You Only Have Enough Energy For One Choice

   Often I see new clients at a crossroad. Out of trepidation they stand with one foot firmly in the past and the other in their future. Two choices, two possible outcomes that require all your energy, time and resources. I don’t mean your financial or material resources but your inner resources. Undertaking personal change, self-improvement or self-evolution demands much, deserves much. No matter the goal be it healthy eating, improved fitness, meeting a physical challenge of any kind requires something no one really discusses. It requires brass, chutzpah. You need to boldly turn away from your former self and embrace the new you that has not yet materialized. You only have enough energy for one choice.

Make that decision and own it. Be a lazy person that sleeps in and shuns physical exercise. BE that if your choice is to skip training sessions, fail to complete the homework or neglect to bring 100% of your effort each and every time you train. Be overweight, plump, big-boned whatever you want to refer to yourself as if you choose to over-indulge in food, soda pop or what have you. If you are truly a foodie and as a result eat more than your person can utilize then the outcome is weight gain. Without compensating for the input with output you have made the choice silently. If you choose to eat and not workout be happy with what you have. The choice, after all, is yours.

These choices I refer to are more than temporary ideals, fancy ways to spend 12 weeks then revert back to your old ways. What I am really asking of you is to dig deeper. Consider that your personal values those core beliefs you espouse to follow are what drive your daily choices. Therefore, rather than state you will lose weight through exercise check your values. Do you value your health and the way you represent yourself in life? Are you affronted by others that do not care for themselves yet feel you are immune? Do you value a balanced life that embraces great food and a great health? Are you proud of how you look and feel?
If you quietly assess your true motivation your honest goals you will find that the choices are simple. Do what you must to up hold your values. If you have been lax in the physical fitness department and gotten a little soft admit it, accept it, forgive yourself and get back to your beliefs. The guilt people complain about feeling when they gain weight or give up a hobby is not necessarily about the physical results but the emotional and self-conceptual ones. You just don’t like yourself that much when you offend your own value system. You let yourself down.

The best thing about this soul-searching and value defining exercise is that it is much more motivating than all the other empty things we do in order to “change”. Looking for the best workouts, buying new workout gear, new gym memberships, fitness magazines… and on and on. We find we have all the intrinsic motivation we need when we calibrate our life with our values.Motivation begets desire and desire begets action which leads to results and it self perpetuates. You only have enough energy for one choice. Either make a change that reflects who you really are or don’t and live that life instead. Standing with one foot in the lazy life and one foot in the active life will lead nowhere you want to be and you will be drained when you get there. Choose wisely.

Shameless Self Promotion

The new year is here! When Saskatchewanites become shut-ins due to the wrath of Old Man Winter. Nothing but time to reflect and watch Netflix. The large majority of folks also contemplate getting in shape or losing weight or both. Years of gaining weight solved in 6 weeks or less. (Sheesh!) Well, I am here to tell you that isn’t going to happen but give me 6 weeks and your best effort and we will be on the right track.

I am excited about my new opportunity. My Personal Training Practice has partnered with Brownstone Health, a group of medical health professionals; Physiotherapists, Registered Massage Therapists, Chiropractic Doctors, Acupuncture Therapists, Sport Therapists, Nutritionists and ME an Exercise Therapist .We are NOT a gym as people think of gyms. Rather we offer one on one and group training but no “open gym time hours”. Therefore, no fees in addition to your training investments. Simple. Yeah for simple!

Here is all you need to know in order to become a client of mine!

You will thrive as my client if you want to:

• Remodel your overall health and body shape
• Desire to workout HARD
• Make a lifestyle shift
• Learn as you get fit
• Work around an old or new injury that keeps down

I train individuals and buddies. Just let us know when you sign up!

http://www.brownstonehealth.ca/future-appointments

http://www.brownstonehealth.ca/

ADDRESS

Brownstone Plaza: 102-1275 Broad Street, Regina, SK

Phone 306.779.1275

Fax 306.779.1276

HOURS

Mon – Thu: 8:30am – 5:00pm

Fri: 8:30am – 12:30pm

Weekdays upon request for Personal Training Clients.

You HAVE Fat, You’re NOT Fat.

Yikes, unless your body composition measurement states otherwise. If you weigh 300lbs and 250lbs of it is fat, then well, you are mostly fat. Sorry. Today’s blog rant is not focused on the total weight of anyone. I am ranting on “How“. How did you become 300lbs? How long did that take? How did you not notice? How do you expect to lose the weight? How did you decide that ONE MONTH would be about the right amount of time for this epic endeavor?

Okay, settle down, this is not going in the direction you think. I am on the good side. I want people to be their version of healthy, happy and fit. Whatever that is for them. I don’t care what size someone is. I don’t care what level of fitness they are at and might want in the future. What I care about, what ticks me off, what makes me crazy is unrealistic expectations. The world of health science is on my side. Dr. Len Kravitz wrote in his paper titled, Exercise Motivation: What starts and Keeps People Exercising, that, “… 50% of persons starting an exercise program will drop out in the first 6 months…” He said further,

People who over-estimate their expectancies from exercise are most likely to drop
out (Whaley and Schrider, 2005). Thus a person who expects to lose a lot of weight from
exercise, and does not, is likely to drop out from the exercise program. The message here
denotes how pivotal ‘realistic’ weight loss goals presented in an ‘attainable’ ‘timeline’
(See Figure 1 for all S.M.A.R.T. goals) are imperative to helping a person stay with the
exercise program.

Let’s look at an example in the numbers.

Can anyone reduce their daily calorie intake by 3850 calories? Nope. Could they use a combination of exercise and diet to achieve this daily deficit? Not likely. But, I gave an example of a 100-day weight loss goal that is reasonable and achievable. Not 30-days, not 60-days but 100-days just over 3 months to lose 33 pounds. Oh, my, that looks like a sensible 8-10 pounds per month! Well, haven’t you heard that somewhere, as in EVERY where, before? The reasons I am skeptical of client proposed timelines are as follows:

• In this example I assumed a female of 30 years at the average height of 5’6″.
• At a weight of 212 pounds this woman requires about 2100 calories just to maintain her lifestyle.
• If she were a regular Jane eating kind of awful yet lying about it to her trainer. She likely eats around 3500 calories daily.
• In an ideal fantasy world she would reduce her intake like this 3500-2100 = 1400! 1400 calories less daily!
• Then she would expend 3850-1400 = 2450 calories performing various exercise daily. DAILY people!
• Come ON!

Here are more numbers to boggle and amaze. Same woman, performing 30 minutes of various exercises could expect to burn 165-547 calories. Even if she had nothing to do BUT lose weight and could spare 2 hours a day in the gym she would still be shy of 2450 daily calories burned. Remember my “Realistic” version, odd how the elliptical plus skipping dessert would achieve the deficit required. Hummmmm. Take a look!

A couple more things to consider when you decide to dump fat in an alarmingly irresponsible short amount of time. You will quit. You will give up on the goal. Not because the goal is a dumb goal. More because you were dumb to set a timeline so ridiculous, so childish that you set yourself up to fail. You. Not your spouse. Not your friends and family. And definitely not your fitness trainer. You. You. You.

One last bit of caution. Just because you are eating healthy food fat doesn’t magically melt off your body. I selected one of the many “Eat This Not That” charts on the web to give you some idea of what I mean. Just because you eat only one Whopper instead of two doesn’t mean you are eating “better“. Having a dressing soaked salad with buffalo chicken wings isn’t going to produce a six-pack of abs. If you eat too much or not enough in some cases, you’ll have a tough time losing weight.

In order to not get trapped in the “I can’t lose weight” forest of excuses, here is something to consider. Take your doctor’s, trainer’s and nutritionist’s advice. Set a timeline that is reasonable. Respect the fact that you did not gain the weight in 30 days so why on earth would you expect to lose it in that amount of time?

I’m not dense. I know what clients really mean when they say, “I want to be more fit and lose some weight…. by December 2nd.” Don’t snow me or your trainer. When you throw out a timeline you’re busted.

I watch a ton of COPS reruns. Yeah, judge me if you like, I don’t care. When the cops roll up behind the bad guys its always the same. The bad guys slow down only to squeal off and make a break for it. Then end up in cuffs with gravel on their face and bruises all over from a rough take down.

When you visit the gym and speak to your trainer about your fitness and weight lose goals it’s a little like the COPS show. You know you did something wrong (fat, out of shape) and now you are singing like a canary. Telling a great story about wanting to be fit but only if that can happen by a certain date (running from the cops). Bargaining with your training and your health by setting a time limit is still running away from the difficult task of getting fit and healthy. Simply, you are lying to yourself. When it comes assessment time with your trainer and the numbers aren’t dropping, the cuffs come out. Your trainer, hopefully, will tell you straight. Your goals are not realistic. Now you are face down in the gravel.

You don’t want to rehabilitate your lifestyle if you put a ridiculous timeline on your health goals. You are no better than a gang-banger on her third arrest saying she really, really, really wants to get a job but the life sucks her back in. December 2nd, February 14th or whatever date you select in your wishful mind will come and go. The only difference is whether you’ve quit or are still on the path to a healthy weight, realistic fitness level and a new life?

The choice is yours. The red and blue lights are flashing in the vehicle behind you. Slow down, do what your told and it will all be okay. Happy Holidays, make sensible New Years Resolutions everyone!

Fraud in the Fitness Industry?

Of course there is fraud in the fitness industry. Why should you care? Because the fraudulent aspect of the fitness industry is stealing your money, robbing you of a positive self-concept and promoting unrealistic fitness expectations. No different from the beauty and banking industry, real estate and stock market sector even, gasp, politics. The lies and deception are intrinsic to these economic sectors to the degree that it is expected, even if that expectation is subconscious. Let me illustrate this. No one really believes that a fitness model developed her body by performing the exercises in the pictures that accompany a workout article, or supplement advertisement. The same can be assumed in the banking and financial world. No one truly thinks one bank over another, this one investment, stock or mutual fund is the answer to all their financial dreams. Your “dream home”, really? And a politician that tells the truth is the longest standing joke second only to, “Knock, Knock”. So why am I so disturbed by the fitness industry and the hoard of undereducated, over publicized rip off artists in it? At home training videos have a place in an individual’s fitness experience, I agree! Why do the “stars” of these videos have to be such frauds? Isn’t it possible to sell really great videos featuring fitness professionals with excellent credentials and not just “stars” or “models” lying their faces off after, at best, a weekend crash course in exercise?

The big names in the industry don’t have big education credentials. The results people achieve in their living rooms has more to do with the individual effort and food choices than the “expert” trainer in the videos. Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons, Jillian Michaels, and Tony Horton do not have degrees in Kinesiology, Exercise Physiology. One doesn’t have a degree at all the others hold Arts or Marketing degrees. I especially like when trainers hold Psychology degrees, how exactly does Freud help my Erector Spinae? In each of their biographies name dropping and extensive past performance details substitute for educational clout. That said, we all have heard that some people are “book smart” but can’t apply the knowledge to practise. The same idea when people say, “those who can ‘do’ and those who can’t ‘teach’. In the fitness world, as it should be in my opinion, great fitness education would be the independent variable for successful personal training. As it is now, media has put the whammy on public logic. Holding out celebrities and movie stars as fitness gurus has effectively convinced the public that educated personal trainers and physical fitness results are mutually exclusive. They cannot exist together. You need a “star” to succeed. In fact, the value of a personal trainer has become their “star” quality. How famous are they? Do they look the part of a personal trainer?

Not only is this dangerous to people in a physical way it is unhealthy emotionally for everyone. Trainers are not allowed to be anything but toned, tanned and beautiful. Clients are still pressured to become toned, tanned and beautiful. All of this is ridiculous. Everyone is different. Some of us have previous injuries that changed our bodies and our potential. Women and men have different body fat needs. We are all basically the same in our DNA and physiology but the expression of that DNA and physiology is very different. Anatomical structure variances can be nonpathologic as can biochemical differences. Our 12 systems of the body all work in concert until they don’t then having a trainer with specific knowledge, experience and expertise is essential to your health and progress.

 

The hard scientific facts are these, when you hire a professional personal trainer you achieve better results. Period. Research studies have found the following interesting trends when comparing the results of supervised and unsupervised training:

• you choose heavier weights. In a study conducted in 2008 with 46 women, those with a PT (Personal Trainer) selected up to 57.4%  heavier weights than when training alone. Heavier weights produce better results, faster.
• you are more likely to stick to your fitness schedule. Again, a group women were studied in 2011 for the purpose of evaluating adherence to physical activity while supervised and unsupervised. A near perfect attendance of 95.4% when supervised versus 64.5% when unsupervised.
• if you have a low-work ethic, a strong work ethic can be taught through high-effort training. In a 1985 related study, the psychological make-up of a person may determine their results in the classroom and the gym. Participants in this study were given supervised high-effort training for mental testing. The group of people with strong work ethics resisted cheating on the exams for a greater length of time than the low work ethic group. However, the low work ethic group attempted to solve the test problems for a much greater amount of time after receiving high-effort training. Work ethic improves when we are challenged! PT’s challenge you to work hard, you learn to appreciate the results that stem from a stronger work ethic.

On a personal note, I see work ethic, adherence and intensity improvements in every client I work with. They start out reaching for the 5 pound weights. After I slap their hands and hand them the 10 pound weights they begin to see the light. Here are just a few select situations from my time with my clients.

1. A young female client accepted the 8 pound dumbbell and said she did not believe she could raise it above her head. My response was to take the weight away and give her a 10 pound weight instead and drive her to raise it above her head 5 times. From that day onward she marvelled at each progressively heavier weight she lifted. She never again reached for anything lighter than 10 pounds. When she squat pressed a 30 pound barbell she could not stop smiling. Her results: improved overall strength, reduced body fat, increased lean mass, improved self-concept.
2. A lovely new mom came to see me around the same time each session. Each time we met she looked longingly at the group training session that was ongoing. I asked what was so intriguing. Her response was to ask me if I thought she could do that. What she meant was lift these heavy looking barbells the class participants were using. She didn’t realize that the bars only held about 25 pounds so I rigged an exact match up for her and handed it to her with one hand. For effect you see, just to let her know it was not scary. Her response to lifting it over her head in a clean was to laugh. Once again, she never reached for a light weight again. She continues to ask for “hard” workouts and “heavy” weights.
3. A larger female client of mine was shy about the gym floor. She stuck to the private areas and I wondered why. Middle way through a session I asked her if she had any “unbelieveable” goals. She said she wanted to walk down into the weight lifting area but was intimidated. My response was to say, “Let’s go!”. I marched her through the area and invited her to “pick up a weight any weight at all” but it had to be from the heavy section. Her response was to reach for a surprising 55 pound dumbbell. I encouraged her to bend her knees, straighten her back, harden her core, use two hands and pull quickly and steadily. The smile on her face was beautiful. No more shyness in the weight room area, she dominated the squat rack and Olympic press rack for weeks afterward.

I am not a fan of videos when the viewer is able bodied, has enough discretionary funds for a gym and has the motivation to start with a Personal Trainer. Its called Personal Training because it is personal, its about you. Not about money, flashy outfits, white teeth and a ridiculous tan – you and your body and how it operates. I recommend pushing yourself harder and harder each time you workout. Your personal integrity, work ethic and motivation sometimes are not enough. You need a professional that will take you to your limit, safely drive you to be better, stronger and faster. Setting the goal of “getting in shape” is vague and useless. Committing yourself to a new lifestyle full of rewarding personal challenges requires a partner and leader that knows you, can see your work and struggle and guide you to be better every day. There is no video for that.