Episode 42: #Spring4Change and Un-Wellness Updates with Annette Zapp, CSCS*D
#Spring4Change is a mental health and wellness initiative created by Chris Marella and AZ. 2023 is our 4th year of running the campaign together, and as per usual, we're shaking it up again.
AZ will be holding down sleep and nutrition starting 4.3.2023 and Chris will swoop in and handle mental health and movement starting 4.17.2023.
Your call to action is to follow #Spring4Change on the 'gram.
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Annette: [00:00:00] Hello listeners. It's AZ back for another Friday solo episode, and as you can hear I’m super sick. I’m super congested, man. I was just sick. It would've been the 10th I got sick, March 10th. I felt really, really crappy. The 11th and 12th feeling bad, the 15th went back to work. I also worked on Saturday, so that would've been the 18th.
Woke up the morning of the 19th just feeling like hot garbage. And here we are sounding like hot garbage cuz that's how I feel. We're gonna talk a little bit about being sick today, but first I wanna hit on something called Spring for Change. Spring for Change is an awareness initiative. It is a campaign that my friend Chris Marella and I designed together.
Let's back up [00:01:00] a little bit. So in 2019, I met Chris Marella at the Illinois Firefighter Peer Support Symposium. We were both there presenting separately, but we're kind of in the same space. And so we became friends and started to sort of collaborate together. And in the fall of 2019, Chris said, “I think we need to do a December initiative for suicide awareness and prevention.”
And so we birthed devote December in like 16 hours, and it was great. It was a really, really good campaign. We really enjoyed doing it together. And so when it became, it turned over to 2020, we actually presented together at the Illinois Firefighter Peer Support Symposium and decided that we wanted to do a spring campaign as well.
And we called that Spring for Change. So 2020 was the first spring for change..2019 was the first Devote December. We [00:02:00] ran both of those campaigns together until last fall when both of us were just, we were burnt, we were tired. Devote December is a really heavy campaign because we don't do it so much anymore, but we used to also track suicide statistics and based on some advice from my friend Dena Ali, we went ahead and stopped tracking those statistics and sharing those statistics and went to, you know, providing more hope and more interventions. But Devote December is heavy. Last fall, we talked about it and we decided that we needed to give that campaign away.
And so we gave entrusted our baby to our friend Matt Spaid, who did just a phenomenal job with Devote December. So if you're not following Devote December, hop on over to Instagram right now and follow Devote December. And while you're there, look for Spring4 [00:03:00] Change. So, Chris and I have done Spring 4 Change and Devote December differently every single year.
And we are busier now than we've ever been before. I am one year from retirement and my business is taking off. He's got two kids now. He's a lieutenant. He's got his own business going on. And so one of the things that I told him this year is like, “I cannot be collaborating on every single post. Like we can't be sending posts back and forth to approve it and let's just divide it up.”
And so I took sleep and nutrition the first two weeks and he's gonna take mental health and movement or fitness or whatever you wanna call that exercise the second two weeks and. Here's your call to action. Go over to Instagram, follow Devote December. Say hi to Matt Spaid. Follow Spring4Change. I'm gonna start rolling out content and ramping up to get started on the third, for April 3rd [00:04:00] for our sleep week.
So there you have it. All right. Today's podcast is gonna be really, really short, and what I decided I wanted to talk to you about was my top tips for when you're sick. And so I am not a big go to the doctor and get an antibiotic person. I think that's a really, really bad idea. Many of the illnesses and sicknesses that we have are viral anyway, and then your doctor throws an antibiotic at it and it just creates a bigger problem.
So I am not a big go to the doctor person that. I may have to go to the doctor for this one cuz man, do I feel crappy. But things that I try to do when I am sick, I intentionally pay much more heed to my hydration. So typically, I would drink half my body weight in ounces, and that's adequate. And then I add more on for exercise or structure fires or things like that.
I try to bump that up a little bit [00:05:00] and I also just because for no particular reason other than I get sick of drinking plain water, I try to make some of the, some of that hydration come from, say, chicken broth or drip drop or ginger ale or whatever. But I do pay really particular close attention to my hydration level when I'm sick.
The next thing, and I probably should have said, the first thing before even hydration is sleep. And it's a catch 22 because when you don't feel good, you can't sleep. And when you don't get adequate sleep, you don't feel good. And it's just a big, massive vortex of gloom and doom. But, as soon as I hop off this recording, and send it to my man, Jeremiah, I'm actually gonna go lay back down and hopefully get some more sleep because I was just, it was miserable last night. I didn't sleep well at all. So you can pay a little more particular attention to your climate. You can pay a little bit more attention to your background noise, whatever it's gonna [00:06:00] take to get to be able to sleep a little bit better, but sleep is is absolutely critical.
The next thing that I do is I intentionally, I don't eat very much processed food. I don't eat very much junk food. In fact, if you came and looked in my pantry right now, well, let's be honest, you wouldn't find much because I've been cleaning out my pantry to move.
But if you looked in my pantry, you typically wouldn't find donuts or pre-packaged snacks or chips or anything like that. I'm just not big on those things. But I try to be even more cognizant when I'm sick to decrease that processed food and to increase the good quality protein substances, or I should say sources and vegetables.
Man, there's a reason that grandma made you chicken soup A, cuz she's grandma and B, because it’s chicken soup, but C, it contains all of those wonderful vegetables in there that can help support your [00:07:00] health. So that's number three. Increase the vegetables intentionally. The next one, as much, as much as I would love to just go banging some weights around or walk on the treadmill or do something, I'm not gonna do that today. I'm gonna allow my body to put the effort into getting better and feeling better, rather than providing that additional stress to my body. Now that's frustrating because I didn't work out yesterday either. I didn't feel that great yesterday.
And so this is now two days in a row without moving, which is frustrating but you have to remember that stress is, stress is stress. And so, it is stressful when you don't get enough sleep. It is stressful when your body is sick. It is stressful when the bills come. It is stressful when you get in a fight with your spouse.
It's all stress. And so exercise is just another form of stress, which I'm not gonna subject myself to exercise at least. [00:08:00] The next one. I don't know how particularly impactful it is, but I always feel like, if I've been sleeping all night, breathing on my pillows and my sheets and my comforters and all those things, I just feel like I should wash those bad boys.
And so those are, they just got done in the washer. As soon as I hop off of here, I'm gonna go put those in the dryer.
And you know, there's nothing groundbreaking here. I didn't tell you anything that's probably gonna make your socks roll up and down, but I just like to keep this podcast really, really human and really real.
And to let you guys know that shit happens to me too. And hopefully I'm gonna feel better soon!
Since we're only at about eight minutes. I will give you kind of a preview of upcoming podcasts, which I'm very excited about. I just finished recording with Dr. Mark Abel from the University of Kentucky, and he is a former [00:09:00] firefighter.
He was a volunteer and paid on call firefighter in his twenties, and then he left that career and now he does research into tactical athletes. That conversation is a good one and it'll be out next week. I also have bookings to record with Chris Fields with Michael Pericht from Orland Fire and hmm, I don't know.
I've got some more in there, but I can't see them cuz AZ’s brain is foggy. All right, so keeping this one short, I'm gonna go ahead and sign off today. I hope you have a really, really great week.
Call to action. Go follow @Spring4Change and @devotedecember. AZ is out.
