Sending you all love while the world is in constant chaos.

Continue to rest well and raise hell my friends. 

I've been in the trenches of the health, wellness, and fitness industry for the last 10+ years and have seen more people fail at a ‘healthy lifestyle” than I have witnessed succeed. This is largely due to people’s assumptions about what it takes to get healthy, how they define health, and the approaches they commit to in order to get there. 

 

Do you believe you have to work out a lot, eat well a large majority of the time, and prevent stress to get healthy? 

 

Do you define “health” as something you feel or something you can see? Or both? 

 

Do you think the best way to get healthy is to essentially, “Just Do It”? 

 

 

 

 

A number of previous studies have shown that 80%-90% of people (in the US) are attempting or have attempted to ‘achieve" a healthy lifestyle, with 90% thinking they weigh too much, 25% of people on diets on any given day, and another 50% of people just finishing, breaking, or about to start a new one. (1) 

 

 

Unfortunately, the trajectory of the data we have to date is depicting a grim future for dietetics- the results of misinformation exacerbating false notions of wellness are making wellness more difficult to ‘achieve,' more convoluted with confusion on what that even means much less how to do it, and causing disordered eating and eating disorders alike to sky rocket. 

 

All for a profit- whether it be promising weight loss (which can't be guaranteed), insinuating or blatantly lying about a product's abilities, and cherry-picking pieces of research to support false claims and sell a service (also known as cognitive dissonance.)

 

 

Movements like the body neutrality movement, not to be confused with body positivity, policies and regulation over private practices and holding people accountable to scope of practice, as well as people using their voices to push social media platforms like Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to take topics of wellbeing more seriously (as well as all other topics of profession) in terms of fact checking- as Tik Tok recently announced, it will begin flagging posts perpetuating disordered eating. 

 

 

Despite the popularization of ‘you can do it too!’ most of us fail at achieving a healthy lifestyle, with many more studies indicating that only 3% of the U.S. are actually meeting the bare minimums for a healthy lifestyle to exist. 

 

Testing measures include: meeting food + exercise  recommendations, adequately managing stress, body fat percentage between 20-30%, and maintaining low levels of high-risk behaviors like smoking, drinking, etc.) (2)

 

Despite even your best efforts and most well-placed intentions, there’s a (really fuckn’ good) chance you’re in the portion of the population struggling to get a consistent healthy lifestyle, rather than the portion of people who are already there. 

 

Don’t let it be lost on you that the mentioned statistics of health closely reflects the wealth gap in the U.S., and the world. (This is going to come full circle later.) 

 

For those of us who work for a living and qualify being under the upper and elite class categories, (make less than ~$300,000/year (3)) it gets progressively harder the lower your income to find the energy, time, and effort to prioritize our well-being as often as we’d like to. (4)

 

 

•what behavior change is/isn’t

•pairing different types of goals with the approaches most effective for achieving them

•and finishing with an overview of the 6 steps required to secure a change in behavior, otherwise known as the transtheoretical model. (5)

 

 

Financial privileges aside, there are still things within your control that you may easily be getting mixed up with the things you CANT control. Not all blame is yours to hold though- the information accessibility and education is not convenient or well-taught. Hell, most textbooks are out of date within 5-10 years time. But this is why I got the masters in this shit- so you didn't have to. Stick with me and we'll hack away at the confusion email by email!

 

But these mix ups are likely the culprits every time you end a health kick in frustration, struggling to make the lifestyle choices (eating better, moving more, and managing stress) consistent over time. 

 

 

When you lead yourself to think that there’s something wrong with you because what works for everyone else doesn’t work for you, you falsely assume that what’s been made to be the most popular in approach ISNT also failing everyone else. 

 

 

After all, there’s apparently only 3% of people getting shit to ‘work’ for them. But speaking from previous frustration and experience- I know it FEELS you’re suffering alone when you’re comparing yourself to other people’s curated lives on social media, are being pulled by stress in all different directions, and/or finding yourself burnt out in more ways than one. 

Burnout, otherwise known as “I have zero fucks left to give." (Burnout, by the way, is also manageable!) 

 

 

In case you’ve been assuming there’s something wrong with you, please be reminded that what ‘seems to work for everyone else except me’ isn’t working for hardly anyone at all- not for the long haul at least. 

 

Most who find themselves stuck on a hamster wheel of healthy lifestyles, lifestyle changes, or ‘cleaning it up’ are only getting enough support to make those efforts last changes in seasons at a time, a season of life when all the stars align and life doesn't throw its infamous curve-balls, and even less than that timeframe for most individuals- weeks to months at a time, otherwise known as yo-yo dieting. 

Hence why the health and fitness industry is a bustling $500 billion global industry. People will spend anything to be told they're better off- even if it's a lie. 

 

 

 

 

The answer to that question varies depending on the person: 

 

A lot of you here, like me these days, don’t give a shit about what you eat or how much you workout- you you want food to remain stress-free, and exercise to be enjoyed when possible. Your goal with self care is to deepen your understanding of your personal needs and how to satisfy them, prevent burnout, and reduce your experiences of brain fog, mood swings, and energy crashes. 

 

While others of you, like I was in my bodybuilding days and like my clients came to me with, are still submerged into the fitness industry’s stigma of health that you can’t tell the difference between the sound, health advice given by qualified experts that have nothing to gain and the fatphobic, fear-mongering content advertised by enthusiasts that only care about profiting from your insecurities. 

 

 

So the advice I would give to each of you is completely different- context matters! 

 

 

Good advice can be given and received by virtually everyone- but good solutions require expertise, nuance, and an intimate understanding of someone’s needs. 

 

 

I could give thousands of examples of differences, but here’s one that comes up pretty frequently:

Personal trainers, supplement reps, and others with no real knowledge of effective behavior modification or health sciences telling you how to eat might be giving you good nutrition advice- like eating more veggies, minding your protein intake, and staying hydrated- but might be offering bad solutions or approaches- like pushing veganism, suggesting people rely on protein supplements to meet their recommended intake, or giving the tip that won’t die no matter how many times it’s been debunked- setting a goal to drink a gallon of water a day. 

 

 

Rabbit trail: If you’re not sweating profusely every single day- as a professional athlete, competitive body-builder, or manual-laborer, then a gallon of water will do nothing more than make you pee 500 times a day. Hydration is not a water-thing, it’s a variety of sources mixed with retention-thing. You must retain hydration, not just hydrate. Which means- Best practices for hydration is a variety of fluids from solid and liquids AND minerals that retain the hydration those sources provide- ie drinking milk, coffee *not a diuretic*, soda, tea, water, eating fruits and veggies, and getting enough sodium in your diet. Retaining water gets a bad wrap from weight-focused sources, but for your health, which includes your metabolic health/benefits to weight management, retention is actually a good sign, not a bad one. 

 

Shoutout to my people who have 3 different drinks on their desk at all times-same. And now you can sleep peacefully knowing you're likely hydrated af. (But consult your urine color for the final say- please and thank you.) 

 

Education is another example of something that serves as advice, not a solution. Knowledge only becomes power once it can be acted on.

 

So, if this is your first time navigating the differences between the two, and you don’t have the resources for coaching, your next step is to read the next newsletter because we’ll be diving into all this in depth, incorporating a different perspective each time- with the last email this month concluding our behavior change series and detailing the 6 stages of behavior change. 

 

 

If you’ve been following me for a minute, have been frustrated with your healthy kick inconsistencies, and have the resources to hire a coach, then join me so you can stop suffering in silence and start getting the quality support you need to resolve your confusion.

I teach my clients all steps of behavior change theory so they never waste efforts on faulty systems, nutrition and exercise education so they can eat and move freely without second-guessing their choices, and stress-management skills that have lead ALL my clients to having more capacity for the people and things that matter most to them- including more time to themselves. 

 

 

Otherwise, I will see you next email! Don't forget to grab your party favors on your way out the door! 

•If coaching is a good fit, we'll get you started. 

•If not, we'll get you turned around in the RIGHT direction!