9 to 5 Wellness

"Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are time-limited."  Clinical psychologist Dr. Matt Campbell explains why New Year's resolutions fall apart within weeks, why you're not lacking discipline, and how small goals, fewer choices and the basics (sleep, sunlight, movement, connection and consumption) build habits that last. Why does motivation fade so quickly? Because motivation...

Lifting heavy won’t make you bulky. It might make you a world-record holder. Emily Hu called herself “the laziest kid on the planet.” She did cardio and pink weights and was sure she had no upper body strength. Then she broke four all-time powerlifting world records , three of them in the bench press, and set the last one at age 41 while working a full-time corporate job. Former pro powerlifter, b...

Exercising with diabetes but not sure where to start?  This episode is your safe-start guide. Just in time for World Diabetes Day, host Aesha Tahir, clinical exercise physiologist, breaks down how busy professionals and caretakers of diabetics can use exercise for diabetes management — without fear, without guesswork, and without finding extra hours in your 9-to-5.Your muscles are your back door f...

“Push harder. One more rep.” But how hard is hard? Most busy professionals know how often they work out and for how long. Intensity is the part most people guess at. Guess too high on a week of five-hour nights and a product launch, and you’re on the way to injury and burnout. Guess too low and you lose time you don’t have. In this episode, yours truly, a clinical exercise physiologist and corpora...

Women need just 30 to 60 minutes of strength training a week to see real health benefits, and you are never too old to start. On this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, I sat down with Kate Georgiadis, founder and director of education at DDKT, a New York City women's strength training studio. For decades, women's fitness advice centered on cardio, calorie counting and getting smaller. We discu...

Would you trust AI to help you live longer? Your smartwatch tracks your sleep, your ring scores your recovery, and AI can now read your labs, your genes and your habits. For busy professionals, that could be the best health tool you’ve ever had, or it could mean handing a lot of trust to an algorithm. Honestly, I’ve asked myself the same question. I wasn’t sure I wanted to upload my own blood work...

It’s 8 PM, the game is on, you’re tired, and the bag of chips is already open. Sound familiar? If you snack late at night, you probably don’t have a willpower problem. You have a planning problem. This week on 9 to 5 Wellness, Aesha Tahir talks with Coach Brian Parana, a men’s health coach with more than 23 years of experience and host of the Driven for Health podcast. They get into what really dr...

The secret to winning workplace negotiations is wanting the outcome a little less: build other options before the meeting, so nerves and neediness don't drive the conversation. In this episode of the 9 to 5 Wellness Podcast, host Aesha Tahir sits down with Dave Volofsky, a cognitive performance and career coach with a master's in neuroscience and education from Columbia University and fo...

Why do so many successful professionals still feel like they don’t have their money together? A strong salary, a great title and financial confidence are not the same thing. In this episode of the 9 to 5 Wellness Podcast , I’m talking with Rebecca Pino, a financial advisor and financial educator with an MBA in finance and founder of the behavioral finance app Inertia. You’ll learn why money is the...

On this epsiode, burnout expert Cait Donovan explains why burnout isn’t about overwork. It’s a pile-up of mismatches. Learn the signs, the brain science and what leaders can do. I came across a stat recently that stopped me: 83% of workers reported some level of burnout going into 2026. That’s this year. Most of us blame long hours or chronic stress, and for years so did I. I overwork (you all kno...

In this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, I'm joined by Heidi, a scientist and the co-founder and CEO of Peri, the first wearable and AI platform built to track perimenopausal symptoms. We talk about the gender gap in health research, why so many women's perimenopause symptoms get dismissed, and how tracking hot flashes, night sweats and anxiety can help you advocate for yourself and personali...

How many of the walls you hit at work are real, and how many are choices dressed up as constraints?  In this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, Aesha Tahir sits down with innovation coach JL Heather , co-founder and managing partner of Centered and creator of the Can't Culture Framework, to unpack the quiet, often unintentional way teams and leaders stop trying. JL has spent 20+ years coaching senio...

Everyone Wants the Results, But Not the Reps Everyone wants the promotion, the finish-line photo, the big win. Very few want the early mornings, the rejected drafts and the 5:00 AM runs in the rain that come before them. This week's episode is a mindset check rather than a list of tips. A few of my clients kept bringing this up with me, so I figured a lot of you are dealing with it too. Peopl...

The other day, my 15-year-old son Aiden cleaned out our pantry without anyone asking him to. As he threw out the chips and crackers, he said, "I don't eat unhealthy like that anymore." I haven't stopped thinking about that sentence. He wasn't talking about a diet, a macro plan or a coach's rules. He was telling me who he is now. In this episode, I look at why so many...

If you could track one number that shows how long and how well you'll live, it would be your VO2 max. In this episode of the 9 to 5 Wellness podcast, I'm diving into VO2 Max: what it is, why researchers treat it as a longevity biomarker, and how busy professionals can raise it. Many of my clients and patients put it this way: "I don't feel old, and I want to stay this way.&quot...

It's a listener Q&A episode — two questions, no fluff. First: why core muscles don't show up no matter how hard you train them. Second: why "doing everything right" for your health can still leave you completely exhausted. Key takeaways Ab definition is a body-fat story, not just a training story You can't out-crunch a bad diet "Toned" isn't a separate p...

Ever wondered why you can nail a presentation with friends but completely freeze when it's time to deliver it to your team or at a big pitch? In this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, Aesha is joined by Dr. David Lee Fish — a communication expert who's spent decades helping professionals, performers, and athletes close the gap between their expertise and their delivery under pressure. Dr. Fish...

Forget January — fall is the smartest, most natural time to reset your goals. In this episode, we break down the science of why autumn motivation actually works better than New Year's resolutions, walk through a practical 90-day goal review framework, and dig into specific healthspan and fitness goals worth building into your fall. What You'll Learn Why January is biologically and psycho...

I hear it all the time from my male patients and clients: "I don't have time to work out." So in this episode, I wanted to dig into that excuse with someone who lives it himself. I sat down with Coach Brian Parana, a men's health coach with over 23 years of experience helping busy professionals and elite athletes — including an Olympic silver medalist and a CrossFit world champ...

This episode of the 9 to 5 Wellness Podcast features a conversation with Kristina, a nutritionist specializing in anti-inflammatory nutrition. The discussion covers women's nutritional needs across menstrual phases and life stages, including pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, and menopause. Topics covered include: Cycle Syncing An overview of the four menstrual phases—menstruation, follicu...

On this episode of the podcast, I sat down with Lisa Dougherty, founder and CEO of the nonprofit MedFit Education Foundation, to talk about advancing education at the intersection of healthcare, fitness, and wellness. Lisa shared that she launched the foundation in 2017 to address the fitness industry's lack of training for working safely with chronic disease, medical conditions, and disabili...

In this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, I dig into why organizations really win or lose the talent war — and it's not about pay or flashy perks. It comes down to the day-to-day reality of culture. I talk about the "values versus reality" gap: employees don't judge culture by what's written in the handbook, they judge it by how time off requests, deadlines, and tough quarters a...

In this 9 to 5 Wellness Podcast episode, I interview Dr. Melissa Durham, Associate Dean of Organizational Success and Wellbeing at USC Mann School of Pharmacy, about reframing DEI as measurable belonging and organizational health rather than performative effort. We discuss why demographic metrics and self-reported data are limited, why retention and performance depend on systems that support diver...

In this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, I sit down with Bosee Akheduri — motivational speaker, corporate trainer, author, and CEO of Goal and Grind LLC — to talk about workplace burnout, disengagement, and the unsustainable cultures so many of us are working in. Bosee makes the case that joy isn't just a nice-to-have — it's a strategic tool that drives better leadership, performance, and ret...

On this episode of 9 to 5 Wellness, I sat down with Coach Brian to dig into a question I get asked constantly: should you train fasted or fed? We broke down what fasted training actually means — working out on an empty stomach after going roughly 10 to 12 hours without eating — and talked through the real benefits, like the modest fat-loss edge over fed training, better metabolic flexibility, and...