Finding balance

Greetings!!

I have to say, for the second week in we had a pretty weak turnout :( Don't let your soreness or the challenge of the first week get you down!!

That being said...I can imagine a wide range of responses, and they probably have something to do with
 a)lack of time/increased time at work
b)sickness
c)lack of energy.


I'm not implying these aren't valid excuses, but that's what they are. Excuses. An excuse is the physical representation of your brain taking a situation that you view as negative and finding a way to make it acceptable or positive for you. Your hippocampus is a part of your brain that is responsible for your perception of the world, as well as judgement and rationalization. Our environment puts pressure on us to exercise, and at the same time makes exercise less important than, say, making money. This prioritization impacts how we feel about choosing what to do during the course of the day. Since we as a general population prioritize staying at work late to finish a project over leaving on time and going to the gym, we will rationalize that we wouldn't be able to afford our gym membership without work, we can workout some other day, etc. etc. etc. If we're starving and the only thing in the house is a Snickers bar and it's 15 degrees outside, we will tell ourselves it's okay to have it just this once due to the circumstances.

In the face of real problems, rationalization is a miraculous response to keep mental morale up. Imagine growing up in a country where the water is dirty and full of pathogens, and/or you have to share an extremely small quantity of food with a whole family, or you literally have to work in order to buy food on a day to day basis. These are times where rationalization - on a day to day basis- can help you keep a positive outlook. This works, however, because these are actual problems. No offense, but your boyfriend breaking up with you is NOT an excuse to eat a tub of ice cream. And those extra 2 hours at work are not likely going to make or break your career, and if they are, it's probably not worth the money anyways.

So if rationalization is so innate to us, how can we stop? Don't think about how much you rationalize, but focus on why do we do it? If you always got enough sleep, ate the right type and amount of food for you, and lived an active lifestyle, what would you need to rationalize?

Stop for a second and ask yourself why you engage in negative behaviors, if you know you are aware that you shouldn't. I mean, you have have to know that you shouldn't or else they wouldn't be viewed as negative and you wouldn't have to make excuses to do them ;-)

Balance has a much narrower scope as well. I get a lot of questions about how much to eat, what type of foods to eat, how much to exercise, what exercises to do, how many....the list goes on and on. I can give very specific responses, but it's important to understand that all of us are both very similar and very different. We have different goals, our muscles are made of slightly differing percentages of muscle fiber, our genetics cause us to gain muscle or lose muscle at different rates....again, the list goes on and on. 

I'm going to touch on this more in later posts, but my view of personal training and nutrition counseling is to teach and empower clients to understand both their bodies AND their minds. This is blasphemy among trainers because it essentially renders our jobs obsolete by modern standards. GASP! A trainer who would rather teach someone to take care of themselves than train them every other day for years? (We'll touch on this more in a later post.. ;0)

Let's take an example: if you truly understand how your body works  -- you know how carbohydrates are broken down in the body, you know why you need certain vitamins and why you should eat vegetables and what fiber is -- you would be able to make educated decisions about what to eat and why you're eating it. If you understood why building muscle mass was so important physiologically while we age and the impact of exercise on serotonin production, you would want to exercise to physically feel better. If you feel better and you take care of yourself overall, you'll likely be

a)more productive and focused at work
b)not sick
c)full of energy

See the cycle? By not taking the time or effort to understand ourselves, we end up feeding into the cycle of stressors that leads to more and more excuses. It's a never-ending journey, but I challenge you to find a daily balance so that you can ultimately live the best life possible!

Please feel free to leave your comments :) See you in class!!

Rachel