Intrinsic goals are goals that we set for internal purposes or intrinsic motivation, like building relationships, developing a personal skill or giving back to a community, for no other reason than to get the warm and fuzzies inside or the sense of accomplishment and pride of doing something challenging that you set out to do.
Extrinsic goals are goals that we set for external purposes or external motivation. Like money, high praise or trophies. They are are often driven by fear of loss or for the external accolades we receive from other people. A perfect example of this in the fitness industry is the before and after picture as a marketing tool.
One of my client’s has a brother and for the sake of this story we’ll call him Mike. Mike is a DJ and he spends most of his time working in clubs, restaurants and doing special events which usually go late into the night. He’s been doing this for over 20 years and has very much adapted to this lifestyle. For the last few years Mike has been getting increasingly more tired, he no longer has as much energy for his gigs and then for some reason he can’t sleep as well even though he’s tired at the end of the night. He attribute’s this to the fact that he’s getting older, he’s in his early 50’s after all and maybe all these late nights are starting to catch up with him.
I’m not 100% sure where this came from or what research study was cited as the original to say this, but the theory goes like this, eating carbohydrates aka. sugar causes your insulin to go up and if your glycogen stores are full, which they are all the time in most people, excluding very athletic individuals, then this gets stored as fat on your body. The theory is this, if you go to bed after consuming these sugars, then you go to bed with high blood sugar which means your body is much more likely to store it as fat because you’re not moving.
To talk about each of these strategies we need to start with a story about Beth. Beth is of course a fictional character but if you’re like most people you at least recognize some aspects of her life in your own. So here are some strategies that you can use in this situation that you might find helpful.
Once you've decided that there is a personal trainer or strength coach that you would like to work with based on education, experience, personality and all the other things we talked about in yesterday’s episode, then you should look for this type of process to decide whether or not they're a good trainer for you.
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We work really hard to try and guide you and get you exercising in a way that works for you, but sometimes you just need the guidance of a professional to show you how to exercise, so today we’re going to cover what you should be looking for when trying to find the right personal trainer or coach for you.
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There are two type’s of people that say they exercise every day. The first is someone that wakes up every morning and does 100 push-ups or a 100 sit-ups or something like that, I have never met anyone like this in real life I have only seen them in movies, I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying I’ve never met them in real life. However they would be able to strength train like this for one of two reasons, one they either rotate between exercises everyday like do push-ups one day, pull-ups another day and sit-ups the next day.
The first thing I want to pick apart is this notion of good fat and bad fat, there’s really no such thing as good fat and bad fat, our body needs fat to survive, which means there are fats we should eat more of, fats we should eat less of and there is one type of fat we should never eat, so I guess this would be the bad one and it’s called trans fat. But we’ll get to that one last.
Alright I get it, sometimes vegetables can be boring, I mean how many carrot sticks and pieces of celery can we eat, we’re not rabbits. Sometimes you just might crave something that’s a bit salty or sweet and vegetables don’t cut it and that’s fine, you don’t need to eat all vegetables all the time, you just need to eat more. So here are some strategies I’ve used with clients or I myself use, to get the job done.
The Lean Start-Up by Eric Ries is a business book that I read 2 years ago, but the principles he teaches in this book can be extracted into health, wellness and fitness. Before I get into it I want to give you some background, Ries had several failed tech start-ups and this was his mind set for each company.
I’m going to start this episode with a story from my high school days, that has very little to do with fitness, but bear with me, I bring it back around.
Isometric strength training is definitely non-traditional, it is a way to strengthen your muscles without actually moving them. This means contracting or flexing your muscles without moving any part of your body.
There are a lot of people in this world and I think for the most part we are all chasing the same thing and that is to be happy and be healthy, at the end of the day if you’re both of those things you’re doing alright.
But back to your question David, if you’re building a home gym you need to look at your goals and what you already have in your house to decide what type of equipment you need. If your goal is to just be a healthier person, remain independent and make activities that require effort much easier you don’t need to purchase any equipment.
Ok, having this skin or adipose tissue that hangs over the front of your mid-section is really common after pregnancy and sometimes it can be made worse by the scar of a c-section, making it uneven. Because fat does not form the same way under scar tissue or over your muscle that has been literally cut, it can make it look even more uneven or a bit ‘extra hangy’. Even if you lose weight it still won’t be as ‘tight’ looking as the other parts of your body.
For the most part these videos are really good, Fitness Blender is probably the current marketplace leader on youtube, and they’ve built a massive following, they make the world a healthier place. But if you’re trying to change your body composition, doing these follow along videos will only take you so far.
Variety just means different ways of training, of course you have variety between exercise types whether you’re doing cardiovascular training, strength training or mobility training, but there are also several different ways you can add variety into each of these training modalities.
An account-i-billi-buddy is someone you not only exercise with but also talk to about exercise philosophies, you lean on each other when one of you doesn’t feel like working out, you spot each other and offer each other encouragement to make sure you’re getting maximum effort out of your fitness routine. Also, there is strength in numbers and having someone to lean on to help you figure this stuff out can be really helpful especially if you’re nervous about taking your first exercise steps. Simply put an account-i-billi-buddy is someone you exercise with, but in order to have a successful relationship with this person you need to make sure it’s a right fit for both of you, so these are some things you need to look for in a person you want to exercise with.
Going to the gym has a lot of great benefits, they have lots of equipment and weights, it’s easier to get into the frame of mind to exercise, sometimes you meet friends and have groups of people that are trying to overcome some of the same challenges you face.
When most people think of flexibility they think of their ability to touch their toes, which probably comes from high school gym class because that was the test for flexibility, but flexibility is so much more than that, it’s your ability to reach behind you or to reach low enough to pick something up off the ground without hurting your back. Flexibility and mobility go hand in hand because you want to be able to move well and this goes beyond being able to touch your toes because you need to move all the parts off your body, your shoulders, ankles, hips, wrists and your neck. If you’re going to stay functional good mobility is required through all your joints not just your lower back.
Before we get into this I need to throw a disclaimer up, this is not my area of expertise, so what I’m going to do is give you some possibilities so you can explore them with your personal health team.
Based on the email Joanne sent us I think this is what she is actually asking.
‘I feel like I’m starving myself and I’m still not losing any weight, I’m at the end of my road and I don’t know what to do anymore, can you help me?’
Does a workout have to be at least 30 minutes long to be effective? The short answer to your question is No it doesn’t but it really depends what you want, If you’re an elite athlete then no it won’t be enough, if you’re just trying to live a healthy life then it probably is. There are are several considerations you have to make in deciding how long a workout should be.
There are a couple of things we need to cover here, the first being for most people there is nothing inherently dangerous with losing weight quickly, but you should check with your doctor first in case it is for your individual circumstance. But for the most part if losing weight quickly was dangerous for everyone gastric bypass surgery wouldn’t exist.
Unless you and your partner together decide to make a change or live a certain way, you probably won’t get buy-in from your partner, so you need to find work arounds if you want to stay with that person. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned you can’t change someone that doesn’t want to change, and most people don’t want to, but here’s my best guess for how you can make it work.