Posts Tagged ‘exercise myths’

Excuses & Meme’s…The Great American Way! Part II

Please read part I posted last week to shed light on what I am about to suggest in this post.  Last week I told you that all of us have meme’s and that they act to impede our fitness and nutrition goals.  Today I would like to give you some simple steps that you can apply to change your current mindset so that you can obtain the lifestyle that you truly deserve.

Step #1:  Acknowledge that you make excuses:

No, you’re not in AA but this first step CANNOT be overlooked. If you do, you will pay the price of failing.  You make excuses…yes you do.  There is absolutely nobody that is exempt from excuse making and you are no exception.  That is ok.  The good news is that you can change your mind once you identify your excuses and memes. 

Step #2: Write down all of your excuses and memes:

This is more of a process.  For the next 30 days I want you to write down all of the excuses and memes that you make to yourself.  See last weeks post for examples.

Step #3: State the opposite:

Once you have written down all of your most annoying excuses and memes you need to write down the exact opposite.  For example if you say, “I am too tired to exercise after work”, write down “Because I am proactive and take responsibility for my life, I will exercise before work to increase my energy level”. 

Step #4: Change your Sub-Conscience Mind: 

Your sub-conscience mind is the part of the brain that stores all of your habits.  It steers the proverbial ship.  This is where the vast majority of all your behaviors are stored and processed.  To change your sub-conscience mind you have to do the following things.

            a. Convince it that it is wrong:  You do this by stating the exact opposite of your memes.  The very moment that a negative or damming thought enters your head you must replace it with the opposite thought…even if you have to say it out loud.

            b. Construct a list of positive affirmations:  On this list could be something like “I am in control of my eating at all times”, or “Exercising daily is just part of who I am”. 

            c. Repeat your list of affirmations daily, morning and night: Do this when you first awake and before you go to sleep.  The goal is to be in a relaxed state where not much will bother you and where your mind can be at ease. 

            d. Be in a state of believing:  When you are repeating your affirmations, do so in a state of positivity and optimism

Step #5: Disarm your alarm system!

When you begin doing these simple steps your brain will tell you that you are crazy and that you are acting weird or like a moron.  This is normal because your brain is still convinced of the validity of your previous mindset of excuses and memes.  Persistence is the key here.  If you persist and repeat your affirmations day after day you will begin to believe the things that you are telling yourself and BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE YOURSELF YOU WILL ACT ON IT!  Yes your behavior will start to change in a way that you never imagined possible.

Step #6:  Realize that you never “Arrive”.

We live in a world of complacency, feeling entitled and laziness.  If you are not constantly reinforcing your sub-conscience mind, rest assured you will slip back into old ways.  Stay focused and realize that you have to be proactive to win the battle.  Things will not magically work out for the best if you are not constantly bathing your mind with the things that you want to accomplish.

Step #7 Action:

This is where it is time to get off your butt and get into action.  You can have the most wonderful meditation sessions of visualizations and imagery known to mankind, but if you don’t move you will never change your behavior.  It is much easier to shed your old excuses when you see yourself doing the opposite of them.  Soon you will be excuse free!

Step #8 Making it Long-Term:

Realize from the get-go that this is about lifestyle change for the long-term!  Never allow any short-sightedness to enter the picture here.  When you are planning your visualizations and affirmations make them long term.  You want to adopt a mindset of permanency.

 Well there you have it my friends!  Properly applied these principles can and will change your lifestyle for the better.  Start applying them today…there is absolutely no room for procrastination here.  Remember…life is good!

Written by Ryan Flint, NSCA-CPT, Sports Nutritionist

I’ve read about this very interesting Harvard University study about exercise multiple times in the past, but I was just recently reminded about this study again while reading the fascinating book called 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman.

Pay attention, because this actually shows a pretty powerful trick that you can use to literally make ANY workout or exercise program a LOT more effective and results producing.

According to the book 59 Seconds, here’s how this study was carried out:

Researchers at Harvard University studied over 80 hotel room cleaning attendants from 7 different hotels.  The hotel room attendants naturally received a lot of exercise from their daily jobs, which included cleaning an average of 15 rooms per day at about 25 minutes per room.  This work involves a good deal of exercise in carrying things, scrubbing, lifting objects, vacuuming, and so on.

The researchers knew the hotel maids led an active lifestyle from their work, but also questioned whether most of the maids may not realize that their work was actually good for their health.  The researchers set out to study the effects on the hotel attendants of making them very aware of how beneficial the exercise they got while working was for their health, and to see if this increased the results that they actually received from the exercise.

Basically, the question was… Would telling them that their work was great exercise improve their health, lower their blood pressure, and help them to lose weight compared to the hotel attendants that didn’t realize their work was in fact “exercise”?

The hotel attendants were split into 2 groups:

1. This group was informed about the benefits of exercise and told how many calories they were burning while doing their hotel cleaning work each day. They were specifically told how many calories activities such as changing sheets, vacuuming, and scrubbing bathrooms were burning each hour.

The researchers also wanted this information to stick in their heads daily, so they gave the attendants a handout showing the quantities of calories they were burning doing each activity of their jobs.  They were also shown a poster daily that reinforced how many calories they were burning.

2.  The control group of hotel cleaning attendants was simply informed of the benefits of exercise, but we’re NOT told how many calories they were burning doing their work, and also were NOT told that their work actually constituted a good form of exercise.

The researchers studied the existing lifestyles of all of the participants in both groups as well as giving them various health tests, including weigh-ins.

The study was conducted for 4 weeks.  The researchers made sure that none of the participants had actually changed their exercise habits, smoking, or eating habits outside of work.  This assured that there was no external lifestyle factor that could have accounted for the results of the study.

In addition, the hotel managers assured that the workloads of both groups stayed the same throughout the entire experiment.

Here are the VERY interesting results:

It turned out that the group of hotel cleaning attendants that was informed daily about the calorie-burning effects of their normal work routines ended up losing a significant amount of weight, lowered their body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio, and decreased their blood pressure.

The control group of hotel attendants that was not told about the calories they burned while doing their work showed NONE of these improvements.

Wow… very interesting huh! 

Remember that each of these groups received the SAME amount of exercise and did not alter their lifestyle, eating habits, drinking habits, smoking, or anything else.  The only thing that was different between the 2 groups was simply that the one group was constantly being reminded of how beneficial the exercise during their work was for their health and how many calories they were burning, and therefore their minds were busy believing in the benefits of it.

This actually doesn’t surprise me… this is classic placebo effect at work here, and reinforces how powerful our brains are in relation to the results we get from exercise, food, supplements, etc.

How to use this info to burn more fat in your workouts, build more lean muscle, and improve your health more from exercise and nutrition

There’s a good lesson in this study.  If you strongly believe in your mind that the workouts that you are doing are drastically improving your body, your results will increase dramatically from those workouts. 

The trick I’ve used over the years is to really “get mental” during your workouts and believe strongly that the exercise you are doing is transforming your body into a lean chiseled machine.  So, if you want to burn more fat, not only do you need to work out intensely (for your individual capabilities), but you also need to mentally visualize the results you’re getting, the body fat you are burning, and really strongly believe in how powerful the workout routine that you are doing really is for your body.

Along the same lines, if your goal is to build more muscle, then you really need to strongly believe in your mind at how powerfully your workouts are helping you to build muscle.

And this can be applied to your food intake too!

Don’t underestimate how powerful your mind really is… If you are eating healthy foods such as those detailed in our client binders and nutritional guide, make sure that you are also actively thinking in your mind about how those foods are dramatically helping your body, making you stronger, making you leaner, improving your energy and health, and so on.

Don’t ignore this… this will drastically improve your results if you actively think about how truly healthy the foods you are eating every day are and how they are changing your body.  This is assuming that you actually are eating truly healthy foods every day.

Another benefit of this “mental programming” is that it trains you to actually want to avoid junk foods, because you want to be able to think about how everything you eat is improving your body instead.

So there you go… an interesting study that shows how you can legitimately increase your results from your exercise and nutrition by just actively thinking about the benefits of both every day!

Beginning in the 1960’s numerous surveys from the Federal Government have been issued to the general population about exercise.  One of the questions that have been asked from that decade forward is regarding why people DO NOT exercise.  The #1 reason each and every year from that time forward is time.  We just can’t seem to get enough time and to make it worse we seem to get more and more busy each and every year.  We can all agree that time is hard to come by but we can also agree that exercise is very important and should not be edged out in the name of being “busy”

I want to offer some simple suggestions that I have received from my clients over the last 10 years that has helped them overcome this barrier and get them to the point of permanent lifestyle change…where time is no longer a constant issue.

Suggestion #1:  Ask yourself the question (disclaimer…the following exercise may make you uncomfortable if you are new to this lifestyle but it will help)   Have I made my new fitness/nutrition program and absolute PRIORITY in my life?

This is where you need to sit in solitude and really search you soul…sounding cheesy?  This is an absolute necessity!  This is a time for you to dig deep within yourself and discover your readiness to make a lifelong change.  If you find that you are hesitant, doubtful, fearful, or indifferent to making this change then you need to stop and re-evaluate your priorities.  If you find that you are indeed able to make time to exercise on a daily basis then go for it and never look back.  The bottom line here is that you absolutely cannot start a new lifestyle while sitting on the fence.  If work/life is too busy and too important for this change then back off for a while and wait until you are in the doctor’s office dealing with Diabetes…you will then understand that this truly is a priority not just a luxury to be enjoyed at your convenience.

Suggestion #2:  Map out a Plan!

This is where 95% of Americans fail in there endeavor to exercise…they never schedule in a time to exercise.  I have two suggestions here.  Make a hard copy of your schedule and make a softer flexible one.  Many have a set schedule and others do not but we all have a general sense of what we are going to be doing from day to day.  On your hard copy write out what days and time during the week you will be working out and keep it on you at all times.  On the soft copy, which could be a planner, an I-Phone, or other electronic device, you can write out your week and schedule exercise in.  If you need to be flexible do it!  The key point here is to make sure that you are making a plan and sticking to it.  It is now more than a wish; it is plan of attack, your roadmap, your compass to get you where you need to be.

Suggestion #3:  Take an inventory of your EXCUSES and then throw them out the window!

This is a great exercise that is imperative to do before starting your program.  While still in the same solitude of soul searching I want you to physically write down ALL of the excuses that you have that stand in the way of you accomplishing your goals!  Each and every last one of them!  I don’t care if you think they are “valid” or not, write them all down.  I am not saying that you are not busy…please do not misunderstand.  What I am saying is that all of these excuses are just miss managed priorities.  Nobody is telling you to quit your job or abandon your family…quite the contrary.

Suggestion #4:   Re-Prioritize!

Now I want you to write down your Daily schedule.  I understand that it may fluctuate…that is not the point.  I want you to FIND the time that will work best for you to exercise and make that your permanent time if possible.  If your schedule fluctuates you are going to have to make some omissions to make time for exercise.  Not possible you say?  NONSENSE!  I want you to be a grown up here and MAKE EXERCISE A PRIORITY!  Stop fooling yourself with every excuse that you find yourself making. Do you see what I am saying here?  All of those excuses may be important but if they are more important than exercise then what you are telling me exercise is not important and I cannot buy that one.  It is time to make a paradigm shift and make exercise a priority.  One last thought…do not skimp on writing this one down!  Physically writing it down into your planner will give you the psychological benefit of knowing that you are indeed making it a priority!  Write out your Dailey and weekly schedule with exercise included. Now I want you to RESPECT it!  I don’t care how busy you are, when it comes time for your exercise time it is time to put those important things aside temporarily and fulfill your obligation period…no excuses…just do it. 

Suggestion #5: Realize that you really DO have the time! 

In the governmental surveys mentioned earlier, it was concluded that time was the major barrier to exercise.  But subsequent studies have proven that NOT to be the case.  What the studies found is that people really have the time if they want it, but they don’t know how to manage their time and they also found that they do not know have to manage their emotions.  In other words millions of Americans come home from work each day and they feel tired…so they then opt not to exercise.  Another common situation is that we feel stressed so we opt for more leisure or comfortable activities to the expense of exercise.

Well there we have it my friends.  I apologize if I get a little too passionate about this topic, but I do know that there is ALWAYS time for fitness if we allow it.

Ok, you are talking to a friend that you have not seen for a while, just shooting the breeze and catching up when all of the sudden you hear him say, “I just started a new exercise program and I am doing my cardio 6 times per week to burn the fat and I lift in the gym 3 times per week to firm up”.  You nod your head in an affirming gesture, end the conversation, and go on with your day.  You return to work after your lunch-break and over hear two ladies in an adjacent cubical saying, “Yea, I just started working out again but I am just focusing on cardio for now to burn the fat and then when I reach my goal I will start with the weights”.

Many of us have heard statements such as these and many more.  Those that make them have the very best of intentions but the very worst of factual information.  Today I want to give you some facts that will change your approach to fitness and ultimately point you in the right direction for whatever your fitness goal may be.

Must Have Natural Metabolism Elixirs:

1- Resistance Training:

For those of you already involved with resistance training congratulations!  For those of you who are either not doing it or putting it off, till “I have lost some initial weight”, please reconsider the following physiological process of fat burning:

-Resistance training is the nuts and bolts to building muscle

-Muscle is a metabolically active tissue, meaning that it is the tissue that is constantly burning         calories and fat.

- Resistance training is the ONLY way to maintain a level of lean muscle tissue that will help you in your fat-burning quest.

2- Proper Cardio/Resistance Training Balance

This goal will vary for everyone depending on fitness levels, goals, age, gender, and so forth.

A few rules of thumb that might help you…

A- If your goal is weight loss: You want to start with 50/50 split between cardio and weights.  For example cardiovascular activities on M/W/F and weights on T/TH/SAT.

B- If your goal is muscle gains: You want to start with the scale swayed towards more weight training days.  So you might go to four days of weights and only two days of cardio.  In reality this particular set-up can burn just as much and in some cases more than the weight loss regime that I just listed under letter A.

C- If your goal is weight maintenance:  typically weight training 3-4 days per week with 2-3 days of cardio injected on your non-weight training days.

3- Muscle Building Nutrition

How many of us go to the gym, do our workout and then lie to ourselves with some of the following excuses…

-“I workout so that I can eat like I want to”

- “I workout so hard that my body can handle some of the junk food that I consume frequently”

- “I am not making progress in the gym so it must be my workout” (completely turning a blind eye to poor nutrition)

The truth is that nutrition is 80% of the fat loss battle whereas the gym is only 20%.  Yes we need to workout and workout hard, but how can we expect our bodies to build muscle and burn fat if we are giving it crap food every day?  The math does not add up and that is why there are so many frustrated, plateau stricken, ever persistent gym going people out there that never get over that last fat hump.

The bottom line:

We all have certain beliefs and perspectives about resistance training that may or may not help us in our fitness goals.  I am speaking to some people in particular.  1-) Those wishing to shed body fat 2-) Those only participating in cardiovascular exercise 3-) Those who have viewed resistance training as a “guy thing” or those who have been turned off by massive bodybuilding men and women thinking that they will look like them if they participate in a sensible resistance training program.  Resistance training consistently beats cardiovascular exercise when it comes to burning fat and maintaining healthy body fat levels.

If you truly want your body to become a Fat Burning Machine please do away with those worn out and tired myths and consider the aforementioned points in this article.  Become a believer as your fat melts away and you maintain the lean muscular and sexy body that you have always wanted.