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Why diet tracking gives you the best diet for you.

5/3/2021

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I first started working in the fitness industry during the time when it seemed like the entire nutrition industry believed that dietary fat was evil, and the cause of obesity as well as many diseases. Of course, many now look back on that and think how wrong we were and question how we could possibly have believed such a thing and how, thankfully, we now know the “right” way for humans to eat. Yet, interestingly, body fat is often used as the sign of the diet’s effectiveness on our health. 

The understanding that body fat was unhealthy was presented with the history of how in the mid 1900s we learned how to produce food at such a scale that it was cheap and developed tools that reduced our daily physical activity, creating a social status indicator that was the opposite of how it was previously. With the belief that before this time people who physically worked were thinner from laboring and not able to eat as much due to cost, while those who were higher on the socio-economic scale didn’t have to labor and could eat more. Thus, carrying more fat was desirable until it was easy to do and then carrying less was the ideal. 

While this explanation doesn’t at all address the health implications that body fat is supposed to have, it does give a solid story about how we as a society developed our issues with body fat. It cannot, however, be a true story because it doesn’t explain how the most popular books in the United States in the 1800s were diet books. In the book A Short History of the American Stomach, Frederick Kaufman writes about how many of the new diets of today are actually diets from the 19th century. The modern day versions certainly have new names and the options our food industry has been able to create are remarkable, but the essence is the same. Which I would think could make one question the trust that they have placed in the current dietary plan. 

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of diet books and they may all work but they are too contradictory to think that they will work for everyone. But they don’t have to work for everyone, they just have to work for you. And that, I believe, should be the guiding focus for whatever dietary plan you have. 

How do you know if your diet is working for you? You pay attention and you track. Tracking means writing down when you eat, what you eat and how much you eat. Paying attention is not only writing down how you feel in your diet tracker, but also watching your body metrics (blood sugar, cholesterols, body weight, etc.) which over time can provide insights into how your body is responding to your diet. The tricky part is to not overvalue the measurements. It can be far too easy to have a number on the scale override your efforts and seem like a much more real indicator of how your diet is working for you than the fact that you aren’t as exhausted at the end of a day. If this sounds familiar, please consider not using the scale. There are so many great reasons to pay attention to what you are eating and while numbers can seem real and objective, placing too much importance on them can cause harm to the far more important goal of optimizing health. 

I know it can be tedious, but the simple fact is that the more you consistently track when, what and how much you eat, as well as how it makes you feel, the better you will understand your body and how to provide the best nutrition for it. 

As always, let me know how I can help.
Adam
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Simple goals set long term success.

5/3/2021

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​Take a small step. Achieve it and give yourself a gold star sticker. Then plan the next step and repeat. This is the way of success. The research is pretty clear that for most of us this progressive accomplishment is not only how we achieve great goals but it is also how we realize the joy of feeling good. Unfortunately, it does not fit with our typical approach to lifestyle changes like diet and exercise. 

For those goals we tend to fall into the mythological thinking of making a significant shift that begins on the New Year, or maybe the start of a new week, and then it’s a planned overhaul of our entire life. Throw out all the food in our cupboards that don’t fit the new plan and set the alarm to wake us an hour earlier. Yet, we know that this model is the path of failure. In fact, this is so common that it doesn’t even need to be explained.

There is wisdom in the saying that a  journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  And I would say that you can get started without knowing the exact destination. Create a simple rule to follow for two weeks. A simple rule could be limits on the time of day that you eat, eating no white flour, only eating local animal products or not eating while involved in any other activity (driving, watching tv, reading, etc.). The simple rule goal is to disrupt the pattern and provide an opportunity to think about eating. 

Regardless of the rule you create, follow it and then reward yourself. Remember that while our goal is the big picture, that destination is only achieved through many little steps. And each of those steps is an opportunity for you to take a moment and appreciate you and celebrate how great you are doing.

Adam
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Find Your Power

6/3/2015

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If you are reading this email, chances are that you have a body. While that statement is simple and obvious, the essence of what it means is a lot less so. Over the 20+ years that I have worked in the industry of helping people with their bodies I have realized that the body can be seen, and treated, as an art form, display object, temple, instrument, conduit, vessel, measuring stick, a home and, perhaps most often, like a machine.

How you view your body is important because it becomes the foundation of how you treat it. If, for example, your body is simply a measuring stick or a means by which to compare yourself against others then the goals and values placed on your body are very different than they would be if you considered your body more of a vessel that carried your spirit and enabled it to interact in this world.

Body image talk brings with it many issues and challenges that revolve around the impact that societal pressures have in how your body appears to fit within the society that you inhabit. And there is no question that throughout human history the body has been used as a tool for people to communicate - or at least to make assumptions. There are numerous ways that humans discern who is like them and who is not and many of these are not conscious. They are sometimes subtle differences in mannerisms and movements. These "like" movement patterns are so powerful that there are programs for sales people that are built around teaching how to recognize and mimic them because when used appropriately they are effective at creating trust - a necessary first step to making the sale.

Let's take a moment and ponder that. If there are non-obvious, non verbal actions that a person can make that can make you more likely to like them and believe them, then there must be signals that you are sending out to others in a similar way. If you aren't consciously modifying those signals then it would seem that they must be based subconsciously and, perhaps, based on the foundation of how you view your body and your self. If we know that is happening externally, imagine how much is internally affecting us without our knowledge.

In my career I have had the opportunity to work with people of all shapes, sizes and fitness levels and can tell you that - as surprising as it may seem - having a body that fits the societal ideal is not the path to loving your body. Loving your body comes from shifting how you view it. Changing your paradigm to one of appreciation is not only the way to reducing the inner conflict it is also the basis for creating change.

I realize that this can be a hard concept to grasp, 'if I like it as it is, why would I want to change?' is far more understandable. For me, the answer lies in the difference between 'happy' and 'satiated'. Wanting to do better or achieve greater is not at odds with being happy with your current level.

This idea is not outside of our thinking for many areas; a competitive athlete can be very happy with a finish but still want to do better, a researcher can be happy with the work and search for ways to do it better, an actor can appreciate the level of performance and still strive for becoming better. In fact, this striving to do better is a desirable passionate driving force yet when it comes to our bodies this model is tossed aside for the all-too-often one of battling the enemy.

Your body is going to be with you your entire life. If it is not supporting you in the way that you want, think about how you can do a better job being happy with it for all that it does. Start with appreciation then, if there are things you would like to be different, use the body building technique of focusing on what you want it to be like. That's right, I said body building, because they spend so much time looking at their bodies and imagining what they want it to look like. They know that focusing your attention on what you don't want, or on what is, will only hinder your ability to create what you want. The goal is to reduce the inner conflict and focus all of your power toward one direction.

Whether that direction is fat loss, muscle gain or even more serious health issues, your best results will come through getting your entire self working as a unified team.  After all, you are in this together.

As always, let me know how I can help.

Adam
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    This blog is written and updated by the staff that support EQUIVITA. Individual blog posts are the thoughts of the staff member that submitted the post.  The content of these posts often support the thoughts and ideas of our organization, but do not always(and we scarcely use definitives) reflect the same thoughts or ideas of the organization as a whole.

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