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Hello everyone. Hey friends, how are you guys doing? Happy Saturday. How’s your weekend going? My weekend is going fabulous. I met up with some friends this morning for breakfast, and then I trained a couple of clients. Um, and now I’m here talking to you guys. So it’s a good Saturday. Today I want to talk to you about fall because fall is here, almost here. We have like a couple of more weeks left of summer, but you know, the weather over here is now feeling like it’s fall in New York and in Philly suburbs. Both areas are cooling down a little, and that’s my running season. So I’m very excited and very happy about the cooler temperatures in the morning. Quick question before we get into today’s topic. When someone asks you how your goals for the year are going so far, how do you feel? Does your stomach drop a little? Like, oh no, it’s September! We are two-thirds through the year, and maybe that vision board from January is now just a board. If that’s you, good. Stay right here, right here with me, because today I want to make the case that fall, not January 1st, is actually the smartest, most natural time to reset your goals. By the end of this episode, you’re going to have an actual framework to do it. Welcome back to the 925 Wellness Podcast, the podcast where we live at the intersection of your career and your health. I’m your host, Aisha, and let’s get into it. So let’s figure out why fall is the time to set goals and dive into your goals if you haven’t done so already. You might be wondering, why not January? Why we got the New Year’s thing wrong? Here’s why. January is cold, it’s dark, most of us are like recovering from a month of holiday chaos, and we are told this is the moment to overhaul your entire life. New workout routine, new budget, new career plan. All while we are running on four hours of sleep and leftover cookies. Yeah, I know. I hear you. January is basically the worst designed goal-setting environment biologically and psychologically. And I say that as someone who has coached so many corporate professionals through wellness programs, the January cohort is always the most burnt out before they even start. However, when I start my programs in fall, the fall cohort is different. Think about it. The rhythm of starting in fall is baked into us from childhood. Every single year of school, from kindergarten through college, September was the reset month, right? No notebooks, no schedule, no sense of possibility. And no, that’s not nostalgia talking. I know you’re like, oh, she’s getting nostalgic. Yes, that is possible, but it’s not just that. It’s the decades of conditioning around very real seasonal rhythm, which I think works better for us. We are coming out of summer where we have enjoyed the time with our family and friends. We have long days, right? We enjoyed those long summer days. And that gives you an advantage. Now you’re getting into the new rhythm. And it’s not the end of the year. It’s not like you lost a year already. You still have a quarter to go, and you can make those changes. And there’s something else that happens in fall, which I believe is genuinely useful. The light changes, the pace changes. And most workplaces are shifting out of the summer Fridays, have the teams on vacation mode into okay, we’re getting serious about Q4 mode. Right? And you can do that for your life, right? You can get into that Q4 mode for your life, for your health, for your career. Your calendar starts filling back up with structure. Structure is fuel for your goals. You can’t reflect on chaos. But when you have structure, you are going to be more consistent and more persistent. So if you try to set intentions in January and they fizzled by February, it’s not a personal failure. Stop saying that to yourself. Talk to yourself in positive words, and don’t consider failure as something personal ever. It’s just the timing of your goal setting isn’t ideal at the start of the year for most people. For some people, it might be right. And that bad timing, meeting bad biology and physiology during peak of winter months, is what is leading to you not sticking to your goals. Okay, I’m gonna put my exercise physiologist hat on for a second, because there’s real science behind why fall feels different in your body. As daylight hours shorten, your circadian rhythm shifts. Your body starts producing melatonin earlier, which actually can improve deep quality for a lot of people once we adjust to the new rhythm. Better sleep means better executive function. And executive function is what you need for planning, prioritizing, and actually sticking to a goal instead of just feeling like excited about it for three days and then ditching it. Okay, cooler temperatures, which are like temperatures like fall temperatures, like in the 60s and 70s, also tend to support exercise performance and recovery so much better than warm weather during summer and or freezing temperatures in January. And ask any distance drummer, including me. I say this for myself. Marathon training blocks are frequently built around fall race calendars precisely because your body handles training load better when it’s not fighting heat and humidity. If you’ve been meaning to restart a movement practice, your physiology is quite literally on your side right now during fall months. And there’s a mental component to that back to school energy, it isn’t just cultural, it’s associated. Your brain has literally neural pathways built over years that link September with new beginnings, new goals, fresh starts. That association is a tool, not just a feeling. So when I tell my corporate wellness clients, let’s do a fall reset instead of waiting for January, I’m not just being like contrarian for fun. I’m working with your biology instead of against it. And that’s when a lot of my corporate clients actually hire me to come give workshops and do training for their employees. So if your organization or company is looking for posture uh training and workshops, andor nutrition and longevity and exercise performance workshops for your employees, let me know. Reach out. You can actually go on 925wellnesspodcast.com, and there is plenty of information on how you can work with us. Just visit the website. Okay, back to fall.

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One of the things I also like about fall is that it kind of like has a built-in reflection framework. Yeah, let’s get practical. Yeah, I want to walk you through the exact framework I use with my corporate clients. Yes, you’re getting this whole thing right here on this podcast episode on this live platform right now for free. Okay, so what are we gonna talk about? You can do this over one lunch break. Or maybe just stretch it over a weekend. Maybe today you start doing part of it and then you finish it up tomorrow. Maybe this is the weekend where you are going to just do your fall reflection work. Okay. Now, if you’re driving and listening to this podcast, this is something you’re gonna do while you’re at your desk. Please do not write, do not start typing in the car. The fall reflection framework. It works something like this. The step one that I want you to take is an honest audit. Go back to whatever goals you have for this year. Maybe you set those goals in January, or maybe you didn’t set any, or you’ve been thinking about your goals, right? That you hoped that you would achieve this year. I want you to jot them down on a notebook. Try to limit those to like 10. More than 10, it’s not gonna be, you’re not gonna be able to get anything done because you’ll be too overwhelmed. Okay. Write down 10 of your goals that you have for this year or you had for this year. If you’ve already achieved some of them, just cross them out. If you haven’t achieved them, then you’re gonna ask three questions for each goal. You’re gonna ask yourself three questions. This is where you’re reflecting. Did I actually work towards this goal, or did I just think about it? Okay, so yes, no, you’re gonna write that. Second question What got in the way? Was it like a real obstacle? I’m sure something prevented you from achieving that goal. So was it a real obstacle, or was it a goal that was never yours to begin with? So you had resistance to executing it. Were you doing it for someone else? Because someone else suggested it? If that’s the case, cross it out. And the third question I want you to ask is do I still want this? Once you have answered all of these three questions for each goal, okay, don’t skip any of these questions, please. They’re important. Once you have answered those questions, then we are gonna move on to step number two. But before we do that, I wanna just kind of like highlight something over here. The second question, what got in the way? Was it a real obstacle, or was it a goal that you wanted for yourself, or you were doing it for someone else? It’s so important because a lot of us are chasing goals we set for a version of ourselves that doesn’t exist anymore. That’s right. We are evolving every single day. So you can’t expect yourself to be the same person you were last year or even in January. So if that’s the case, if you’ve evolved enough to just go beyond that goal, cross it out. It’s just weighing you down. So now, once you have been through this filter for for all of your goals, the next step is to create two buckets. You’re gonna sort these goals into career and health. So career is a bucket and health is a bucket. I always pair these because, in my experience, both professionally and hosting this podcast over the last three years, they’re never actually separate. Your energy at work depends on your health, your stress levels depend on your work. You cannot goal set for one in isolation from the other. Once you have sorted them into two buckets, career bucket and health bucket, it’s time to move on to step number three, which is the 90-day lens. I want you to forget about these are the goals for a year, or these are the goals I’m gonna achieve in the next 12 months. I want you to start thinking in terms of 90 days. 90 days is a great time for, we call it a training block. 90 days makes up a great training block, not just for training, for like strength training and you know, changing your nutrition and changing your body composition, but for everything else in your life too, for your goals for your career, too. So you have 90 days left, roughly. What’s actually achievable and meaningful in 90 days? That’s the question I want you to be asking. This is where fall gives you a gift that January doesn’t. You’re not trying to plan 12 months in the dark. You’re planning for one focused quarter with real momentum behind it. The last step then I recommend to my corporate clients is this pick one habit from your career bucket and one from your health bucket that you can start this week, like literally, maybe tomorrow. It’s Saturday today, Sunday is a new day, is a new morning. You wake up tomorrow morning, you’re gonna start picking that one habit that you can implement right away. So not you’re not gonna wait till Monday. You’re not gonna wait for after that big project or that big deadline, or maybe after I can switch my job, I can do that. No. Tomorrow, if you can’t do it tonight, tomorrow morning, you’re doing it because it’s small enough that missing a day doesn’t derail you, but starting it sooner puts you on the track sooner. Consistent enough that it compounds. I’ve watched this exact framework take burnt-out professionals from I don’t even know what I want anymore, honestly. I’m just stuck and I am tired and I’m fatigued to walking into their December performance review, like end-of-the-year performance review with their manager with actual proof of growth, walking into January already ahead instead of starting from zero. And I’m sure you want that for yourself, right? I bet you do. And if that’s you, these are the four steps that I want you to take. Simple, simple, simple. And don’t forget the last step. Keep it super simple, keep it super implementable, keep it consistent. I want you to start that. If you can start taking action towards better health and your career growth tonight, start tomorrow morning. But that’s it. No later than that. Okay. Yes, we have a deal. I like that. I like you guys already. You know that. Okay. I want to shift the focus towards health span a little bit because I had the opportunity to train a couple of new corporate clients. And one of the things that I’ve started kind of like it’s coming into my awareness is a lot of times people are just kind of like thinking along the lines of fitness goals. And fitness is not the term that really motivates people. However, as a clinical exercise physiologist, I will tell you when I see patients every day in my clinic at the practices where I work, what I’m seeing is people want to know more about how they can stay functional in the marginal decade of their life. Marginal decade is your last 10 years of your life. They want to be healthy enough that they can still enjoy the activities that they enjoy today, even then. And that’s the goal. And that’s what motivates people. Like that’s what we’re talking about when we are talking about health span. So I want to move away from fitness altogether. Not that it doesn’t exist or it’s not a good thing to talk about. It’s just not something that’s motivating. Our end goal for most of us, for I mean, I would say probably 98 to 99% of the patients I’ve worked with is I want to enjoy my time here for as long as I can. So that’s why I wanted to just, you know, take some time here and highlight this because it’s September. It’s the second, is it second week? Yeah, it’s like the second week of September only. You have almost 90 days left to work on your health span. So rather than just, you know, talking about fitness goals and thinking of number on the scale, I wanted to start thinking about bigger goals, something bigger than that, something even bigger than you and beyond you. Maybe it’s running with your grandkids, maybe it’s being able to hike a mountain in your 80s. Why not? People do it. Not just how you how long you live, but how much life you also have in those years. I mean, of course, we want to extend the lifespan. And that’s already happening with all the advances in medical science that we have already. But are you gonna be able to enjoy those years that you have on this earth, right? So, how can you get to live fully functional, strong, and pain-free life? So here’s the menu of goals I have for you guys as it relates to health span. First one, strength and muscle preservation, right? And I know that now we are getting a lot of we are actually making it more mainstream to strength train and preserve muscle mass, which is your longevity and metabolic currency. Muscle is your metabolic currency. If you have a healthy metabolism, you have a healthy physiology, you have a healthy body. So here are some things, some steps you can take towards having stronger and stronger muscles and. Having higher muscle mass. Start with a structured strength training program. At least two sessions a week or two days a week. This is the single best thing you can do for long-term health span, especially past your 30s, since we start losing muscle mass every decade after we turn 30 if you don’t actively fight it. And actively fighting means your strength training. So strength training is the way to actively fight it. Second, nail your basic movement patterns. Squats, hinges, hinges are deadlifts. Push, pull, carry. Five movement patterns that are that are needed for living a functional, healthy life. Let’s do it again. Squat. Hinging. Hinging is hinging at your hips or deadlifts. Everybody’s like familiar with deadlifts. People don’t always relate hinging to deadlifts, but hinging is deadlifts. Okay. Push, pull, carry. With good form. Let me just say that again. With good form, because if you are executing these movements with bad form, they’re not gonna help you. You might actually get injured, and you don’t want that. So good form and then start using progressive overload, which is adding heavy load as you keep on, as you have good form. Then you will keep on adding load every three to four weeks, depending on the patient and depending on the client, it really depends. But mostly in physiology, we try exercise physiology, we try to do six to eight weeks of progressive overload. If somebody has adapted to the exercise already, has good form, then we can go every three to four weeks as well. Okay, so that’s the rule of thumb. Third thing, track a simple strength marker for each month. Like how many pounds can you hold on in each hand for farmers carry? Or how much can you push, which is a push press with your um shoulders and or push with your chest muscles, right? So you a bench press. Or how much can you lift for how many number of reps? So the goal is either to increase the volume andor increase the intensity in form of pounds or the weight that you are carrying. And sometimes it’s increasing both that would tell you, oh, you’re you’re getting stronger now. So those are the three things for your strength and muscle preservation. Now let’s talk about cardiovascular strength and aerobic base. Build a consistent aerobic base with two, two are ideal, two zone two, easy conversational paced sessions a week. This is the foundation that improves your VO2 max and your endurance and cardiovascular resilience over time. If you’re already like a runner or a cyclist or a swimmer, use falls like cooler temps to build mileage and you know, add one quality interval session a week if you can. On top of that, if you can. If you can’t, that’s okay. You can do one distance session or endurance session and one or zone two session and one interval session. That’s fine too. So you can train intervals and for a specific fall event. Maybe you have already have a fall marathon on the calendar, or maybe you have a half, or maybe you have a 5K, or maybe you want to like participate in a charity walk. Go for it. Put it on the calendar now if you haven’t already done it. Give your training structure a deadline. We are most motivated to achieve goals when we have something to look forward to, something to show up for. So deadline is always something that you know you can aim for. Last one, which is also very important because I think a lot of people miss this: mobility. Mobility and flexibility, which is also longevity of your body and your muscles. Add 10 minutes of daily mobility work, hips, shoulders, spine, especially hip flexors. We said a lot. Open up your hip flexors. And the best exercise for that, which I like, is I know it can’t be done on a chair necessarily, but it’s a glute bridge because it opens up your hip flexors, it strengthens your glute muscles at the same time. So that’s my go-to. But spend 10 minutes a day if you can. If you don’t have 10 minutes, spend five minutes a day. Do something though. Work on one specific mobility restriction for the full 90 days. Every day, just pick one muscle group, get a baseline flexibility or mobility screening so you actually have something to measure against later. And if you’re looking for a mobility screening, reach out. I can help you with that. And I have a couple of slots open on my calendar. I’ll link my assessment link actually to the show notes here of this podcast. The fourth thing that I want to leave you with is sleep and recovery. Set a consistent sleep and wake time. Even on weekends, I know, I know it’s not always possible. And it’s okay if you’re socializing late and you’re like, that also brings me joy and that makes me feel better throughout the week, go for it. But try to have a consistent sleep and wake time most days of the week. Recovery is where the adaptation from all this training actually happens. Build a wind-down routine. Maybe it’s reading a book, maybe it’s listening to music, maybe it’s listening to like slow meditative music, maybe it’s meditating before you go to bed, maybe it’s stretching before you go to bed. Whatever gets you away from screen 30 minutes before bedtime and slows you down is the thing to do. Track your sleep for two to three weeks to get an honest baseline before starting to set like a target time and to and before setting like the target length of your sleep. That that’s something I always recommend to my clients. And yeah, that’s it. The last thing I want to suggest to everyone is if you haven’t gotten your blood work done in a while, maybe this is the time you go and say hello to your physician and say, hey, doc, you know, it’s been a while. I I’ve missed you. Get your baseline labs done this fall because knowing your numbers is a goal in itself, and it gives you something concrete to track into next quarter. Yes. If you can get them done every quarter, every six months, that would be golden. Honestly, it would be. So go for that. Um, and fall is a great time to get outdoor movement in. So get outside, maybe join like an outdoor boot camp class, go for walks with your family. You know, get some non-exercise movement into your life too, because believe it or not, neat, which is non-exercise movement, matters more than what then people give it credit for. So that actually helps you have a healthy metabolism. And I’ll be honest with you, with why this topic is so important to me and matters to me. And it’s probably coming across in my voice, right? Because I think fall is the time when you can be very productive. And my work ethic, my uh mindset around productivity, it came from watching my dad work so hard. Especially fall was the time he always used to like take new projects on, and he would be like working late um into the night, waking up early, working out, and I’d visit him in his office sometimes after school, and he would be like so focused and finishing what needed to be finished. Nothing could like get in his way for his when it came to his goals and his projects. And just watching him do that made me like that too. You know, I I I’m so focused when I have these goals like written in front of me. So I would suggest you do it too. And in all honesty, in all honesty, like it just got shortened every fall. I trained for a marathon with my distance running. Distance running teaches you consistency, right? And consistency beats intensity every single time. So fall for me has so many good childhood memories of like setting goals and working towards them. And it has always been my training season, literally and figuratively. So there’s something about shorter days and milder temperatures and the leaves falling down that just makes me want to build something, not just survive until holidays. And I hope that you get that page out of my book today, too. So this is how I approach fall or this time of the year myself, in my own business, in my own training. And here’s the homework for you if you wanted. Before this episode ends, just put 15 minutes on your calendar this week, not some time, an actual 15 minutes for your own fall audit, two buckets, career and health, one small habit in each. You don’t need to wait for a new year to become who you are trying to become. You’ve got fresh energy sitting right here in September. Use it. If this framework was helpful, I’d love for you to share this episode with a colleague who is also stuck in. I’ll restart in January mode. Let’s put them into fall with us instead. Until next time, it has been a blast being with you here on Line25 Wellness Podcast. Go build something with the fall season you’ve got. Thanks for listening today. Bye.