YOU Aren’t FAT!

Here’s an experiment…..

Get about 20 people together in a room. Give each person a blank sheet of white paper, and ask them to draw a picture of a house. For the sake of time and lack of artistic ability, tell them they have 5 minutes to prepare their house. Although some drawings may be similar, everyone’s perception of a house is different- some large, some small, some elaborate and some stick figured. However, it is more than likely that each house would occupy only a part of the whole page with each person starting their drawing at a different location on the page.

Get a different group of 20 people together in a room and perform the same experiment. But, before you tell them to start drawing, give them an “example” and show them a picture of a house that occupies the whole page. It is now more than likely that you’d see 20 large houses,  all resembling, very closely, the previously shown picture by taking up the majority of the page.

My point? We are heavily influenced by the opinions, acts and overall perceptions of other people. Sometimes, that influence is so strong that we forget about our own and why we should have our own.

In this experiment, it is important to realize that although we’re currently focusing on a “house,” that “house” is only part of the page.

Hell, if they weren’t shown an “example” picture before hand, maybe someone would have drawn something a little different to describe the term “house.”

Sure, there are overweight people. Sure, there are even obese people. Sure, there are people who simply just want to lose 10 pounds. Nonetheless, many times, in their eyes, they’re FAT. Even when they lose it, they still see themselves as FAT? Why? Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to associating a quality with an overall person. We become so ingrained in that mindset that it becomes everything we are. FAT is a macronutrient necessary for survival. FAT, depending on its composition and structure, can be in solid or liquid form. FAT can be animal-like and plant-like. Now, I’m not telling everyone that they should walk around and change the name of FAT to ADIPOSE TISSUE. The point shouldn’t be lost in the name game. Rather, we should acknowledge that when a person is working and cannot answer the phone, they are busy. That temporary busyness is only a part of their current existence. When a child is sad because their parents decide not to buy them a toy from the store, they are temporarily in an unfavorable mood. When you come home from the beach and you’re covered with patches of sand, you are temporarily dirty until you take a shower.

Perhaps fitness goals could be as easily attainable as taking a shower if we really payed more attention to the words we use to describe ourselves. YOU may have extra FAT on your body, but that doesn’t mean you can’t lose it. YOU may have extra fat on your body, but that doesn’t mean you can’t train to run a marathon. It doesn’t mean you can’t train to deadlift 315 pounds. Train to improve performace- a quest towards a positive, and the fat melts off. Train just for the sake of fat loss- a quest towards a negative, and you just may end up worse, mentally and physically, than where you started. So, YOU may have extra FAT on your body, but that doesn’t mean you should feel it’s ok to be treated differently than anyone else. Body image needs to be improved, and people need to realize that the way they look is only part of who they are. I’m not giving up on exercise and good health to boost happiness at all. What I am saying is that we should stop blaming our lack of motivation to be better and to achieve our fitness goals on being FAT. If you want to do something about it, do it!

Imaganine how these people would be if they decided to lay down and merely label themselves or let others label them as disabled people.

I see dedication, relentless work ethic, pride, integrity, patience. What do YOU see? I don’t know about you, but I see athletes.

When Wishing Leaves You Whining

During my personal training career thusfar, it has not at all been uncommon to hear people wishing they looked like those graced along magazine covers. Everyone, including my closest friends, tend to compare their self-perceived flaws to the self-perceived advantages of others. I am also a victim of this train of thought that can most definitely be considered mental quicksand. Whether it’s in relationships, jobs, friendships or fitness, people usually succumb to ideal images, which can create a genie effect. Wishing can sometimes feed negative reinforcement. Once you wish you were like someone else, you de-value every inch of your own being.

By definition, ideal means: a standard of perfection of excellence.

Sounds like a great word. I have a knack for taking things apart so let’s dig a bit deeper. By definition, a standard is something considered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison; an approved model. The fitness industry is smart. They know that people have, over time, attributed a great deal of value to a nice body. What did they do?  They put these nice bodies everywhere, and eventually we, as a collective authority by our own consent, deemed something as perfect and excellent. Now, I don’t have to go into the whole “nothing’s perfect” saga. It is true, but we all know that already. The question is why do we continue to do this and why do we end up sabatoging our own progress?

Ideal means nothing. If we strive to have the body of someone else, we have already ended the mission before it begins. Why? Because we can never have exactly what someone else has and experience it in the exact same way. We’re all different. We’re shaped differently, and believe it or not, our muscles compared to each other, are all different shapes and sizes- and for that we can thank our parents. Long and lean, short and lean, completely shredded, average. Those are all names we have given to certain looks. More importantly, everyone has different starting points. Although the finish-line may be the same in a group where, let’s say, fat loss is the goal, everyone starts at a different body weight and body composition. If someone who is morbidly obese loses 150-200 pounds but isn’t shredded, who’s to say they aren’t a new person? Who’s to say they aren’t happy? It would be foolish and border-line obsessive compulisve for them to now look at the leanest person on a magazine cover and be upset that their progress hasn’t led them to look the same.  Not to mention, many people who are extremely lean are naturally like that. Even people looking to improve speed suffer from self-comparison. Sure, you can always improve speed, but everyone has their own threshold that’s based on so many interdependent factors. Now, let’s stop the hate mail before it happens because this post isn’t about genetic predisposition to obesity, low body fat percentages or potential for athletic prowess. I just want people to realize that a preoccupation with ideals can lead down a very destructive path both personally and professionally. Aside from an aesthetic appeal that, once again, we’ve created, there is no difference between 4% body fat and 11% body fat if you are healthy and disease free. Certainly if you were competing in a body-building competition or an olympic sprint, then that’s a whole different story as well. However, even they have a difference between their “competition-ready look” and their “everyday” look.  

People aren’t satisfied with calling themselves thin. Thin? What does that mean? Why aren’t I skinny? Or, are you calling me skinny? They even get scared when they here lean or muscular. God forbid you use the word thick to describe someone. You can mean that as the best compliment, and that wouldn’t go over well with almost anyone. People like the scale. The scale is comfortable. Why? Because it dishes out numbers. People are eased by numbers simply because they are objective. They are one thing and one thing only. They aren’t up for interpretations from anyone, and they represent something that’s direct, observable and tangible. Lean, thin, thick, curvy, skinny. Those words are scary for some and almost always make the scales come flying out. It’s easier to say a certain number is considered lean instead of relying on the mirror, the way clothes fit or the way you feel. That’s why people like being a certain weight. But, remember, there’s many ways to get to the number 150. There’s tripling the number 50. There’s dividing 300 by 2. There’s adding 71 to 79. You get my point. Leave the numbers alone and focus on how you feel because everyone is different.

As long as you’re moving more, eating an assortment of healthy foods and resting appropriately, you should be happy with who you are because there is only one you.

I know, that comment belongs in a hallmark card somehere. GROUP HUG. Nonetheless, I know it’s cliché and a bit cheesy, but it’s coming from a sincerely natural place.

Are we all swayed? Touché

Although I am a personal trainer, I am fascinated by the relationship between physiology and psychology. The relationship between the two isn’t an entirely new exploration. In fact, there are tons of information about what drives the behavior of personal training clients, athletes and all fitness enthusiasts alike. We all know the fancy words associated with reaching goals: motivation, commitment, persistence, consistency, optimism, etc.

What many people don’t know is that these words come with their own set of experiences. People like to see things through rose-colored glass. People like to hear nice things, but to be honest, sometimes you just have to lay it all out there- the good bad and the ugly. Afterall, dogs make the most beautiful pets, but at the end of the day, they still shit in the street in front of everyone. In order to be successfully motivated, you have to turn the damn television off an hour earlier (because it’s rotting your brain anyways) in order to get to sleep at a decent time so you can have energy for your workout the next morning. Being persistent means dragging your ass to the gym on the coldest day of the year when you’d rather swallow fire than get out from under your warm covers. Consistency means taking action. It doesn’t mean eating a cheeseburger for lunch on Wednesday and then deciding to pig out the rest of the week thinking that you’ll just start over on the following Monday. Consistency means acknowledging your poor decision, resisting the human urge to create this massive guilt-trip. It means looking in the mirror when you do that and telling yourself to shut up. It means….. build a bridge, and, wait for it….. GET OVER IT!

It amazes me how we overcomplicate the things that mean the most to us. When a building goes up, don’t you think there may have been a few mistakes constructing the 17th floor? They didn’t rip it all down to start over again though. When a college student misses a class or two because that’s what freshmen do, they don’t take the class over again until they go to every single one, do they?  Next we have commitment. Commitment doesn’t mean when you feel like it. Commitment doesn’t mean only when it’s interesting. Commitment means no excuses. It means sticking to your goals when everyone else around you does the opposite. Finally, there’s optimism. People are always so quick to call positive thinking a “woo-woo” phenomenon, yet, when something goes wrong, we’re all so quick to assume the worst. Once you realize you really you have no control over anything in life, then you’ll be able to be optimistic about the everyday things that you should be grateful to have. In other words, you can miss the train in the morning and complain about being twenty minutes late, or you can use the extra twenty minutes to finish reading a book that’s in the process of changing your life.

Unfortunately, there is a HUGE gap in the relationships between many coaches/trainers and clients/athletes. For example, in many instances,  when people think of a personal trainer, they think of their new miracle body. These same trainers aren’t equipped to deal with these clients, psychologically, and time and again, clients and trainers are left frustrated by both unrealistic expectations and lack of communication. See, here’s an interesting thought. People decide to go on vacation. They view vacation as time away from stress, anxiety, work and everything that makes them want to hibernate. Let’s call this vacation “fat loss.” How do we get to “fat loss?” There’s more ways to get there than there are hours in a day. People can go by plane, car, boat, train or a combination of all of the above. Let’s name the way to get there “personal trainer.” Now, people, for whatever reason, put more thought into their real vacations than they do into their fitness goals. It’s the same thought process, but for some reason, when many people hire a trainer, they want to change yesterday. Conversely, people can plan an upcoming vacation by the most meticulous details. Which shirt should I bring? Which pair of shoes should I wear? Should we rent a Honda or a Camry? In the grand scheme of things, those issues don’t even matter. Their vacation- their fat loss- matters. When it comes to their fitness goals, they overcomplicate the simple fact that they have to simply eat less and move more.

Which brings me to my point. I recently finished reading a book called SWAY: The Irrestible Pull of Irrational Behavior. Tony Gentilcore, a Strength and Conditioning Coach at Cressey Performance in Boston, posted the book on his well-known blog a few weeks ago. I picked it up and definitely couldn’t put it down. Apparently, our brains have a “pleasure center” and an “altruism center,” both of which cannot operate at the same time. In school, I learned that we have two basic principles at the core of our being: 1) to enhance pleasure, and 2) to avoid pain.

I thought about how both centers of our brain can relate to many people’s fitness goals, and why many people fail more than they succeed. Perhaps we are inspired by the wrong things. It may be the case that getting in shape just to merely have a six-pack isn’t strong enough for us to succeed. Perhaps we put a six-pack on such a high pedestal that we deprive ourselves too much from the start. Maybe we don’t eat enough (of the right things), overtrain and end up sabatoging our goals or giving up because of our constant pursuit of instant gratification. Once we do this, we become so set on this “six-pack” mindset, that we forget to be altruistic with our own bodies. Once we become so obsessed, we cancel out any form of altruism we may have within our own lives. We forget that in order to create a lasting change, there are steps we have to follow, which in time, will produce the results we want. Perhaps we should start thinking good training, eating and recovery habits cause a better body, instead of a better body causing good training, eating and recovery habits.

This situation makes me think of the “Biggest Loser” show. I have to admit that I was once a fan. As time went on, I began to disagree with a lot of what goes on during the show. Now, the biggest issue I have with it is the reward luring in the future of the biggest loser contestant. Such anticipation of a monetary reward can definitely shut down our “altruism center” and greatly favor the “pleasure center.” In doing so, once they go home, contestants can pretty much starve themselves, overtrain and use any number of bogus five day colon cleansers to shed enough weight to win the show.

My point at the end of this rant and rave is simple: maybe we are swayed by the wrong things. There is always more than one way to accomplish a goal. Maybe we should urge people to be a bit more cautious, and most of all, true to ourselves.