Episode 037: New Year, New Moves - Cultivating Every Day Activity w/ Dr. Jim Walter

In this episode of The Lifestyle MD, Dr. Angela interviews Dr. Jim Walter, PhD—founder of the Institute for Preservation of Health and an expert in cardiovascular exercise physiology. Dr. Walter shares insights from more than a decade of research on how meaningful health benefits can come from integrating small, intentional movements into daily life—without relying on traditional exercise routines.

Together, they explore the science behind “move more moments,” how incremental movement compares to structured exercise, and practical ways to re-engineer everyday activities for better long-term health. Dr. Walter also reflects on his personal motivation, shaped by the early loss of his father to heart disease, and how it continues to influence his work today.

Listeners are invited to share their own “move more moments” and connect with Dr. Walter at https://www.jimwalterspeaks.com, by email at jim@jimwalterspeaks.com, or on Instagram @jimwalterspeaks.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:59 Dr. Jim Walter's Background and Passion

01:46 The Importance of Movement Over Exercise

03:57 Practical Tips for Integrating Movement

07:14 Personal Stories and Motivation

11:51 Re-engineering Daily Routines

19:29 Tracking Progress and Staying Motivated

Transcript

New Year, New Moves: Cultivating Everyday Activity with Jim Walter

[00:00:00] 

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Welcome to the Lifestyle MD Podcast, the show dedicated to busy adults, navigating family, career, and the challenges of midlife while striving for lasting wellness. I'm Dr. Angela and I'm honored to be your guide on this journey.

Angela Andrews MD: Hello, this is Dr. Angela. Welcome back to another episode of The Lifestyle MD. I am excited to bring a new guest onto our podcast, Dr. Jim Walter PhD. His PhD is in cardiovascular exercise physiology, and he is the founder of the Institute for Preservation of Health, he is a passionate advocate for helping people move more in everyday life. When I first had a chance to chat with him. I was really pleased to hear that there was someone doing the very thing that I try to encourage my patients do. He has some practical ways to encourage people to integrate exercise and movement. I've already started integrating some of those in my [00:01:00] conversations with patients from our conversation a while ago.

So I'm really excited have you share what you have to offer in all of your years of experience. If I understand, you've got more than 10 years of experience, in this space. Everything you do is backed by science and you have some practical ways to weave movement into everyone's busy schedules without adding extra exercise time. So thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Jim Walter's Background and Passion

Jim Walter, PhD: That was quite extensive and thank you. Yeah, I'm looking forward to going into it. I have been shaped by a number of things. Yes, I did spend 10 years directly doing preventive and rehabilitative cardiology. I wandered off to the pharmaceutical industry for the past 25 years. But my passion for wanting to help people and wanting to help them be able to help themselves has never waned. And I've gotten to the point in my career where I've started to think. I am looking to make a transition out of the pharmaceutical industry, [00:02:00] and into this mission of talking to people and trying to, as I said a moment ago, help them help themselves. 

The Importance of Movement Over Exercise

Jim Walter, PhD: And the importance about my message, which I'll reinforce is, is that what I'm gonna talk about is something that.

Everyone can do the word exercise and the definition of it is something that not, not everyone can or is willing to do. So that's where my message and story is a little bit different, and I'll be happy to delve into the details as appropriate.

Angela Andrews MD: I feel like sometimes I am reluctant to use the term exercise. When I talk with patients I'll say, you need to move more, get steps in, but we need to move more. I try to couch that so it doesn't sound like exercise, because some people have a very negative reaction to that.

Jim Walter, PhD: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines as exercise as 150 minutes or more [00:03:00] of moderate to vigorous physical activity, that's where you run into challenges and that's where people say.

I just don't have the time energy or motivation for that. So that's where I'm trying to change things. 

Practical Tips for Integrating Movement

Jim Walter, PhD: So what can we do to make a transition that everybody can do and that is to move more? Yes. And then what we'll do throughout this conversation is, you know, we've said that to people like, okay, that makes sense. And then people start to think, oh, I guess that means like parking my car further and walking and taking the steps instead of the elevator. But when you get beyond those, that's where people draw blanks. And that's what my message is all about. I want people to re-engineer their day. To incorporate more movement where they otherwise might be sedentary.

Angela Andrews MD: How do you convince people that it is worthwhile to take those steps, to make these modifications [00:04:00] that it's actually going to have benefit?

Jim Walter, PhD: I will share a little bit of data we've got this magical number of 10,000 steps I'm looking at an article right here that says just a little over 2000 you can start to get health benefits. 2000, that's a little bit more manageable for most people. All the data says if you do more, you will get more benefit. But if you do nothing you get no benefit. So let's start with the simple, and you know, I often cite when I talk. An article that came out of the Mayo Clinic proceedings not too long ago in 2020, indicated that the simple act of going from sitting to standing multiple times throughout your day, resulted in small but statistically significant decreases in fasting blood sugar and body fat mass.

Wow. If a [00:05:00] little thing like that can make a difference. That's what I try to communicate to people. A couple of years after that, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, they cited an article that adding an additional 2000 steps up to 10,000 resulted in an eight to 11% decrease in death overall.

Wow. And less cardiovascular disease, cancer. And then if you start whatever you're doing and adding an additional 500 steps and then 500 more, and then 500 more, those show incremental decreases in either all cause mortality or cardiovascular death. So what I'm trying to do is get away from these big changes. In fact, in my talks, it sometimes slips out, but I try to avoid using the word exercise. Yes, physical activity, movement. I use those [00:06:00] words every once in a while. Exercise will sneak in there, but I try to avoid it so that people can understand that this is something that everybody can and should do.

Angela Andrews MD: So basically you call it something else and reframe it in a way that makes it approachable so that they're not scared by it. and they're doing more exercise, and getting more activity without actually sometimes even really knowing it.

Exactly.

Personal Stories and Motivation

Angela Andrews MD: Let's go back a few steps here and you spent 25 years in pharmaceuticals. How do you go from that to what you're doing now? What really drives that passion?

Jim Walter, PhD: It started a long time ago. My father died at a very young age from heart disease. Even though he was only 45. My parents managed to have eight children during that period of time. I'm one of eight kids that was hard on me. I was 13 years old. I had a 1-year-old sister. A one, A three, A five.

And you know, the numbers go 'cause I was the third oldest. I [00:07:00] did study exercise physiology and I did that because I really wanted to focus on something that could. Help others avoid what I had to go through. There are millions of children out there that have had a similar story and so, that's what drove me towards that. You might be curious about the name of the company, the Institute for the Preservation. That's part of this whole story I was dealing with people in cardiac rehabilitation, and what I always thought about was you know what? I'd love doing this

Practical Tips for Integrating Movement

.

Jim Walter, PhD: I can help people that have had massive heart attacks, who might have had heart failure, who might have had a heart transplant, and help them reintegrate themselves back into their life. What I was doing was always a step too late. Wouldn't it have been better to not allow that to happen to preserve our health Many of us don't. we go off [00:08:00] on things that appeal to us. Like foods that taste good and Lying on a couch for eight hours watching football games all day. And that's not gonna help us preserve our health.

And so I intentionally searched for that word 'cause I wanted to have meaning to all of this. And so that's where I got started, driven by the premature death of my father. did work in the preventive and rehabilitative world for 10 years. I won't bother going into why I drifted off into the pharmaceutical industry, but I'll share a story with you. One of the ones that I learned along the way has nothing to do with this, but it was. More or less like a personal development story, and it's referred to as the rocking chair test. Ever heard this story before? No. So here it is. you're sitting, you're 80 years old.

Picture one of those big, beautiful covered porches on a house in South [00:09:00] Carolina with big willow trees on either side, and you're sitting in your rocking chair and reflecting back on your life. you started off as an engineer, became a physician, all the people that you're helping along the way while growing and raising a family and all the good things that you've accomplished, and that's bringing a big smile to your face and then you think about the other side. What is it that perhaps during this time you wanted to do but didn't And you regret not having done that. That's what this is about for me, I've got this message. I believe it's an important message. I believe it's a very useful message that can help many people because the message about exercise still is great and resonates with some people, but not most people. Right.

Data from the CDC tells us. 25% of Americans are completely sedentary. So, [00:10:00] that means they're not doing anything more than activities of daily living. And as much as 60% or more don't meet that definition of exercised. So there's a lot of people that can do more, but we get busy. We have a job. We have to take our kids to their sports practices. We gotta help them with their homework. We gotta make dinner. When are we supposed to fit that in? Exactly. That's the message that you hear from a lot of people. But if we can re-engineer our day to include more movement, we might not have the profound benefits that 150 minutes does, but you will have health benefits Maybe for some people they're so far away from that 150 minutes that they don't even start. But what if they start moving and moving some more and moving some more? They might get closer and feel more comfortable for that ability to move.

Re-engineering Daily Routines

So how do you define movement? Like if you're talking [00:11:00] to someone and you're trying to make it tangible to a lay person who's hearing this for the first time. How do you explain movement in a way that they can really get what you're telling them?

Jim Walter, PhD: Anything that they do more than they currently do. Did that standing up make a difference in my health? No. No, but compound over time, right? Does taking a flight of steps during the day, one extra flight of steps during the day have an impact on my health? No, but if you can take your day and restructure it to include opportunities to move more. Remember I said you do so much and then you add 500 more steps, and that has incremental benefits for reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall death. So how do you do that? You just look for clever ways

Angela Andrews MD: What are some clever ways that you can introduce those more steps and movement?

Jim Walter, PhD: Yeah, so we'll start, like we all do in the morning, [00:12:00] right? We get out of bed you can probably tell I'm a little bit old fashioned. we still get a physical newspaper, our mailbox. Is right out our front door. So instead of going out the front door to get the mail or the newspaper, how about if you go out your side door and then walk around the curb? I'm on a corner piece of property. Maybe even go out your back door and just walk around and get your mail or newspaper and come back.

Wow. So you know that's a very simple way. I'm talking to you right now, from a loft in our house where I work as my office. We have an office in the house. My wife works out of there. I work up here. I don't use the restroom that's right outside the door here. I always go down a flight of stairs and back up a flight of stairs to use the restroom. And this is part of the thing that I do when I talk to people, is I try to open up their minds. Because a lot of times we just have blinders on. A few weeks ago, I [00:13:00] had to tell my son, if he could take the dog out for a walk. And I'm up here and he's down in the kitchen. So what are most people gonna do? They're gonna walk to the top of the stairs and yell, Hey Dylan, can you take Max for a walk? I started to do that and then I stopped. I walked down the stairs, walked into the kitchen, said, Dylan, can you take max out for a walk? And then I walked back up to flight of stairs. You've said a couple of times about creating time for exercise. That doesn't change my day at all. I'm not going to bed later at night because I walk down. You just sort of build that into your day. That's so practical.

That's what I'm trying to encourage people to do. Let me ask you a question. Sure. Do you stand up while you watch television?

Angela Andrews MD: I don't as much as my husband does. Sometimes I exercise or do sit-ups when I'm watching television though.

Jim Walter, PhD: So for a simple person, just stand up. Watch television and then sit down. Remember, standing is [00:14:00] better than sitting. So this is very practical. I'm gonna raise my standup desk because I do have one.

Angela Andrews MD: I figured you did. this will be an opportunity to demonstrate a practical application of it. What I'm hearing from you, is instead of thinking about the quickest or shortest way to do something, you could say, what is the least direct, the slowest, the longest route I could take. Or whatever Yeah. To complete this task.

Jim Walter, PhD: Yeah. So One of these things I do , is all of these little ideas, I call them, move more moments, right? Just the way that you can move more. one of the ones that I've posted on my website is think perpendicular, not angles. Wow. And that's to your point right there. if I went out my side door, I could cut across the grass on an angle to get the mail or the newspaper, or I could walk perpendicularly to get that right.

So, yeah, look [00:15:00] for, look for the opportunity to move. Where you otherwise might be sedentary. I'm not saying to encourage people to stand up for the whole show, But maybe stand up during commercials and then sit down during the show or vice versa, but just something and then wander.

Angela Andrews MD: Instead of trying to complete a task all in one trip, if I know I'm gonna have to do a few different things in the kitchen. I might break it up and do something now. Yeah. Come back to my desk and then go back and do that next thing, then come back to my desk. Yep.

Yeah. that happened to me the other day too. I walked downstairs to get a cup of tea. it takes about three minutes to heat in the microwave then I thought, oh wait, the mail is here. So I could have stood there and wait for the tea to be done, and then walked outside and got in the mail and then came back upstairs.

Or you could approach it differently. I put the tea In the microwave. I walked outside, got the mail, took the mail [00:16:00] upstairs and put it on my desk. Then I walked back down the stairs. That took about three minutes. the water was done and I was doing, yes. So, yeah, if you can break it up like that.

Instead of just sitting or standing around, what can you do to move a little bit? You don't need to jog. We all have cell phones. When you're talking on the phone at night, you're talking to your parents before you go into bed meander around the house.

I usually break it down this way for patients, I'll say. There's being sedentary and I don't want you to be sedentary. And then there's exercise. Exactly. knowing who you're talking to and what's gonna help move them along the continuum of being more active and moving is really important.

Jim Walter, PhD: Yeah, It is. But I also don't wanna leave out the athletes. And why this message is appropriate for them as well, because. I still like to call myself an athlete. I was a basketball player. after I finished playing basketball, I [00:17:00] ran marathons and did triathlons But the problem was, Sometimes you forget that you're getting older and you still try to have your body do what it always did. I ended up with Achilles tendonitis that was extremely symptomatic, for five years I could not run. So the message here is all of us as athletes, we're gonna get hurt at some point. When you get injured, that's not the time to try to develop these kinds of habits. Do it now. Have them as part of your lifestyle so that while you are in recovery, you can still move more throughout your day.

Angela Andrews MD: And then you're facilitating your recovery. Exactly. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It is a whole paradigm shift. It's mind-boggling I spend most of my time trying to be more efficient. How can I use less time? How can I do more and then less time, which often leads to trying to like make these [00:18:00] movements and these activities. I mentioned how I recently adapted to trying to make those Trips. But my natural tendency, like most of us, is to be more efficient with what I'm doing and what you're saying is that's not really. Going to be Your best approach. Trying to be efficient in everything, especially as it pertains to moving around is not necessarily a great idea because you're missing easy opportunities to be more active and move more. 

Tracking Progress and Staying Motivated

Angela Andrews MD: So what if people aren't measuring their activity? You know, some people wear things like smart watches and those rings. What about people that don't wear devices? How can they know? What should they be tracking? How can they pay attention? What are some clues they can listen to in their body?

Jim Walter, PhD: That's a good question. I would encourage people, by all means to use the devices if they help.

Angela Andrews MD: Some people can get carried away with it. Yeah.

Jim Walter, PhD: And take it too much and then maybe not do something because they're not wearing their watch or ring that day or something like that.

Angela Andrews MD: Yes, exactly. I can't do that [00:19:00] because it's not getting tracked.

Jim Walter, PhD: And I have those things. I have an Apple watch. I don't wear it. This may not be the answer that you want to hear or the people want to hear, but Just do more and you'll know that you're doing more by recognizing that you're not stopping at the top of the stairs to yell down to your child to do something, that you're actually taking the flight of steps. When you go to the store, there's the one shopping center that I go to, it has two stores that I use a lot, Lowe's, and our, food store is called Shop right here. I park my car right in the middle, I walk to one, I back, put the stuff in the car, walk to the other, I don't need a watch to tell me that .

Angela Andrews MD: I'm doing that. So I, I might, I might suggest that. Or argue, you know, as a clinician, I like to have people know that they've made some sort of improvements, for instance, I'll take my mother-in-law as an example. She's gotten a little bit decompensated. She had a recent Bob pneumonia. She was, not moving around a lot, did some home occupational therapy, physical [00:20:00] therapy, working on sitting standing balancing on one leg and taking a little walk around the driveway. From the beginning of physical therapy to the end, and now let's just say that physical therapy was kind of like this move more, right? I observed, comparing from the first time I went to pick her up that she was able to walk. From her door to my car and one fell swoop later, after the completion of therapy versus the beginning, she might have had to take one or two breaks. That to me could be a measure. So is there something that, maybe an activity or something that you're engaged in or maybe going to the grocery store if you're someone who goes to the grocery store on a regular basis, and maybe initially when you start making that walk, does it feel really difficult the first time? Are you noticing that it's feeling a lot easier? Are you feeling like you need to challenge yourself with a little bit further distance? people are gonna be more willing to put more into it and push themselves a little bit more if they can sense. Progress being made, right?

Jim Walter, PhD: Yeah, we [00:21:00] are an objectively driven culture. and we need those kinds of things. I haven't been asked that question before, so it's a great question. Because I find it even for myself. Now that I'm not running marathons and stuff like that anymore, simple things. Are a little bit simpler. It's more subjective than objective. And that's why, you know, people. Maybe just need to pay attention to themselves a little bit more. Yes. There was a part of me that says, well, maybe the way to do it if you're not wearing a watch and stuff is to write things down.

Angela Andrews MD: But I feel like it becomes too tedious.

Jim Walter, PhD: Right, exactly. Look, just try to replace immobility with movement. And I think you'll naturally begin to feel better. I think you're gonna have to try to assess that for yourself. I think you can take a look at what you're doing if going out the side door and getting your mail and coming back, perceive how it feels. what was that like a few months ago [00:22:00] when you weren't doing this? Importantly, people are gonna have to give themselves time the old adage, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Tortoise and the hare kind of a thing is if you keep going, you'll eventually win the race. And so, it would be for people to try to perceive things. if you're gonna embark on this, if you're gonna try to make change, you know, we don't wanna make change overnight. Gradually look at these things. Challenge yourself in a fun way. What can you do to add more movement to your day?

Be creative. Let me share a story. my father before he passed away, he loved to fish and the last boat that he used for fishing, he built it himself. I imagine he then did something afterwards to really help us kids. And I imagine something like this was going through his head. So I actually have a prop here that I can show you. so you can see this, don't worry about it being fancy, but this is, it's a boat hull, right?

Mm-hmm. And so that's what he got. He got a boat hull from the boat yard, and then he basically built the rest of [00:23:00] it. And part of me started to think what's the boat hull designed for? If you're gonna be in the boat, the boat hull designed to keep water out, right? But if it can keep water out, what could it also do?

It could keep water in . So, you know what my father did? He went back to the boatyard and got a second boat, he dug a hole in our backyard buried this boat And then built a wooden deck around it and filled it with water. And guess what we ended up with? A swimming pool. So if my father. Could see a swimming pool in a boat How can any one of your patients or listeners look at their house, look at their hotel room, look at their place of work? Yes. As an opportunity to introduce more movement. That's the other half of what I try to encourage people to do when I give talks... I live in a two story home. For somebody that lives in a single floor rancher, going up a flight of stairs is not an option to use the bathroom, but there are things that you [00:24:00] can do And so that's what, can make people's day a little bit more fun.

Angela Andrews MD: What do you envision, let's say that 25% of people. That's our sedentary, our less sedentary over the course of the next five, 10 years and moving more. What does that look like from a public health standpoint?

Jim Walter, PhD: It looks like, a mechanism to better help control hypertension. To better help control blood sugar to better help control lipids. None of the big pharmaceutical companies that have these weight loss drugs are promoting them without also encouraging people to exercise. How many of those people do you think are getting the medicine say, well, if I can lose 30 pounds by taking the drug and exercising. I'll be good with losing 20 pounds and not exercising. I'll bet there's a lot of people that do that. What if [00:25:00] you can just move more? you might not lose the 30 pounds, but maybe you'll lose 22 instead of 20. more importantly, you'll have a better lifestyle. And by the way, this not only helps with diseases, it helps with joints mobility and strength. the ability to remain moving. I've seen people in my life who move less, which begets moving less, And it becomes a vicious cycle.

Angela Andrews MD: Pretty soon they're not moving at all. as part of my annual wellness with my patients, and sometimes more frequently I will pose the question, what do you want your lifestyle to look like when you are, 60, 70, 80, 90? What do you still want to be able to do that you do now? for some people that's playing with their grandchildren, taking vacations and being able to go on airplanes without assistance. Maybe [00:26:00] that's going for a walk with their spouse or their partner. I like to frame it that way and then remind them in order to be able to still do those things later, you must be intentional about doing those things now and then some, because we are all going to naturally lose strength. We're all going to naturally decline over time, and if you're not doing those things now, you won't be able to do it later.

Jim Walter, PhD: Exactly. and that is so critical. We all think that I'll start to move in 20 years and then, you know, I'll be good to go and we can't recover what we've lost And that's why this message is also critical Because it's stuff that you can do every single day, right? Every single day. You don't to wait for time to make it happen, And that's important. Our health is something that we have to manage every single day. I like to use this piece of rope this is really strong, but if you look at the end of it. You [00:27:00] can see that it's made up of just a bunch of strands put together, I could further pick this apart to where it's thousands of fibers that are woven together. If any one of these little fibers were to break, does that ruin this? No Not at all. So if you protect those fibers every day, you know you're in good shape. But if you don't. One of them breaks, two of them breaks, three of them breaks, hundreds of them break. And yes, thousands of them break. And that's a metaphor for our health, sometimes people are hanging onto their health because our human body is a tremendous organism. Our body has a tremendous amount of reserve. We know full well that many people don't recognize that they have cardiovascular disease until their arteries might be 80% blocked. So they think everything is great. They've got a nice strong health. But what they haven't seen is that a lot of these, they're [00:28:00] breaking. And they might just be hanging on. And that's what happens if we don't take care of our health every day.

Angela Andrews MD: So you get to that last thread, it's like the last straw, right? In this case? Exactly. It's the last thread that you actually feel it or notice it. You know, as we were talking, I was thinking about other ways to implement this. I participate in Walk With the Doc. I have my own local walk with the DOC chapter, and it's an organization nationwide, actually worldwide. And the whole mission of it is to encourage people to walk once a month. I meet with walkers in our area. We have a group that is really faithful that usually come, and I've been trying to think of ways to encourage activity in between these walks. it dawned on me. I should make this a part of that message every month. having them collectively share things they've done So they can have some of that group learning as well. then they can take those ideas back home. And over the next three weeks, four weeks, in between the walks, they're accumulatively doing more.

Jim Walter, PhD: Exactly. my next thing is to write a book, put all my ideas in a [00:29:00] book. But what I also wanna do is steal shamelessly. I want people to write to me and send me things that they're doing. I can't think of everything. And my environment is different than other people's environments. If we can get everybody's ideas and put 'em together in a common collection area, that would be fantastic. that could help the match. I can see that being something I wanna give out to patients. No, that's the plan. And, if you want, you can have them visit my website. They can send me an email. They can send me ideas.

Angela Andrews MD: Share your website. I want patients and listeners to visit. I want them to connect with you. I'm gonna share things as I learn them from my patients. I'm gonna encourage them to share things they've done. If we only look from our own perspective, we're missing out on a world of ideas. What is the website they can visit?

Jim Walter, PhD: It's pretty easy. It's my name, it's jim walter speaks.com. and, If you wanted to send me an email, it's jim@jimwalterspeaks.com. I'd be happy to connect with people. they can look at some of the ideas. One of the things I need to get better at, [00:30:00] which my generation isn't great with is social media stuff.

Angela Andrews MD: Yeah, I was gonna ask if you have any social media.

Jim Walter, PhD: I do have an Instagram account. What I post on there are these move more moments, things that are real quick that you can do each day. And that's where I would post, other ideas that I would get from people. So, my plan is that when I can, Move away from the pharmaceutical industry and devote full time to this, to be able to bolster all of that stuff, and make it more accessible many people. that would be fantastic.

I can see this being something that could pair very well. I could see you collaborating with Walk with the Doc, for instance, and sharing this mission. What is your Instagram handle though?

Yeah. At Jim Walter. At Jim Walter speaks.

Angela Andrews MD: I'm gonna share your website, your email in the show notes. I'll also share your Instagram handle, and I'll have a call to action. Any listeners. patients, you know, share their move more moments. What are some things that they have [00:31:00] done that they plan to do that they can share with us and you, so that you can spread that word, you can be the catalyst for helping the 25% of the population that's sedentary to find ways to be more active. 

Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Angela Andrews MD: Any final thoughts or any stories you wanna share before we wrap up?

Jim Walter, PhD: I'll share a little quote that I've, conjured up I've always been fascinated by history and, one of our great presidents, John F. Kennedy, has the infamous words he used in his inaugural address, I've put my own twist on him, and I would encourage people to ask not what your healthcare provider can do for you. That's what you can do for your health. these move more moments are a way. You can take more responsibility for your own health Grow with it. Do a little bit more each day. I did have trouble answering your question about the objective measurements for that, but I'm sure people will recognize that, maybe I can do a little bit more. Just keep going in these [00:32:00] small incremental steps. that'll continue to make a difference. have your doctor check your blood pressure along the way. Maybe that's changing Check your lipids, check your blood sugar, and maybe you will get some objective measures that could help you because the data shows that it does.

Angela Andrews MD: And as you were saying, I have, physician colleagues that also listen to this and my call to action to them, whether they're primary care or specialty. Is to ask their patients about their move more moments or offer this as a suggestion. Share with them this tangible, practical, realistic way to get more movement in. Take some of these examples, conjure up your own examples and share them with your patients. And then. however often you see your patients, take opportunities to check in on how they're doing. You're going to be getting vitals and as the provider, you can make the connection for them even if they aren't making the connection. So many people are touching the healthcare system, so if more of us, are cognizant of that, we can promote that message.

Jim Walter, PhD: And your physician groups, you know, that could [00:33:00] benefit from. Not just your podcast, but my presence in the talk and stuff like that. Yes. I talk about my father, I talk about the boat. I have a bunch of other stories. I bring the piece of rope with me, to show people. And it's fun. There's the moments that'll make you cry. There's the moments that'll make you laugh, and hopefully moments that will inspire people because the message is a simplified message. Movement is just doing more than you're currently doing. And then just do a little bit more than that and let it accumulate and, you'll feel better.

Angela Andrews MD: Oh, that's fantastic. Such practical advice. Thank you so much for this. profound take on movement and for, opening up our eyes and sharing with our listeners simple ways that they can be healthier. I really love your quote. I can't steal that, but I'm definitely gonna give you credit for it because I think that's something that I would like my patients to take . You know, have more self-efficacy to take initiative and be comfortable being an active [00:34:00] participant in their health.

Jim Walter, PhD: So please use it as much as you want. Thank you. Yes. Einstein told us that nothing happens until something moves. I share things like that. simple things like that and I have many more. Benefit from, a talk like this. Please feel free to reach out. I'd be, happy to accommodate.

Angela Andrews MD: Anyone listening make sure you check out the show notes. Look for, Jim's email there. and look for his website where you can find more inspiration and ideas on moving more. I'm so grateful for your time today and I can't wait for people to listen to this episode.

Jim Walter, PhD: Thank you, and I'm glad that you're grateful and happy, but let me reciprocate by saying, it's people like you that take the time through a podcast to get important messages out. So I thank you for your commitment to patients and healthcare and making a difference in people's lives.

Angela Andrews MD: The pleasure is mine. All right, great. Take care guys. Listen, and happy holidays to everybody. Yes, happy holidays. 

[00:35:00] This has been another episode of The Lifestyle MD. Special thank you to Lou Musa for the show Theme Music, Created with Bri Photography and Makeup by Janae for the cover photo. And if you enjoyed this podcast and you haven't already, please subscribe today and share with another person or , doctor who may benefit.

You may also follow me on Instagram @angelalifestylmd. I am Dr. Angela. Thank you for joining me today.