Increasing Physical Activity

Most of us know that there are inherent benefits to exercise and I have even spoken to many of these benefits in prior newsletters. I will not belabor these benefits today but rather address how to achieve these benefits by incorporating activity into your daily life. I want to add the disclaimer that I am not a certified personal trainer or physical therapist. You should always consult with a professional if you have a unique situation that limits mobility or function.

1. Workout at home. If schedules or budgets don’t allow you to get to the gym consistently, look for ways to workout at home. Facebook Marketplace is a great option for buying sporting equipment gently used. You can also pay a monthly subscription for both Yoga and Pilates classes to follow along from home. My home office also doubles as my workout space. It features a weight rack, a curl bar, resistance bands, medicine balls and a under the desk peddle bike. I have a simple routine with weights that I follow three times a week.

2. Incorporate activity while working. Who doesn’t want to be more productive and time efficient? If you have a sedentary job like me, you are likely not moving your body enough during the day. One way to account for this is to increase activity while working. I have an under the desk peddle bike that I use during sessions. I have also hopped on the elliptical during a training or less interactive team call. How can you pair a job duty with movement?

3. Increase your steps. My former office was located on the third floor of a Historic building. I regularly took the stairs in lieu of the elevator to work in additional steps and avoid the creepy and creaky experience of the elevator. Can you challenge yourself to work in additional steps throughout the day? Can you take a break every two hours to get up and walk around your office or around the building for 15 minutes?

4. Incorporate activity into play. There are lots of ways to play. Going to the movies, eating dinner and attending a concert are all fun but not very active. Other ways to play that are active include, but are not limited to, mini golf, picking strawberries, running a 5k, and pickle ball. Instead of going to see a movie, can you choose another activity that is more physical in nature?

5. Pair exercise with everyday tasks. If you know me, you know that pairing tasks are one of my favorite ways to get stuff done. As it pertains to exercise, you may want to consider pairing an activity with something naturally occurring in your environment. For example, my husband recently started pairing push-ups with a behavior that our son does. Our son likes to raise his torso off the floor and push himself backward on his belly. My husband began showing him how to do push-ups from a very similar position. Another example of this might be to pair squats, walking lunges or push-ups every time you take a bathroom break throughout the day. While 15 squats isn’t a lot of exercise by itself, 15 squats over 8 bathroom breaks for a total of 120 squats is much more substantial.

Recap of Topic: Increasing Physical Activity

Our bodies need to move. While we know and understand this, creating time for this is challenging when you are a working parent. All or none thinking can trick us into believing that unless we can set aside substantial time to attend the gym, then we can’t create time for activity. We often overestimate what we can do in the short-term and underestimate what we can do in the long-term. Working out at home, increasing your steps, incorporating activity while working, involving activity during play and pairing activity with everyday tasks are all ways to increase movement to create small, incremental progress.

Adopting Healthy Eating Habits

Each of us has our own unique relationship with food. For some, food is a resource needed to keep the body running. This relationship is one of practicality and necessity. For others, food meets an emotional need. Eating brings pleasure, peace, and enjoyment. While there is nothing wrong with either of these relationships, an over use of food for emotional reasons can result in unhealthy eating habits. We are going to explore some ways in which eating habits can become unhealthy and how to make small changes for big results.

1. Failing to budget. Each of us has a daily caloric intake that is needed to maintain our current body weight. If we want to lose weight, we need to take in fewer calories than this daily amount. Inversely, if we consume more than this amount we will gain weight. One of the biggest challenges to losing weight can be knowing how many calories you are taking in. Sometimes, we lose track of how much a handful of this and a handful of that can add up to be. A calorie tracker can be useful in helping you to learn how much calories you are taking in and setting a budget for creating a deficit if weight loss is your goal. Calorie tracker apps are readily available for both Apple and Android.

2. Mindful eating. When we are mindful in our eating, we can be intentional about what we are putting in our body, when we are full and how we feel when eating. The opposite is also true. When we are distracted when eating, we can overeat and binge on unhealthy, caloric dense foods. To be mindful in your eating, it is generally recommended that you do not eat in front of a screen. Moreover, intentional preparation of a plate can control for portion size and diversity of food selection.

3. Not eating enough and not eating regularly enough. This may seem paradoxical but you actually have to eat consistently to lose weight. Now, if you went long enough without food you would of course lose weight but your body will eat it’s own muscle before it breaks down fat. Remember, weight loss does not mean fat loss. When you eat a balanced meal regularly, you are teaching your body that food is a plentiful resource and it does not need to go into starvation mode. When your body is in starvation mode, it intentionally holds on to fat to ensure your survival. Inconsistent eating can also lead to binge eating behavior because you are starving. Usually binge eating is not mindful and sources of food tend to be options that are easy and quick. To get into the habit of eating regularly, you may want to consider adding calendar reminders or alarms to encourage you while building this habit.

4. Inadequate water consumption. Our bodies need water and lots of it. The benefits of water consumption are vast from flushing the body of toxins to improving cognitive functioning. Water consumption also helps with appetite and the feeling of fullness. For this reason, foods higher in water content are helpful in creating a feeling of fullness and are lower in calories. If you struggle to drink water, water enhancers can be used to encourage hydration. My favorite is Mio and I especially prefer the lemonade flavor.

5. Snacking. I can eat perfectly all day long until about 9 PM. I don’t know what it is about this witching hour but my body demands snacks. In all fairness, this is mostly habit and occasionally hunger. Over the years, I have found a few things that help with the snack attack. I never keep snacks in my bedroom. This is just an invitation for over indulgence. I have also learned to ask my husband for help in reminding me that I likely don’t need a snack but just want one. This additional layer of accountability is useful when I am teetering in my will power. Finally, I have accepted that foregoing the urge to snack is uncomfortable. Eventually, the discomfort passes but it can take days to weeks before the signal dissipates if I have gotten back into the habit of snacking.

6. Balanced plate. Creating a balanced plate involves portion control for various food groups. Specifically, 25% lean meat or protein, 25% carbohydrate and 50% vegetable. Believe it or not, Amazon actually sells plates that are partitioned in these exact ways. There are diet options out there that do not subscribe to this. If those diets work for you, that is great. Portion control eating has been proven by the National Institute for Health to aid in weight loss.

7. Accessible food options. Lots of “diet foods” are still high in calories or deficient in macro-nutrients. For example, have you ever looked at the label on a protein bar or health shake? While you can find high quality items, many of them are high in sugar and added fats. An option is to make your own with high quality ingredients. My favorite protein powder is made by Optimal Nutrition and can be purchased off Amazon or at GNC and Publix. Another thing to consider about accessible food is your will power. Are you the type of person who can have one piece of chocolate and walk away? If you are not, you may want to avoid keeping these items in the house or entrust them to a loved one to portion out for you.

Recap of Topic: Adopting Healthy Eating Habits

When evaluating your eating habits, I want you to ask yourself what changes, if any, are needed. Once you have established these goals, I want you to determine what incremental steps you can begin taking. Again, the goal here is progress and not perfection. Maybe you can’t commit to foregoing the snack attack monster but you can commit to scheduling meals times. That’s fantastic! I encourage you to revisit this idea several times over the coming months. Simply put, once you create one change can you challenge yourself to create another and another. Over time, these small steps can yield huge results.

Exploring Barriers to a Fit Mindset

Every change begins in the mind. For some people, a decision can be made easily and quickly and change is immediate. For others, they may sit in a place of indecision weighing the pros and cons of change for months or years before deciding on a course of action. Neither are wrong, it’s just important to know your readiness for change and the barriers that you have created in your own mind toward change. The following are some common thinking errors when it comes to adopting a fit mindset.

1. Form over function. I frequently see this struggle with both male and female clients. It manifests as a desire to look a certain way, weigh a particular amount or wear a desired size. These are what I refer to as form goals. These goals are based on what form they desire the body to take. An alternative way of conceptualizing health and fitness is function goals. In lieu of focusing on how the body should look or how much it should weigh, the goal here is how the body performs. Examples of this include, how far the body can walk, how much the body can carry and how the body can move. What I usually tell clients is that if you are creating goals for fitness that address how your body needs to function for your daily demands and needs, form will follow. Function goals address wellness throughout the lifespan whereas form goals only address a desired presentation which will not be attainable over time.

2. All or none thinking. I referenced this earlier but examples might include, “If I can’t meal prep for the week, then there is no use in trying to create better habits.” or “I missed my workout today. I knew I couldn’t stick to a routine.” When we use all or none thinking, we can not embrace incremental change and we cannot tolerate setbacks. In lieu of this, I encourage a daily reset that focuses on what you can control today with the tools, knowledge, time and resources you have at your disposal.

3. My scale is broken. This is a common thought distortion based on a lack of knowledge associated with weight fluctuations and an understanding of your body. The goal for weight loss is FAT LOSS. One pound of fat is comprised of 3500 calories. What this means in practice is that if you weighed 178 pounds yesterday and weigh 180 pounds today, you would have had to eaten 7000 calories the previous day to have gained 2 pounds of fat. Most daily weight fluctuations are based on water and waste. If the scale doesn’t budge from day to day this DOES NOT mean that your efforts are for nothing. Moreover, muscle weighs more than fat. If you are combining strength training with a caloric deficit you may not notice a change in the scale for some time. This does not mean that you have not lost fat.

4. The scale is my enemy. I have personally struggled with this mindset. For a great many years, I did not weigh myself because of the mental and emotional triggers this caused me. While it was effective in avoiding anxiety, it was not effective in addressing the underlying thinking patterns and pathology. The scale simply offers you a number. Nothing more and nothing less. The meaning you place on this number comes from the messages you have received and internalized about who you are. Avoiding the scale doesn’t mean these messages cease to exist. In lieu of a total ban, I recommend scheduled weigh-ins to ensure that your weight remains in a range that is healthy for you. If you are actively trying to lose weight and have scale anxiety, you may want to consider a weekly versus daily weigh-in. I will add one disclaimer to the above information. If you have a history of weighing yourself compulsively and notice that this behavior causes you marked anxiety, then I recommend a break from the scale while you work with a therapist to address thinking patterns and behaviors.

5. Failing to acknowledge progress. When we fail to acknowledge progress, we minimize or dismiss all of the steps that are required to go from the decision to change to the end goal. I have sat with many clients who fail to acknowledge progress across many life domains. This always saddens me because these clients typically live with feelings of not being enough. These beliefs are tough because the statement, “I’m not enough,” is so all encompassing. I encourage clients who suffer from these core beliefs to define what is enough. Usually, this question is met with a blank stare. When determining a quantity for enough, I encourage people to think of themselves as dimmer switches versus light switches. As a dimmer switch, what is enough light to see in this room? As a dimmer switch, what is enough progress toward your goal for today?

6. I can’t have what I want. While there is some truth to this, a more accurate statement might be, I can have what I want but I have to budget for this in my daily calories. There are several ways to create a surplus of calories for the day from eating lower calories meals and adding in exercise. A combination of these both will net a large number of calories in your budget that you can use for any splurge item you desire. Moreover, it’s okay to have an imperfect day. Our goal is progress not perfection. One imperfect day every couple of weeks will not detract from your overall fitness goals.

Recap of Topic: Barriers to a Fit Mindset

Everyone has thought distortions. In all fairness, I haven’t met everyone but every human I’ve ever met had thought distortions. Often times thought distortions are subtle but have marked impacts on our behavior and mood. It is possible to have other thought distortions associated with adopting a fit lifestyle. I shared some of the common ones I have seen in my personal and professional life. When combating thought distortions, you can try asking yourself, “Is there another way to think about this?” or “How have I tied this belief to myself?” Another way to combat thought distortions is to consult with a team of professionals to include your physician, a dietician, a personal trainer and a therapist.

^{Recommended Product of the Week}

This week’s recommended product(s) is the DeskCycle Under Desk Bike Pedel Exerciser. The DeskCycle 2 exercise bike offers 8 resistance settings and up to 39 pounds of resistance. Our high inertia flywheel spins 14 times per pedal stroke, simulating a smooth, challenging, real-bike feel.