Lena Shahbandar: 5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Can Dramatically Improve Your Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Celebrate success — We are good at being hard on ourselves as humans. When you sit down at the end of each day or even each week, try to celebrate the things that you have done right. Your mind will then be able to remember the successes when you doubt yourself. We need evidence that we can reach our goals and small successes become the stepping stones to large successes.

As a part of our series about “5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lena Shahbandar.

Lena Shahbandar is a physician who treats patients with spine and other musculoskeletal problems that impact their function. During the pandemic, and given the burnout prevalent amongst health care providers, she became a certified life coach and has been working to reduce burnout amongst physicians at her medical institution. She recently introduced a product, called the Nessl baby carrier, to reduce the impact of pain on the body of moms and to help them lead active lives.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?

I started my journey of fitness and wellness as a teen who loved sports and health. I played tennis and all sorts of other sports and loved to work out in the gym. I then became an aerobics instructor in college and went on to medical school. I loved sports medicine but didn’t want to do surgery; rather I was interested in focusing on non-surgical treatment of sports injuries, so I specialized in physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R). For the last 15 years I have been treating people with all sorts of musculoskeletal ailments, and in our field, we see the great impact the mind has on the body, healing, and pain. During this time, I noticed that physicians are expected to just keep going and pushing ourselves past our healthy limits. When the pandemic hit, it became abundantly clear that not only is this not good, but it is endangering our own lives and impacting our ability to care for the patients we love. I also saw how this trend impacts mothers as well — as mothers we often put ourselves last. So I got coached and then became a certified life coach in order to really make an impact on a greater scale.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

One of the most interesting stories on the impact of mindset on physical well-being came early in my experience as a rehabilitation medicine physician. I had a patient who had suffered a quadruple amputation below the knees and elbows due to a terrible medical crisis. When I first saw her, she was in the hospital and you can imagine how hard it would be to lose your hands and legs all in one moment. However, she looked at me with steely eyes when I asked her what her goals were, and she said, “I want to run a race again.” She worked incredibly hard, managed not only her physical hurdles but also worked equally hard with the psychologists who do trauma therapy. Two years later I saw her in outpatient clinic and she had a whole system in place — she would get up and put her prosthetic arms on, then use them to help her get her legs on. And she was training and completed a 5K. This taught me so much — one is to believe in your patient’s goals and to help them reach them; another is that nobody can make you feel weak if you don’t believe it; and third is that it is both the mindset and the physical work that allow us to achieve our fitness goals.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

In medical school, I had to drive 30 minutes to the hospital for my surgery rotation. As a medical student who is the lowest on the medical totem pole, the expectation is that you get there before the interns or residents so you can look up all the labs from the night and be up to date to help your team. I was speeding up Sheridan Road in Evanston, IL at 4 am one day when I got pulled over by a police officer. Panicking, not that I would get a ticket, but that I would be late to rounds, I must have looked terrible to the cop, because as I said sorry, he took a look at me and my frumpy short white coat and said, “You must be the only person out there with a worse job than me right now.” And let me go. That moment was probably one of the first to teach me that if I don’t take the time to literally slow down, and take care of myself, I could get hurt and hurt others.

Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?

PM&R doctors are special doctors because we look at medical diagnoses and how they impact people in the real world. As a PM&R doctor and a life coach, I try to step back and look at the big picture then hone in on the particular problem a person is facing to give them both a road map and practical tips to help them get better. Looking at things from this big picture with pregnant women is what helped me realize that the way mothers are expected to carry their babies in car seats and transfer them in such unhealthy positions is literally too much burden for their bodies to bear. That is how I decided to get into creating infant products that also center the mother’s health, like the Nessl Baby Carrier.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

In the summer of 2020, I signed up for coaching with Sunny Smith, a leader in physician wellness. She is an amazing physician who spent most of her clinical practice at a free clinic treating underserved populations in San Diego. She runs a physician coaching program called Empowering Women Physicians. I remember listening to her talk about the crisis of well-being among physicians and how physicians are often afraid to report mental health problems due to unfair policies that exist in some states. She said, in reference to the centrality of mental health, “mental health is human health.” I will never forget that sentence. It speaks to the centrality of mental health on the human experience and the need for us to normalize addressing mental health.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. We all know that it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?

The blockages that prevent us from acting on our knowledge are blockages in the mind. I believe 3 of the main blockages are

-Not believing in ourselves — we say we have certain goals but don’t necessarily imagine ourselves as people who do these things. Rather they are “shoulds” that we use as weapons against ourselves.

-Looking at it as a chore — so often people look at lifestyle changes as burdens or difficult things to do. However, it truly is fun and enjoyable to live a healthier lifestyle, and when we can look at it as fun then it does not feel as daunting.

-All or nothing mentality — We must stop thinking that if we don’t make all the changes at once then we are unworthy. Rather, small goals done sustainably are achievable and can be incorporated into a newer lifestyle. Then we build on these achievements to do the next thing.

Can you please share your “5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”? (Please share a story or an example for each, and feel free to share ideas for mental, emotional and physical health.)

1. Assess your values and live by them — We often say want to eat well, exercise, see the people we love and focus on our mental and spiritual health, but maybe we don’t actually do those things. It is worth spending some time and deciding what you value. Then compare that to how you currently live each day. The next step is to shift your living to match your values. One idea here is to set out four or five little mason jars labeled with the things you care about along with a bowl of beads. Every day, drop a bead into the jar if you did that thing. So if one of your values is fitness (and I like to separate food and exercise because we know both are important) then drop a bead in your jar if you ate your veggies or you went on a hike.
2. Create ladder thoughts — When we have fitness and health goals we have to visualize ourselves as the person who already does the things we want to do. Sometimes our goal feels so far off that we can’t really believe the thought. If we want to exercise 6 days a week and stop eating processed foods and we currently don’t do either very well, a ladder thought to “it’s really fun to exercise every day” might be “exercising every day is fun for people who do it regularly” and that might be enough to get you going.
3. Start small — This is similar to the thought work above but has to do with the action. As humans, we tend to overestimate what we can achieve each day, and we pack too much into our schedules then fail to achieve. But what is interesting is that we vastly underestimate what we can do in the long run. This causes us to continue with our status quo and we are surprised when people make huge changes in their lives. It is ok to start with small consistent action. If you are not used to eating vegetables and avoiding processed carbs for instance, you can make your first goal that you are going to stop eating those foods after 8pm. And do that consistently. Then add another meal, and so on.
4. Celebrate success — We are good at being hard on ourselves as humans. When you sit down at the end of each day or even each week, try to celebrate the things that you have done right. Your mind will then be able to remember the successes when you doubt yourself. We need evidence that we can reach our goals and small successes become the stepping stones to large successes.
5. Celebrate failure — Just as important as celebrating success is celebrating failure. Our brains are wired to avoid failure, in order to protect us. We must remember, though, that failure means you tried. And with weight loss and exercise journeys, as with smoking, we know that the more times we try and fail the more likely we are to eventually succeed. So keep it up and give yourself a pat on the back if you tried but failed.

As an expert, this might be obvious to you, but I think it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?

Weight loss is not really a benefit of exercise. Weight loss has more to do with food (80%) than exercise (roughly 20%). However, there are many benefits to exercise. Three key benefits are improved cardiovascular fitness, increased muscle tone which reduces the pressure on joints and therefore pain as we age, and improved mood. Cardiovascular fitness means you have better endurance, you are able to do more things, and your heart and lungs are going to be there for you as you age. The muscle strength benefits are huge; if your muscles are stronger you are less likely to injure your spine, and as your joints age and the cartilage wears away then you will be able to rely on those muscles to help you live more functionally. Weight training and muscles that are strong help increase your metabolism so that means that you can probably eat a bit more. Finally, the benefit of exercise on mood has been well documented; these days we live with so many stressors and we know that centering our emotions is critical, and exercise is a great way to get you feeling happier.

For someone who is looking to add exercise to their daily routine, which 3 exercises would you recommend that are absolutely critical?

If you are trying to add exercise to your routine, you need to add moderate low impact exercise, weight training exercise and meditative deep breathing to your life.

Moderate cardiovascular low impact exercise like walking is super important to get the heart going and keep you healthy for longer.

The core musculature (the abdominal, back, glute and pelvic floor muscles) are amongst the very most important muscles to support our spines and joints as we age. Low back pain affects 50% of pregnant women, and it is the overall most common reason to see the doctor after the common cold. If you can work on an exercise as simple as gentle abdominal and glute exercises as well as kegel exercises for the pelvic floor, you will see huge benefits in your life.

Meditative deep breathing, where you close your eyes, center your breath and bring awareness to your body as you breathe deeply in and out can reduce stress and increase your body awareness.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

One of my favorite books about diet and food for the general public is The Obesity Code by Jason Fung. He was one of the people who popularized intermittent fasting, and he talks very eloquently and clearly about the impact of hormones, when we eat, and how we eat on our bodies. I listened to the book and found it helpful when I gained weight, and it has also helped so many of my patients and friends. What it also taught me is that we have to look at larger causes of problems when we see an entire society with a medical problem. Instead of trying to fix each individual person who thinks there is something wrong with them, we should bring awareness to larger trends and address those as well.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

These days I am teaching new moms postural awareness and to be careful with what they lift when they have babies. Nearly 50% of pregnant women experience back pain during pregnancy and approximately 40% of women experience postpartum back pain. This is due to the many changes to ligaments, muscles, and spinal alignment in pregnancy that do not recover fully until approximately nine months after delivery. In this period we are made to think that we need to lift heavy car seats, and we position ourselves in all sorts of awkward positions as we lift our babies from their cribs and even when we put our babies in baby carriers. We somehow think that taking care of our babies means that we can’t prioritize ourselves. I am on a mission to teach women how to move and lift so they can realize that better care for ourselves is also better for our babies. I have been working for six years to build solutions to this problem and create products that center the mom’s health while being safe for baby, and I am proud to share we are introducing the Nessl Baby Carrier as one of these solutions. I would love to see a shift in the baby product industry that starts to focus not just on baby but also on parents.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

One of my favorite quotes is by Rumi. He said, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to change the world around moms and babies to help with the epidemic of pain. But this quote helps to center me and remember that what I absolutely have control over is my own journey of improvement, introspection and growth as a human.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I would love to meet with the founders of Uppababy, Lauren and Bob Monahan. I really admire their brand and products and think that there would be great opportunities if we could work together to make life better for parents’ bodies as we produce products for babies.

What is the best way our readers can follow you online?

You can find us at www.nessl.com or follow us on instagram, facebook, pinterest @nesslbaby

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!