Master the Big 3! How You Move, Eat & Think

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you, Tom McCarthy, good to be here.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, so I’m really excited to have you on. And one of the reasons that you’ve been so successful as you’ve taken this complicated business of how do I become healthier? How do I create wellness in my life? And you’ve simplified it. You didn’t say there’s a million and two things you need to do. You’ve actually boiled it down into what you call. And I love this terminology mastering the big three. So give us just a little bit of a high level, what the big three is. And then we’ll start to dig down deeper and give people some information on how to master the big three. But what is the big three, what are the big three?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, the big three are really lifelong rituals that guarantee your success in these three areas of your life. How you move, how you eat and how you think.

Tom McCarthy

And so, why did you pick those three? What is it about those three categories that made them rise above everything else?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, if you really look at most of the habits that you have in a day, good and bad. If you look at those habits, most of them fall somewhere within those three areas. What we’re eating during the day, if we want to be healthy, maybe you’re trying all these different diets, trying to figure out how you’re supposed to eat in order to maximize your health, or maybe you’re exercising or moving in a certain way, hoping that that’s gonna make you healthy, or the thoughts that you’re having throughout the day, these fall into these three areas. So if we look at our daily habits of what we’re doing, those unconscious habits that we’re doing over and over again, they’re gonna fall probably into one of those categories.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, and so you talked about habits and I know you’re gonna talk about rituals too. A lot of people will dabble in parts of those. Like they’ll take a yoga class every now and then, or they’ll eat healthy or try some new diet every now and then, or they’ll try to think positive thoughts, but you’re a big proponent that it has to become a ritual. It has to become something that you do on a consistent basis. Why is that so critical?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, if you look at a habit and we all have habits good and bad, they’re usually unconscious. They could come from all kinds of places. They could have been passed down from our parents or from our roommates. Let’s say you get up in the morning and every morning you fix yourself a cup of coffee, first thing out of bed. Well, that’s pretty unconscious for a lot of us. It’s just, that’s what I do. I wake up and have coffee. But when we really look at being our best self and we start to do things intentionally and consciously over and over again, to be our best selves, that becomes a ritual. 

We’re much more conscious of what we’re doing. We’re much more intentional of what we’re doing versus this just unconscious. This is the way I’ve always done it. I don’t think too much about it. So this is what I do now. And so we’re taking those unconscious habits and we’re starting to be more mindful about what it is we’re doing. And eventually those rituals also almost become unconscious, but we started very intentional, very conscious and moving in the direction of our best self.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and I can vouch for the fact that you practice what you preach. There are many rituals you have, as you go through your day, that allow you to optimize how you move, how you eat and how you think, let’s start with how you move. A lot of people think, exercise or movement is important, but they don’t know how to optimize it. They don’t have the best rituals or maybe they work really, really hard at it. And then they burn out. They can’t keep it up. 

What are some of the things to think about around movement before we even get into maybe a habit or two? What are some ways to think about movement? Because we’re moving hopefully throughout the day, not just in an exercise practice, I know that you have and have things you do in bed, when you wake up, sometimes you wake me up because you’re moving and doing these things. But what’s a good way to think about movement as you go through the day, because you say it is one of the big three components of living a healthier and happier and well wellness filled life.

Stacy McCarthy

Well, first of all, we’re living right now in a sitting society, right? We spend so much time, in fact, we’re on Zoom, but we’re standing up because we spend so much time behind our computers, behind cars and transportation. So sitting today is really the new smoking. So if you’re getting up and you’re moving at all, great job, you’re getting up and you’re moving. And so already you’re on the track to doing something good. Just get up off your seat. Don’t sit there too much and move, but then we can refine it a little bit deeper. So exercise is fantastic. Exercise is great and exercise for most of us, it’s, our 30 minutes or hour in the day. And if you do that much and then that’s what you’ve done, but it’s really the other 23 hours in your day, that’s gonna make a difference. So couple things, one, I want to define health versus exercise. And I come from an exercise background. 

Obviously, you mentioned I’m a kinesiology health and nutrition professor, I was a swimmer in college. So sports and exercise have always been a big part of my life. However, exercise in itself is really designed for an athletic endeavor or to accomplish something, whether it’s losing weight, whether it’s keeping fit, whether it’s building certain muscles, but a lot of times it’s very repetitive and it’s designed to again, to perform something. And over time, even if you look at athletes exercising a lot, or that weekend warrior exerciser, they’re tending to do the same thing over and over, which can create a lot of muscular imbalances and structural irregularities in the body. 

And just take a look at any professional athlete long-term and depending on what sport they did, you can probably see what’s happening, and you’ll see the football player get up and their knees, or you’ll see these different athletes in what’s happened to them. And it can even happen in just exercise classes, these days, they’re really hardcore exercise classes, where again, it’s designed for a single purpose. Whereas health, health is really the optimization of your entire system, your muscular skeletal system, but also your cardiovascular sister, you’re hormonal system, your nervous system, your circulatory system, your health is the entire body working together.

So when it comes to movement, when it comes to movement, let’s really look at things that are energizing, not just your muscles and your attendance and your leg, but let’s look at movement to really boost our circulatory system, to balance our hormones, to really look at the body as a healthy, healthy vehicle. So there’s a little difference in that. And that’s one of the reasons that I’m a big proponent of yoga because yoga is a 24/7 practice of really awareness that the Asana or the postures that we do, our body awareness technique aimed at liberating our consciousness from old ways of being doing and thinking. 

So even while we’re moving in poses, we’re working on it to help our mind, to help really liberate our mind from all the chaos outside of ourselves. So we’re looking at it as a health system as a whole. So I hope that helps and looking at how you move and being a little more mindful at the type of movements that we’re doing.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, so let’s start by. So ritual you have every morning is you stretch in bed, and talk about your little ritual of stretching, because that could be something that anybody can do that five minutes before you get up and you’re up and going, you’re moving around in bed, not moving jerking around, but you’ve got purposeful movement. How did you come up with that? And what are some of the things people can do even just in that time that they’re waking up, they can start with their movement, almost like get a little headstart on the day. Talk a little bit about that.

Stacy McCarthy

That’s a funny one, but I do do bed yoga. So in the morning before I get up, it’s just kind of like a yin practice, very sophomore restorative practice, where I’m just easing my body into the day. So I’ll do some light things to really release my low back in bed, right? Release the hips. I’ll do some things for my shoulder girdle, just very light where I’m holding them almost half asleep in a meditative state for a good three to five minutes. And I’m just allowing really the fascia in my body and to relax and open up, so it’s a very light thing, but it’s a great way to start my day. So I started with that and then I move into my meditation all before I get out of bed. So that I’m really setting both my body and my mind to have a great day.

Tom McCarthy

So give people an example of a couple of things they can do in bed to start their day. Like what are a couple of things? And be careful you’re not kicking your partner. Sometimes I think I get a little nudge, but what are a couple of things? ‘Cause they’re pretty simple exercises, but it’s something that, I’d never seen before or heard of before. It’s something unique you do. I think you could help people with.

Stacy McCarthy

Well, I’ll try to show you standing here, but one of the simplest things you can do is, and I’ll just give a sample, is just bring your arms out to the side and a T, bring your knees into your chest and then drop post your knees to one side, they drop it. Let’s say drop it over to the right side. And then you just gaze over the left side. And so very softly, you’re dropping the shoulders down, you’re lifting the lower belly and you’re just kind of softening into it. And all you’re doing is you’re giving your spine a little bit of a twist and then you’ll reverse it. You’ll take the knees to the left side. You’ll softly gaze over to the right shoulder. And so we’re moving the, basically the hips, the shoulders are staying stable and you’re moving the head to kind of start to wake up the spine. 

You can also lay on your back, just bend your knees with your feet, hips with distance apart, and literally just lift your hips up and then exhale, bring them down and you could do that a few times, so you get a little flection and extension in the spine. And so really what I’m looking at and in any single day, everyone should be moving their spine in all six directions. What does that mean? You shouldn’t be moving your spine inflection and extension forward and back. You should be moving your spine and internal and external rotation, and you should be moving your spine as well inside bed so that you’re moving abduction and abduction. And so if we move our spine in all six directions and it’s gonna be a little more open and your energy, here’s the thing. 

Your energy is going to flow with greater ease, because in yoga terms and in much of mind, body terms, one, the chakra system runs up from the pubic bone through the crown of the head. So it’s up to the spinal cord area. So when we’re keeping our spine mobile in all six directions, then we’re allowing the energy to flow. And when it gets blocked up, this is where it gets locked. Usually running up through the central energy channel. So in yoga, we have a great saying that we are as young as our spine is flexible. I hate, so we want to keep mobility in our spine, to keep the energy flowing, to stop the blockage of energy.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I love that. So any movement then throughout the day that people can do in those six directions is gonna help keep that spine healthy and flexible and I love the age of your spine really determines your age, right? If you’ve got an old creaky spine because you haven’t been moving it in six directions. So some really great stuff to think about there.

Stacy McCarthy

Tom, you know what? I could do just for everyone, if you’re sitting right now, maybe you could just stand up with me and let’s move your spine in all six directions is this something you can do, like set your clock for each hour. ‘Cause I want to give you something actionable that you hopefully will create a ritual around and you’ll do it several times a day. But if you just stand up, something is simple. And I hope you can see me as putting your hands here and then arching your bat and then drawing the navel to the spine. So now you’re moving your spine in flection and extension. So this is one way just to get up and move your spine. Then you can stand up and all you have to do is kind of twist side to side. 

So now you’re doing internal and external rotation, you’re waking up the spine again and then very simply reach your arms up, grab one wrist, and then exhale over to one side, plant your feet. Now you’re moving an abduction and adduction, these lateral beds. So just that it took probably less than a minute. You’ve moved your spine in all six directions. And if you can get up and do that a few a day, first thing in the morning, before you go to bed, maybe at lunch, gosh, you’re moving your spine and you’re gonna be younger. You’re gonna have better energy flow.

Tom McCarthy

That’s awesome, great job, I love that. And so simple to do a couple of times a day, make it a ritual and you will age better. You will feel more vigorous and you’ll be healthier. So great stuff, so a little bit, I know you have way more that you could share with people. These are just a couple little things. Your website is yoganamastacey.com. So nama, like namaste, but N-A-M-A and then S-T-A-C-Y.com. And I know there’s a lot more there that people can tap into and they’re gonna want to go there, but they already have some really good things on how to move, great job. So now let’s go to how you eat. Why is, I mean, people have heard, what you eat is very important, but why is eating well, eating the right things, having the right rituals around eating. Why is that so critical to health and wellness?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, what you eat is either creating health or it’s creating disease. And we have a choice in everything that we eat, that we’re doing one or the other. And again, this is an energy summit. Food has energy. So obviously if you are eating junk food, this edible bio-engineered food, it has very, very low energy, there’s a very low, it’s all processed. So you’re not gonna gain any energy from it. But if you’re eating foods that are coming directly from source, directly from, whole foods coming directly from where they were made, they’ve got an energy to it. And so when we look at our food, if we want more energy, if we want more vibrant health eat as close to the source of the food, as you possibly possibly can, and that’s gonna create more energy, but guaranteed these edible bio engineered foods, they are creating disease. They are not creating health and energy for you.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, so this is another area that you’ve got a lot of rituals in around the way you eat. You have a pretty predetermined morning ritual in terms of what you ingest in your body. Take us through a little bit of what you do. Not that it’s gonna be perfect for everybody, but some of the suggestions or some of the rituals you have maybe something that could help people. So what are some of the rituals you start your day off with?

Stacy McCarthy

Sure, well, I do have a lot of rituals around it, but just know everyone that we just left exercise that no amount of exercise can fix a poor diet. So I started off, I mentioned as an athlete and I thought, well, if I work out harder, I can eat what I want. And some of that was that edible bioengineer food that had nothing good for me. So I really starting to feel my body and understanding what I put in it. I could feel it in the way I moved in the energy that I have. 

So that’s one of the first things to start to get in touch with your inner body wisdom of what you’re eating and how it makes you feel. So for me personally and again, there is no one diet that fits everyone. You have got to explore what is giving you the most energy and the most vitality. What does work best for me is to start my day with something that is very cleansing. So first thing in the morning, I have warm water with lemon, why warm water with lemon? Because it helps to boost my digestive system and it helps to really continue the cleanse of overnight. So when we’re sleeping, basically when we’re sleeping, our body is now it’s working on fasting and cleansing. 

And so the first thing in the morning, the last thing I want to put in it is something maybe highly acidic, that’s hard to digest. That’s hard on my gut, but something that’s going to continue the cleansing process. And so I have warm water and lemon a little while later, and this is not for everybody, but it works fantastic for our family. Our whole family does it. 

We have celery juice, we have to straight celery juice. I use it fresh every morning, yes, it’s a lot of work. So, but what it does again, it helps keep the cleansing going. And maybe for you, it’s a different juice, celery juice is a wonderful one for us. And then always have a big green smoothie. So I don’t eat a lot of solid food until late morning, kind of 11:00, little bit before lunch, I’m eating mostly very, foods that are very cleansing so that I can continue the cleanse from when I went to sleep that night as far as possible. So each day I’m kind of rebooting and recleansing and reenergizing my body.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, the other thing you do pretty much every day is you have a huge salad, now there’s things on the salad. So it’s not just vegetables, there’s all sorts of seeds and not some different things. But why is eating a lot of vegetables and salads, why is that such a big part of your life?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, I up it with a lot of superfoods. So one of the things I look at with each meal is this, is having these four things within each meal that I have. And within my salad, I have greens. Obviously this is even in my smoothies, I have protein, I have something with fiber in it, and then I have something with fat. So these four things are what save our body. So even if it’s a salad, whatever I’m having, I find it had those four components in it. So that I feel full. And the way I bring it in with some of the super foods, chia seeds, hemp seeds, these is more super foods that I can bring into it. And I’m put in very high-quality dressings, not the ones loaded with sugar. So I stay away from refined sugars. Because again, if you want something to zap your energy, sugar will do it right? So we stay away from a lot of the refined sugars. 

And one of the tips that I can give you for all of this, because is probably sounding like a lot of work for you. And again, this is why I said, make it a ritual, make it conscious, start with one thing that you can commit to until you no longer think about that, right? So maybe for you, it’s having that ginormous salad, always in your refrigerator every single day, right? Every single day, you have a big salad there. So you know, I’m just gonna have a big salad at some point today, it’s very, very cleansing. And the other thing is for all of this is set up systems that are gonna guarantee your success, that are gonna guarantee you master this. So for example, I go back to movement. 

I always have a space ready for me to get on my mat. If I roll it up and put it away. If I don’t have a space for how I’m gonna move, guess what? It’s too easy not to move. So I make sure I have dedicated space, find it somewhere. Even if you live in a small apartment, find someplace that’s dedicated for your movement. When it comes to eating, set up your systems, just like you would set up at your office, in our kitchen, I have everything right where it’s at my Vita mix for the smoothies right there. I have our juicer right here to pull up. In the morning, I have my instant hot water ready to go. I have fresh lemons ready to go. So I really make sure all our systems are ready because the more prepared you are, the less you have to get ready. And if it becomes too much of, oh, I’ve got to do all this, you won’t do it, so start your systems, make your systems as important as you would working at your computer, working at your desk for it.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that’s awesome. No, the proof is really in the pudding because everything you’re talking about, you do, you’re a great example of, so we have how you move. We talked about how you eat. The third one is how you think. Talk to us about how thoughts influence our health, our wellness, our vitality, our energy.

Stacy McCarthy

All right, so I’m sure everybody has heard over and over again the quotes that we are our thoughts, that we become our thoughts. So out of all these, all of the big three, the thoughts are the most important of all of them. Because quite honestly, you can move perfectly. You could eat perfectly, but if your thoughts are toxic, guess what disease will thrive in toxic thoughts. So our thoughts are gonna be the most important thing that we can do to have good quality thoughts, to stand guard of our mind of what we’re allowing to come in, so I have rituals around that as well. Tom knows these rituals I have, I do a meditation every morning. 

Some of you may be familiar with it is called a metta meditation, loving kindness, where the meditation, every single morning and every single night, I want to plug this into my brain first thing. And before I go to sleep, I want that in my brain as well. So the loving kindness is really, it’s a simple meditation to bring loving kindness first towards yourself, then towards others, and then really towards our whole global community so that we’re spreading it out. And so in the morning and in the evening I do this loving kindness meditation. And then throughout the day, I’m doing something from a yoga terminology, from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, there’s a Yoga Sutra in the Sanskrit, the ancient language of yoga spoke And what does that mean in simple terms? It means when a negative thought comes in, negative thought, or emotion comes into your head immediately do whatever you have to do to cancel that thought and replace it with something more powerful, a more optimum performance thought. 

So this is one of the things is learning how to notice which thoughts are coming in deliberately and consciously canceling that negative thought, replace it with something more powerful. 

So let me give you an example. And again, as Tom mentioned, I’m a yoga teacher. I usually come back to yoga because it’s taught me so much, but some of you have probably seen this pose called tree pose, right? Tree pose, where we stand on one foot, right? We balanced, we do what we have. And so people will come into class and they will take tree pose and maybe for whatever reason their balance is off that day, maybe they were traveling and I will see it. I will see it on them, they’re balancing in the whoo. They fall down and they come back and they’re and they’re falling down and what happens? They become what? What did they become and that keeps happening Tom?

Tom McCarthy

Frustrated.

Stacy McCarthy

Frustrated right and any of you out there, maybe you felt frustrated in a yoga class where you’re falling over and so frustration isn’t a real great emotion and thought to have while you’re doing your yoga practice, because frustration is really, it’s a combination of embarrassment, anger, and disappointment, and those are not empowering thoughts. So when that comes in, I’m falling over. Ooh, can I cancel that thought? Can I replace it with something more powerful? How about fascination? How about being fascinated, which is much more alluring it’s about wonder, it’s curious. It’s much higher thought and emotion process. 

And maybe I start to get curious. Wow, I’m kind of off balanced today. I wonder if it’s because I was on an airplane yesterday and maybe my equilibrium’s off, or I wonder if it’s because of what I ate. You’re curious, you have wonder, and it’s a higher thought process. So when we start looking at how we think, again, learning this practice of when the negative thoughts and emotions come in, can we cancel it and replace it with a higher emotional, powerful thoughts?

Tom McCarthy

No, that’s awesome. So the big three, how you move, how you eat and how you think. And by creating rituals in each of those areas, we can all become healthier. We can create a higher level of wellness and we can really enjoy life better. I love how you’ve broken that down and you’ve helped so many people with it over the years. How can people get in touch with you, and what types of things can they do with you if they want to continue on this journey with the big three?

Stacy McCarthy

Well, I would love to meet all of you, and the best way to connect with me is really through my website, as Tom said, yoganamastacy, and it’s S-T-A-C-Y at the end .com. I’m also among all the social links, but if you go to yoganamastacy, I have a little ebook that you can get on mastering the big three with some of these simple techniques that I talked about, that you can start implementing right away. And really my tip forward is start with one, make a commitment to just one thing that you’re gonna be conscious and deliberate about and do it, keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it, until you don’t think about it anymore. That’s just the way you start your day or that’s the way you end your day or that’s what you do. So pick one of those things, master it, and then add on the next one, what is it you need? But yeah, really at my website and I would love to connect with all of you, I teach online so anywhere in the world, come connect with me and I would love to help you.

Tom McCarthy

All your students love your classes. And she has lots of a huge base of very loyal fans that she’s helped change a lot of lives. I mentioned at the very beginning, we’ve been married 30 years and just the proof is in the pudding. You notice her energy, you notice the vibrancy she has, she’s getting ready. And she doesn’t mind me saying this because she’s done. She’s not concerned with the age, but she’s getting ready to have her 60th birthday. So this is the kind of energy you can have if you master the big three, the way that Stacy has done. So you’re a great example and it’s really been wonderful having you on. And I know a lot of people will benefit from watching you and hopefully they’ll reach out to you and be able to take advantage of some of the more things that you have, where they can continue their journey to health and wellness along with you, so thank you so much for being part of this. And you did an amazing job.

Stacy McCarthy

Thank you, thanks everyone.