Laurie James
Hey, Freebirds. Before we start today's podcast with my wonderful guest, Kelly Howard, who will talk about fitness for women in midlife and beyond. And by the way, she also has some wonderful retreats if that interests you. I want to remind you that moving and being active is so important, not only for our physical health, but for our mental well being. And studies show that when we get up, get out into the daylight each morning, it helps with our circadian rhythm. You don't have to be a competitive athlete, climb mountains, or be the best at something. But it's important that we move our bodies everyday. So that way, we feel better. I'm a big fan of the Blue Zones, which is an organization that researches longevity, the zones in the world where people live the longest, and they bring this information to the public so we can all live longer and live better. And one of the things that they talk about, one of the articles I've read is walking even 30 to 40 minutes a day can extend your life expectancy. That's something that I do every day with my dog. It also activates our lymphatic system. It eliminates toxins, it fights infection, it strengthens our immunity. And it's also a great way to clear your head, exert excess energy, and regulate your nervous system. Because when we can regulate our nervous system on our own without responding instead of reacting, we can begin to improve our relationships and show up differently. And whether you're dating, or you're in an existing relationship, and you're trying to improve it, every relationship begins with us. So, I hope you find value in today's conversation. And thank you so much for listening and being here.
Laurie James
Welcome to Confessions of a Free Bird podcast. I'm your host, Laurie James, a mother, divorcee, a recovering caregiver, the author of Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go, a therapy junkie, relationship coach, somatic healer, and now podcaster. I'm a free spirit and here to lift you up. On this podcast, I'll share soulful confessions, and empowering conversations with influential experts. So, you can learn to spread your wings and make the most of your second half. So, pop in those earbuds, turn up the volume. And let's get inspired because my mission is to help you create your most joyful purpose-driven life, one confession at a time.
Laurie James
Welcome Freebirds. I am thrilled to have my guest on with me today. And I have to confess, when she reached out to me and then I was doing some research on her background and saw what she was doing, I knew I wanted to have her on as a guest because we were in such alignment and the one word that really jumped out to me was adventure. And so if you know me, I'm always up for a good adventure. So, today I have the pleasure of speaking with Kelly Howard. Kelly is the fifth fitness consistency expert with a touch of adventure and the author of FIT: Active and Ageless For Life. Woohoo. Let's keep that going. For over 25 years Kelly has helped thousands of women prioritize their fitness so they can feel great and have more fun in the second half of life. She invites women to adventure out of their comfort zones by trying new experiences that they may have only dreamt of previously. Her Fit is Freedom podcast, coaching online courses and retreats have changed the lives of thousands of women. She's a frequent guest on podcasts and television and the creator of Fox TV outdoor Houston Adventure series. She lives in Houston, Texas, but you can often find her out kayaking rivers and traveling trails worldwide. Welcome, Kelly. And thank you so much for being here. And I'm actually surprised that you and I haven't run across each other on one of those trails.
Kelly Howard
Thank you so much for having me. And thank you to everybody listening. I truly appreciate it.
Laurie James
Yeah. So, happy to have you here. So, can you start by telling our listeners just a little bit more about yourself and how you got into the fitness world, and maybe even how you coined this term "fitness consistency expert," which I love.
Kelly Howard
Thank you, thank you. My story is a little bit like yours. There's quite a few parallels. I was, at the time, probably late 40s, maybe, somewhere right around there. And I had purchased this company, not the company I have now, but another company, and I was working myself crazy because it was an Outdoor Adventure Club. So, it's like a membership for people to go and do outdoor things. And I've had been active my entire life. I've been a little bit of a gym rat. I used to race skating, and sailing. But I wasn't like a hiker or a biker, or a kayaker or any of these things. And these are the things I wanted. So, I'm trying to build this company. I'm working like crazy during the week, I'm being like a weekend warrior. And at the same time, my mother had a heart attack, she fell. And so I became her caretaker. And then we purchased an old home that needed to be redone. And instead of spending the money on a general contractor, I said, I can do that. I'll just set up my computer I have to buy for. And I can work while I tell everybody what to do. So, I'm doing all those things. And I'm going crazy, right? I'm doing it all, just like everybody else, doing it all. And then it took a few years, but call it three years, all of a sudden, I woke up one morning, and I couldn't get out of bed. Like I was in so much pain that I literally crawled to the bathroom. And across my dirty dog, hairy dog floor, right? And I crawled back to the bed. And I'm just laying there and I'm thinking, Oh, I think I'm dying. This is it. And the whole time, that's the drama queen. The logical queen inside of me is going, yep, no, you know what you're doing? You were thinking that your body would just keep doing all the things it's always done and held it together, while you threw every bit of stress at it you possibly could. And that was the truth. Right? Like I Googled kidney disease all day long. But it-
Laurie James
Wow. I'm getting chills. There's so many parallels here.
Kelly Howard
So, it took me about a week. After a week, quite a few ibuprofen, a lot of journaling, right, a lot of thinking, a lot of forgiveness work. And I know your listeners will understand that like not everybody understands when I say that, but I went through all of this. But what stood out to me so much at the end was that all of my friends were doing the same thing. We were all doing the same thing, just in our own ways, like parallel universes, maybe slightly different actions. And it stuck with me. I like I could not get rid of this thought for 10 years. And during that time I grew this other company, it became very successful, I sold it. And I still, instead of taking my money and running, all I could think about was what's always going through my head is that all these women I know are in that limbo. And that limbo is here I am I've been taking care of everybody, but me. Maybe some of myself, maybe I do a little yoga, maybe I go to the gym a little bit, whatever, but not really, right? And now I'm taking care of everyone else and my job and whatever it is. And our bodies can't do it forever.
Laurie James
Now our bodies keep the score.
Kelly Howard
They do. They exactly keep the score. So, it's just that thought never went away. So, I took what I made from the business I sold. And I started doing this because I went, you know what, and this is consistency and fitness. So, if I asked anyone out there that I talked to, what's the key to fitness? Everybody who's like, oh, well, it would be consistency, and I'm never consistent. And the truth is they are consistent. They're just consistent in maybe not getting the results they want. And part of the problem there is that we've been taught this, "Go big!" There's this billboard in our town and it says lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Drives me crazy. Like I want to get out there with a canvas paper and spray paint, right? That's the story. Like, go big and I found that's not the truth. Go small and get consistent and figure it out.
Laurie James
And that's what coaching really does.
Kelly Howard
Yeah.
Laurie James
I don't know about your coaching training, but that's what they talk about is take small baby steps. And it's so small that it's easy, and you don't notice the difference between your normal life because that's what's going to help you stay consistent and incorporate it and make it a habit.
Kelly Howard
Right? Exactly. And I was on a group call last night, and one of the ladies was like, she was ashamed because she hadn't started. Right? She joined the group about two weeks ago. And you could just see the whole body posture. And I said, why don't we just do the minimum daily movement, but I like to call MDM, like, what's the minimum daily we can do? And we came up with something that's very simple, very effective. It's very effective. Takes about eight minutes. And so I got a text from her this morning, she's okay, I did it. I don't know if that's really going to do anything. But by gosh, I'm gonna keep doing it. I'm like, yeah, you know what it's gonna do? In one month, or two months or three months, you're gonna realize that you've gone from eight minutes to 20 minutes to 30 minutes to a habit. And it's life changing.
Laurie James
And I love that minimum daily movement. That's beautiful. And listeners out there, think about what your minimum daily movement might be, that you can incorporate into your life to stay consistent.
Kelly Howard
Yeah, it, you know, it matters if I could tell a quick story when I was writing my book. What I realized was that I was writing a book about fitness. And I was becoming more unfit by the day, because I'm sitting on my back in even more than I normally do. And I'm just typing, typing, typing all the stuff that you do when you're writing a book. And I was probably eight months in and realize that I'm back to where I was before. Like, I'm trying to dial it in on the weekends, and expecting my body to hold it up. And I literally started doing the minimum daily movement. That was my first step. And immediately, almost immediately, I was able to get back to where I usually am, because I had a foundation. And that's what's going to happen for everybody is every time you get a foundation, because we're all going to have times when we have to restart, like that's a big deal. Like people will tell me, oh, you know what, I've tried everything. And I've always quit. So I probably am not cut out for this. And the reality is, that's not true, right? We're all cut out to move. And what we have to do is get over the idea of that starting over, it's been a big deal. It's not a big deal, it's life.
Laurie James
Right? We're always starting over, we start over every single morning is an opportunity. So, you said something that I want to touch on just a little bit. We're both similar age. I've got one more year in my 50s. And I'm going to milk for the rest of the year. Why is it important for us to be active? And that could be a whole separate podcast altogether. But as we age, and as we get older, why is that so important for us?
Kelly Howard
Well, this may sound very dismal, but it's, it is the honest to goodness truth. Almost all of us are going to live a long time. Modern medicines' job is to keep us alive. That's the job. It's up to us how we're going to live. If we're not moving, then we are heading toward the person who has to have the handrails to get out up from the toilet. And the person who has has someone to take care of them and the person who isn't there to take care of their family and those grandkids and everyone that they want to take care of. Because now they're a burden. They're a burden to themselves and everyone else. Or if you take up the idea of just movement, start minimum, but move and keep moving, a body in motion stays in motion, we know that. And there's also this thing that I like to call a cascading effect of good. When you first start moving, and it becomes a little bit more of a habit or a plan or whatever you want to call it, that little bit of movement is going to start making changes. It's going to change the way you sleep. It's going to change the way you make choices about food. It's going to change the way you look at life. Like all of these things come from a little bit of movement. And all of those things lead to more movement. Better sleep like you know it's perpetuating. So, it's up to us. We're gonna be here. Let's just make it like stinking amazing.
Laurie James
Yes. And as my listeners know, and I've shared with you, I've watched my parents demise for 14 and a half years. And I took care of, I didn't on a daily basis, but I oversaw their care for 14 and a half years. And although my mom was active, she had other health issues that led to her dementia. And so, I think it's so important for us while we are, you know, be proactive, and I think that was a perfect example of let's be proactive. So, that way we can make the second half of our life the best that it possibly can. Well, I've already told my kids I'm going to be a burden to them at some level, like less of a burden, right, less of a burden on them. And for me, it's like, life is about finding things that bring us joy. Sitting in a chair and watching Wheel of Fortune to me is not joy. Joy is me getting out in nature, me having these wonderful conversations with people like you, me going out and skiing and sailing and doing, that's where I get joy. So, we need to stay active so we can continue to live our best lives.
Kelly Howard
It's so true, there's a little bit of what I call a North Star in there. And that North Star to me is what's the thing that's guiding you, that's calling you, that's pulling you. And much like you, the North Star to me is that I want to be able to do all the things I can do for as long as I possibly can. And most of my things are adventure things. I do love things that require lots of excitement. And there's no reason that we can't do it. That's the other piece is that too often, I meet people, just people in general, and like I say, women, it's just people who go well, you know, the best days are behind me. Like that is so much baloney. And if I could, we talked briefly about adventure earlier. So I just came back from Costa Rica. We took a group of 11 women there. And it was a difficult trip. Because of the activity level. I had asked the guy that I work with there, I'd said, you know, we need to step it up. Last year when we did this, it was fun, but I was a little bored. And he was like, Okay, let's not get bored this year. There was no boredom, I can promise you, there's not a speck of boredom in this entire trip. And to the point that I probably will step it down a little bit next year. But the cool thing is that all these women who are along. I'm 63, so I was probably one of the younger people. We probably range from about 58 to 71. And the cool thing was everybody stepped up and did what they could. It was not about you had to be perfect and keep up. It's about let's have fun doing this. And when you're not having fun, when this trail has hit the point where you're like, hey, you know what, this is no longer fun, then you stop, we've got a guide for you. And you go do like one of my girls did, she went pick blackberries for an hour. So it's, there's just so many things that we can do. And we can do it with the bodies that we have. And if we take care of our bodies, we can do it better, and for longer.
Laurie James
So, why is it so hard for us to be consistent with exercise and fitness in your opinion?
Kelly Howard
Hmm, I think it's a couple of things. I think one of the things is it comes back to that taking care of everyone else. When we have learned to take care of everyone else and everything else, to put everything else first, it almost becomes this like nagging guilt of selfishness. I don't have time to take a half an hour out or an hour out or whatever it is, when I could be doing X for someone else, whether it's the kids or the parents or the work or the volunteerism, it doesn't matter. It's guilt, right? We have it. And well that's how we grew up. We grew up being good.
Laurie James
Yeah. Well, we were taught like, be a good girl.
Kelly Howard
Yeah, exactly. Even when you're a bad girl, you're still supposed to be a good girl.
Laurie James
Right? And especially in our generation, we were raised to take care of others. And as women were nurturers.
Kelly Howard
We are nurturers and we give and that's wonderful.
Laurie James
Right.
Kelly Howard
I think it's fabulous. And that's where consistency comes in. We have to give to ourselves.
Laurie James
We have to give to ourselves.
Laurie James
For me, it's setting my alarm. Because if I don't get my exercise in the morning, I typically don't do it, which I did this morning, before our call.
Kelly Howard
Right? That's one piece. I think that's one piece of it. Then the other piece is it comes back to that perfection, right? We've been taught that there's things that we're supposed to be perfect, right? We're supposed to be perfect-looking, we're supposed to be the perfect weight. It's all that stuff. And if you're not there, then it's like, well, I'm never gonna get there. And I will just say right now, it's not about the weight. Yes, we have to be at the right weight so that we're healthy. But this is about what you can do. Right? What can you do with this one beautiful body that allows you to do these crazy things that you have been doing. And so getting rid of the idea of perfection and coming back to if I was consistent with my movement, I don't even like to call it exercise, let's call it movement, should be a little bit of a mix of three things. But just if you're consistent with your movement, and you're not trying to be perfect, then the next piece and we talked briefly about having some takeaways, but this is one of them that I'm huge on is that just schedule. It's what we call in our group FPA, which is friggin plan ahead. So, schedule, like your next week, put your gym clothes out the night before or your hiking shoes out, or whatever it is, it doesn't matter.
Kelly Howard
Perfect. And those things just once again, goes back to the very beginning, it seems so small. But when you put them all together, and that's where that consistency starts to happen. It's... And it's magic. Like it really is. And-
Laurie James
It is for me, I mean, it makes or breaks whether I work out in a particular day.
Kelly Howard
Exactly.
Laurie James
For sure. So. I love that. Was there another piece to that?
Kelly Howard
Let me throw one more out, okay. And in this one, we didn't talk about it all before our call, but just it's one of those things, and it worked for me yesterday. So, I want to throw this out. It's accountability. And a lot of times, if we decide that we want to do accountability, quote, unquote, we pick one of the big bad three, you get an online app, which really you have no accountability, you get your best friend whose job is never to tell you to get your butt out of bed and go exercise. Her job is to say, oh, have you had a bad day, let's go get you a glass of wine, right? Or if you have a life partner, their job is to figure out every way possible to keep you from dragging them out and exercising. So, you know, to get you on the couch watching Netflix and eating pizza. And those are the ones that everybody goes to for accountability. And so skip that. You are accountable to your alarm clock, to your FPA, write your stuff out the night before. You can be accountable to a class, you can be accountable to a coach, you can be accountable to a group. I mean, there's so many, it's layered accountability. There's so many pieces to it. And everyone just has to find something that works for them. The ultimate is that when we're 100% accountable to ourselves. But that doesn't always happen. I mean, yesterday, we have an accountability group going right now we do it through text. And I kind of oversee it. So, there's four groups going on, I oversee them. So, I took advantage yesterday. Because in the morning, I took my dogs to the park instead of doing my exercise. And I knew that was pretty much the kiss of death to my exercise because I'm not a good afternoon exerciser. But I had to get this workout in. So, I reached out to every accountability group in my phone and I said, Hey, guys, I didn't do my exercise, but I want to get it done before our call tonight. And so it was hysterical. Like they're all texting me. Like they're on me like duck on a Junebug, as we say in the south. And it was funny. And I'll tell you what, I got it up, way outside my usual. So, those, all of those little things matter.
Laurie James
It's good. I love it. It's great, because I think that's the first step, right, is in the consistency. And it's like, where do we fall short? And how can we keep ourselves from letting go of our exercise routine or movement? I love that. Movement routine. I have a couple other questions. So, through what you were just sharing with us, you talked about the different areas that are that are important when it comes to exercise, which I think is flexibility, strength and cardio. Is that right? Is that what you were referring to earlier?
Kelly Howard
Yes. Yeah. That's Exactly. And, and so people will, a lot of times when they first come to me, they'll say I don't want to go to gym, or I'm not going to spend six days a week at the gym. And you don't have to. You just don't have to. But what you do, and I'm going to use the word have. I hate to say the word have to or should or got to or whatever. You do need to have mobility. And that mobility can be yoga. It can be yin yoga, it can be just moving your joints, doesn't matter. We need it. Especially now. Our joints are less lubricated. And so let's get some moving. We are more inclined to get injured because of all of our past, like everything we've done to our body in the past, right? So, we've got to do the mobility. Cardio, I won't be the first to say that I'm like a cardio addict. And our cardio shouldn't be a lot every day, which is really good for those people who don't really like cardio. Max it in an hour. If you do 30 minutes, you're a queen, right? And then we need some sort of resistance and I tease people have resistance to resistance. But most do. And that resistance can be, it can be Pilates. It can be using your weight in a way to move your body. It can be the gym. It can be a lot of different things. But you just need those three pieces. If you do that resistance twice a week, you're going to maintain. If you do it three times a week, you're probably going to gain. And what I'm saying maintain and gain, it's about muscle. Because muscle is probably the most interesting thing that I've noticed in the last few years. The loss, this is a sad but true. When we went into the very beginning of the pandemic, I was somebody who went to the gym four days a week. I'm training for a long distance bike ride, like I'm in really good shape, really. We go into the pandemic, I don't know what to do, like everybody else in the world, right. And I don't normally watch news. Like that's not part of my daily. So, now I'm watching news. This is like my nervous system is on fire. So, I don't know what to do. And I just start doing cardio. And I'm doing cardio like a crazy woman, three, four hours a day. Hikes for hours, I don't care, it's the only thing I can do to get out of my head. And the gym's closed, right? I'm not thinking about the fact that at that point, I'm 59. And I'm just like cardio-ing myself in the craziness. But what starts happening is I start losing muscle, and I start losing muscle mass really fast. Part of that is because I've been a vegetarian for 50 years, 45 years. So, you know, I never really paid attention to protein. So, you know, it happened quicker than it would for most people. And so, I have noticed since then, now I've set up the gym in my house so that I have no excuse. But I've noticed if I skip three weeks, I was coming back from Costa Rica, so I was gone for 10 days. And then I had another week coming back. So, what about 17 days, 17 days, I started losing muscle. So, this is the piece that the 21-year-old trainer at the gym is not going to know or be able to tell you. And I'm not a trainer. But I've trained my body for my entire life. And so I can say everybody listening that little up the protein thing is true. And you got to do the resistance.
Laurie James
That's going to help build muscle.
Laurie James
Keep the shape.
Kelly Howard
Keep the shape.
Kelly Howard
It's going to help build muscle, it's going to maintain muscle, right, make your body look better. If you worry about that, it's gonna make your body way better.
Laurie James
And at least has some form for our skin that is sagging more to like wrap around.
Kelly Howard
Bluffs up that skin a little bit.
Laurie James
Just a little bit. Will just take all the help I can get.
Kelly Howard
And it's what's going to keep us from being bedridden.
Laurie James
Yeah.
Kelly Howard
It really is. So, everybody I know like that is probably the biggest resistance I get is people just don't want to do it, just do a little bit.
Kelly Howard
Probably, probably. I have friends who only do yoga and pilates. And they do fine. But they don't end up with that extra muscle that I think actually allows us to do things. Balance, just do things in life that are super helpful.
Laurie James
And I have to admit that I on and off have been resistant to that too. And also, there was a period of time in my life, when I was going through a very difficult time that I wrote about where like I could do yoga, but I couldn't lift weights, because every time I would start lifting weights, my whole body would just tighten up and it was my lower back. It was my neck because of a lot of the stress that I was going through. And also for me, there was a lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty about what I was going through. And I was leaving a 26-year marriage, which is when you go through a divorce, the second most stressful thing you can experience in life. So, that stress was showing up in my body, which is the somatic piece of it all. And now I can and I'm back at the gym, and I'm lifting weights, and I'm doing the Body Pump classes. But during that time, yoga and pilates were the two things that I was capable of doing, which definitely helped. But I feel like having another day or two where I'm actually lifting weights and having that true resistance is making a difference for me.
Laurie James
So, for anybody who's listening, who is either starting a movement or exercise routine, or maybe is looking to step it up a little bit, what are like maybe two or three tips that you can give them that will allow them to have more success?
Kelly Howard
Yeah. So really, I think, and we touched on it, but just truthfully, the most important thing I think someone can do is to create a schedule and be honest about it. And when I say honest about it, sometimes people give me a schedule, and they'd like here I've made my schedule for the week, and we'll touch on exactly what to go into that schedule. But I've made my schedule for the week, and it's six days. And I'm like, can you really do six days? And that's in a perfect world. But most of us don't live in a perfect world. So, when you're creating a schedule, and you do, you want to have a little bit of mobility. A little bit of mobility to me is five minutes, five times a week. Right?
Laurie James
That's not that much.
Kelly Howard
Yeah, some cardio. Maybe I'm just gonna make something up, maybe three days a week with 30 minutes. Right. And some resistance, maybe 20 minutes a day for three times a week? Not a lot of time when you think about it. What did we just come up with? Maybe two hours?
Laurie James
Over the whole week, yeah.
Kelly Howard
The whole week. Then, you look at your week. And you look at your week. Realistically. You have people coming into town? Are you leaving town? Are you getting ready to take care of the grandkids? Do you have doctor's appointments? Whatever it is. You have to be truthful about your week.
Laurie James
Yeah.
Kelly Howard
Because when you are, then you can go okay, I can do this Monday, Tuesday, but not Thursday, and Friday. Sometimes you won't get it all in. Sometimes you have to load up. I remember one of my clients said, I just did the math. And there's only seven days. It was pretty, she was really snarky about it. There's seven days of the week, and you have given me eight exercises. I'm like one of those two days is going to have a couple of extra exercises. Right? So, do that and have what I like to call a wildcard and a wildcard is something you enjoy doing. Okay, yeah. Wildcard can be like for you, it would be hiking and sailing and all of those things. For someone else, maybe it's like one of my clients is she just loves to play with her grandkids. That's her North Star is to be able to take care of those grandkids and play with them first. Like to be the cool grandmother. That's what she wants to be. So have that as one of your wildcards but have something fun. Because if it's not fun, it is not sustainable.
Laurie James
Okay, so speaking of fun, what's your take on the pickleball craze that's happening right now? And how does that fit in the routine?
Kelly Howard
Do you want Pollyanna or you want my cynical side? Okay. Here's I'll give you both.
Laurie James
A little bit of both. How about that?
Kelly Howard
A little bit of both. I think that Pickleball is cool, because people are having so much fun.
Laurie James
Yeah.
Kelly Howard
I really do. Like I have so many friends that are just like having the time of their life. Yeah, cynical side is a friend of mine, who's pretty big in the in the recovery, not not addictive. But injury recoveries, yeah, physical therapy, physical therapy and such. He's already created the course on how to get over all the injuries that are going to come from pickleball.
Laurie James
I know so many people that have injured themselves playing pickleball, it's insane.
Kelly Howard
It is insane, which is, I think fun. Because, by gosh, you're out there. kicking butt and having fun. And it's a little harder to recover from injuries. When we have-
Laurie James
When we're older.
Kelly Howard
Our bodies are a little bit older. Right? So, no going into pickleball that you need to use your mobility more, warm up before. Think twice before you dive for the whole thing. I have a client with a broken shoulder right now. Think twice before diving for the ball. And be, and understand that this is about fun. So, many of us have that little competitive thing. I used to play racquetball. Oh my gosh.
Kelly Howard
I'm lucky that my body is still in one piece because I was so competitive. And so don't make it competitive. Make it fun. And, but I think it's I think it's a cool thing.
Laurie James
Oh yeah.
Laurie James
Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Love that perspective. And it's pretty right on. So, as we come to a close, there's so many other questions I have for you, but I think maybe we just have you back on again. Because I love fitness. I love adventure. I love everything that that you're doing. But as we come to a close, what's one confession you'd like to share with our listeners? And what's your takeaway from that? Something we haven't discussed yet.
Kelly Howard
Something we haven't discussed. Oh, yeah, this is a super confession. This is like I'm not even Catholic, and I'm in the Catholic booth.
Laurie James
I love it.
Kelly Howard
So, I look at everything we do. As we're a whole. It's what we eat. It's what we, it's how we move. It's how we feel. It's how we treat our bodies. It's all of these things. And I have noticed and this came from when I was talking about during the pandemic. I had, I like, I had nothing to drink for a very long time. And then I was like, back on the wine without a doubt. And it's a habit that I carried forward. Up until now, and I'm not saying that wine is a bad habit. But it isn't the best habit. If you do it consistently.
Laurie James
Maybe that's the one thing we don't want to be consistent about down,
Kelly Howard
I know, magnets things, right? And just to test this, just to test this, is I don't really see a difference, right? I don't feel different. And I don't really see a difference. But to test it, I went through one of these longevity studies. And the only black mark I had against me was like, having a glass of wine most days.
Laurie James
Okay.
Kelly Howard
And maybe two glasses of wine some days, like three glasses of wine if I'm a wild animal. But that was, that's probably the thing that I've noticed is, you know, we all have something I call the kryptonite. Everybody does. Yeah. And that was our guilty pleasure. Yeah, guilty pleasure. And it's not a bad thing. It's just then awareness. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So that's where my awareness has been lately, as I've been like, okay. Yeah. So you do do all these other things.
Laurie James
Yeah. And I feel as I've gotten older, I love that. And I love that awareness, but I noticed the alcohol more as I get older. Yeah. And how it affects me. Yeah.
Kelly Howard
Unfortunately, it doesn't affect me any differently. Yeah. And so
Laurie James
I think maybe it's good that affects me. Yeah, I think it might be drinking a bottle of wine every night.
Kelly Howard
Just a party animal, right.
Laurie James
Well, Kelly, thank you so much for being with me today. I so loved our conversation, and I know that our listeners are gonna get so much out of this. How can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your book?
Kelly Howard
Yes. Easiest way is just go to my website, that's where you can find everything that's going on. And that's fitisfreedom.com. Just fit, F-I-T is freedom.com.
Laurie James
Love that. And I'll have that in the show notes. So thank you again for being here. And I look forward to staying connected on many different levels with you.
Kelly Howard
Thank you, and thank you to everyone listening. I truly appreciate it.
Laurie James
Hey Freebirds. One more thing I wanted to add before I leave you. Kelly offered her book, her ebook, free for anybody who's interesting. So check that link out in the show notes if you'd like to pick up her free eBook. And thanks again for being here with me.
Laurie James
Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Freebird. I'm grateful to be in your ears and hearts. If you're interested in becoming a Freebird, I'd love to support you. Please check out my website at Laurieejames.com.To learn how we can work together or to sign up for my newsletter. So, you can receive tips on how to date and relationship differently and ultimately, find more freedom and joy in your life. If you found this podcast helpful, please follow or subscribe rate and review and share it with friends so they can find more freedom in their second or third act also. Until next time