E11: Health behaviours that might not be healthy for you or your kids!

4 portrayed behaviours that are encouraged by the health and fitness industry that could actually be detrimental to your health:

I'm talking about:

Step trackers

Calorie Counting

Before and After Images

Weekly Weigh-ins

I'll also share my tips and advice with each to make sure your HEALTH is the priority!

P.s I've recorded my top 5 health and fitness tips for parents, it's a 13minute masterclass which you can access for FREE here:
https://mailchi.mp/0d13fb44479f/healthyparentmasterclass

Social Media/Other Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifestylelegacygym
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthrevivalcoachben
Website: https://linktr.ee/lifestyle.legacy_ben

Transcript

Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle Legacy podcast. This is episode eleven. My name is Ben Johnson, and today I want to share four portrayed healthy behaviors that might not be healthy for you or your kids at all. Going forwards, going to get straight into them. Number one, step trackers. The whole ten k steps per day buzz that's been around a while. Whilst step trackers initially can help you build self awareness of your daily movement and your activity levels, they can also become an additive towards a negative relationship with exercise and your general movement. This in turn can negatively impact your overall mental health. Let's take an example. If you've got a step goal of 10,000 steps per day. Actually, whilst we're here, I want to make a point of saying that ten K steps, as much as it's thrown around as being the gold standard, is quite an unrealistic and unsustainable target for many people initially. A better idea is to set a target that's a little more than your current. So for some people that might be 5000, might be 6000, might be 7000 a day instead of 10,000. Anyway, I got sidetracked a little bit there. Using an example, you've got 10,000 steps per day as your daily goal, probably just because somebody said so. It's probably tied to an outcome probably around fat loss being the most common one. Let's say there's certain days that that step goal isn't hit. This could be making you feel like a complete failure. It could lower yourself worth, it could lower your confidence. This could lead you inevitably to giving up on all of your health journey. You could just go into sack it off mode, the all or nothing mindset which I've spoke about so many times. On the flip side of that, sticking with the same example, you've got a goal, 10,000 steps per day. This can create obsessive tendencies, not being able to relax, not being able to socialize, not being able to partake in other daily enjoyable tasks just because you've got to hit 10,000 steps every single day. There's two sides to this, and both sides can be really, really detrimental to your long term mental health and your long term relationship with exercise, with movement, with your body image, which will get into, especially if the approach, the reasoning, the goal setting, the understanding and the motivations are in the wrong place. I've even started seeing and hearing more and more kids, these kids under 16, wearing step trackers. And in my honest opinion, I personally think that it's a terrible idea which needs to be nipped for the above reasons that I've just gone through on both sides of the coin. So my advice would be to stop encouraging school age kids to wear these. I'm going to share some more tips around step trackers after I've gone through number two because they're both very linked. So this leads me on to number two calorie counting calorie tracking the buzz of calorie deficit in recent years. Again, similar to step trackers, initial use can help some people build better self awareness of energy intake. Remember, calories is just a form of measurement of energy. However, they can also, as well as step trackers, be an additive towards negative relationship with food, negative relationship with your body and your body image. Again, both things which massively impact mental health and your overall happiness. First of all, if you had or currently have an eating disorder or OCD calorie tracking, calorie counting could be the absolute worst thing for you to do and for your mental illness and for your mental health. Important to understand that. 1st second of all, just like a daily steps goal with a calorie goal, you might have days where you don't hit it. In this instance, calorie daily goal might be over. Where the step goal might be under. Let's say you go over on your calorie goal. Your tracker that you're using just shows red, red. You start to feel like a failure. You may allow negative self talk to come into play I can't do this. You lower your self worth again, you give up, inevitably go into the all or nothing mindset because you've got a bit of a bad relationship with how you view these trackers. Also very important to note that calorie intake does not equal nutrient intake. They are two completely separate things. You can hit your calorie goal, you can even lose fat and still be very very unhealthy when there's no consideration for your nutrient intake and your mineral intake. You've probably heard me say that fat loss does not always equal healthy or healthier. Actually, on the flip side of that, calorie counting I've seen firsthand can also make you, let's call it health habit lazy when it comes to nutrition because you can just completely disregard nutrient and mineral intake as long as you're hitting that calorie goal number. Also with calorie counting and tracking. Many people, just like with other diets, then become attached to the calorie counting method and they believe that it has to be part of their life every day going forwards for the rest of their lives because it's helped them maybe lose a bit of body fat. And then if they stop using it, then they're going to fail. And it's a bit like this safety net which again long term isn't really a positive relationship with food, with nutrition, and with your body shape and body image as well. So my advice with both step trackers and calorie counting trackers is this they can be useful if you want to use them, you don't have to, they can be useful. But you've got to think about approaching these with a short term method. Think about them as being a method that's going to help you build self awareness. You've got a long term exit strategy and they might help you build some last and healthy habits in the meantime, assess weekly how these trackers make you feel. If you're feeling things like guilt, worry, stress, or like you're a failure, or like on the flip side, you have to have them and you're fully attached to them. Then you either need help changing how you approach these trackers or just don't use them at all. Seek help with other methods to improve your health. There's loads of other ones which we help all of our team members with either side either improving the relationship with these trackers or showing them a completely different method. And as touched on earlier, these tools step trackers, calorie counting Trackers they need education around the approach and how to use them efficiently. They need help educate you on what the motivations for using them are. If your motivations are coming from the wrong place again, that's going to affect your mental health. You need education on the impacts from using them. How would it actually impact your body, your performance? And then you need education in effective and efficient goal setting when using them. Again, with health in mind, there's more to consider than just downloading a tracker and having a number to hit. Keep that in mind. Number three before and after photos something that I think is portrayed in the health and fitness industry that actually could be very, very detrimental to health. Before and after photos, in my opinion, are tie in all health into just shape and fat loss. Little story for you. The leannest that I've ever been in my adult life, about three years ago now, was probably one of the unhealthiest times as well when I'm talking about health. As a reminder, if you've not listened to any of my previous podcasts, health is physical, mental and social well being. So over the six months I wanted to do a photo shoot to market my business, I thought that doing a before and after photo would help promote me, see me as someone who knows what they're talking about and as an authoritative figure in the industry. So over that six months for the before and after photos, let's look at health, physical, mental, social, physically. This is all complete honesty, by the way. I was tired a lot, I was ill a lot, I lost quite a lot of strength. Mentally, I was stressed, worried, anxious about the photos themselves and in all honesty, had probably the worst body image to date. Body image being how you perceive how you look and how you think others think about how you look as well. Socially, I was avoiding meals out, I was avoiding certain foods, certain food groups. I was avoiding enjoying alcohol. Every now and again with friends, family members, we're talking about health, physical, mental, social. That doesn't sound healthy at all. It wasn't. But because the health and fitness industry has pushed us, or pushed progress and marketing via before and after photos, before and after imagery, we've all been led to believe that this is what health and fitness is all about. And the more that we applaud it, the more that we like it, the more we share it on social media and media, the more that we reinforce this belief, the worse this problem is going to become. I'm not saying that you can't lose weight and you can't lose fat and you can't change your body shape and not improve your health. You can. That's exactly what I help people with right now from my own experience. It's exactly what I do in my own personal life. But what I am seeing is that a lot of methods, a lot of ways, a lot of plans, a lot of coaches, a lot of instructors are not doing this with health as a priority. And health in mind often say it to our members there's no point in losing weight, losing body fat, changing shape, and feeling **** in the process. Health has got to be the priority, otherwise it won't last. And I feel like before and after images aren't really putting health as a priority in a lot, a lot of cases. So my advice with this start positively reinforcing how you feel rather than just how you look or what the scales say when it comes to your exercise nutrition habits. Start focusing on the actual health improvements physically, mentally and socially, that exercise and nutrition behavior change can bring to your life. If we just continue to focus on looks and on photos, before and after images, how do you think you're going to feel when your body naturally changes shape? Year, depending on your circumstances. After Christmas, after a holiday, after some celebrations, after family changes, environment changes at work, becoming more sedentary, for instance, or having more family members introduced into your life, or having to look after someone. These are all circumstances that are going to impact your body shape year to year that you can still, yes, have a control over. You're not going all or nothing, but they are going to impact. So what if you don't ever look as lean as that before and after fort or that you did? Does that mean that you're a failure? Does that mean that you just feel fat, you hate your body, you hate yourself, you start punishing yourself, you start restricting yourself. Realize that's unsustainable, burn out, give up, and then just give up on your health habits altogether. This is the rabbit hole that perform after imagery can take a lot of people down. Not a relationship that I want for myself or for my kids. Something to consider. Finally, .4 weekly Weins weekly weighins, whether that is from a PT coaches, instructors, fat loss camps, weight loss clubs, whatever it is, weight on the scale as a solo metric of health progress is not helpful or accurate. An ad goes far as saying it's the exact opposite. It's unhelpful, it's very damaging, and it's inaccurate. And I'm going to get into that. Now, first of all, important to understand that scale weight includes muscle mass, it includes body fat, and includes water weight. So to just focus on weight loss week to week means that the person who is making you weigh in every week, whether that's your instructor, coach, whatever it is, they are happy for you and they're encouraging you to lose any of those three things that we've just spoke about muscle mass, body fat and water weight. Wow. I'm not too sure what the health benefits of muscle loss brings. Poor support, poor strength, poor mobility, less independence, reduced quality of life. They come to mind. Doesn't sound too healthy. Water, not too sure what health benefit water loss brings. Dehydration, less energy, slower bodily functions, comes to mind. Again, doesn't sound too healthy to me. So how can weight and weight loss alone as a metric be classed as a health indicator? On top of that, here's a scenario. What if you'd started consistently exercising? Great. You've included more nutrient dense foods each week. Brilliant. You're drinking more water. Brilliant. You get on the scales week to week that don't move. Does that mean that no progress has been made? You get frustrated, you give up and sack off all positive health habits. And just because a number on the scales didn't show that your mental health has improved, your energy levels have improved, your sleep's improved, your confidence has improved, your immune system and other bodily systems have improved, are you then willing just to give up on all of those benefits? And that's not many, by the way. I've only mentioned some just because a number on the scales didn't change. Going back to muscle fat and water, all things that are included in scale weight, I want to focus on the water weight section a little bit just to improve your knowledge. Again, a little bit about this. You could have lost, let's say, one or £3 of fat in a week, but you step on the scales because your educator, instructor, leader, whatever it is, tells you to do. So depending on factors like what type of food you ate the day before, how much salt you had the day before, your exercise level on the day of, or the day before, your hydration level on the day of or the day before you step on the scales. The time of the month it is for the ladies when you step on the scales. All of these things could impact your water weight. So therefore your water weight could be higher than the week before. And then that one or £3 that you've lost in body fat is completely masked by the increase in water weight. And it looks like no progress is made. I'll say it again, weight on the scales as a solo metric of health progress is not helpful or accurate. Hopefully you all agree with me now on that. So my advice with weekly weigh ins. First of all, assess what your motivations for weight loss are. How, if at all, will it positively impact your overall health and quality of life? If you really want to track weight changes, make sure you build up your knowledge of how body weight works. Like, I've touched on how it can fluctuate, what it is included in it, how nutrition impacted, how exercise impacted. Make sure you weigh in yourself no more than once per month at the same time every month. The ladies out there try to do it in line with the same part of your menstrual cycle, month to month, as much as you can, and make sure you're being realistic. Zoom out. Assess certain factors, like I've discussed the day or two prior that might impact scale weight, especially your water weight. Take them into consideration. Make sure you've got more than one aesthetic progress metric, not just scale weight. And then also make sure that you've got at least two other non weight related health progress metrics for motivation and focus. If you can't improve your understanding and your relationship with the skills, and use those tips that I've shared, throw them in the bin. Your mental health and your overall health deserve more. They deserve better. So there's four behaviors portrayed as healthy or to do with the health and fitness industry that can actually be very detrimental long term for not just us, but also for our kids if we're passing on these habits and behaviors and they're being inspired by us. If you can relate any of these or you're struggling with any of these, please do not hesitate. Reach out via the info provided in the podcast text. I've got regular, free, insight events coming up for people to come in, have a little sneak peek into my one on one online coaching program, which can be done anywhere in the world. Thanks again for listening, and please, please keep on sharing. If you found this information useful.