Fitness and Exercise Psychology

Eat less and exercise more. That is what we’ve all been told for years and we have been trying to push this mindset onto Americans since they became adults and their parents stopped telling them to eat everything on their plate or else. Our society has developed some conflicting mindsets about health and fitness. It is no wonder we have so many different diets and exercise plans out there. We’re so confused we’ll try anything and want to believe everything to stop feeling bad about ourselves and how we look. I’m here to tell you to start eating more and exercise less.

This is what I use with my personal training clients. The hardest thing to do is change the mindset from “starve myself” to “eat, eat, eat!” and stop killing yourself for hours in the gym or running marathons and cut your workout to twenty minutes. WHAT?! This is where the argument starts. “I’ll never lose weight like that!” Well, good. I don’t care if you lose weight. I’m trying to help you lose fat. There is a huge difference. Weight loss when working out tends to be just water weight in the beginning. You also need to take into consideration all of the changes we go through that affect what the scale is going to tell us. Did you poop today?  It has become better known that weight loss, or, as I prefer to call it, fat loss is 70% nutrition and 30% exercise.

Rest-based workouts are exactly what they sound like. Exercise routines that require you to rest.  Jaden and Keoni Teta coined this title, “rest-based training.” They have an entire psychology behind this method. The person working out is to push themselves to the max until they have no choice but to stop for a break. Their theory is that people will be more self motivated with this style. They will be more apt to push themselves harder than usual without realizing they are doing it. The workout isn’t the whole picture though. The brothers have incorporated hormone activity into their workout and nutrition design. So, what about this whole eat more thing? People tend to eat three large meals per day. Let the calorie counting begin! No, please, don’t do that. I hate math. I detest calorie counting, which is why I love that when you are looking at nutrition from a hormonal perspective, you don’t have to. People need to be focused on the quality of foods they are eating rather than the number of calories they are ingesting. The best analogy I have ever seen on this is the comparison of a doughnut and a chicken breast. Both contain the same number of calories. This leads to a variety of conflicts. First you can eat a whole box of doughnuts easily which will jack up that calorie count real fast but you aren’t going to be able to eat twelve chicken breasts. Second, what nutrients are you getting in that doughnut? Not any. On the other hand, that chicken breast contains nutrients your body needs. Eating constantly throughout the day helps your metabolic rate and you are eating less in one portion so you are shrinking your stomach down to not desire a large meal anymore. If you really feel the need to count, count your bites. Only allow yourself a set number of carbohydrates in your meal to get your math problem in for the day. (Teta, 2010)

Obesity is a growing problem for our nation. We have a lot of people who are overweight trying to prevent obesity before it is too late. This is great but if they continue with the eat less and workout more plan, they will continue to fail and keep gaining weight. Ronald Gristani and Rick Bramos back this argument concerning obesity going so far as to say that exercise does not work to cure it. (Gristani, 2011) They are not saying that exercise doesn’t work at all but state that nutrition is the key factor. Exercise is the secondary resource. With people who are obese, their health is already compromised and certain exercise regimes just will not work for them because their bodies cannot handle it. They are at greater risk for heart issues because their heart is already stressed from working overtime pumping blood to their large bodies. There are so many other variables involved but, ultimately, the verdict is that we've been going about fat loss all wrong, starting with the title.

Stop eating less and running useless marathon and start eating small, nutrients filled meals throughout the day. Don’t forget to get your rest between those spurts of high energy workouts. Ultimately, there is a mindset shift that has to change in this nation about how we view weight loss to start seeing significant change. There are physiological and psychological aspects of this that weren't studied before but have light shed on them.  

References

Teta, J. N.D, Teta, K. N.D (2010). Exercise is Medicine. Rest-Based Training: A New System and Psychology for Exercise. The Townsend Letter, N. 88-89. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Grisanti, R. D.C. (2011). Obesity:  Why Exercise Doesn’t Work!. The American Chiropractor. Nov. 28-32, Retrieved from EBSCOhost.