Physical wellbeing, fitness and nutrition

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Nothing's Off Limits - bringing together experts and people with lived experience to discuss the topics we love to avoid but absolutely need to talk about made with the support of Vision Australia and the NDIS Information Linkages Capability Building Grant Building grants.

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Hello and welcome to the show where nothing's off limits. My name is Tess. I'm with my co-host Polly over the next 10 episodes. We're going to be delving into some subjects, which we might usually consider off limits, discussing them openly and honestly and through the specific lens of blindness and low vision.

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And to help us, we brought together a bevy of expert guests to explore some of the questions which I've always wanted to ask on subjects that matter to you. And a huge thanks to those of you who got in touch to tell us what you want to know.

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Subjects we'll be covering include dating and relationships, appearance and body image, mental health, physical well-being, and much more. Each episode of Nothing's Off Limits is available to download from the Vision Australia website. Just go to Vision Australia dot org. That's Vision Australia dot org type. Nothing's off limits into the search engine, and you will be directed to a web page where you can view this and other episodes and do make sure you subscribe to make sure you don't miss any or else. If you prefer, you can tune in via Vision Australia radio.

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Today, we're talking about physical wellbeing, fitness and nutrition. There's an abundance of evidence around the importance of physical wellbeing for everybody exercise and good nutrition, supporting better cardiovascular health and blood pressure. And there are lots of fitness options out there. Whether it's the gym, Pilates classes or sports developed or adapted for those with a visual impairment such as goalball, swish line cricket and even blind Aussie rules football. And there are additional positive outcomes of taking part in physical activity. 

If you are blind or have low vision that relate to balance mobility, mental wellbeing, no falls, muscle strength, flexibility and gait. But a 2018 study published in the British Medical Journal found that compared with sighted individuals, people with visual impairment have a higher prevalence of chronic conditions and lower levels of physical activity. Tess, does that surprise you?

S2

It doesn't, I mean I know someone who's blind, how hard it can be to access exercise and fitness, and I guess it's it can be an uncomfortable, uncomfortable area for some people yet accessing ways of exercising and getting healthier for the first time. Maybe some people might feel a bit anxious about that. We hope that this episode might provide a bit more information on that.

S3

And we asked you, what barriers have you experienced in keeping healthy?

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Nothing's Off Limits with Tess and Polly.  

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What areas have you experienced in keeping healthy?

S4

Too much good food...

S5

Too many good restaurants...

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Too many good people to enjoy good times with...

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Personally I  haven't experienced too many barriers, so I'm lucky in the sense that I'm fairly agile, fairly independent, so I'm probably one of the lucky ones.

S5

Apart from lockdown, probably the motivation proximity to various things, the barriers I experienced in keeping healthy is just around being able to access the types of activities that I enjoy for very many years.

S7

I didn't feel very confident getting out and about in my community. I still find it a bit challenging. You know, someone says there's a great yoga class and it's three suburbs away and it's on a Monday night. I have to kind of think that through and go, Am I actually going to be able to do that? A and B the journey to the and from there going to be so stressful that the yoga class and they're going to be worth it. I would say that that's probably my biggest barrier, just terrible memories of being made to try and play sport as a child with a vision impairment, ball sports.

S6

Like what the hell? It's probably laziness, not squawking as much as I should. When we had two hours limited exercise period during lockdown, you made yourself go and do it because you only had that limited time frame. Well, I don't like exercise. That's the bottom line. So for me, the barriers have been about finding something that I can do independently and that I enjoy. And so while you might be able to do some exercise independently, like on the treadmill and things like that, others find it boring. 

I have really worked to try and find something that I can do independently again in terms of eating well. I think over time that's become easier because you can now read much more packaging information on foods than you used to be able to. I do ballroom dancing, which is good exercise, but I like it, and that's the main reason I do it because I like it.

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nothing's off limits. With Tess and Polly,

04:57

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I think we all have areas that we can recognise there.

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to help us explore this topic further. I'm delighted to welcome our first guest, Jason Weiter. Jason is a low vision body builder and a volunteer at Vision Australia, all alongside his day job as a director of his own real estate company. Jason, thanks for joining us.

S5

Thank you for having me on a pilot episode. 

S3

Certainly, we're so thrilled to have you on. And thank you. So, Jason, can you maybe start by telling us a bit about the role that physical exercise has played in your life?

S5

Sure. So it's been a big part of my life. Growing up from the age of eight, I started taking parts and all sorts of sports that was somewhat Cricket Australia rules rugby in appealing getting to American football, you know, athletics. I loved everything that got me active and also outdoors, going probably about 17. I would say that I got into bodybuilding. I found weightlifting. That really made a change to the way I had my outlook on physical activity. 

In all that, the changes that you know, everybody goes through when you start lifting weights, as I call it, or what they call new me and really made me want to take it further. So at that point in time, I started trying to enter a bodybuilding competition which seemed to have become a gym junkie house, going to the gym three times a day. So I would pretty much be wake up in the morning, go down the gym, drill bit of training, go to work, get back to the gym at lunchtime, there'll be more training, go back to work and then on the way home, stop at the gym again and do more. And that was almost every day I would be doing that. My whole life revolved around me being in the gym. 

From there, I felt that, well, why not get into a career and become a personal trainer at some point? Then obviously our own had complications from diabetes that stopped me from playing. Sports and training had impact on my blood pressure, and it was a complications from the diabetes that affected my eyesight. So as a point in my life, I was completely blind and had had some operations done and that we have to fight a little bit of the issue somewhat. Somehow some are back, but that didn't stop me from training, other than the fact that I had to go for a kidney and pancreas transplant and recover from that.

S3

Were there any barriers that you found? Kind of. I mean, it sounds like you never stepped away far from fitness, but kind of approaching it after you'd experience vision loss. Were there any barriers that you came up across that you didn't have before?

S5

One of the biggest challenges I think I faced was convincing my specialists to allow me to go into the gym. Yes, I've been saying it's just not a safe environment, and I understand it's not when you're in the gym, you're one of those people training and there's people that will leave weights on the floor and not worry, which represents a lift. 

And then the next thing that always happens to avoid touching a bars that are hanging over your head, you're going to hit them and you're going to have to buy machines. And so it's important to find ways around that  challenge. 

S3

And what were some of your strategies? 

S5

Well, I end up getting an hour to coming to the gym and have a look at the licensing that they can do. They can't predict that people are going to lose weight, which I'm I started two years prior to having support workers there. I would just use my cane to navigate around as long as they were memorising, where all the overhanging bars could be or would be, just ensuring walking safely around them and really using, you know, your hearing to identify people nearby. So I would hear someone training next to me. So I know they're there. 

And these options are, and you can also have a shirt that let people know that you have low vision or you're blind. So you know you could just for a one morning sort of signs. And if you've got a cane, people will keep their distance generally and then you might go to is quite small and we all know each other, say they will they walk out from anyway, just really great. 

And then I have a personal trainer as well who monitors me. And that was especially important during COVID because I was training at my own home gym and he would always identify hazards that were in my area. Morsi was training me over Zoom. You know, we managed to avoid those, I guess, those little things that most people would see as barriers. 

I won't say that self-image is one that I'm worried about me being fit and health is more important than what I look like or what a lot of other people. So I don't have a full lifting weights as long as I'm out with those weights and I do training groups as well. So I won't say it hasn't had that much of an impact on me being able to train.

S2

So when you lost your vision, Jason, you obviously had quite a background in health and fitness. What advice would you give to somebody who's blind or has low vision who doesn't have that background knowledge already of physical, physical health and fitness practices?

S5

OK, well, if you're not currently taking any physical activity or taking part, I recommend doing something and that could just be, you know, walking. I'm Daniel Hall for a little bit if you've got a whole way or some space because you know it's the feeling you give it, not just physically but mentally. And I think more so mentally, you're doing physical activity, the Bundesliga playing for your body. Are you getting oxygen to your mind? And it helps you think clearly it helps you help your mental illness. 

And also one he's taking part in some form of activity, particularly in a sedentary lifestyle. It's, you know, it does wonders to your lifestyle. But then if you want to take a photo, you want to have a purpose to your activity. Find out what that reason is. Why are you taking part in exercise, what you want to achieve? So is it that you just want to feel fitter in yourself? Or is it that you want to actually feel stronger or, you know, so identifying the reasons behind it and then identifying what you need to do that? So do you need to get to a gym or can you do it in a park? Do you need a personal trainer or can you just do it with a friend or support worker? Things like that. 

And you need special equipment, do not need special them, and they once be identified, my sort of thing, take the next steps and actually go out for the membership. Take those first steps that lead to the next step and so on and so on.

10:33

S3

And physical health is also down to nutrition, and I know that's something that you're really passionate about. And can you share some strategies around knowing what you need from a nutritional perspective, particularly when you're shopping?

S5

One of the biggest impacts for someone who has my vision is actually trying to read those labels on the on the cans and the food. It's like, Well, what is I mean, I think probably hard enough in FullVision to do so, but finding out why don't know what they mean. So it's great that you have all these calories or calories, all these free products. And I'm not saying I'm an expert opinion. I'm not a nutritionist, so I can't really give advice here. But from my own personal understanding, it can be confusing. 

I do recommend if you want to take it to the next level, is it good to talk to a dietitian to work out what you eat in your diet and then understanding the food labels? So what? What are the calories mean? What's macronutrients? What micronutrients and what? How does that body to be trying to lose weight? They say You want to be in a calorie deficit, so how do you do that? What you are going to help you do that and eating healthy? 

So cleaning up your diet is really important. Again, that does not just for how you look for your mental health as well. You find you get more energy, you know, tons of blowtorch. That's all I found. And because of my transplant, I'm going to watch my diet anyway, so I can't eat regular bodybuilders diet. You know it. That doesn't make it important to find out what I can eat. And again, that's what a dietitian comes in handy. 

But I think really, what these are most confusing part is knowing what the labels are. I mean, it's so much information out there with YouTube influencers and all these. It's a technology that say, Well, this is what we need to be doing, and we don't actually listen to our own body. So, you know, we're going on these fad diets and then we don't see changes. So we give up on that time to go to the next one or we're going to stay on it long enough because we're not getting the instant results of these influence. So you're a skinny person saying, I was on this diet for a week and this is what I look like and then it doesn't have to be here. You give up an image selection and just almost revert back into unhealthy habits again.

S3

That's an excellent piece of advice. I think you right about technology, but is there anything that you'd recommend any apps or any pieces of tech that can help you in your fitness journey? I know a lot of people resort to Fitbits as a way to motivate and track their activity. Is that something that you've used? Is there anything accessible out there?

S5

For me personally, I don't use a lot of those apps any afternoon to you, just something to record my training programs. So that's what I use called JFI. But there's plenty of them out there, and they just basically put your workout exercise in their tracks, how much lifting the number of sets of reps. And then you've also got those ones that track, you know, your calorie intake and output. Not that I find beats. 

And if you get overwhelmed with too much information, as I mentioned, we start relying too much on that and you don't listen to your body. So you're trying to target Omaha at this range all the time, but that's not always effective for the type of training one day. I think it's important more to have some expert knowledge from a personal trainer or a doctor or allied health professional, get the guidance from them and then stick to a plan for at least six weeks or longer, and then to see it actually progress on that. 

So, you know, keeping a written diary or an HIIT progress, if it's heading in the direction you want to head, then you know you're doing right. And if it's not the only reason you need to make a change, but again, as we get some expert advice and guidance, what can make a change?

S3

That's great advice. And I guess just just before we wind up, how do you find the expert? How do you find a dietitian? How do you find a personal trainer and how do you find the one that's right for you?

S5

That's where it's been really hard. Being someone with low vision is where do we find someone that knows what they're doing? So a lot of personal trainers don't have the patience to train someone who has location, so they may actually want to have you trained as if you could see. And when they do take it on, you want to make sure that they're able to, you know, audibly describe that exercise or workout you're doing. 

So I've been to I've seen a lot of people trying to train people and they say, Can you get into this stance? And that's that, you know, somebody can't say, we don't know what this stent is. We're doing what you're doing. And I still describing it as if you ever know the exercise. So I mean, an example is if you've never done a push up in your life and then someone says gentle push up position, you're not going to know what that is. And that's what happened. It's great to see you need someone. This is what I was done with. My personal trainer is the audio descriptive thing I'll say is basically lay flat on your chest and put your arms to your sides, palms on the ground and then push out for your shoulders and elbows. 

Now that the audio descriptive and you can technically identify with that, and if you got to support, they can guide you alongside their personal trainer. Just trying to find that was was the hardest thing for me or trying to find any sort of physical activity so blunt. It took me a long time before I even, you know, existed. This really sports and recreation of The Good Place to go, talk and choose different support network groups that also would place. I need sort of providers that can help you.

15:12

S3

There are wonderful things, Jason, and I think that that's a great kind of tip to leave us with that. If you need more information, just keep out your trainer until they've described it properly. It's their job to do that. That's great. Thank you so, so much for joining us. It's been a fantastic interview, and all of the things that you've referenced will make sure that they're on the website as well if people want to follow up on those. But thank you so much, Jason, that was so helpful. 

S5

Pleasure.

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You're listening to nothing is off limits with Tess and Polly reduced by Vision Australia radio. Did you know? Vision Australia is Australia's largest provider of services for people with blindness and low vision. To find out more about our services, visit Vision Australia-dot-org or call 1800 847 466.

S3

Our second guest is Tyler Marin, and Tyler is a personal trainer and motivational speaker and three time Paralympic athlete, as well as a husband, a father and a business owner and all the way from Indiana. Is that right?

S4

Yeah, all the way from Indiana in the US.

S3

Thank you so much for joining us. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show.

S4

Thank you. Absolutely. It's great to be here with you.

S2

Tyler, can you tell us a bit about your journey with fitness and exercise?

S4

I grew up in Southwest Michigan, so kind of like the Midwest of the US. I grew up on a farm in a pretty rural area and had a lot of space to roam. I had a lot of siblings and cousins and in the area, so we we just found a lot of things to be active with. I was always climbing trees and digging holes and swimming in ponds and riding bikes and all kinds of stuff like that. 

When I was little, there were definitely some extra challenges that I faced without really understanding what was going on. So I have retinitis pigmentosa, and when I was about three years old, I was diagnosed with an underdeveloped retina and we didn't really understand what that meant at the time. But you know, I dealt with some things like night blindness and tunnel vision, which made the ball sport kind of challenging. 

Despite that, again, you know, whether all the activity that I had going on around me coming from a family of athletes, I just grew up in an environment where I was just always doing something physical. I turned 14, 15 years old and was officially given the diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa. I started losing more vision. At that point. It's a digressive condition, so I started having trouble reading my books and things like that, seeing the chalkboard in my classroom. 

So I went and got tested, got that official diagnosis. And that's when I started getting services like learning how to use the cane, learning to read braille. I was introduced to adaptive technology, and that's where I was introduced to adaptive sports as well. And so just coming from a fitness background and an athletic background, I took to Adaptive Athletic very, very quickly. I did wrestling and track and field. I went to sports education camps where I did swimming in judo and cycling. 

The one sport that I really picked up on was goalball accelerated at it very quickly and made the USA national Paralympic team at a pretty young age, and it really drove me to try to find out what this fitness thing was all about. So I spent a lot of years engaging in fitness, but now I really wanted to make it a study. I went to Western Michigan University, got my bachelor's degree in exercise science, became nationally certified in strength and conditioning, and spent a number of years as a personal trainer working for 24 hour Fitness - it's one of the master personal trainers and more recently has kind of spun off. 

I opened up my own business and I'm taking all of that experience and knowledge education and approaching the blindness and low vision community and creating a program to help people who are blind and visually impaired connect to fitness and absorb it. The way that I was able to do that, I was blessed to get when I was as I was growing up.

19:11

S2

As well as being an elite athlete, you're also a personal trainer and one of your specialties is training people who are blind or have low vision. What do you do differently when working with a client who is blind or has low vision compared to if you're working with somebody who's sighted? Is that the main difference?

S4

Really, it comes down to the way that somebody is taught. Right. So it's surprisingly similar to the way that I would train a sighted person. So when I worked for 24 hour fitness, 99 percent of my clientele were sighted since I opened up my own business. Most of my clientele was visually impaired, and really the way that I teach is is very, very similar. So when teaching somebody who is visually impaired, the one thing to remember is that so much of our input, so much of what we understand about the world around us does come from visual input. 

People who have vision, they learn things through their sight without even realising that that's what they're doing. Take a standard pushup, for example. Most people who are sighted have seen people, whether it's just in a movie, whether it's in their own gym class, they've seen people do pushups. Hey, do a push up. Now they may not know the exact technical. How far? Year and still apart, what is the angle of your elbows? What do you do with your midsection? But they know what the idea is. 

Somebody who's visually impaired may not have a clue what a pushup is, is or how it works or what your body is supposed to do. So in teaching somebody who is visually impaired, the biggest difference is just the hyper level of description involved, the nuances of how the body is supposed to feel and how it's positioned almost in nausea. It's almost overkill with the amount of description, because there's so many little things that that you may miss. 

You know, if I tell you get down on your hands and your toes, your belly should be off the ground and your hips level with your shoulders. They're still going to be a lot of different variations. You're going to maybe drop your head, you might raise your head up, you might turn your hands in or turn your hands out. There are still many different things that you could do. So it's an excessive amount of description. Usually, I find that that helps teach proper exercise to people who are visually impaired.

S2

And you've created your revision online workouts. Congratulations, by the way, on winning the home and prize. That's very exciting.

S4

And I appreciate that. Yeah, it's very easy.

S2

Is it true that you are using that that award to develop your online series of revision workouts into an app?

S4

Yeah, that's exactly it. I have a couple of resources that I have a YouTube channel and a Facebook group that I've hosted, you know, kind of free workouts, any various topics, instructional videos. But what I've done with the and Pro in that grant funding is I'm using that to develop a digital platform where I can start to collect all of this information. 

So think about it is is almost like a library. There's a couple of main sections. There's a classroom section where you can go and just learn about individual exercises. You know, if you want to know how to do a tree pose in yoga or a push up or a squat, and you can go there and find those lessons and find the descriptions of how to do them. And then from there, you can either take that information, go to your local fitness center and follow in their classrooms or do the exercises in your living room. Or you can go into the fitness studio that I've developed on my platform, where we have several accessible workout beginner level advanced level workouts built into this digital platform. 

And then from there, what I kind of say is the exercises are the ingredients, the workouts are your utensils and fitness plans are the actual recipe, right? So we have recipes or fitness plans that you can dive into as well. We take these workouts and these exercise classes. And what do you do with them? What days and what order should you do them? 

And so we have some fitness plans on there. You can follow depending on what your goals are and what your circumstances are. So I've used that whole approach to build a platform that it's still kind of in the beta stages. There's still some development, but we have several dozen people who are signed up and using that information to get themselves more fit. All right. So it's pretty exciting. 

S3

We'll put all the details about that on our website as well, Tyler. Great nutrition is another key component of physical health. What barriers have you noticed with your clients and eating healthily? What strategies do you give them?

S4

There are definitely some challenges when it comes to nutrition. The things as simple as reading labels on the side of the box, picking out maybe the right types of vegetables and things like that. As you're going down the produce day off, it can be a little more tricky. It can be a little bit more daunting, but I don't think that nutrition is any more daunting than any other daily life task. 

Yes, because of the visual impairment. So what I mean by that is being visually impaired makes a lot of things more challenging. It's not that things can't be accomplished, it just it makes them a little more difficult. It makes you have to kind of think of doing things in different ways. Totally doable. You may just have to go about it in a different way. And most people are smart enough to understand the basics of nutrition. 

Even somebody who says, I know nothing about nutrition, you could ask them a few questions and they can generally sit out very good. Foundational nutritional information. Everybody knows that eating fruits and vegetables is really good for you, right? You shouldn't eat super sugary foods all the time. You should drink plenty of water. Those are the real basics. And honestly, the massive percentage of good nutrition just revolves around those general rules of thumb. Drink plenty of water, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Try to steer clear of highly processed food. 

Greater detail goes into, you know, what programs are more accessible and calorie counting and things like that, which we discuss a lot of that in my Facebook group. So if you're interested in getting more information on that, you can definitely check that out as well.

S3

But what's your advice for people who don't have that background in physical exercise and who perhaps feel very intimidated about where to start? Would they feel self-conscious? How do you start the journey?

S4

If you're somebody listening to this, you're visually impaired, or maybe you're not. You see fitness, you think about fitness, and it just feels really overwhelming, feels intimidating. You think about going to the gym and it just you feel like a nervous wreck. Like, what if you do something wrong? You're kind of feeling embarrassed? Listen. That is so normal, it's so normal, don't think that you're alone in that. 

There's this idea that that's almost natural for us to think, but it's totally false that bitterness should just be something, you know, like if you can't do a push up and you can't run well or you can't squat like you should be ashamed of that or something like you should know how to move your own body. And that's just it's a falsehood. You know, if I came to you and said, here's a harmonica, you play me a song on this harmonica and you say, Well, I don't know how to play the harmonica. You wouldn't really be embarrassed by that. It's a skill that you haven't acquired, and learning exercise and fitness is no different. Right? There's no reason to be embarrassed. 

First of all, that's first and foremost is try your best to kind of push aside the sensation of like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to be embarrassed. People are looking at me 99 percent of the time. They're not. They've got their headphones in and they're doing their own workouts, right? And so often people want to see you succeed. If they see you going in and being adventurous and trying to think you're more often than not, find people who are in your corner wanting to support you, and that when you think about becoming more fit and learning about fitness, just try to approach it with an open mind. 

Try to approach it with the idea that, yes, I am not a fitness expert, but I know I can do better. I want to do better for my health. I want to do better for my, my energy levels, my family, and I'm just going to keep working at it. I'm going to try new things, I'm going to ask questions, and it's OK if I make some mistakes, and that's just part of the learning process of any new skill.

26:59

S3

Tyler, thank you so much.

S4

I appreciate you guys giving me the chance to share my knowledge.

S3

And good luck in Tokyo.

S4

Thank you. I appreciate it.

S2

We've only had 30 minutes to talk about physical well-being, but please don't let this be the end of the conversation. And remember, you can download this and other episodes of Nothing's Off Limits by going to the Vision Australia website and finding our web page. Or you can tune in via Vision Australia radio. 

The Vision Australia website also has some links to some really useful resources and information, including a great webinar by one of Vision Australia's physiotherapists about exercising in isolation and understanding fitness in general. 

S3

Thank you again to our guests, and thank you for joining us for the show where
nothing's off limits.

27:48

S1

That was Nothing's Off Limits. Made with the support of Vision Australia and the NDIS Information Linkages Capability Building grants, learn more about our radio and podcast offerings by visiting VOA Radio-dot-org and access all there is to know about our range of client services via our website. Vision Australia-dot-org. 

We thank everyone who participated in this episode, but especially you for listening today. We rely on your support, so please share this podcast with just one person today and brighten our day or write us on your preferred podcast platform. Bye for now.