It never ceases to amaze me how much resistance people go through when attempting to lose weight. It seems like people would be excited about this process. I would estimate that at least 65% of the clients I train and have ever worked with are interested in losing weight. Given America’s obesity epidemic, this is of no surprise. Over the years I have watched the mechanisms at play that are responsible for the weight gain, and then equally responsible for the resistance to losing it. Some of the of the most common barriers to change I encounter are the result of unconscious, deep seated emotional issues that have been neglected and usually pushed down into the basement, left there to ferment. In my Zen practice these issues are called “shadow material”. Shadow material is deeply rooted emotional trauma that has not been dealt with and comes out in unhealthy forms. We cannot see our own shadow material, it is hidden from us due to a lack of conscious insight. The people around us however, can see these issues as they arise very clearly. Some of the seeds that grow this shadow material are low self esteem, verbal and physical abuse, trauma, or emotional issues that have been cultivated in an attempt to deal with a mental or chemical disorder such as bi-polar, or depression. Please understand that for the sake of this blog I am not speaking about people with hormonal disorders such as hyper or hypothyroidism which can lead to severe weight gain. I am interested in the people who are severely overweight and have no diagnosable reasons for their struggles.
Overeating, for most people, is an unconscious attempt to use food as a drug to help them deal with the pain, suffering and loneliness which they have created. Year after year and pound after pound this process goes on and the love affair with food and the protective blanket it momentarily provides weaves itself deeper and deeper into the psyche or ego. Ego is just another word for Identity. We are continuously disseminating the world around us; adding and deleting to and from our egos. One of the most important, and again, “unconscious” elements of this process is “likes” and “dislikes”. We use likes and dislikes as a means of gauging the world around us, attempting to categorize the world we come in contact with. We build our personas (Greek for mask) and identify with “I like this” and “I don’t like that”. When it comes to using food as a drug, people will begin to identify with the temporary comfort that food offers them and before long overeating and its side effects become woven into the fabric of that person.
Therefore, it is a logical conclusion that if someone is serious about weight loss then an honest examination of the self is essential. Dieting or any weight loss program will fail every time, unless we look deeply into what caused this issue to begin with. If you are serious about a lifestyle change and long for a healthy, happy life you have to make discomfort your best friend. Discomfort, “or what you perceive to be discomfort” is the sensation of change. All too often I work with clients who say they want to change but do not want to experience any discomfort along the way. They want it quick, they want it to be easy and painless, and in three easy payments of $19.95!
If we are truly interested in conscious, healthy living and continued growth, we have to nurture discomfort, become best friends with it, and understand what is really at work internally when we experience discomfort. The ego doesn’t like discomfort because its presence will undoubtedly mean change. Your ego cannot exist if it doesn’t identify with something. And believe it or not, the ego will identify with an unhealthy lifestyle that is killing you and fight tooth and nail not to change, even for the better.
Fitness, exercise and good nutrition should be a tool for conscious, mindful growth, not egoic growth. We have to be brave and pick up the sword of the samurai whose lives were spent in selfless study and dedication to those around them. We should attempt to shatter the ego and move past its addictions and the despair caused from them. Take the time to look inside, be honest with what you see and know that you are completely and totally responsible for where you are. If there is something in need of change, you are completely responsible for changing it. Life is not happening to us. You create the walls that hold you inside and only you can tear them down.
Due to my experience as a personal trainer and fitness professional, friends and associates always probe me for information concerning their fitness and nutrition programs in addition to the vast assortment of injuries they have sustained or continue to struggle with as they try to maintain a steady routine. These ailments include, but are not limited to shoulder impingements, foot, neck, knee, hip, and, of course lower back pain. I am not surprised to find that when I pursue a line of questioning to help me identify the underlying issue or issues, all too often I hear very similar answers. One of the most common answers has to do with over specificity in sport and fitness programming. Over-specificity in sport is easy to identify and, for the most part, easy to remedy. Generally speaking specificity refers to performing an activity for an extensive number of repetitions (think golf swing, or tennis serve) creating discrepancies in strength and flexibility between the right and left sides, upper and lower portions of the body leading to biomechanical instabilities and eventually, injury. The other culprit leading to common fitness related injuries is the type of fitness programming or lack thereof. This programming, usually created by a “personal trainer” is lacking in depth and balance as it pertains to all the components of fitness. Personal trainers often times will teach only what they themselves like to do in their own workouts. It is rare to find a personal trainer with a background in a comprehensive set of fitness modalities. Who suffers? Unfortunately the client does. The client becomes compartmentalized in his or her approach to health and wellness and inherits the shortcomings of a narrow-minded fitness program and all the contraindications which result from it. The American College of Sports Medicine defines fitness as having five components, including:
- Muscular Strength
- Muscular Endurance
- Cardiorespiratory endurance
- Body Composition
- Flexibility
At a minimum, everyone should include each of these components in their fitness regimen and attempt to create a more balanced, periodization model free of steady state training, injury and which balances the body’s energy systems. With over twenty five years as a practicing fitness professional and personal trainer, I have found it necessary to include three additional fitness components to my training. These three additional components include:
Mobility – While flexibility, in my mind, is really related to the muscle itself, mobility pertains more to the connective tissue. Mobility explains the fluid movement of the joint and its ability to move freely through its entire range of motion.
Balance – Let’s face it, what good is any aspect of fitness without balance? Balance, or proprioception is the body’s ability to know where it is in space at all times. Balance begins to decline around age 35, yet is central to injury prevention and functional fitness.
Mindfulness – Mindfulness is an acute awareness and attention to both the internal and external environments. Most modern exercise is practiced with as little mindfulness as possible. Most people, and unfortunately their personal trainers, are either mindlessly staring at a TV, cell phone, or iPod instead of paying attention to their movement and the discomfort which arises from it. This discomfort and the mindful attention to it, is central to breaking through any plateau. Exercise is stress. Thus, if you are exercising and inducing additional stress from watching Fox news or answering emails on your cell phone, your entire exercise program may likely be creating more health issues than it is preventing. Dump the phone, TV and internet and pay attention to your body. Stay present, and breathe in the moment.
Cheers!
As a 43 year old personal trainer and aging martial arts instructor, I know first hand about the struggles people my age go through in order to stay in great physical condition. I do anywhere from 8-10 personal training sessions a day, moving the whole time. I work out every day, teach and train 5 hours a week of martial arts classes. My fitness program has to work or I can’t! It has to be functional and not leave me needing recovery for two days after. For aging men , testosterone levels begin to decrease every year and muscle mass begins to atrophy to the tune of about 1 lb. per year after 40. When this begins to happen body fat increases, motivation to workout decreases and the toll of a physically active lifestyle and cumulative injuries begins to take hold and mobility is gone. My personal training practice specializes in working with both men and women who have had active lifestyles but have lost their zest for fitness, or injuries have become so chronic that they can no longer play their favorite sports like golf and tennis. In addition their posture has returned to the fetal position and they are usually in pain.
People need a proper fitness routine that will help them correct their body’s bio-mechanics and restore proper movement and function. If this is ignored and we just go out and start flipping tractor tires at the local
, the results are permanent and not good. My workouts are always integrated. In a single session I will target body composition, flexibility and mobility, muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, strength, and balance. I use mindful movement as a precursor to all exercises. Without mindfulness all movement will become contra-indicitive and once again the results are catastrophic. One of the biggest problems I see these days with personal trainers and the programs they implement is that they are one dimensional. By one dimensional I mean pushing or pulling. The dynamic body moves 3 dimensionally but rarely do most personal training or fitness programs move that dynamically. Ever
so often you might find an exercise that include both
pushing and
pulling
at the same time. This type of movement is definately more dynamic than one dimensional but still doesnt deliver the neurological stimulation needed by the body for it to become truly “sport specific” or even what I would call functional. I shot a video for USA wrestling attempting to convince them of the need for circular and 3 dimensional movement for functional fitness.
Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu1-kLxeppY&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
