In past lives, Dean Anderson has been a social worker, small business owner, college psychology and philosophy instructor, and world-class couch potato who weighed close to 400 pounds, smoked three packs and drank two six-packs of beer per day, and considered chocolate-peanut butter fudge a well-balanced meal. In this life, Dean earned a personal training certification from ACE, received training as a lifestyle and weight management consultant, and began working for SparkPeople. He writes about attitude adjustment, motivation, men's health, and senior fitness. When not sitting in front of his computer, he can usually be found hiking or biking (he's the bald guy that everyone else is passing).
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Confession: My Mind Isn’t Getting Along With My Body (Again)
I had one of those Aha! moments this past weekend. You probably know what I’m talking about: one of those blinding flashes of the obvious (BFO), where you suddenly realize what’s really going on, and why you’ve been doing what you've been doing. Which, of course, has been obvious to everyone else in your life for quite a while.
This particular BFO was triggered by a complete stranger. I was out last Sunday taking a ride on my bike, and was making a quick stop at the grocery store on my way home when I crashed. I didn’t think it was any big deal, just some scratches and bruises, and tried to head on into the grocery store as planned. But some bystanders firmly insisted that I should wait for the paramedics, who had already been called. I protested until a woman pulled a mirror from her purse and showed me my face, which was covered in blood from a fairly nasty looking gash near my temple.
Fortunately, my injuries turned out to be less serious than they looked. But in the course of cleaning me up and checking me out for signs of a concussion, the paramedic grilled me about what had happened. I explained that I had been out on a long ride, and was angling into the store’s driveway when my front tire got snagged on the curb cut and I was thrown off the bike onto the sidewalk. We walked over so I could show him where it happened, and I saw that the curb cut was very high, which explained why it grabbed my tire. I told him I hadn’t noticed that, because I didn’t have my glasses on. Then he said:
Posted 2/19/2009 12:33:32 PM By: : 184 comments 9,410 views
Staying Motivated Tip #8: The Three Ps of Success
In last week’s blog, I talked about how the Three P’s of Failure can lead to “learned pessimism” and cause all kinds of motivational problems–not to mention how they can make your emotional life pretty miserable. Now let’s talk about how to transform that pessimism into an effective “can do” attitude, and a more enjoyable state of mind.
Posted 2/17/2009 7:32:14 PM By: : 60 comments 19,849 views
Quiz: How much do you really know about fat?
If you’re trying to eat healthy and/or lose weight, you need to know quite a bit about fat—both the kind you eat, and the kind you’d like to lose.
But it seems that many of us don’t really know as much as we need to. In this study, for example, 77% of the people questioned knew that trans fat is one kind of dietary fat that can be unhealthy. But only 21% could name 3 foods that provide trans fat, and only 33% could name one.
Can you name 3 or more kinds of foods that have significant amounts of trans fat in them (without looking at the article first)?
There are also many myths and misconceptions floating around about how to get your body to lose the stored fat you don’t want. If you’re not sure what’s fact and what’s myth, you could waste a lot of time doing things that don’t produce very good results—or even worse, your diet and exercise efforts could produce results that are the opposite of what you really want.
Here are some basic statements about fat that you’ll often run into. Some are true and some aren’t. Decide whether you think each statement is true or false, and then check your answers below.
1. Your body “loses” fat by taking body fat out of storage in your fat cells and converting it into energy when you don’t eat enough to match your energy needs.
2. Compared to protein and carbohydrate, fat is the easiest nutrient for your body to store as body fat.
3. The larger your daily calorie deficit is, the more body fat you will burn as fuel.
4. To get the best fat loss results, you should exercise at lower intensity levels (the “fat-burning zone” you see on many cardio exercise machines).
5. It’s better to exercise on an empty stomach, because you’ll burn more fat as fuel for your exercise.
6. A very low-fat diet is best for your health and for weight loss.
7. For weight loss, it’s better to concentrate on strength training rather than cardio exercise, because muscle burns more calories all the time, and the more you have, the more calories you’ll burn even when just sitting around.
Done? Read on to check your answers…
Posted 2/12/2009 6:20:49 PM By: : 73 comments 25,607 views
Staying Motivated Tip #7: Beat the Three P's of Failure
Do you feel like you consistently sabotage your own good intentions and don’t understand why? Or that you have an evil twin who takes control of your mind sometimes just so she can do the opposite of what you intended, no matter how much trouble it causes?
Welcome to the club. Many good intentions end up as pavement on that proverbial road to a certain well-known, extremely hot place. But, no, the devil did not make you do it. And it’s not very likely that you have an evil twin sharing your brain and body, either.
For most of us, there’s a very simple explanation for what looks like self-sabotage–and a simple solution, as well.
Posted 2/10/2009 6:21:01 PM By: : 152 comments 30,252 views
Staying Motivated Tip #6: Assemble Your Own Success Squad
When it comes to changing exercise and eating habits, flying solo is not a good idea for most of us. It can be tough work, with a lot of ups and downs. We need the information, ideas, moral support and inspiration we get from being around others working on the same things.
Study after study has confirmed that people who use weight loss programs with a strong social component do better than those who don’t. And it’s not hard to understand why. One of the main reasons people gain weight in the first place, and find it hard to lose on their own, is that we live in an “obesogenic” environment–an environment where calorie-dense food is TOO available, and eating it is often part of “fitting in” to the social groups we’re part of, including family, friends, and co-workers.
You’ve probably seen some of the magazine stories, like this one, about “how your friends make you fat.” Of course, no one literally forces you to overeat—you’re the one who puts the food in your own mouth. But if a spouse or significant other doesn’t want to change how they eat, or friends get upset when you change the “rules” on them (which might have included excessive drinking, eating, or sitting around), or co-workers act offended when you decline the office doughnuts or fast food lunches, this can generate an awful lot of pressure to give up your new behaviors and go back to the “way things used to be.”
And a lot of this pressure comes from the inside, as well as the outside. It’s our nature to need and want to fit in, and it's very hard to be the “outsider” who’s playing by different rules and priorities.
The bottom line is that most of us do much better, and feel much better about it, when eating and exercising the way we need to is what helps us fit in, not when it means we have to resist pressures to conform or struggle constantly with temptations.
This doesn’t mean you have to make your entire social world change their habits along with you in order to stay motivated and be successful–or move yourself into a weight loss monastery where there aren’t any temptations or conflicts to contend with. You just need to find yourself a community where doing what it takes to achieve your health and fitness goals is also what it takes to fit into that community and feel like you belong there. The motivation, support and inspiration you can get there will usually be enough to get you through whatever temptations and frustrations the rest of your life throws at you–more often than not, anyway, which is all it take to succeed.
But this doesn’t happen automatically when you sign up in a weight loss support group. It takes active participation in the community, and it takes identifying and asking for the particular kind of support you need—and giving something back in return. In effect, you have to create your own individualized support community from the people and resources available to you.
That means, of course, you have to know both what you need, and what you have to offer. Here are some ideas you can use to identify your own support needs, and the kind of supporters you might want on your Success Squad:
Posted 2/3/2009 6:01:53 PM By: : 108 comments 19,033 views
Does It Really? What's the Deal with the bodybugg?
Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easy-to-use, moderately priced weight loss tool that told you exactly how many calories you burned each day, how many you ate, and what your real calorie surplus or deficit is?
That would sure take a lot of the mystery and confusion out of the business of losing or maintaining weight. Right now, all the numbers you get from exercise machines, online calculators, and even heart rate monitors come from general formulas based on statistical data from large numbers of people. Since no two people are exactly alike, these general estimates can be, and usually are, inaccurate—sometimes by as much as 30-40%. And food trackers, of course, are only accurate if you record everything you eat.
Well, there is a device that claims to come pretty close to solving these problems. If you watch "The Biggest Loser" on NBC, you’ve probably seen it on the contestants—it’s called the bodybugg. The bodybugg is owned and sold by Apex Fitness, the same company that owns the chain of gyms called 24 Hour Fitness, which is also a major sponsor of "The Biggest Loser" show. For current pricing and information about what you get for your money, you can check the company's website.
The bodybugg system consists of two parts. The first is an armband sensor that collects several kinds of information about you as you go through your daily activity, and uses it to estimate your calorie expenditure during both your exercise and the rest of your daily activities; you can also get an optional wristwatch-style display that shows you the numbers. The second part is a computer software program that does some math, based on the armband data and other information you provide, to figure out how much you must have eaten in order to produce the changes in your body weight observed over any given period of time. It also tracks your numbers over time and has some other features.
Basically, it's the opposite of the traditional method of tracking your food intake carefully, and estimating your calorie expenditure.
In theory, the bodybugg eliminates the need for tracking your food intake (check out the video on their website, which claims "Don't want to track your food? You don't have to!") and counting calories in versus calories out. Bodybugg's gadgets and formulas and software would do all this for you. All you'd need to do is wear the armband most of the time, spend a little time on the computer, and adjust your food intake or your exercise until your calorie deficit is what you want it to be. You also have to pay monthly fees ($14.95 right now) for the online software to work, without which, the Bodybugg is not very useful.
That's how it works in theory. But does it actually work in real life?
Posted 1/29/2009 11:19:18 AM By: : 233 comments 77,271 views
Staying Motivated, Tip #5: Write Your Own Contract for Success
Once you’ve made sure your goals are positive and realistic, and you’ve gotten yourself into the habit of making mindful choices, the next ingredient you’ll probably need in your plan for staying motivated is personal accountability.
You know that keeping yourself accountable to your own goals is a basic key to success in any endeavor. Even with all the information you need and all the good intentions in the world, you won’t get very far if you continuously let yourself off the hook when it’s time to actually do what you need to do—even if you do that mindfully. There’s nothing that will de-motivate you faster than frequently letting yourself down when it’s time to put your intentions into action.
That doesn’t mean you need to be perfect with every decision—perfectionism is a trap you definitely want to avoid. And it also doesn’t mean you need to have the will power and self-discipline of a world-class athlete in training. For most of us, accountability is all about having the right kinds of tools and the right kind of support to draw on when the going gets tough.
One of the most effective tools you can use to hold yourself accountable is your own individualized Contract for Success.
Posted 1/27/2009 6:00:00 AM By: : 57 comments 23,542 views
Challenge Answers, Winners, & What It All Means
Last week, I challenged you to identify whether 5 very common statements about obesity and health were true or false. 1,352 of you participated, but the number of people who were correct about all 5 statements was...well, a lot less than that.
I’m not sure of the total number of correct responses (it would have taken me all day to go through and find all of them), but I had to go all the way up to comment #265 to find the 25th winner of a 100 point SparkGoodie, and by the time I got to comment #500, the total of correct answers was less than 50. In other words, less than 10% of the responses were correct about all 5 statements.
So, if you didn’t get all 5 right, you weren’t alone (in fact, by far the most common answer—that all 5 statements were true—was wrong about all 5 statements). But don’t feel too bad–the questions were deliberately worded in a way that made it easy to make a mistake. In fact, that was really one of the major points of this challenge—to demonstrate that it’s very easy for anyone to take a “fact” and present it in a way that leads to a certain conclusion, when the fact itself doesn’t lead there at all. And it isn’t always easy to spot when this is going on.
Each of the 5 statements in this challenge presents a good example of how facts get turned into widely held impressions and assumptions that aren’t really accurate, and could potentially cause problems for people. So, let’s take a look at the statements and the correct answers, and then we can talk a little about what this all means in the real world.
Posted 1/22/2009 12:28:52 PM By: : 85 comments 12,772 views
Staying Motivated, Tip #4: Inoculate Yourself Against Weight Loss Tunnel Vision
Do you find yourself getting very upset when you don’t see the number you want on your scale? Can a bad food day leave you feeling so frustrated or helpless that you wonder if this whole weight loss business is really worth all the effort it takes?
If so, you’re definitely not alone. But you may need a little attitude adjustment to take some of this drama out of your relationship with your scale and your food, before it does you in.
That was definitely the case for me, during my many weight loss failures and the yo-yo dieting years.
I know that an awful lot of the emotional eating I did can be traced back to this kind of drama. I’d do fine on all my diets, until the scale started being uncooperative--which, of course, it always did, and not just once in a while. Then I’d end up feeling extremely frustrated and hopeless, not only about losing weight but about almost everything. All because I gained a pound or didn’t lose as much as I expected. If you were looking for a classic example of the weight loss drama king, you definitely didn’t have to look any further than me.
So, what’s really going on here? How did the number on the scale become so important that it could literally determine my mood and how I felt about life?
Posted 1/20/2009 6:17:07 AM By: : 75 comments 20,943 views
A Challenge: Can You Separate the Facts from the Myths?
No doubt you’ve noticed that the world of weight management is populated by all kinds of claims, theories, diet strategies, and different approaches, many of which totally contradict most of the others.
And this problem isn’t confined to the snake oil peddlers and fad diet promoters who have a financial interest in getting you to believe their particular claims. Even reputable scientists and health professionals don’t always agree on “the facts,” or on the best way to help people manage their health and their weight successfully.
Given all this confusion and uncertainty, it’s not surprising that even some of the most basic and widely held convictions people have about weight and health turn out not to be proven fact.
Below, for example, are five very basic statements about body weight and health that you’ve probably heard many times, from many different sources. Not all of them are true.
Your mission for today, should you decide to accept it, is to correctly determine whether each of these statements is true or false. If you are one of the first 25 readers to get all five correct, you will receive a SparkGoodie valued at 100 SparkPoints, personalized with a congratulatory note from me (If you're not already a member of SparkPeople, you will need to join for free before posting your answers, and set up your SparkPage by the time the prizes are awarded next Thursday. Otherwise, your Goodie will get lost in transit). While the cash value of this reward may not impress your banker or your loan shark, and you can’t eat it, I’m sure you'll be excited by the prospect of watching its sentimental value increase exponentially as this blog expands its readership, with your name permanently recorded as a winner of this historic first challenge.
So, read on for the 5 Statements, and post your answers in the comments section (along with any remarks you want to make–but please, no attempts to deliberately mislead other respondents). Then, tune in next Thursday, when the correct answers will be revealed, and the 25 winners of this valuable prize will be announced (if there are any).
Posted 1/15/2009 6:47:24 AM By: : 1468 comments 20,166 views
Staying Motivated, Tip #3: Take these 5 STEPS for Success
In Tip #2, I said that feeling unmotivated is what happens when you fall into “autopilot” mode instead of making conscious choices about your eating and exercise. And I suggested that feeling motivated comes more from making conscious decisions about your own behavior than from the results your behavior produces.
Today’s blog takes a look at HOW being mindful keeps you feeling motivated, even when your choices aren’t always “perfect.” And we’ll talk about a 5-step process you can use to turn your autopilot off and keep yourself mindfully motivated.
Posted 1/13/2009 4:58:19 PM By: : 94 comments 23,837 views
Is it an Exercise Machine or an Expensive Clothes Rack?
It’s that time of year again, when thousands of home exercise machines are anxiously waiting to find out whether they’re going to be used as intended, or mainly to keep the laundry off the floor.
I’ve broken the hearts of a few exercise machines in my time. Over the years, I’ve had 2 stationary bikes, a treadmill, and a Total Gym, and all of them ended up becoming expensive clothes racks within weeks of purchase.
They all seemed like great ideas at the time. I was sure that, if I didn’t have to go through the hassle of getting myself out the door and to the gym, I’d actually spend a lot more time exercising.
Wrong. After the initial burst of enthusiasm wore off, it wasn’t any easier to get myself to use this equipment at home than it was to get myself to the gym. It wasn’t always just lack of self-discipline on my part. Ever try to talk a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old into leaving you alone so you can play with your own toys for an hour? Fat chance. And somehow, by the time they were in bed and the chores were done, the idea of exercise just didn’t seem very appealing any more. And then, of course, there was the additional problem of having to put away all those clothes before I could even get to the machine.
This is not an uncommon problem. According to this article, consumers spend about $4 billion every year on home exercise equipment, and 40% of us say we don’t use it as much as we expected to. That works out to about $1.6 billion worth of over-qualified laundry racks sold annually—not counting the resale market. And we all know these are just the honest people, right? How many more of us don’t want to admit to some researcher that we spent several hundred dollars or more for a rack to display our laundry on in the middle of the room? Or worse, that we’ve done this not just once, but several times?
So, what happens to all the enthusiasm and optimism that leads people to buy this equipment in the first place? Is there something you can do to turn that good intention into a consistent exercise routine that will keep both you and your machine happy?
I think so…
Posted 1/8/2009 6:22:19 AM By: : 167 comments 25,480 views
10 Tips for Maintaining Your Motivation, #2: The One Thing You Should NEVER, EVER Do.
Last week, in the first of 10 Tips on Maintaining Your Motivation, I talked about the importance of framing your healthy lifestyle goals in positive language.
There is, however, one very basic and important goal that everyone should have on their list, and it really needs to be expressed in the strongest possible negative terms: Do NOT do this, EVER!
So, what is this one thing you should never do? Read Tip #2 to find out...
Posted 1/6/2009 6:14:29 AM By: : 200 comments 32,546 views
10 Tips for Staying Motivated All Year Long: Tip No. 1
Ask any veteran of the weight loss wars and they’ll tell you that success depends just as much on exercising your mind as on exercising your body and changing your diet.
Let’s face it. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to eat and exercise if you want to lose weight. Sure, there are lots of things it’s very helpful to know, especially if you want to avoid wasting your time and money on some “you can lose 30 pounds in 2 weeks” scam, or on one of the dozens of ineffective fad diets that hit the book stores and magazine racks every January. But the basics are pretty simple: eat a little less, choose healthy foods, move your body more.
If you’re like me, though, the real challenge is actually getting yourself to consistently do what you know you need to do. This is the first in a series of 10 weekly blogs where I’ll share some “attitude adjustment” tips that helped me lose 150 pounds and keep it off for five years.
Read on for Tip No. 1:
Posted 1/1/2009 8:00:00 AM By: : 171 comments 30,650 views
Do Your New Year's Resolutions Produce Results?
I’ve never had much luck with making successful New Year's resolutions. Like many other people, I get off to a good start on the appointed day, but within a few days or weeks, I’ve pretty much given up and gone back to my old ways.
There is at least one local chocolate maker in my home town who is rooting for me to keep this pattern intact again this year.
On the other hand, though, I have been very successful at making and maintaining some important changes in my habits and my lifestyle. I’ve quit a 3-pack per day smoking habit (smoke free since 1983), and gone from drinking 2 six packs of beer per day to about 1 six pack per month. I lost about 170 pounds a few years ago, and have kept 140 of those pounds off since then. I’ve gone from being a confirmed couch potato to putting about 125 miles on my bicycle and hiking another 20-25 most weeks–and loving it.
So, I know I can make changes, including some pretty difficult ones. I just can’t stick to my New Year's resolutions. And I’m pretty sure I know why...
Posted 12/30/2008 1:26:40 PM By: : 111 comments 12,264 views
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