by Joan Kent | Jul 13, 2015 | Engage Your Students, Health and Wellness, Master Instructor Blog
Most IC instructors have the client’s best interest at heart. We may not all agree on every point, but we do want our participants to do well, get the results they seek, and feel great. That probably goes not just for how they work out, but for what they eat, as well.
It’s a safe guess that most instructors wouldn’t mind at all if their class participants stopped doing the following things — immediately and forever.[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
1. Eating “Good For You” Foods They Hate
The feeling of deprivation can make us do strange things with food. Feeling deprived can result from eating so little food that they’re always hungry, always thinking about food, always ready to gnaw the legs off the furniture.
We know it’s a binge waiting to happen. But there’s more to it.
Several years ago, during an appointment, a frustrated client stomped her foot at me and demanded, “Joan, do you ever enjoy eating?!”
My answer was an enthusiastic, “Yes, of course.” It’s true that we might need to give up certain foods — including some of our favorites — to get the results we want.
But let’s look at the good news. There are always foods we can and do enjoy that will fit into our food plan — even if we stop eating sugar, for example. Plenty of delicious foods are out there that don’t contain sugar.
The main point of this, however, is to get your participants to avoid eating foods they hate. Please. They shouldn’t eat them because they heard how “healthy” they are. They shouldn’t eat them because they read about the antioxidants they contain.
They shouldn’t keep eating them because they’re worried about their health. Chances are you can find a different food for them that contains the same healthful nutrients as that hated food. In a food they won’t hate.
Most importantly, if they don’t like what they’re eating, they’ll feel deprived — as surely as if they were skimping on quantities and semi-starving throughout the day.
Eating foods they hate is just another binge waiting to happen.
2. Using Food As Their Entertainment Or Reward
How do we use food for entertainment or reward? We eat when we’re bored. We eat to procrastinate on that work project we dread starting. We eat to take a break from that work project we started but aren’t enjoying. We eat because we got through a killer cycling class that morning. We eat because we had a great day. We eat to celebrate hitting our weight loss goal that week.
Feel free to fill in other favorite entertainment or reward uses of food.
In the early days of an athletic training program for which I was the nutritionist, a participant refused to follow the nutrition guidelines for the program. Her rationale was simple: She worked out hard and was entitled to eat whatever foods she wanted. Who could argue with that? We all get to make our own decisions.
When her training coach took weight and measurements at the end of the program, though, it was disappointing for her. Hers had all increased. It was a shame, too, because she probably would have performed better athletically if she had followed the food plan.
It seems unusual that we’d eat more food — or eat junk — when things go well. But, to use just one example, endorphins (beta-endorphin) may be released when mood is “up” and positive.
Beta-endorphin affects the brain’s satiety center. It makes us want to eat more. It doesn’t matter whether the original trigger was positive or negative.
When we’re ‘up,’ it’s not surprising that we want more of that up feeling. And we may end up eating foods that trigger the release of more endorphins.
More sugar, please.
3. Using Food As Their Primary Stress Reliever
What does it look like when we eat to relieve stress? We eat when we’re frustrated. We eat at the end of a bad day. We eat in the middle of the bad day. We’re much more likely to go for junk food when we’re stressed.
Eating when we’re stressed might seem like a minor issue, but any stressed-out moment is a bad time to eat. The digestive system basically shuts down — reduced production of saliva, lack of peristaltic contractions throughout the digestive tract, and other stress changes. It all means the body isn’t ready for food.
Because foods change brain chemistry, they can change our mental/emotional state. When our moods are low, it’s almost an instinct to look for something that will lift us out of that low mood state.
Even animals do it. Researchers have said that animals don’t eat for calories or nutrition per se, but for “optimal arousal.”
That’s why food choices when we’re stressed go in the direction of big brain-chem changes. Sugar is often used as a stress reliever because it triggers changes in brain chemicals that are felt readily.
But other comfort foods are used — frequently in large quantities: mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, spaghetti, biscuits, grilled cheese sandwiches, chips.
If your participant’s favorite comfort food isn’t on this list, it’s probably still a state-changer.
State changing is the key. They won’t binge on broccoli when they’re stressed — unless it’s smothered in cheese or sauce. That’s because broccoli doesn’t change brain chem, but those toppings will.
You’d probably prefer that they avoid these stress-driven, high-calorie blowouts.[/wlm_private]
by Joan Kent | Apr 13, 2015 | Engage Your Students, Health and Wellness, Your Fitness Business
Participant resistance was such a big part of running a weight-loss program, I didn’t even realize it was a thing to write about (if that makes any sense). It just went with the territory.
“Resist” has many synonyms: oppose, battle, combat, duel, fight back, put up a fight, defy, struggle against, stonewall. Why would someone join a weight-loss program — and pay lots of money — only to do these?
Participants resist in many ways. Below are only a few examples of actual participant behavior during the 13 years I ran a program combining athletic performance training and a robust nutrition plan geared to weight loss and ending sugar addiction.[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
Jeffrey
Jeffrey was our first participant. He got used to having my full attention and turned petulant when other participants joined. From that point on, he continually criticized the program and stopped following instructions. When I said peanut butter was okay to eat, he ate a 1-pound jar in a day.
John
John was in the program for almost a year before he lost any weight. Once his weight started dropping, he told me that, at first, he wanted to prove it wouldn’t work, so he made sure it didn’t.
Kathy
Kathy complained about hearing sugar addiction info in both a live class and a webinar, instead of realizing she heard it twice because it was key. After a private consult, she waved to me from the window of Pete’s (the coffee place) while eating. Based on Pete’s menu, draw your own conclusions about the food.
Kimberly
Kimberly was a vegetarian, miserable, touchy, and quick to anger. She masked it with a phony-soft voice but complained to management about everything (especially me). Even her doctor had told her she needed protein. I knew on Day 1 she’d never finish the first quarter. She didn’t.
Tom
Tom was an alcoholic who reacted to the rule about avoiding alcohol with a strange grin. He dropped out and rejoined over a year later. He reacted to the alcohol rule with the same grin, dropped out again and never came back.
Shelly
Shelly was in sales and said she had to drink with clients. She had many reasons she couldn’t get around drinking. She never lost weight until she did the AIDS ride from San Francisco to L.A. (without alcohol).
Kristin
Kristin’s attendance at trainings was poor. Because it was a progressive, periodized training program, not a drop-in class, she didn’t progress. She also wanted detailed menus instead of guidelines. When we didn’t supply menus right away, that became her excuse to eat pizza, drink wine, and never keep a food log.
When we developed menus, she complained they weren’t specific enough. She wanted to know precisely what SHE should eat every hour of every day. She gave me The South Beach Diet and said our nutrition program was just like it. It wasn’t, but I never understood why she didn’t just follow that diet instead of eating nachos and drinking margaritas. Or what any of this had to do with never logging her food intake as instructed.
So why do people pay lots of money and then resist? Here are a few reasons.
Alcoholism
Addiction defies rules of reason and logic. It’s a complex topic, very briefly covered in a previous post (Sweet Tooth or Sugar Addiction: What’s the Difference?). Alcohol can sabotage weight loss, as covered in another post.
Sugar Addiction
See above. People will go to extreme lengths to avoid giving up their favorite foods. Lots of blame gets thrown.
Not Taking Responsibility
They’re overweight because of a spouse’s work schedule. Or they go to restaurants frequently. Or they never learned what to eat as kids. Or… fill in the blank.
Plausible Diversion
Registering and paying for an expensive, intensive program showed their sincere desire to lose weight. If they didn’t lose, it was the fault of the program, not because they never did the work to make it happen.
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These stories aren’t pretty — and they’re crummy memories — but they’re 100% true. If you have a similar experience with your students, maybe something here can help you start them moving in the right direction.
by Joan Kent | Apr 6, 2015 | Health and Wellness
The Natural Eating Cycle is simple and straightforward: We feel hungry. We eat in response. The hunger stops. We stop eating and lose interest in food.
We could visualize those 4 steps as a circle because they form a continual, ongoing process. Eating that natural way is primal and elemental.
Babies are expert at it, although it obviously takes a parent or caretaker to feed them. The last step is one they have down cold, though. Have you ever tried to feed a baby who’s not hungry anymore? Good luck.
That’s how it’s supposed to be.[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Yet the natural eating cycle can go wrong, and sugar is one reason that can happen. More about sugar’s effects later.
Unnatural eating patterns could include restriction (dieting or fasting); bingeing; purging (self-induced vomiting, abuse of laxatives, excessive exercise); irregular meal timing (skipping meals, grazing all day); extremely rapid eating; or eating a lot of food when not hungry.
I once read 2 different articles, each describing a “disturbed” eating cycle. According to the first cycle, an event disturbs our equilibrium. We eat. We feel fat and resolve to diet.
The other eating cycle went like this: We diet. We feel deprived. We binge.
No doubt some of your students have experienced one or both of those cycles. What if we put the two patterns together and look at interactions among the steps?
1. An event disturbs our equilibrium.
2. We eat.
3. We feel fat and resolve to diet.
4. We diet.
5. We feel deprived.
6. We binge.
The 6 steps in sequence seem reasonable, and form a pattern to which your students might relate. Based on clinical experience, though, I say there’s more to it. Below are a few ways it might go.
Scenario A
We go all the way through steps 1-6. After we binge in Step 6, we then circle back to Step 3 — we feel fat and resolve to diet. From there, we continue through the lower part of the list, and cycle through Steps 3-6, possibly over and over.
Scenario B
We’ve binged, presumably after Steps 1-5. That takes us to Step 1 at the top of the list: bingeing is the event that disturbs our equilibrium, so we eat in response to it. We might then continue to cycle through the remaining Steps 3-6, possibly over and over.
Scenario C
This one involves only Steps 1-3: the event that disturbs us, eating, feeling fat and resolving to diet. But in this scenario, resolving to diet — just anticipating the stress of dieting and deprivation — is enough to disturb our equilibrium, so we eat. Someone could stay stuck in Steps 1-3 in this way for quite some time.
How can sugar make any or all of these 3 scenarios more likely?
We might feel deprived in Step 5 because we gave up sugar to diet and are now experiencing sugar cravings.
We might feel stressed at the anticipation of dieting in Step 3 because it will mean giving up sugar.
With sugar, we might find ourselves at Step 1 more frequently, feeling more disturbed by a greater number of events. That could simply be because the neurochemical effects of sugar make it difficult for some people to maintain equilibrium. Almost any stage of sugar addiction, including withdrawal, can make our behavior (eating behaviors and others) more impulsive.
The natural eating cycle is a delicate balance. It’s always subject to disruption, but eating sugar can disrupt it a lot more. If you have students who are struggling with unnatural eating patterns, please let them know.[/wlm_private]
