Stout but fit, just like Pooh Bear

First impressions are powerful thoughts that cause us to judge people in an instant. What do we base these judgments on and how do we know if they are the truth/reality?

If you met a slim gentleman (A) and a gentleman that was stout (B) what would your first impressions of their fitness and health be? Most people would assume gentleman A to be fitter and healthier due to their visual look. Society amongst other things, has taught us to believe that slimmer is fitter but is this the truth. Firstly we must ask ourselves what is fitness and health and is size and shape the only measure of it?

If you asked a group of people what health and fitness was to them and asked how they would measure it, you would get many different answers. Health and fitness is subjective and as such can only be defined by the individual and their personal parameters. Therefore, one persons perception of fitness (I can walk to work and not get out of breath) can be totally different to another’s (I can bench press 100kg) and therefore their body shape will look nothing alike. Who is right and who is wrong?

Is Pooh Bear fit? He is stout and cuddly yet he walks every day and plays lots! Does that make him fitter than a model who eats little nutrition, hardly trains due to lack of energy yet has little if any body fat and fits societies “healthy” shape. There are plenty of people I know who on first impressions would be perceived to be “overweight” and “unfit” due to their size yet I would not like to take them on in the gym. And I am not talking about the big muscle men just Joe Blogs.

So when we judge on first impressions what are we actually doing? When we have information presented to us, in this case in the form of an “overweight” person, we delete, distort and generalise the information and base our reality on past experienced, personal values and beliefs. Our own belief about people and situations are not reality only our own reality. Reality exists but is never experienced by anybody. All we known is our own reality created by years of experience, deep routed beliefs and learnt truths. What you perceive in people is merely a reflection of your own deep values.

Does a size 12 define us?

Why have we become so obsessed with numbers and what they mean in the weight loss/body shape world? I don’t believe there is a single woman who has not been upset because a certain size top, pair of jeans/trousers or skirt, did not fit her in a particular shop. And men are not exempt from this. And when these outfits don’t fit, we instantly feel it’s a, bad day or I’m fat and no good, this exercise/diet/healthy eating is just a waste of time, why should I bother, pass me the chocolate and crisps!! What is frightening is when the questions lead you to ask, ‘if I’m not a 12, who am I?’ As if a size is defining who you are.

There are many reasons we have ended up with these thoughts and beliefs, unfortunately they are not easy to stop, we can’t just say stop doing it. But if we can at least be come conscious of what is happening and know when it’s happening we are on the way to helping ourselves feel better. So what are some of the influence?

• Media
• Marketing
• Celebrities
• Peers and friends
• Learnt behaviours

Media, marketing and celebrities are constantly bombarding us with what we should look like, what we should wear and how to wear it. A question we should first ask is who said and will that suit me, someone who is not only bone? But this is not what we think or believe due to a life time of instilled beliefs and values and now it is very difficult to break these learnt patterns and behaviours. Instead we discuss it with friends and work colleges and fuel the situation further. Can anybody see the label in your clothing? Do people really look and think oh she is a size… or do they think she has good figure or do they not really care? I believe it is more about your own perception of yourself that you project onto what others might be thinking.

Manufactures also have a major part to play in the size war. How can we say we are, per say, size 12 when every brand of cloths is a different size, every style is a different size and I am sure you have experienced it before, sometimes even the exact same rack of tops/jeans are slightly different in size. If this is the case how can we ever be just one size? Most of us know what style makes us look good and what brands fit so why don’t we go with what will make us feel good and not set ourselves up to experience pain?

It is a sad a distressing time to think that if we don’t fit into a specific size we are not who we thought we were and are not good enough. Why not look outside the label and ask better questions, such as how do I look as me (not as a size), how do I feel and what is important in my world and if like most you’re not totally happy ask yourself ‘am I working towards that I want to be?’ If you’re not, why not start now to be who you what to be, not what a false media driven world tells you, you should be.

Societal expectations are killing us!

Is it not time we started to realise the negative effect we are having on ourselves with the latest diet, exercise regime and you must be….expectations?

What are some of these ‘societal expectations’?

• Be slim and fit into the BMI range (to be discussed in a later blog)
• Keep up with the latest fashion and look (at work and/or social)
• Eat only this… (depends what you have read or latest fad)
• Exercise at least 3 times a week for an hour
• Use the latest gimmick to exercise it will definitely work
• Remember your British, stiff upper lip and tell people everything is good
• Been tanned or white, depending on the latest look
• Work hard and long hours to be successful
• Spend lots of time with your family or you’re not a good parent/husband/wife

These are a selection of societal expectations and they vary across cultures and families.

We are all brought up in a world that is dictated by unwritten expectations, we are never actually given a list about these farcical rules, nor do we consciously sign up to them. But, whether we are aware of them or not they are there and have been for years. Many expectations are instilled in us from an early age and they become part of our reality. We then live by these ‘rules’ and feel guilty or bad if we do not maintain them and believe we have let people down or failed. How can we have failed or been bad if what we have broken are only expectations created over time that hold no more truth or absolute fact than teddy bears talk (which most of us believed at some point!).

In addition to this how many hours do we truly believe we have in a day to achieve and reach all these expectations. We have set ourselves up to fail before we have even started. But hey, let’s get on with them and try and then prove to ourselves we are not good enough.

If only society could step back and look at what it’s creating. We (as we all follow and feed into these nonsense) are creating extremes in many aspect of our lives such as; body size, eating disorders of all types are increasing both gaining and losing weight and working hours are extreme, more unemployed and at the same time, more people working crazy hours. The amount of people that you speak to who are having weight or work challenges is countless. Yes we need to work to live and have a ‘healthy’ lifestyle but at what cost must we have these. It seems only to apt, that depression is at an all time high. There must be a middle ground and not the extreme we find ourselves in today.

What would it take to have values, rather than expectations, that allow people to accept themselves more easily and not be judged in a heartbeat on what we (society) expects of them? What would our values have to be for this to exist?

What is health?

The word health is used in so many different ways today but what actually is it and how do we achieve health if indeed that’s what we are aiming for. Is it slimness, is it how far you can run, is it how many hours you can function for and does it vary with all of us.

The dictionary definition of health is: the condition of the body and the degree to which it is free from illness, or the state of being well (taken from the online Cambridge Dictionary).

Many people feel they are free from illness and it is hard to argue with them as they may well appear healthy and participate fully in the activities they have become used to doing on a day to day basis. However, what if you asked a model to play a game of squash? Would she be able to play the game for more than 10 minutes and if she can’t, does that make her unhealthy? I am sure she looks slim and fits ‘societal healthy’.

One of the key indicators of health today, is that you are slim. As obesity rises, more and more importance is being put on the waist line measurements. I am not saying they are not of use and have some relevance but are they everything and are these measurements causing us to make bad decisions on how to become healthy?

If your waist line is bigger than the ‘norm’, a fast way to lose the inches is to eat low fat or low sugar foods. But do these foods really put life and therefore health into your body? Our bodies make 3millon cells a second. Would you feed a new born or small infant low fat/low sugar food, or would you choose foods packed with nutrition to nourish the body? As adults we somehow think we are different but just like children we are growing everyday and as such need to put the right ingredients in to grow. Eating nutritious food 80% of the time may be one of the ways to improve health. Although we cannot see inside we need to know our cells are forming well and we can control this by what we choose to put in

What other factors may influence health?
Good sleep and sufficient rest
Water
Movement
Good thoughts
Safety
Love

As the media and Government continue to lose sight of the true definition of health and instead focus on the waist line, the obesity epidemic can only continue to rise. We need to address the whole person and strive to provide education on each missing aspect, with each individual, if we are to see improvements in health and indeed wellbeing.

Just Do It! And no, this is not a Nike promotion!

I am not sure about you but I have been told countless times by doctors, health care professionals and bosses to’ just go and do it’. Why do people think that if they say ‘you should just do it’ it’s going to solve the problem? Surly if we knew how to ‘just do it’ we would have done it by now and would not we wasting their time.

I find it hard to believe any of us choose not to go and do the things that would make us health, well and rich if we knew what to do and what was stopping us from doing them. Simply been told to ‘do it’ is not going to get to the route of the problem, rather mask the problem like pain killers do!

The question should be, ‘what is actually stopping us from getting what we want and how can we help ourselves?’ Let’s take weight loss as an example. The doctor says ‘just stop eating so much and exercise more’. I am pretty confident to say, most if not all, overweight patient know they need to eat less and move more. I mean it’s not rocket science! The true problem/question is what’s stopping them changing their present behaviour. How many people really address the deeper questions and change their behaviour for life?

We are all intelligent human beings and know what is right, the problems arise when emotions and beliefs get in the way and cause us to act in ways that are destructive to our wellbeing. If we do not address these deeper areas, emotions and beliefs, true change cannot happen. This is not to say we all have ‘issues’, what it is saying is, we have all picked up emotional attachments, beliefs and values throughout our lives. These can easily be retrained, just as easily as we change our mind about, say cloths we do and do not like. Have you ever looked back at a photo and thought ‘why would I buy something like that!’ At the time you must have liked it and now you have changed your beliefs and dislike it.

So next time you are told to ‘just do it’, have a think about the things you have always done and what your emotions, beliefs or values are around them. If you change these then the behaviour will follow suit.

Root Cause - Emotions not Behaviours

As our lives become more inactive due to cars, computers and the fear of gyms, to name but a few factors, its vital people eat healthier and find ways to move more. However, when we look at the statistics it is frightening to see how few people really change or maintain a healthy lifestyle for any considerable time. We have to ask ourselves, how do we create lasting change to solve this personal and societal, epidemic.

Many approaches to health and wellbeing are still segmental when in fact the human body is a unitary system with the mind and body being inseparable. Traditional approaches aim only to address the behaviour of an individual by implementing change with food and/or movement rather than the root cause (fig 1.) of the problem, emotions and thoughts which ultimately drive the behaviour.

The iceberg analogy (fig. 1) outlines the importance of getting to the root cause, the emotions/thoughts. Studies have shown how hard it is to change a behaviour, Paul Chek noted that it takes 300 repetitions to create a habit and 3500 to 5000 consistent repetitions (if you run the old habit just once, you have to start over) to change an old habit (Chek 2002). If this is even half true, how many people are going to consistently run the new habit successful at a conscious level and not give in to temptation? What is needed is an approach that has an impact at the fundamental level and influences the emotions and thoughts that drive an individual, consciously or unconsciously, to behave in the way they do. If change is made at this level then behaviour can only follow.

The brain is highly complex and will associate events and behaviours when the emotions are strong enough. When you hear the song to your first kiss/date do you feel set emotions? The brain has associated the music and the emotions. The same happens any time strong emotions occur alongside a specific behaviour like eating a box of chocolates when you feel lonely and sad. Each time you experience the feeling of loneliness or sad in the future you will crave that box of chocolates and likewise those specific chocolates could cause you to feel lonely or sad. Unless the emotions are addressed and understood, the behaviour of eating chocolates will never go for good.

There are many approaches that help people move forward from these associated emotions, everything from neuro linguistic programming (NLP), time line therapy and counselling to acupuncture and hypnosis.

It could be deduced from this that there is no point in simply working with food and movement as it all happens at the level of the brain/mind. However, as previously mentioned, you cannot split the mind and body. The body does influence the mind and so working with healthy eating and movement, in conjunction with emotions and thoughts is paramount. When the body is static and/or unhealthy food choices are made, the body is compromised from a nutritional point and this has knock on effects to energy levels and emotions. The neural networks run the entire body from muscles to memory so anything that influences one influences the other. It is for this reason we must educate people on the importance of addressing the entire body and help people create life changing strategies to health and fitness.

Back to Basics

There are over 25,000 different diet books on the shelves today. Magazines tell us about the latest celebrities doing no carbs, all carbs or some carbs. Confused? You’re not alone! Lets get back to basics

Why do we need to eat? We are made up of trillions of living cells. We make 3 million new cells every second. The physiological reason why we eat is to provide our bodies with the vitamins, minerals and nutrients it needs to make the cells that make up our bodies. It makes sense then that the food we eat need to be full of life and nutrition if it is going to serve our body well.

Processed, pre-packaged fast foods have little to no nutrition left in them. These foods are cooked to high temperatures to kill bacteria and to get them ready for a long shelf life. This process actually kills off nearly all the good enzymes and nutrition. So when we eat these foods, we are not providing our body with what it needs to make healthy cells – the only use for these foods is as stored fat!

So what should you eat? Quite simply, it takes life to give life. Food which is or has been alive and is minimally processed by humans, which includes all your vegetables, salad, fruit, beans, pulses, whole grains, fish, meat and plenty of water. If it’s fresh it’s good! Unlike processed food, the body breaks down fresh food slowly, utilising the nutrition and releasing calories at an even rate so that they don’t store. Fresh food also keeps us fuller longer, reducing our desire for sugary or processed snacks. So before you eat, ask yourself this question: how is this food serving my body

Processed food is popular because it fits in with our busy lifestyle. But eating fresh is easier than you think – preparation is the key. With shops open 24 hours a day and delivering to your door there is no excuse for not having fresh food in your home. Most supermarkets stock prepared fresh vegetables, which although not quite as good as unprepared, allows you to make a stir fry quicker than you can order and fetch your take away

Eating fresh, vibrant foods is not a diet – it’s a lifestyle. Eating with family and friends and enjoying the taste of our food is extremely important. That’s why no food is ‘banned’. If you stick to the 80/20 rule where you eat fresh, healthy foods 80% of the time, your body will be getting what it needs to be strong and healthy and will be able to cope with the other 20%.