’ve been through a lot of events in my lifetime. And something I’ve learned is that the people that you need are the ones that show up. And that’s absolutely crucial. So showing up. So thank you.
DAVE: Laura, we’re going to bring this to a close here, although we could go on forever in this conversation. What is on the horizon for you? What are you currently investing your life in? I know the Let’s Go Initiative. Could you talk about the Let’s Go Initiative a little?
LAURA: Yes, I would. So in addition, I am in the dissertation process to get my PhD, because I think that I could help teach. And I’m actually hoping to be in that behavioral health type of environment teaching, which I know we talked a little bit about that today. So it’s so valuable. So yeah, I’m getting my PhD. And then I just recently launched, I started a 501c3. So I went through the process with the IRS to get that approval. It’s called the Let’s Go Initiative. It has a website, letsgoinitiative.org. And it is intended to provide financial assistance to people with a physical disability for things that help them improve their wellness and quality of life. So it’s back to that wellness thing, but wellness and quality of life, that is broad. That can be a lot of things that people need. But what I have learned is, I have gotten more involved in this physical disability community, because I knew nothing before. I’ll admit, I just didn’t know anything about this world. And as I’ve gotten to know more and more people, they have expressed their struggles financially to get things that they need to help them improve their life or to help them be more well. Because it’s hard to hold a job when you have, I need to go to therapy so often, or people get sick, so it’s hard to hold down a job. And a lot of employers aren’t set up to have adaptations to help some of the disability work for them. So there is a financial need. And when I learned more about this, I was very grateful that I haven’t personally had to struggle with that concern. I know if I needed something or wanted something that could help my life, I would be able to get it. I would have access to it. And I know that I have a large community of people that want to know that their money that they donate is doing good stuff. And so I thought, okay, and it just goes back to my purpose of needing to help people. I’m like, okay, I now know about this problem. I have to do something about it because I can.
DIMITRI: Laura doing Laura things.
LAURA: So I started this initiative and I launched it. I’ve already raised a good chunk of money. And so the next thing will be going to the physical disabled population saying, you can submit an application, and maybe for like a cap of like $2,000, I will help support what it is that you need. Whether for example, wellness and quality of life, if someone needs to attend a conference to get a certificate to help them get a job, or maybe someone needs a new stove that’s meant for wheelchair users, so they can cook for themselves. It could be really broad. Maybe they need a piece of workout equipment for their home. So yeah, that is kind of the new thing, and it was still, and will always be collecting money for that. So like I said, you can go to my website and learn more. And if you want to donate, you can donate. And it’s letsgoinitiative.org.
DAVE: Correct. letsgoinitiative.org. Perfect. Okay, awesome. Well, Laura, thank you. That seems like a small thing. It’s like not enough. You’ve said a bunch of things that I’m going to underline in my life and grateful for you. Are you hungry, or do you just want it. Don’t stop asking. And maybe one day I’ll crawl on hands and knees back into the Hot Room and try again. But at any rate, Laura, we’re grateful for you sharing your life and story with us, and your wisdom.
DAVE (NARRATION): I always end our podcast with a blessing. So I have a blessing for everyone from John O’Donohue. So here we go. When the light around you lessens and your thoughts darken until your body feels fear turned cold as a stone inside, when you find yourself bereft of any belief in yourself, and all you unknowingly leaned on has fallen, search and you will find a diamond thought of light. Close your eyes, gather all the kindling about your heart to create one spark. That is all you need to nourish the flame that will cleanse the dark of its weight of festered fear. A new confidence will come alive to urge you toward higher ground, where your imagination will learn to engage difficulty as its most rewarding threshold. We’ll see you next time on The Vitality Journey Podcast.