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Body Image

A Life Coaching Perspective

What this page is not about

This page is not about altering the body using surgical or other artificial needs. This page is not about a discussion about diet physiology and the efficacy of one diet versus another one. The only comment I will make in that regard is that the only certainty in regard to diet is that successful long term weight loss depends on the consumption over a long period of time of less energy than is expended. This is a great page to check out if you're after easy to understand information on the physiology of dieting. Nor is this about the efficacy of an exercise program suffice to say that it works on many levels not just in a weight loss sense by burning energy and contributes to the expending of energy in the weight loss equation cited about. This is a page you can visit to understand how exercise burns energy. But for the following discussion I take both my statements as a given.

What this page is about

This page is about tracing the roots of the problems with body image but only in order to understand the subsequent initial motivation to take up an exercise program and then to continue with it until the goal weight or other target is reached. This page when it does discuss altering body image is only about using a healthy exercise and diet program with obsession playing a part in neither. When illnesses develop with an undue obsession with exercise and/or diet, then medical advice should be sought. My interest in this subject is firstly personal as I am currently following an exercise and diet program consisting of a reduced calorie intake supported by a regular aerobic exercise program. But I am more interested generally speaking in the aetiology or deep source of firstly recognising that there is a need to adjust your current body image and secondly the motivation to do something about it and then stick to it.

I must also say here that I find both an exercise program and a diet program a hard thing to do and I presume the majority of people would also find it hard to do on a regular, consistent and sustained basis. So understanding the roots of the desire to take up the running shoes and eating less maybe helpful in sustaining the effort over a long period.

Dissatisfaction with one's body image

There are as many reasons for being dissatisfied with one's current body image as there are people but a number of common sense reasons come to mind ---

The realisation that you are carrying an extra 30 kilos over and above your optimal weight for your height. It is a hard slog having to carry that around. Too much hard work. Just imagine putting 30 kilos on your back and carrying that around for a whole work day. Very difficult if not impossible. It makes exercising very difficult and injury prone especially when participating in dry land high impact aerobic exercises like jogging or running on a treadmill for example.

Even if you don't find it hard work to carry the extra kilos, there are serious consequences for your health with long term obesity.

The shape, size, distribution, firmness or otherwise of your body may not be pleasing to you aesthetically. You may have been a very fit and toned individual as a younger person and you hark back to those days when you were fit and any physical challenges placed in front of you could be easily conquered. Whilst you are unfit, you cannot meet those challenges.

One of the most important arbiters of doing something about your current body image is the internal (ideal) image you have about yourself and the gap between that and the current reality. The wider the gap the greater the disconnect between your inner harmony and your outside physical manifestion.

You may desire to take up sport again or even set your sights higher so to speak and say want to climb Mt Everest and for that you may need to do six months alpine training and follow a very disciplined exercise regime and perhaps need to lose 20 or 30 kilos.

Starting an exercise and diet regime

There are many reasons why someone would want to start an exercise and diet regime. Starting it is the easier (in relative terms compared to continuing at a high rate but in absolute terms it is frighteningly difficult to start) part of the whole game. Doing it continually, consistently and at a high rate of achievement is the key driver one has to master. That in relative terms and also absolute terms is the hardest to keep up. There is the initial realisation that your have idealised and realised, given voice to a goal. This is only the beginning of the beginning. The next thing that happens is also understanding, appreciating that though your goal is to accomplish something in six months, you still will be live through the next six months without having fully realised your goal. This is a bit of a dampener as you want the goal to be realised as soon as it is set, given voice, inside you. You think why if I did this six months earlier, it would be done by now.

Diet doesn't have to be a regime. But this is what it is called in french. Diet is usually equated with eating less of so-called bad foods and eating more of the so-called good foods. If one is trying to lose weight, then it is only about ensuring one's energy consumption is less than one's energy intake. But it is not simply about that equation. It is not a limitless intake of energy and provided that one expends at least one calorie more one is in theory on the way to losing some weight. That is taking the equation too literally. I think there will be a calorie intake recommended by nutritionists that is the reasonable amount required (not the minimum and not the maximum) to sustain the day's reasonable activities and provide energy for the metabolism. So from a weight loss point of view, the point one should be coming from is balancing a reasonable intake of energy on the one hand and a reasonable amount of expenditure on the other hand to ensure that the sum of calories needed for body nutrition (and which is expended) plus the amount expended by exercise is more than the daily reasonable intake of energy. In this situation, one is not trying to combat massive overeating by an exercise routine that will never ever keep up let alone be more than the energy consumed.

Obviously one can more easily be losing weight in the situation where there is a reasonable calorie intake but the entrenched problem with over weight people is that the calorie intake is not reasonable. It is massively more than is required by the body's metabolism and is not offset by any expenditure of energy as a result of the body's metabolism and any additional energy sapping activities like walking, running, swimming. The inherent imbalance in over weight people is that they may not exercise or exercise too lightly but that their consumption of calories is massive0ly over that that is reasonably required by the day's needs and any other activities. What is the cause of this?

Firstly on the energy consumption side, what drives people to consume more than the recommended allowed energy intake. In other words why do they overeat. I think that question must be answered before one can take any reasonable steps to reduce it. One can never combat it alone by exercise. Otherwise you would need to exercise for hours to lose 1 pound of fat. People who overeat eat more that is recommended on average but also eat more than the maximum allowed. What causes them to explode past the normal boundaries of consumption into a stratosphere, an orgy of feasting and food. I think one of the main reasons for this is that because food makes us feel good and some foods better than others. Over weight people tend to reward themselves with the food that makes them feel great, usually with lots of calories, or reward themselves with activities that do not burn calories and entrench the problem such as watching tv or a movie, buying videos, DVDs, watching a game (but not participating in any). This rewarding behaviour (more like cause = I have done something good and reward = a piece of chocolate cake) ensures the over weight person is locked in a vicious circle. The more they reward themselves, the more weight they put on, which results in lesser and lesser physical activities. In addition to rewarding themselves with food, perhaps even more insidious and difficult to counter is when an over weight person feels bad, they will remedy those bad feelings by foods that give an instant hit to the blood sugar level and dramatically increase the calorie intake. The more they eat the worse in terms of body image they feel and the worse they feel the more they eat. A truly difficult vortex to extricate one self from.

The barriers to continuing and performing

The barriers to continuing and performing at a high rate are many including ---

You reach a certain point, an easy point to reach on an upward trajectory and then you plateau. To use this plateau as a launching pad you need to push through a certain performance barrier to reach an area where your performance is continually improving. This barrier may be related to a pain threshold or a fear of what is around the end of the current path. This fear of pain or fear of succeeding, both fear of the unknown, is a powerful demotivator.

Another reason people stop is because they have achieved their goal not knowing that a maintenance program is required to consolidate the progress made and hold the line at that point without regressing to being unhappy with your body image. It is something one must do for the rest of their lives. It is preferable to keep setting new goals each one higher than the other instead of holding the line per se. As I have written elsewhere don't be content with living anywhere but base camp ready to climb the mountain. Always live in setting and achieving mode. Standing still one can too easily fall back or regress.

It gets boring for you. Mostly this will be because you are stuck on a performance plateau and to get off requires further and additional effort requiring dedication and perseverance and based on the previous point a certain fearlessness to overcome both the pain and the fear of success barrier.

Why are people afraid of succeeding? It is because they are enjoying the journey and don't want the disappointment of reaching the destination and then having to recalibrate their lives and set new goals. The groove that they are in during the journey is so powerful that it takes a life of its own and forces the person into a certain behavior that is less than their optimum. To continue long after the initial destination has been reached is to waste valuable time and potential by not achieving one initial gaol (Base Camp) and then immediately setting another one (Intermediate Camp I) with the bar raised slightly higher.

Injuries both niggling minor ones and more serious injuries take time to recover and their is a natural reticence to continue with or recommence a behavior that has previously led to this injury.

A catastrophic life event or events, of which I have written much elsewhere.

It has been said that it is important that the work (exercise and diet regimen) that you are doing is not seen as something extraordinary you do but becomes part of your everyday life. That I think somewhat simplifies the situation. It is only just words but the actual doing of is another dimension altogether. Firstly if it was so easy to incorporate into your normal life, then why is it that so many people start exercise and diet programs. It is not something one can easily integrate into one's life because it is a difficult thing to do and keep on doing. That's why so many people stop and so many people are starting. A lifestyle that integrates a good exercise and diet regimen is probably the closest one will get to totally integrating the program into one's life. If your job is sedentary and you are exposed to the temptation of junk food, then your exercise and diet regimen is another world apart. But if your work is as say a mountaineering guide or a fitness instructor or some other occupation where you have to be extremely fit then it is a lot easier to integrate the diet and exercise philosophy than an office worker ever could. They can try but they never will as the level of integration is low at best.

What does it take to continue and improve?

A deep seated desire to improve your body image, one which is hard driven from inside yourself and where you are your best exponent. It is you that forces your body to do the things it needs to to improve performance.

An iron will to regularly, constantly, consciously engage the mind to tell the body to do what it has to do to get into shape. Humans are by nature lazy animals so this will is crucial to get you off your butt and do it.

Having a strong attachment to your ideal goal image will help making your body work hard to achieve that ideal goal image. Sometimes this can go horribly wrong in cases of anorexia and other related illnesses but I mean here a healthy pre-occupation with body image that drives a healthy exercise and diet regime.

A good appreciation of safe and healthy behaviors in relation to exercise and diet. Not trying too hard or trying to outpace the body's capacity to perform. A good understanding of what is required in terms of preparation of the body for an exercise program is vitally important to ensure there is a safe takeoff and smooth plateauing and landing and takeoff and smooth plateauing and landing again and so on.

Giving yourself enough time to recover between sessions. Make the sessions fun, exciting and interesting by providing your own music and perhaps dressing in a manner that makes you feel great about yourself. This is especially so as your body image improves with your work.

A scientific and medically proven approach to treatment of injuries is very important so is prevention (see above).

Integrate your exercise and diet regiment with your life style and your life cycle. See above for an explanation of this.

You must come to the realisation the belief that you cannot defeat excess energy consumption by exercise alone. You have an important part to play in controlling what goes in your mouth and only allowing those things that will help you. If you are continually defeating your efforts on the exercise battlefield by opening and putting into your mouth excess energy, that will set you back, then eventually you will become discouraged and give up.

Be prepared with alternative strategies when the early boost provided by your initial goal setting begins to wanes and you are only 20% into achieving your goals. Know that this will happen and you will wake up one day 20% into the program and not feel like going for a run or going to the gym or eating sensibly.

Do not be discouraged when you make great progress one week and not so good progress the next. Your body is adjusting to the program and is reacting to it in its own way. Understand it and go with it don't fight it by trying too hard or other unhelpful and unhealthy measures.

What can a Life Coach help with healthily improving body image?

Life Coaching can trigger the deep seated desire to improve the body image and enhance performance. It is about discovering the inner deep desires and dreams that complete you, will nurture your inner self image and will set you up for the future. In order to work with this, we need to build a deep understanding trusting working relationship. This is the key. But most people fear this, fear the one thing that will help them conquer and achieve. Overcoming this initial fear and engaging a Life Coach is the first step won in the battle for achieving your goals.

Please call me on my mobile (0409 223 436) for a confidential discussion to begin the journey of self discovery.

You may prefer to email me your situation and your desired goals. Your details will be kept strictly confidential.

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