E1: We've lost Health!

Find out why you YO-YO, stop-start when it comes to nutrition and exercise routines.


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Speaker A: Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Johnson, mental health and exercise coach, private gym owner from Newcastle Online, coach of the revival program, and outnumbered dad of two strong independent daughters just like my wife. And I can't get a word in with them at home. Here's my chance. Welcome to my podcast. This show is a combination of my own personal growth, life experiences, and experiences of coaching people for over a decade to help improve their health, happiness and life fulfillment. There's a lot of people struggling to find sustainable physical and mental health solutions, so I want to provide you with some key insights and key tools to help. If you find this information useful or even just enjoyable, it would be absolutely amazing if you could hit the Share button or leave a comment. You can also follow me on any of my social media platforms that can be found in the description text of this show. Here we go. Episode one. I'm coming in all guns blazing. I'm going to say it straight away for me. In my opinion, the health and fitness industry is largely failing you. It's failed me and it's failed so many people that I've coached in the past. It's massively, massively focused not on just fat loss, on just weight loss. Things like six week fat loss programs getting shredded before and after 4 hours, losing £20 in six weeks, eight weeks, whatever it is. And I'll be honest, I've been there. The health and fitness industry pulled me down that route when I first qualified as a personal trainer many years ago, I thought it was the thing to do. And I've been there and I've offered those six week programs, those fat loss programs that we do weigh in every couple of weeks. As for before and after photos, I did measurements, circumference measurements, hips, waist. Been there, done all of that, offered diet plans. So if anybody who's listening to this, that's from the Northeast and has been part of one of those programs with me many years ago, I'm here publicly apologizing for me at that time, that is what I thought that people wanted. I thought that's what the health and fitness industry was all about. And at that time, the knowledge that I had, that was what I thought was best, the best service to offer. So first and foremost, I apologize to anybody who was part of any of those programs, any of those plans. Secondly, though, I hope that this information can help you moving forward for your long term health and fitness with the new information that I have, the new experiences that I have, and sort of understanding people who want help much, much better. Let's have a look at the terms physical health, mental health, social health. Let's have a look at health in general and let's have a look at fitness as well. So if I was to look at the definition of fitness, all right, experts define fitness as one's ability to execute daily activities with optimal performance, endurance, and strength. So that's fitness. If we now look at health, the definition of health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not just the absence of disease. So health and fitness got a bit of a better understanding about what they actually mean, the definitions. So let's consider health and fitness against the majority of the health and fitness industry, which is all about extreme fat loss, extreme weight loss. Basically, these programs have the aim to elicit the quickest possible results in terms of the fat loss and weight loss. All right, let's look at the vast majority of those. And again, I'm talking from experience here. They offer restricted food plans, diet plans. They offer absolute beasts of workouts. Could be 1 hour, could be 45 minutes. And those workouts don't really have much care for anybody's. Initial fitness levels, initial mobility. They don't have much consideration for injuries, and they definitely don't have much consideration for safe technique progression. Probably one of the main aims is to get as many people in as possible into that one session. And these programs, the very, very end goal focused, the willpower driven, let's get to session number 18 of 18 over the six weeks, or let's get to the end of the eight weeks. There's a constant reminder that you've got a weigh in day coming up mind, or you're going to be doing before and after us, or we're going to do these circumference measurements, remember? So there's always this end goal focus. So all of those things that I've just gone through, for me that means less, nourishment, you're on a restricted diet or food plan that could potentially be cutting out certain food groups or massively limiting the variation of foods that you get. So that's less, nourishment less recovery probably going to put you through at least three workouts per week, and they're probably going to want you to do some extras on top of that, some maybe four or five, six times a week, wanting you to go through these very tough, high intensity workouts over and over again. So there's less recovery there. All of this also means to me that there's probably going to be extra and very likely excessive stress put on your body, okay, so there's less, nourishment less recovery and excessive or at least extra stress that doesn't really equal health and or fitness. Fitness being one's ability to execute daily activities with optimal performance, endurance, and strength. If you're a parent, think about your energy levels that you're going to have when you're less, nourished, less recovery and more stressed. Are you going to be working to the best of your ability as a parent in your career? When you're less, nourished, less recovery, more stressed, do you feel like you're going to be making the best decisions within your career? That is what being able to execute your daily activities IA fitness means these things are not promoting that. That is not good management of diseases, good management of fatigue, it's not good management of stress. And for me that's an absolute recipe for injuries, burnouts sickness, chronic stress and other poor forms of mental health. All things that are going to push people into this all and often mindset, which I'm going to get into in a second. Anybody who does go into this all and often mindset and goes into this vicious cycle is going to increase their sedentary and their inactivity behaviors. Again, so I've mentioned their mental health. Everybody has mental health. There's a difference between mental health and mental illness. Mental health you can have poor and you can also have positive. And that will interchange through everyone's life and it will vary at different levels of intensity. So poor forms of mental health are things like stress, guilt, worry, anxiety, depression, low self worth, low confidence in all of those things. All those forms of poor mental health are all associated with that stop start cycle. So here's a process that I've seen so many times throughout the last decade of coaching people and seeing other people and speaking to other people, friends, family members, all right, start some sort of fat loss, weight loss, strict, fast, quickest possible program, go through the process, feel **** in the process because of everything that we've just gone through and then they end up stopping. That is the cycle of all or nothing. That is a stop start cycle. And all of those things, stress, guilt, worry, anxiety, they are all linked to that cycle. All forms of poor mental health, talking about health, physical, mental and social wellbeing. So we've got to take that into consideration when we're talking about the health and fitness industry. On top of that, let's take a look at health definition again. Physical, mental, social wellbeing during these programs. These fat loss, weight loss programs, weigh in clubs even. I'm going to check in there as well. It's highly likely that no socializing goes on or very little because when they're in the program or whatever it is in the plan, they've got this I'm honest mentality when I'm on it. I definitely can't go out for a drink with friends. That's not on the plan, that's not in the program. Or I can't have a pizza or a coffee or a cake with some friends. Socializing is seen as a bad thing and it is minimized. So when we're talking about physical, mental and social wellbeing, that can be lost during these programs even more. There'll be zero education about how you can improve your health and fitness long term while socializing, how you can incorporate these socially healthy things, going out, meeting friends, enjoying food, having some drinks, but also focusing on proving your overall physical mental well being as well. Again, health has been lost with the majority of the industry and in my opinion, it's an absolute **** show and we all deserve better, you deserve better. But until the industry on a whole changes and there's a lot that needs changing, but there are certain certifications and awards that are trying to help change the whole industry, such as the Mental Health and Exercise Coaching Award. But it's a slow process, we are starting to turn a corner. But until that happens, we've got to look at what you, the consumer, can do until the industry changes on a whole. So I just want to share four tips with you that are going to help you moving forwards. Number one, you need to fully understand what health and fitness really means. So like we've gone through there the definitions of health, the definitions of fitness. Then once you understand those, then you need to look at and understand how improving it is going to positively impact literally every area of your life, physically, mentally, professionally, so with your career, personally, with your relationships, socially, with friends and family. When you improve the whole aspect of health and fitness, it will positively impact every single area of your life. Notice I haven't even touched on how that is going to impact how you look. So that's point number one. Get a better understanding. Number two, change your focus from this short term shape change, clothing size change, weight number on a scale change and start focusing on how you feel, how you perform day to day and how it impacts your overall health. When you flip that focus, when you change it to feelings and performance, you'll actually find that the shape goals, the looks goals, the wave goals that you had, they'll probably happen indirectly and it will happen in a much more enjoyable and more sustainable way. I'm not sitting here saying that you can't have these aesthetic goals, aesthetic being way to shape change, but just don't make them your sole focus. Think about this. It hasn't worked for you so far by focusing on those. So why not change things, change the focus. It hasn't worked so far. It hasn't created a sustainable solution. Point number three, change your inputs. Your inputs being your social media, other forms of media, magazines, TV shows, et cetera, et cetera. All right, these are mostly reinforcing the wrong focus for your exercise and nutrition routines. It's going to be focusing on your looks, your weight, your shape, rather than what we've just touched on. Focusing on your feelings, your mood and your overall health. You can do a social media audit, go through, have a look at who you're following, which A or Z list celebrities you're following that are potentially promoting that. Health and fitness is all about how you look. Even coaches, personal trainers in your local area, online coaches, anybody? Have a look through your social media and see how much has drumming you to believe that your health and fitness is all about looks and shape. You can stop following those. Take them out of your life. Take them out of your headspace. And finally, number four, seek help from trainers, coaches, either locally or online who actually want to help change your mindset, those who actually want to build your independence and set you on with life lasting changes that you can take forwards for yourself. If you've got a return, here's the point that I really want you to listen to. If you've got a return to a method of program two times, three times, four times over the last couple of years, it has not worked. The amount of times I've heard somebody say to me when I first speak to them, I'll say, what have you tried in the past? And they'll say, X, Y and Z. And then I'll say, so has it worked? And they say, well yeah, it worked at the time. And I'll reply, it hasn't worked because you wouldn't be having this conversation with me if it worked. We need to change the meaning of what worked means. Working means that you have found something that you can do independently for the rest of your life without having to rely on somebody else. You shouldn't have to feel like your progress, your confidence, your health, your self worth is in the hands of someone or something else. It's got to come within and that should be taught by a good coach once when it's done properly. So make sure you're shopping around, don't get dragged into coaches trainers programs with the best before and afters. Because here's a little side note 80% of those clients feel absolutely ******* miserable and they'll not look like that anymore because it hasn't last, because it hasn't been sustainable and the followed the stop start pattern. So there's four points. Yes, the health and fitness industry needs to improve massively, but until it does, and as it does, you can also control a lot more than you think. So use those tips. Hopefully, if you found that useful, let's start putting health back into health and fitness. Thanks for listening.