Think Positive. Take Action. Be Accountable. BLARGH.

But first, I will take a selfie.

"Health and wellness" type pages on facebook seem all be either one or the other type of polar opposites.

At one end you have the all doom and gloom, guilt and shame pages about how "everything out there is killing you, but join our food cult and you'll be alright" variety... and... they're dressed up with a facade of positivity, but make no mistake... it is still based on scaremongering + the suggestion that anyone not in the gang/tribe/cult/whatever is some kind of dumb, lazy, undisciplined slob who actually doesn't deserve health or happiness.

Join us and live by our made up rules to prove that you do though, right?
Everyone knows how much I'm against that sort of nonsense, especially as all of the fearmongering is completely unfounded and only leads to all of the usual problems associated with restrictive dieting. You know what I'm talking about here.

At the other end of the scale you have the more "New Age" style positivity type pages which tend to be just a bunch of feel good crap with no substance behind it, as well.  Just peddling a bunch of easy answers, really. Decide that you're happy and the universe will deliver everything your heart desires because of your positive energy, or something.

As a side note I'm actually heavily influenced by so called "New Age" philosophies such as Taoism, Zen & Bushido especially from my days practicing martial arts. However, well... it gets complicated. On the one hand "with our thoughts we create the world", but on the other hand particularly in Taoism the universe is seen as cold and uncaring and what you "deserve" is irrelevant. That's my limited understanding on the subject, anyway.

You might pick up on that influence in some of my writing. In particular, many times I've talked about how "you don't get into shape by proving you're a good person, you get into shape by training and by providing sufficient energy and resources to perform, recover and adapt favourably to training". A puritanical approach to eating is entirely irrelevant in this, and if anything is actually less conducive to meeting those increased requirements of energy and other resources.

But anyway, I have digressed as usual.

Those two extremes are kind of like fire and ice, with the puritanical disciplinarians at one end and the hippy feel good stuff at the other end. I see my role as somewhere in the middle of those two extremes (like lukewarm water), providing sense and strategy for the minority of people out there who are too intelligent to be manipulated by those sort of shonky tactics.

Here's the thing. You DO need positivity and an approach that is about feeling good about who you are and where you are going. HOWEVER...

Just thinking positively isn't enough. You need to take action.
BUT...

Just taking action is not enough. You need to know that you have the correct (or I should say, "a suitable") course of action.

This has come up in conversation with a few of my clients recently. Clients who ARE getting somewhere NOW and who were not prior to working with me. It has come up a couple of times, how so many coaches out there seem to have nothing but "think positively, take action and be accountable" to offer.

It is nice advice in theory but entirely useless if they are not also providing you with that strategy, that suitable course of action that ENSURES success as long as you keep working at it.

It's a bit like someone asking how to get to your place for your BBQ or whatever. You don't just tell them “oh, you should drive in your car”. They need directions. They need a strategy. They're coming from a unique starting point to a specific destination. Each person's journey will be a little different although the goal is the same.

If you're shopping for a coach, that's the question you should be asking. HOW is this going to ensure success in my goals? If the only answer is “because you'll be taking action and being accountable” there is a huge part of the plan (aka, the actual plan) missing and I would suggest that that's actually the main component you were paying for in the first place.

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Observations on involuntary binge eating.

I'll start by saying that this is a complex and multifaceted issue, and circumstances from one individual to another will vary. Therefore this might not be applicable to everyone with a binge eating problem, but hopefully it might be to some.

I've long felt that over restriction of energy intake is the cause of all manner of other problems. Restricting or banning food choices actually makes you crave them and more likely to over indulge in them than if you'd adopted a flexible approach with a little room in the plan for a delicious treat in moderation.

I had a link to a study on that point but I'll have to try dig it up later and paste it in.

Now along with restriction of food choices also comes restriction of energy intake, either inadvertently due to avoidance of calorie dense foods, or deliberately via attempted adherence to a low calorie target. Often this will be the generic 1200 calorie diet, or restricting to BMR or even "netting your BMR".

So for the people who are quite active and enthusiastic about training, who are attempting to adhere to a low calorie diet as described above, but invariably end up going way, way off the rails eating what we might describe as.... well, let's just say significantly more than you intended...

My observation quite often is that this is a recurring or cyclical thing, and even though you end up quite upset (to say the least) and blame this "binge" eating for a lack of progress in your training or weight loss goals, your condition stays about the same and you don't re-gain weight or see any other regression in condition.

So for those people, here's my observation and my theory about what is going on. As I mentioned earlier, I believe most problems stem from trying to restrict to an unrealistic and inadequate total energy intake. To illustrate what an appropriate intake might look like just in terms of total calories, I came up with an imaginary / hypothetical case study of a 22 year old female client of about average height, about average weight, and above average participation in exercise and training.

Running the maths on this client at "extra active" level, the numbers were pretty high so I decided on "moderate activity" instead. I am working on the theory here that people in this situation even though they are indeed "extra active" are somehow convinced that it doesn't really count for some reason and they don't require as much fuel as another athlete at that level. So... ok then I will humour you and go with just "moderate activity".

If you are active and participating in sports or training most days, that's certainly "moderate activity" at the very least, right? Anyway for this hypothetical female client at moderate activity I crunch the numbers and decide that 2000 calories per day is the appropriate target to see better results, lean out a little and quite likely lose 5kg in the process.

Now... imagine that like many people, rather than the appropriate 2000 calories per day, this client is restricting to a target of 1400 calories per day. Now, that's 600 calories per day below the amount she actually REQUIRES. Not below maintenance, below REQUIREMENTS. At some point the body is going to say "enough is enough"... or rather, it is going to say "not enough is NOT enough" and demand the rest, all in one go.

Here's a little chart I made showing the amount you'd need to eat on a Sunday to get back up to 2000 per day on average, after restricting to 1400 calories per day for the week previous.

Now realistically, it won't necessarily happen on the seventh day rounding out a week of failed dieting. It might be the fourth, or the tenth, or whatever day. At some point though the human body will DEMAND the massive amount of missing energy (not to mention other nutritional resources) that it requires but has not received. And even though the conscious part of the brain that you hear as a little voice in your head might still be saying "no", that's not really the part that is running the show.

To my way of thinking this is self evident. People are upset and dismayed that they have ended up over eating to the tune of hundreds, or even thousands of calories in an afternoon or evening. Have they really though? If this happens regularly without resulting in significant weight gain, it is self evident that in actual fact, on average, they have only consumed the amount required to maintain their current weight. In other words, they've made up for what they needed but did not receive in the days prior.

In these situations it is the attempt of restricting below the amount that you require for good results that is to blame for a lack of progress, not the days when you inevitably, involuntarily "over eat" to make up the difference.

Since 2000 calories per day is the actual requirement in this case, in my opinion something like the following would be a much better strategy to ensure results from training and enjoyment of life as well.

 

As you can see, this is a decent and suitable amount each day and good stack extra on Saturday night to grab a pizza to share with your friend while watching a DVD or something nice like that.

The bottom line is: you cannot expect results from training by restricting your energy intake. You can’t expect to hold out and stick to that level of restriction in the first place, as your subconscious will take over and you will end up making up the difference involuntarily. But even if you COULD hold out, it wouldn’t be conducive to results from training anyway.

You MUST give your body what it REQUIRES not only to FUEL activity but to RECOVER and ADAPT positively to training.

Always remember: You are trying to BUILD something here.

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Health At Various Sizes.

Tell 'em, Caitlyn!

Oh lawd.

I got tagged on another "fitness" type page where there's all sorts of controversy going on over fat shamming and bullying. I got tagged as a better example of a trainer with a positive message, which was nice!

Here's the thing.

Body weight and even body composition isn't much of an indicator of health. Now OBVIOUSLY there's a limit where we know that excessive energy intake contributes to various problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and so on. And that coincides with weight gain for the same reason.

In some circles it is considered politically incorrect or unkind to acknowledge this, but the truth is the truth whether we like it or not.

But here's the thing.

We're talking about extremes here.

We're not talking about just "anyone who's not in ripped athletic shape" here. People can be "over weight" and still perfectly healthy. I'll be happy to have this confirmed by an MD/GP but I believe the same can be said for "obese". If I remember correctly the weight at which we expect to see a reduction in life expectancy is quite significantly above the cut off between overweight and obese.

Of course "reduction in life expectancy" and "general good health" are different topics and you could reasonably argue that the point at which health is compromised occurs well before the point that life expectancy is effected, and that this is still cause for concern.

But I digress.

The thing is that an overweight person is not necessarily unhealthy, and a "normal weight" person is not necessarily healthy. And most certainly the idea that anyone other than someone in athletic shape with an especially lean or "ideal" body composition is unhealthy is just ridiculous. Especially when so many unhealthy approaches are suggested as being necessary to achieve such a condition.

What I have come to understand over the past few years writing blogs and participating in discussions is that these are complex matters that need to to be handled with compassion and eloquence.

It might be true that a person's weight is excessive to a point that their health is compromised. Commenting on it in a judgmental manner that implies that they owe it to you to care more about their health is far from helpful or constructive. In most cases it comes across more as a form of concern trolling, where the real message is simply "I don't like fat people", but disingenuously mitigated with the "but it's not healthy" message.

It's complicated. Another individual's health is none of your business. However we do live in a society and what we all do as individuals does effect our society.

So if you have a concern that as a society, we're tending to be less active, less healthy, more likely to over indulge in excessive amounts of unhealthy foods, and so on... if you're concerned about where this is heading... fair enough. But singling out individuals for ridicule is not the answer. Shaming people for taking up too much space and telling them what they should care more about (aka their health, having a body type that you find less objectionable, whatever) is just offensive.

If you want to fix the problem, fix the fitness and weight loss industries that contribute to the problem via ineffectual, unhealthy approaches and guilt and shame based marketing.

Indignantly making people feel like they're not good enough and you're offended by their existence is hardly the way someone with positive intentions and concern for others would conduct themselves.

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