Words of Wellness with Shelly
Do you get confused by all of the information that is available regarding ways to improve your health and wellness? Do you often become frustrated or overwhelmed with decisions on how to be your healthiest? We all know and understand how important our health and wellness is to the vitality of our lives, however navigating the wealth of health and wellness information available can often feel overwhelming. Understanding the significance of our well-being in leading fulfilling lives is crucial, yet determining what steps to take that are essential for our health can often be confusing.
Welcome everyone to "Words of Wellness"! In this podcast, hosted by Shelly Jefferis, M.A., a seasoned health and wellness professional with over 35 years in the industry, all of your questions will be answered and clarity will be provided through personal stories, education, tips and inspiration. Throughout her profession, Shelly has always had the heart and desire to help others feel their best and live their best lives through her supportive and compassionate approach. Through engaging solo and guest episodes, several topics will be addressed, questions will be answered and clarity will be provided in an effort to lead you to a healthier, more energetic life. With a master’s degree in kinesiology, extensive experience as an educator, speaker, coach, and entrepreneur, Shelly brings a wealth of knowledge and a genuine passion for empowering others to feel their best. By featuring industry experts and relatable individuals, the podcast promises personal stories, practical advice, and inspiration. She is excited to come to you weekly sharing all she has experienced, learned and discovered through the years. Whether you're seeking to elevate your well-being, gain practical insights for personal health, or simply be inspired to live a high quality vibrant life, this is the podcast is for YOU! Be sure to tune in weekly and join us along our "Words of Wellness" journey and embark on a path toward a healthier and more fulfilling quality of life full of happiness, energy and joy!
Words of Wellness with Shelly
Shelly's Shares: Longevity Starts With Smarter Exercise Choices - Part One of a 4-Part Series
Feeling overwhelmed by fitness advice that tells you to push harder, go longer, and never miss a day? Let’s trade burnout for a smarter plan that actually works. We’re kicking off a four-part longevity series by unpacking the movement habits that help you age strong: sustainable cardio, essential strength training, and daily flexibility that keeps joints happy.
We start by reframing cardio so it supports your life instead of draining it. The talk test becomes your guide to intensity, with brisk walking, cycling, or light running as approachable options. You’ll hear why short sprints once or twice a week boost fitness without the crash, and how aiming for around 7,500 steps a day can deliver real health benefits. No guilt, no grind—just consistent movement that improves heart health, metabolism, and mood.
Then we go into one, if not the most important aspect of longevity, maintaining our muscle mass. Strength training two to four times a week protects against sarcopenia, supports bone density, and makes daily tasks easier. We outline a practical approach, even without equipment and utilizing your own body weight, you can accomplish a very effective workout. And always want to incorporate stretching and flexibility to keep the range of motion around our joints. Most importantly, keep a simple weekly structure that you can commit to now and into the future.
If you want guidance or accountability, Shelly offers limited 1:1 coaching and the Moms Who Flourish mentorship, a 12-week community designed to support wellness and motherhood with weekly Zoom sessions and ongoing touchpoints. Ready to build strength you can count on for years? Press play, try the plan, and tell us what small change you’ll make this week. If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help more listeners find the show.
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https://scoutandcellar.com/?u=healthyhappyhours
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Thank you for listening to the Words of Wellness podcast with Shelly Jefferis. I am honored and so grateful to have you here and it would mean the world to me if you could take a minute to follow, leave a 5-star review and share the podcast with anyone you love and anyone you feel could benefit from the message.
Thank you and God Bless! And remember to do something for yourself, for your wellness on this day!
In Health,
Shelly
Again, I can't emphasize enough the importance of getting strength training in, keeping and maintaining our muscle mass and our strength. As we age, if we are not doing that, there is what we call sarcopenia, which is a progressive decline in our muscle mass. And that's the last thing we want to have happen. Do you get confused by all of the information that barbards us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing, what foods you should or shouldn't be eating, how to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelly Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to Words of Wellness. This is our Shelly's Shares episode. I hope everyone is doing amazing. I am going to kick off today's episode with the start to a series. I am going to be sharing in the next four episodes of Shelly's Shares. I will be sharing four areas of wellness, specifically longevity. I'm going to be sharing a four-part series on longevity. And I have talked about these areas in the past, and I felt like it's a good time to have a little refresher and to jump in, give a few tips when it comes to each segment of longevity with this start of a new year. And so I wanted to just share with you all there are four areas to longevity. And when we talk about longevity, which I have been sharing for quite some time, and I haven't specifically said the word longevity for a really long time. But honestly, it's part of the reason I started my podcast because I really wanted to get information out to all of you about just complete wellness, bring experts in who could share with you all and give you tips, and then also to have people come in and share their own personal journeys so that you can relate to them and their stories and learn from them. And a big reason that I do this is to help us to feel our best and be our healthiest, not just now, but into the future years and to live a life full of energy, joy, and vitality. And that is what longevity is all about. So I'm going to start our four-part series. I'm going to be sharing about sleep, stress, movement exercise, and food, fuel, and nutrition. And today I want to start with talking about movement, our exercise, our regular, what are we doing for our regular exercise routine on a weekly basis, on a day-to-day basis? And I want to share with you and really really hit home one point. And that is for most of those of you who are listening who might be in your 40s, your 50s, or 60s or beyond, this is probably going to be more geared towards you and your stage of life and your lifestyle. Gone are the days where we beat ourselves up at the gym for two hours. We go and we do cardio for an hour, we take a class, we do weights, we we spend, you know, two hours working out. Those days are gone unless it is a person who might be specifically training for a specific event. Then that's that's different. But this is this is going to be geared towards the average person and what we need to do to maintain our health, our wellness, and our longevity. And when it comes to exercise and movement, I think that for so long, and I mean I've been in this industry for 40 plus years. So I've seen all the different phases, fads, stages that that have been out there that have come and gone. And, you know, for a while there it was encouraged that, you know, we work out really, really hard. I mean, um, and here's here's the thing. I don't want to negate the fact that yes, it's important to have a high-intensity workout mixed in to your routine. But the point of it is we don't have to feel like we have to beat ourselves up in order to get a good workout. So I hope that this hits home. I hope this all makes sense to all of you. And I want to emphasize the importance of getting in all different types of exercise. And, you know, the cardiovascular exercise is very important for our overall health, our circulation, our heart health, our metabolism. And for various reasons, we want to make sure we're getting some kind of cardiovascular exercise in on a regular basis. Now, for many years, I would share, because this was the recommendation from the American College of Sports Medicine. The recommendation was to exercise at least 30 minutes, at least three times a week. And back years ago, we used to talk about our heart rate and getting our heart rate into up into that training zone. And you know, we don't talk about that so much anymore. And I really steered away from it when I was teaching my classes in person and leaned more towards how are you feeling? How are you feeling during your during specifically your cardiovascular component of your workout? Do you feel like you can maybe talk a little bit, but you're not just cruising through the mall looking in shops, right? You're maybe you're walking, but you're you're walking briskly. So you're getting some challenging workout in, but at the same time, you can walk, you can talk and you're not completely out of breath. And that's what I would always emphasize, and I would still do take that talk test, see how you're feeling when you're exercising. That's really more of a a I think a determinant of are you exercising in the right zone? How are you feeling? And again, we shouldn't be able to just carry on a conversation with ease, but we should be able to talk a little bit. We should and we shouldn't be so out of breath that we can't talk. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot. Now, again, it is important to get some higher intensity workouts in mixed into the lower intensity workouts. And to give you an example, I I love to walk and I also love to run. And a couple of days a week, I will make a point to run some sprints. I'm not a big fan, but I don't go for very long at all, but it's a way to kind of increase the intensity a little and challenge my body and mix things up. And I want to encourage you to do the same. Mix things up. So walking is amazing. And you know, we hear you want to walk 10,000 steps. That's great if you do that. But I recently had Dr. Paul Arciro on my podcast, and he has said that the science now tells us that it's really not necessary. Getting even 7,500 steps in a day is great. So keep in mind, you know, you want to challenge yourself, you want to make sure you're getting that cardiovascular exercise in, but it doesn't have to be extremely strenuous or stressful to be able to get it in, right? Also, making sure we take time to stretch. This is crucial, especially in later years. And I can tell you that I notice a difference when I stretch as opposed to when I don't get in enough stretching. I my joints are tighter, my back feels tighter. It's just a complete difference all the way around. And the stretching is really important. We want to make sure that we keep our joints somewhat, you know, flexible, that range of motion around our joints, we need to keep that somewhat flexible, especially in our later years. So really taking time to stretch is really critical. And also the strength training. I can't emphasize this enough. Strength training is, I would almost rate it as one of the most important aspects of our overall workouts. It you know, is critical to maintain our muscle mass. And again, it comes down to when we get older, we need to maintain that muscle mass. It's going to help us so much in later years, in addition to our bone health. And you know, when we do any kind of walking or running and some kind of that um repetitive movement, and if we're kind of doing some kind of jumping here, so for some people that that's not an option, I understand. But some of that impact helps with our our bones and our muscles, but you have to make sure you're getting specific strength training exercises in. And that is a combination of using machines, dumbbells, exercise tubing, and your own personal weight, doing uh weight uh exercises like squats and lunges and push-ups and pull-ups. Again, I can't emphasize enough the importance of getting strength training in, keeping and maintaining our muscle mass and our strength. But as we age, if we are not doing that, there is what we call sarcopenia, which is a progressive decline in our muscle mass. And that's the last thing we want to have happen. Again, one of the most important things that we want to maintain through all of the years is our muscle mass. So keep that in mind. You know, I personally have kind of a routine that I follow. I tend to on Mondays take time to run and go for a walk, and then I and then I strength train at least three to four days a week, and then also factor in stretching after each workout. And it's just so, so crucial. So, you know, I don't want to jump into giving exercise programs because that's not what this is about, and it's not in the scope of our short episode today. But if you are someone who needs more guidance with their routine when it comes to exercise or any of the other areas of longevity, I am opening up exclusive one-on-one coaching sessions for anyone who might be interested in working with me when it comes to your overall wellness and longevity. So be sure to reach out to me through Instagram, whether it be at Wellness with Shelly J or at Moms Who Flourish. And speaking of moms who flourish, we also have a mentorship program that will be kicking off very soon. And if you are a mom looking for a community where you're feeling seen and heard and supported, and you are held accountable for your personal wellness and health goals and also getting support through all the different phases of motherhood, then our moms who flourish mentorship is for you. It will be a 12-week program where we will meet weekly on a Zoom session, and we will also have other touch points throughout those 12 weeks to support and guide you and give you clarity in your different areas of health and wellness, all the while supporting you in motherhood. So please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions about any of my offerings and ways to work with me. I would love to support you. And with that being said, take time for yourself on this day for your own personal wellness. And again, this is this is part one in our for our poor part series that will be coming up. So stay tuned for the next few Mondays. We will continue talking about longevity. And with that being said, have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week, everyone, and we'll see you next time on Words of Wellness. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed week.